General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Is it not interesting here today? One can easily see when the supposed mainstream Opposition has nothing to whinge about, because we revert to tittle-tattle and personal snides and slights come from very inexperienced members of the House, who are overpaid for doing very little work, at all.

During the election period, all of us were out there on the hustings listening to people—[Interruption] There they go, baying like poodles. We were out on the hustings listening to people tell us about their concerns. Rather than promising to get into the dirt, and to roll around in the muck with Rodney Hide and all those other grubby little cretins, we in New Zealand First made some promises to some people. And have I got good news for all those people who voted for New Zealand First—and even for the elderly gentlemen in the back row of the National caucus who are about to superannuate after the next election. While some people are rolling around in the muck and making personal attacks on other MPs, others are getting on and doing the work.

What sort of work has New Zealand First been engaged in? Members will remember that during the election campaign we met all those people who were complaining about the $9 economy, about underpaid work, and about casual labourers. Well, there is some good news. What is the good news? New Zealand First has secured a rise in the minimum wage. Is that not good news? And all those people out there will be thanking New Zealand First for doing that.

What other good news is there? New Zealand First, as a result of its agreement with Labour, has secured an increase in superannuation—[Interruption]—and even “Mr Noddy” over there is saying that that is amazing. I cannot remember his name. From 27 March workers earning the minimum wage will receive a pay rise of nearly 8 percent, taking that wage to $10.25 an hour. Is that not amazing? That is an important step towards our $12 an hour target.

On 1 April the rate of superannuation rose. But wait—there is more than just the fact that superannuation rose. One of the key promises of New Zealand First during the election campaign was that we would peg superannuation so it would never ever fall below 65 percent of the average working wage. Has that happened? Yes, that has happened—thank you, New Zealand First! Can we fix it? Yes, we have done the deal.

What else have we done? Well, the golden age card is coming up. Even Bob Clarkson will get a golden age card. But here is the great news about the golden age card. All the corporates who have been funding a failed National Party campaign are now coming to New Zealand First and saying: “This golden age card—can we be on it?”. That golden age card will be the tear jerker and the heartbreaker in the community, because not only will superannuitants get a card that gives them Government-sponsored discounts on power, phone, prescriptions, and doctors fees, but now the corporates—which will not back National next time—are coming to New Zealand First and saying: “We can tap in on this; we can help superannuitants.” That golden age card will become a billion-dollar card, mark our words, and superannuitants—[Interruption] Yes, Gerry Brownlee’s mum and dad, Lindsay Tisch’s mum and dad, and Mr Bennett’s grandfather, will all benefit, and I say to Mr Bennett that if they do not want it, they can just hand the money right on back. But that card was from New Zealand First. Did we fix it? Yes we did.

What else has New Zealand First done? What about the Tauranga Harbour Bridge? The old duffer in Tauranga was running around saying that he was going to put Tauranga on the map, but he is totally irrelevant now. The Tauranga Harbour Bridge will be toll free. Can we fix it? It is a done deal; it is good news from New Zealand First. Tauranga residents, who are already saying: “Did we really elect that guy to Parliament? Did you hear him speak the other day?”, are cringing. Members of the blue-rinse brigade are worried that he might fondle certain parts of his anatomy in public, but actually the biggest criticism now is that he cannot put two words together without making himself look like a raging idiot. But New Zealand First is still there, supporting Tauranga. Did we fix it? Yes, we did.

What about the 1,000 new cops? I say: “How do you like those babies!”. There are 1,000 front-line police in blue uniforms. The police are already telling us that they cannot handle the number of job applications. Is that not good news? And it is not just 1,000 uniformed staff—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Then why are you on 2 percent in the polls? Actually, it could be in the negative.

Oh, Mr Williamson is there—the computer whiz kid. He was going to solve the problems of the police force. He gave the police a computer to go and catch criminals. That is what he did, but it did not have any legs. It could not run fast enough. New Zealand First: can we fix it? We sure as hell can.

