General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Following the resignation yesterday of the honourable David Parker, this House had a debate about the matter. There were two speeches that, I think, were reasonably well quoted by various media commentators: one from Jeanette Fitzsimons, and the other, in part at least, from the Rt Hon Winston Peters. They raised the question about whether this House was headed in a direction that was, to say the least, unsavoury and worrying—whether individual members could expect to have their backgrounds raked over, whether they could expect all sorts of investigations into their past, and other such matters.

I think those speeches missed the point slightly. It is not muckraking to ask the Prime Minister how $446,000 of her leader’s budget ended up in the Labour Party campaign. It is not muckraking to ask the Prime Minister how five policemen and a civilian driver could end up in the dock for speeding while she did not notice that the speed of the car was 160 kilometres. It is not muckraking to suggest that misleading Parliament is a serious matter, and it is not muckraking to ask how the falsification of a document came about. Those matters have been before this House, and they are not matters that should be swept aside easily. I say to this House, particularly to the Labour members who have had so much to say about those matters, that if they want respect they will have to start showing it.

I think that anyone who looked at today’s question time would see why the House has deteriorated in the way that it has. If one looked at the way in which Government Ministers dealt with question time today, it was clear there was no desire on the part of Ministers to give serious answers to serious issues when the rightful role of the Opposition to scrutinise their portfolios was exercised.

The Prime Minister today refused to say what she thought of the Whangamata decision. She hid behind a pathetic answer, saying that the Minister of Conservation had followed a process. That virtually pushes the Minister out and hangs him out to dry. There was no group responsibility whatsoever.

Dr Nick Smith decided he should ask Dover Samuels what he had meant when he said he thought the Minister of Conservation had acted inappropriately. We know that Dover Samuels had a heck of a lot more to say, and that most of that was said inside the Labour caucus room, but publicly he had questioned the right of the Minister to make that decision. And it is our role to ask why he did that.

Why is it that a Minister can make an important public decision, only to be questioned by another Minister? What we got was this idea that because the first Minister had a different coloured hat on at the time he made those statements, he is exempt from being questioned about that matter in the House. That is an utter nonsense.

Is there a point when a Minister walks out of this place during the day or the night and is no longer considered a Minister? I do not think Lianne Dalziel would agree with that. I do not think Ruth Dyson would agree with that. I do not think poor old Dover himself, if he really asked himself the question, would agree with that. So what happens is a level of frustration brews up inside the Opposition and, of course, we have a degree of disorder occurring in the House.

A question was asked of the Hon Harry Duynhoven. It was a simple question: were there any bids for the latest round of gasfields that were on offer? The answer that came back, in any form one likes, was to get him out of answering simply that, no, no one was interested.

For how long will we have people writing articles about the way in which the House appears, and the business the House is supposedly preoccupied with, while ignoring the fact that Ministers are not exercising their responsibility to be accountable to the public of this country? It does take us away from considering the big issues that face this nation. The looming energy crisis is right on our back-doorstep, and we have a Minister of Energy who does not want to know about it.

National started this year by saying that the economy was going to be the issue. I have sat here in Parliament for 2 days this week and there has not been a single question to me as the Minister in charge of the economy. Where are all the big, brave candidates for the leadership of the National Party taking on the Minister of Finance? They have all given up. Instead, all they can do is complain about which hat Dover Samuels wears. I will tell them. The hat he wears is called an Akubra. It is one of those leather, brown things that one can get in Australia. He wears it frequently, but we will not go into how he sometimes uses it. The fact is that it is called an Akubra. The other complaint was that Harry Duynhoven’s answers were too long. I could have made that complaint, as well, as the Leader of the House, but we will pass over that matter at this particular time.

I point out that 1 April this year is a major date. It is a red-letter date for well over 1 million New Zealanders—parents, children, business people, students, graduates, and superannuitants. That is the real political story. It is the real news that ordinary Kiwis actually care about. Instead, of course, we have the leader of the ACT party swimming around in the sewer and National members waiting by the outfall for their faithful dog to bring them something to chew on. Well, I do not share the same taste as the National Party, in politics or in anything else.

So let us come to 1 April. What happens on 1 April affects every superannuitant in the country. It also affects three-quarters of all families with children, the great majority of students and recent graduates, and the great majority of New Zealand businesses. And it is good news for the economy. First, it will put more spending power into the economy just as it is starting to slow down as part of the cycle. On 1 April we will see families with more spending power. That upsets John Key, because he wants to have all the spending power in his own palatial home. It is not, of course, the home he registered on the electoral roll. Oh, no, he did not register his own home for that purpose, but I will come back to that a bit later. Secondly, when we come to the business changes they will be great for business investment. They will lead to more business investment and more growth within the economy.

What happens with Working for Families? Under that package 350,000 families qualify for targeted tax relief. Many families with two or three kids will be over $100 a week better of on 1 April this year. A billion dollars is going into support for New Zealand families with kids, and I thank New Zealand First, United Future, and the Greens for supporting those measures. I cannot remember whether the Māori Party was split on that issue. I think it did vote for the last round of those particular matters. We will see a new in-work payment that will significantly increase the margin in terms of going into employment compared with being on a benefit, which has been attacked by National members at every point. That is because they prefer the poor to be beneficiaries rather than being in work.

And from 1 April we will remove the interest on student loans for those who stay in New Zealand. What that means is a much faster pay down of individual student loans. It means that all the payment goes towards paying off the principal, not merely towards servicing the interest on the debt. That will remove a burden for many young people, and as they move into adulthood they can begin to save, have a home, and have a family, and not worry about the length of time the student debt incubus will hang over them. Will it cost as much as National has said? No, it will not. I can tell National members that they will be even more disappointed than previously when they get the updated reports on the costing of that particular policy.

The annual adjustment to superannuation this year does take people to 66 percent of the average wage, but because of the agreement with New Zealand First that relativity will be maintained next year and the year after. So superannuitants will be better off while we work on the gold card. Indeed, of course, many superannuitants are better off because of higher interest rates.

Debate interrupted.