Well, who would believe that New Zealand First is not part of the Government? Ron has gone home—Ron has gone back to his Labour roots. During the adjournment Helen Clark will reshuffle her Cabinet. We know that because she was a little uncertain about what to do with the finance Minister.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. You would expect that when a member has been here for some time he might know the Standing Orders. It is not proper for Mr Brownlee to refer to someone by his or her Christian name. It is proper that he calls Mr Mark by his full name, or refers to him as “the honourable member”, or major, or sir, in his case, but not by his Christian name. The member should be asked to stay within the Standing Orders.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member is correct. All members know that members should be referred to by their correct name. So would the member please refer to the member by his correct name.

I withdraw and apologise. My friend Paku is signalling me from the gallery to say that his friend Ron does not mind being referred to by his first name.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): No, no. The member knows that that is incorrect—the member had better withdraw and apologise.

I apologise, Madam Assistant Speaker. The point is that Helen Clark is going to reshuffle her Cabinet. She has to. She knows that Michael Cullen has got tired. He is a little uncertain about whether he wants to carry on, and, more than that, she is uncertain about whether she wants him to carry on. We know that Pete Hodgson has completely lost the plot. He is in severe need of some sabbatical, and he also has put himself on the managed exit list, along with Russell Fairbrother, Dianne Yates, and our old friend the former member for Whanganui. The certainty is that despite the rumours—the strong rumours—Ron Mark will not be in that ministry.

💬 Hon Members: Oh, no!

I know—people on this side of the House think he is a competent man, but despite that speech today, New Zealand First is not part of the Government. Despite the fact that every time the Prime Minister gets into trouble Winston “the trained poodle” Peters gets on his hind legs, Winston is insisting that New Zealand First is not part of the Government. We just keep seeing, day after day, examples of why New Zealand First is not part of the Government.

Earlier in the week the Auditor-General reported on the arrangements the Government has with the Green Party. Those arrangements have been spun by the Government as being perfectly acceptable, and the Prime Minister has said that there is nothing the Government needs to change. The reality is that the Auditor-General found a lot of things that need to change. The Auditor-General agreed with the National Party that Helen Clark had freely dipped into the taxpayer purse in order to cobble together an arrangement that suited her and ensured her longevity. The sad thing is that the Auditor-General could not make any comments about the constitutional issues that arise out of that situation.

So we now have a Parliament that cannot go directly to the people who are organising Government policy on the Buy Kiwi Made campaign, and, more important, cannot go directly to the person who is organising Government policy on energy conservation—something that is critical to this country’s future. It is time that someone, somewhere inside the Government showed enough integrity to insist that those people somehow become accountable directly to this Parliament. I do not hold out any hope that that integrity will be shown by anyone in Helen Clark’s Government, nor by anyone who is supporting her Government but who, for that matter, is not part of it.

Then there is the other issue that has come to light today, and I am sure that my colleague Bill English will speak more on it. It has to be a sign that a Government is in its last days when two former Ministers are being investigated by Government agencies, or by special people appointed by the Government to investigate them, and the ninth floor is donkey deep in ensuring the outcome from those investigations. That is the way in which this Government works. Helen Clark has the belief that her right to run this country cannot be challenged. It is an inappropriate way for someone to operate, and it will catch up with her later.

Then there is the extraordinary dispute between Dr Cullen and Helen Clark. It does not matter what sort of spin Helen Clark wants to put on it, the reality is that there was a 24-hour silence once she had first spoken. She may say in here today that Dr Cullen is her loyal deputy, that she supports him, and that as long as he is there she wants him there, but for 24 hours that man was hung out. It will be only his own toughness that sees him still sitting in that seat today. What we do know is that the two strongest people in this Government are clearly at loggerheads. When that sort of breakdown occurs, the end is very close.

It is a bit rich for Gerry Brownlee to even utter the words “loyal deputy”, because everybody knows that that was a bid for the leadership, albeit a pretty pathetic bid for the leadership. The three National Party members there—John Key, Bill English, and Gerry Brownlee—all looked at the poll on Sunday, saw that National was 3 percent behind and that 45 percent of the New Zealand public had voted overwhelmingly that Dr Brash was not up to the job, and each one of those men want the job. I give members this prediction. Dr Brash will still be there, because those three are cutting each other’s throats. Not one of those three have what it takes to be a leader, nor will that pathetic party in Opposition—the once-great National Party—ever persuade New Zealand that it is anywhere near ready to be in Government.

I take up one thing with Gerry Brownlee. He had to apologise twice in the first minute of that speech. He should have just apologised and sat down. He did not add anything. However, he did try to imply improper influence by the Prime Minister’s office with the Companies Office. He knows that implication is untrue, he knows it is dishonest, and he knows it is totally unsubstantiated. I predict that when that implication is proved to be wrong he will not come in here to apologise for the smear tactic he has just tried in this House.

Do those members not learn anything? They used smear tactics against David Benson-Pope. Judith Collins and Rodney Hide tried everything in the book and said improper things. None of it bore any truth, and none of it had any traction with the electorate. But they do not learn. They use personal abuse, because they have nothing of substance to add to this House or to our country. As for Rodney Hide, even the founder of ACT said at ACT’s own conference that Rodney Hide was the reason the ACT party has practically disappeared in the polls.

This has been a bad week for the National Party but a great week for ordinary New Zealanders. On 1 April, 470,000 New Zealanders had the burden of interest rates on their student loans lifted from their shoulders. What better message can we give to the young people of this country that we want to motivate them to get more skills and more education for themselves, their families, and the country than to relieve them of the burden of that debt?

I ask Gerry Brownlee or John Key whether National would reimpose the burden of interest rates. We will not get an answer today, but those two members said they were totally against lifting the burden of interest rates from student loans. Last Friday Bill English said he was wrong, it had not led to students taking out more loans, and that National would keep the policy. Bill English said yes, and Gerry Brownlee and John Key said no. They are totally without direction. No wonder they have no credibility in this country.

What did we hear yesterday? We heard Shane Ardern say he would reverse the legislation passed by the previous National Government, abandon science-based biosecurity, and not let honey that the biosecurity people have said was safe to bring into this country come into this country. He got away with saying that in the House. The people I admire in this House, like Lockwood Smith and Tim Groser, who know something about trade, absolutely cringed. The National Party is trying to be everything to everybody and it ends up being nothing to anyone. That is why it is in its third term of Opposition, and that is why it will stay there for a fourth term.

What about decent, hard-working New Zealand families? If we take a family with a couple of kids that is on between $25,000 and $45,000 a year, it will be getting $100 tax relief in its pockets this week. I think that is great. Who on the National Party bench will say that National members would reverse that? They have said—here is the criticism—that MPs might get something. They said Heather Roy might get something if her husband had not been working, but because he is, she will not get anything. Twenty bucks a week—I ask John Key what the National Party was promising. It was promising $5,000 a year to people who did not need the money and were well-off already, and National members whinge and whine in this House because we have lifted the threshold levels so that decent, hard-working families will get money to help raise their families.

I mention an article from the New Zealand Herald, which states that this is some pay rise for ordinary hard-working New Zealanders. It states that it is richly deserved, and that it recognises the role families play in bringing up their kids. The article features a Polynesian family that said its kids would now have fruit in their lunch. This is a good Government and I am proud of what it is doing.

Perhaps the enthusiasm of Mr Goff today is because he has spied his opportunity in his own party—an opportunity he is well known for keeping a sharp eye out for. Have we not seen it before? A Labour Government comes apart, because its Minister of Finance and Prime Minister are at odds. That is what happened back in 1987.

What has happened this week is more important than the marginal legal activities of many members of the current executive, because what has happened is that trust and confidence between Dr Michael Cullen and Helen Clark has been broken. It has been broken because she expressed in public the view that she did not know whether he would stay on. He was rather concerned about those comments, and as my colleague Gerry Brownlee pointed out to the House, it was a couple of days of talking until it was resolved.

We know that Helen Clark is very keen to try to make this Government look like it is refreshed and renewed. We know that Dr Cullen has been behaving in an increasingly irrational way. He has expressed views that he is tired and irritated, but he has not expressed the view—which I am sure he holds—that he is getting a bit fed up with Helen Clark taking all the credit for a good economic time that she had nothing to do with. Dr Cullen is getting tired of her taking all the credit for the stability of Government when he does all the hard work, and I sympathise with him. [Interruption] But those who have been in Cabinet—which the member who almost lost Otaki has not—will know how corrosive it is when the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister lose confidence in each other. Because the question remains unanswered—will Dr Cullen continue throughout the term?

Clearly the Prime Minister is covering her options. That is why she moved Trevor Mallard into a finance portfolio; that is why she has fed Phil Goff the line that he has a chance of being Minister of Finance, as compensation for taking foreign affairs off him—

💬 Gerry Brownlee: Wouldn’t that be good.

That would be good. But, of course, the Prime Minister has been preoccupied with her own machinations. I cannot believe that she stood up in this House today and admitted that officials from her department have been communicating with the statutorily independent Companies Office, which is involved right now in considering whether to prosecute a senior Minister in the Government. Helen Clark is desperate to have David Parker back in Cabinet. She believes it is critical to the stability of the Government. But I say that this Government and this country are paying too high a price for her obsession with stability, because she is now interfering in the decision making of an independent statutory body.

As a Minister I would never have considered instructing an official, taking advice from an official, or letting an official in my office if that official had communicated with the Companies Office in these circumstances. It would have been unimaginable. It is a measure of the extent to which Helen Clark has eroded the standards of propriety in Government that it is not even regarded as that significant that she has been briefed, via her officials, about the length of time that investigation will take. That is what she has owned up to—what is it that she has not owned up to?

I am told that an opinion has been written by the Companies Office—I know the name of the officer who said he or she wrote it—and it was handed to the Prime Minister’s department. I believe that is why Helen Clark changed her position on the seriousness of David Parker’s actions. She changed her view from being that they were mistakes warranting his resignation, to allegations from which he might be cleared and be back in Cabinet.

Listeners tuning into this debate today could be excused if they thought the National Party had been struck down with a new disease. It is called snivelling syndrome—everything is bad; nothing is good. Boohoo, they are “going down the garden to eat worms”! There are bogeymen, conspiracies, and malicious fabrications. We have just heard the biggest one from Bill English, who accused the Prime Minister of asking for information. She never asked for that information. He made it up, as he makes things up in this House everyday. The member knows it was made up, as he walks out of the Chamber unable to face the fact that he is making up stories in this House for political advantage. Let us use the words of Shakespeare to describe National members—they are droning, flap-mouthed gutter gripers. We do not need a vaccine against bird flu, we actually need an anti-snivel vaccine for the National Party.

I would not worry about the leadership of the Labour Party, but I would be very worried if I sat on the front bench of the National Party, as its members look sideways at each other. Who will be the next person to pull out the knife? Who will be the first person to get rid of their leader? Plotting and backstabbing are the order of the day in the National Party.

I say that 1 April was a red-letter—[Interruption] Oh, Maurice Williamson is still here—is that not amazing? Of course, he has moved from the third bench to the second bench. Well done, Maurice! If he stays there long enough they might even let him sit on the front bench, again.

But I was saying that 1 April was a red-letter day for thousands of New Zealanders—for students, for old people, and for families. I listen in this House to members opposite, and they love to talk about families. They are very caring about families in theory, but they are careless in practice. I want to give them some examples today of how this Government is caring about families. They are real examples—not theoretical examples—of what this Government is doing.

For example, in relation to the Working for Families package I took this straight out of Saturday’s New Zealand Herald, which some people may have read. It refers to a benefit boost, and states there is a good advantage for the Fe’ao family in Auckland—a family with seven children. Of course, National members are probably appalled that anyone has seven children, except for Bill English. This family with seven children had a gross income of $38,000 a year, and it was losing a lot of its benefits through claw-back until this change came in. That family will now be $409 a week better off.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: More welfare.

That family man, Nick Smith, is yelling out that that is boring. It is boring to him that that family is getting $409 a week more. Does Nick Smith think that that family would not say that this will make a huge difference to them? They are saying that it will make a huge difference.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: More welfare.

He never said it was welfare when farmers got subsidies. He never said it was welfare when exporters got help from hard-working taxpayers. But when families get help from the taxpayers of New Zealand—good hard-working families who go to work every day, have children, and bring them up properly—he says it is welfare. We say that it is the proper assistance that we ought to give to families.

Let us take another story on Saturday. This one was in the Dominion Post and it is headed: “Student spared a small fortune on interest fees”. It states: “At only 22, Cathryn O’Sullivan still can’t get her head around the fact that she owes the Government $100,000. But the sixth-year medical student is ‘absolutely elated’ that from today she will no longer be charged interest on her loan. She is one of thousands of students and loan-holders who will benefit from Labour’s interest-free scheme that comes into effect today.” I am quoting that. One of our good young doctors will save $100,000 in interest on that loan. What a good Government!

That was a tired speech from a tired Minister in a tired Government. I know why she is tired. It is because she did what every other Labour Minister did on Sunday morning. Last Sunday was a little different from most other Sundays because Labour Ministers got up knowing that the Listener was coming out on sale. So Labour Ministers set their alarms for 7 a.m. as they were just not quite sure who Helen Clark was going to finger. The word had gone out that there was a message for one of the front bench. Annette King knew that she had gone from the all-important health portfolio to police, and she knew she could be the one to be mentioned by Helen Clark. I hear from the Rongotai dairy owner who sold her a copy at 7.01 a.m. that the look on her face was one of relief as she got back into her self-drive ministerial car knowing that Michael Cullen was the one to be fingered.

I feel a little sympathy for Michael Cullen. He has spent 30 years slaving away in the shadow of Helen Clark. It is a shadow that is cast from some very far-flung parts of the range as she traverses the Earth at all-important functions like some inter-parliamentary faith conference—as opposed to the Commonwealth Games, which she did not have time to pop over to. For 30 years Michael Cullen has stood behind her, loyally supporting her. How was he treated last Sunday when the Listener came out? He was treated with a kick in the teeth. He must have choked on his chewing gum when he woke up to read that article. Helen Clark, who described herself as a close friend and colleague of Michael Cullen for 30 years, was there in print musing about his imminent departure.

No wonder Michael Cullen was a little miffed. This is a man who is not usually short of a comment, yet 2 days went by before Michael Cullen could find anything to say. That is because he had to oversee a very unusual situation. It was a macabre kind of scene—something like The Godfather, with Helen Clark playing her new role as “The Godmother” as a sort of real-life, female version of Marlon Brando. Was she really trying to tell the trusted deputy Michael Cullen that he now sleeps with the fishes? Is that what she was trying to tell him through the pages of the Listener magazine? Was she trying to tell him that he was about to have a horse’s head delivered to his parliamentary bed? That is what he thought was coming. Poor old Michael Cullen—after 30 years. Of course, the next day she played it out beautifully on screen. What did she say? She said: “I am going to encourage him to stay.” That sounded really convincing. She said that even though he is in his early 60s, and even though he is engrossed with what he will do next, she will encourage him to stay.

Michael Cullen went to the seventh floor and did what any self-respecting Minister of Finance would do after he has been treated like that—he sulked for 24 hours. He said to Mike Jaspers: “You get out there and tell them I’ve got nothing to say. No comment. I don’t have anything to say about a woman I’ve loyally supported for 30 years, and she’s come out in the Listener and kicked me in the guts.” One has to ask why Helen, in her new modern-day role as a female Marlon Brando, made that comment. There are two options. The first option is that she knew from Michael Cullen that he was off. She would only confirm one Budget. [Interruption] Let us get the facts right, I say to Mrs King. She said: “One budget—I can’t see any further than that.” Or she was trying to send him a message just like the message she sent to Dover Samuels, Jill Pettis, Georgina Beyer, George Hawkins—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: “The Godmother”!

—exactly—Russell Fairbrother, and Marian Hobbs, and the list goes on. They are all gone. Poor old Michael Cullen! He has got the DVD and the video at home. He knows what it is like when the ninth floor plays it out against the seventh floor and does it through the force of the State. Michael Cullen deserves a lot better than that.

In Budget 2005—and we all accept on this side of the House that it was an absolute and unmitigated disaster—Michael Cullen said something that I thought was very interesting. He said that Budgets do not win elections but they can lose them. Well, when he delivers one like that, he can lose it, all right. There was Helen Clark smarting from the fact that she had the unloseable election, the second term, snatched from within her grasp—

💬 Darren Hughes: Third term.

She was within millimetres of her third term when it was snatched from her grasp because Michael Cullen could not deliver a Budget—and she kicked him in the guts.

I rise on behalf of the Māori Party to discuss the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, on His Mission to New Zealand. It is a report that focuses on the injustice wide across the political and social spectrum.

The report to the United Nations describes the Foreshore and Seabed Act as a process by which the Crown extinguished all Māori extant rights to the foreshore and seabed, in the name of public interest. The rapporteur recognised that Governments cannot unilaterally extinguish indigenous rights through any means, without the free, prior, and informed consent of the concerned indigenous peoples. Māori did not give any type of consent to the action of the Government to the confiscation of the foreshore and seabed. The special rapporteur therefore recommends that the Foreshore and Seabed Act be repealed, that Te Tiriti o Waitangi be entrenched in the constitution, that the MMP electoral system be constitutionally entrenched to guarantee adequate representation of Māori in the legislature and at regional and local governance levels, and that there be recognition of, and meaningful provision for, Māori as a distinct people who posses their own system of knowledge, philosophy, and law.

Throughout the country today, Māori leaders have been commending the rapporteur’s report for what John McInteer described as: “an insightful and intelligent report”; a report that is wide ranging and displaying good understanding of the situation. The head of Māori Studies at Auckland University, Professor Margaret Mutu, said that the Government cannot keep ignoring international criticism of its treatment of Māori.

Next week the four Māori members of the Māori Party will be embarking on a nationwide tour of our constituencies, and presenting the draft bill to them for their appraisal and comment. We will also be taking the report of the special rapporteur back to the people. We will be listening to Māori people.

What has the Government said? Its own admission that “nothing much will happen” is now on public record as to how much it cares about the status of United Nations reports, and how it cares even less for the well-being and prosperity of tangata whenua. The Government has unilaterally discredited the report, those who contributed to the rapporteur’s visit, the rapporteur, and the United Nations committee—even the number of days the rapporteur spent in this country. Millions of people throughout the world believe that the world was created in 7 days. Well, 9 days for the rapporteur to assess our situation in Aotearoa is pretty good by that standard.

In respect of Treaty settlements, the tangata whenua have been questioning the nature and process of the Treaty evasion that this Government has undertaken right across the policy spectrum. The United Nations report states that Māori’s ancestral land base has been appropriated by a variety of historical processes, including voluntary sale, fraudulent purchase, confiscation, and alienation of land through legislative subterfuge. Indeed, the rapporteur suggests that the fact that the results in any redress are dependent on both the Government’s and the claimants’ willingness to reach an agreement, is a matter of coercion. Standover tactics used by the Government to force a settlement to its conclusion could be referred to as extortion if John Citizen did the same thing in the street. One law for all? Or does it apply only to dogs? In the view of the special rapporteur, such redress as may be negotiated in the historical claims process seems, on the basis of experience so far, to fall short of “just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered”.

In view of the importance of the Treaty as a founding constitutional document, the special rapporteur considers that the entrenchment of the Treaty of Waitangi in constitutional law is long overdue. Rather than continue to disregard, dismiss, and deny, perhaps the Government could respond calmly in the light of day to the recommendation of the special rapporteur with these words: “These wider constitutional and societal issues need to be debated responsibly and democratically by all social and political actors concerned, because their solution will determine the kind of society New Zealand will be in future.” The Māori Party does not think that that is a big ask of this House.

Of course, 1 April was a great day for New Zealand and New Zealanders, as many of my colleagues have outlined. But I want to return to a theme I talked about a couple of weeks ago, which is perhaps the main thing on the National Party’s mind: the National Party hack handicap for the leadership race. Before I do that, though, I think it is important to ask a question. What I really want to know is how much political correctness “The Eradicator” has eradicated since he became “The Eradicator”. So I asked some questions. Is it 50 PC things, or 40, or 10, or is it maybe five? I have learnt that it is zero PC things—absolutely zero, zip, not a sausage. Not one PC thing has been eradicated by the PC eradicator. He came in with great hope, but none have been eradicated at all. So I think the PC eradicator should do us all a favour and eradicate the PC eradicator, because clearly he is a waste of space.

I want to go back to my main theme, which is the National Party hack handicap. I reported on that race a couple of weeks ago, and talked about the TAB odds being placed on each horse. To recap on some of the horses, there is “Bold ‘n’ Brash” out of the Reserve Bank stable, “Gerry Can” out of the St Bede’s College stable, “Key to the Door”, which is from the only State house stable that is in this race, “The English Patient”, which is a horse all the way from Winton, “Wind Power” from Rangitīkei, “Punch and Judy” from the New Zealand Law Society, and “That’s Rich”—

💬 Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. You may recall that earlier in the afternoon I was required by you to alter my speech considerably, because of the way I was referring to members. I accept this is perhaps the one moment of creativity that Mr Swain has displayed in his entire parliamentary career, but I think you should be consistent and ask him to refer to members by their proper name.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member is quite right. The member on his feet must refer to members of Parliament by their correct names.

Let us look at the odds for these horses. Don Brash, last time I reported, was at about $1.40, but I have to report to the House that he has slipped back to $1.50. He has been invisible and had no impact; that is why he has gone down from $1.40 to $1.50.

💬 Hon Annette King: Where is Don Brash?

That is the question everybody asks. Then linked into that is Mr Key. He was at $1.50 last time and there has been no change, because he has been a bit quiet—a bit below the radar. We now have a head-to-head race between Don Brash and John Key. They are paying $1.50 each.

Then, of course, we have Gerry Brownlee. I reported last time he was at $8 for the win, but he has slipped right back to $9 for the win, because he has been absolutely invisible, trying to make fuss and nonsense out of nothing. The point is that there is no place bet on Mr Gerry Brownlee.

💬 Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I notice that Mr Swain referred to me as being invisible, and I want to thank him!

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member knows that is not a point of order.

Gerry Brownlee has gone down to $9, and the point is that there is no place bet on that member. When the final reshuffle happens, he will be nowhere to be seen. So there is no place bet on Gerry Brownlee. He has slipped from $8 to $9, and I suspect the punters will not keep with him for much longer.

Then we have Bill English. He started out at $2 last time, but has slipped to $2.20. He has been making a fool of himself on issues like the National Certificate of Educational Achievement and student loans, so most people realise that he will not prove to be a good bet in the end. Then we have Simon Power. He started out at $3.50 and there is no change to that, because he also is under the radar.

We have only two place bets at the moment. Judith Collins started out at $5 but is not likely to get there in the end, because she is not really liked by the other jockeys. So there will be some pressure on her. I think a good place bet for those who are following the race is a $3 place bet on Katherine Rich. She is from a younger stable, she is brighter, and she actually prefers a clean race. Have members noticed that? She is not like the other person in the race, who prefers a bit more of a dirty race. This is a clean race, and I think the punters will take over.

💬 Darren Hughes: John has worked it out.

Yes, John Key has worked it out. He is known to be very canny. He is hanging in behind there, just waiting.

The point is that since I reported on this matter to the House a few weeks ago there has been a bit of change. Now, we have a dead heat between Don Brash at $1.50 and John Key at $1.50. I think everybody is now looking to see what will be happening to the money—and the good money—

💬 Darren Hughes: What about Nick Smith?

Nick Smith is in the knacker’s yard. He is heading for the dog’s meat factory. He is not even being considered. I think some of the good money that was on Simon Power will probably start to shift shortly. I think people have realised that Gerry Brownlee is really out of the race too, although a few punters are still hanging on. He is not a bad performer in the House, so he is still hanging on a bit. But I think the money will shift and go on to one of the other two contenders. I think this will be a two-horse race, and I look forward to seeing it.

The only sure bet is that this Government is on the ropes and on the way out. It is a tired, divided Government that is reeking with scandal. We just look through the lack of moral authority that it has to govern, by going through its front bench. We can look in terms of Trevor Mallard and the mess he has made of young people’s scholarship and examinations. We can look at Steve Maharey and the mess he has made of tertiary education, which has to be cleaned up by Dr Cullen. Then we look at the Prime Minister with “paintergate”, with “corngate”, with “Doone-gate”, with “speedgate”, with the pledge-card mess, and now the Auditor-General’s report on the dodgy arrangements for buying off the Green Party’s support. Now, we have the splits at the highest level of the Government between Dr Cullen and Helen Clark, which show the degree to which the Government is on the way out.

The problem for the Government is that every single one of its front-bench Ministers has a track record of messing things up for ordinary New Zealanders, which now sees the reputation of those Ministers in tatters.

I just want to highlight further the debacle that has occurred over Kyoto in just 1 year. A year ago we were to believe that New Zealanders were to make hundreds of millions of dollars from the Government’s decision to ratify Kyoto. Then it had to admit, prior to the election, that not only had the numbers reversed to negative but New Zealand faced a $560 million bill, as a consequence of ratifying Kyoto. Then today the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues, Pete Hodgson, the master of this mess, more or less admitted in the House that it was not $500 million but a billion dollars. Then he said that that was not very much. So a billion dollars is not very much! It actually comes to $250 for every man, woman, and child in this country. We face that huge price, because Prime Minister Helen Clark wanted a pretty photo opportunity in South Africa with her left-wing mates by early ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. That is what it came down to.

💬 Hon David Carter: Sold New Zealanders down the drain.

She sold New Zealanders down the drain. We now have a huge price. Then in the House today Pete Hodgson made another amazing comment that if we pay a billion dollars to the Russians, the weather will be better. How many members believe that? Maybe if we pay $2 billion to the Russians, Pete Hodgson will be able to guarantee the weather for New Zealanders.

But it is more serious, because this week we have a senior scientist within the Ministry of Economic Development saying that it was not officials who had goofed the numbers, but it was at Pete Hodgson’s direction. Let me read out what Dr Kevin Patterson had to say about who was responsible for this mess: “The energy modelling team at the time did all the work, working out what the projections were going to be. Then they came up with a final number and they had this big whack taken out of it, and that was Pete Hodgson’s initiative.” The reporter asked: “So you’re saying Pete Hodgson stuffed it up?”. “That’s right.”, the senior official said. So not only do we have a billion-dollar mess-up, not only do we have this Government covering it up—that is what the Auditor-General said—but also we now have the knowledge that it is actually a billion-dollar problem. The reality for the Government is that the chickens are coming home to roost. They are coming home to roost in terms of the breakdown in the relationship between Prime Minister Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. They are coming home to roost in terms of the mess that was made with the Tertiary Education Commission in respect of Kyoto, etc. It is time this Government gave it up so that a decent Government could take control.

What a shame to see the member for the Opposition with such a single, tunnel-vision focus—and without a policy, I might add, on what the Opposition is going to do about climate change.

I wonder whether the Opposition actually woke up on 1 April this year, because it was a pretty exciting day. It was a red-letter day for families young and old in New Zealand, and did they not know it!

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: April Fool’s Day.

It was no joke, and this Government was not fooling. I was at City Focus in Rotorua with my little laptop, showing families what they will get with targeted tax relief. I can tell the members opposite that those families were absolutely thrilled. I had people coming up to me. I would whistle them over and say: “Do you realise that your family may be entitled to some family tax relief from 1 April?”. We would go through the programme and they could not believe it. They qualified for in-work support.

My family of three children not only had interest taken off their student loans but they got some targeted tax relief. What a difference it will make to them! They are in that emerging group of the so-called middle class. That is what the Opposition calls them. They are children who have come back from the United Kingdom prepared to face their student debt and also to contribute to New Zealand’s identity. What will they get? With two children, on $60,000—middle class, as they would say over on those benches—and with a mortgage, they will get $120 a week from their in-work payment, and it will make a huge difference to their lives. It will actually put food on their table.

And there was Mrs Tangohau in Rotorua. She said: “If you don’t have the strength in your families, your children are going to be in trouble.” She is a wonderful woman; a solo parent with four children, on $25,000 year. She came up to me and she did not know about the package. She is going to get in-work payment, keep family assistance, and get some accommodation supplement. She was thrilled. She is one of three out of every four New Zealand families who will have some more bread on the table. It was a red-letter day. It was a day when I, as a Labour member of Parliament in this House, felt so proud to be going out there amongst our community

I also went to a hui at a primary school, where 80 Māori parents turned up to learn about their children’s education and discuss education issues. One woman came up to me and said: “I have had three part-time jobs. With this family assistance through Working for Families, I am going to stop part-time work, and I’m going to be home with my children. Thank you for that because it’s going to help me keep my children on track with their learning and be able to make sure they get good food, get their homework done, and get into bed.” For us, as Labour members in this House, that package is about building strong families, and those families are going to contribute to the economic benefits of this country in the future. I am really proud to be a Labour member who actually brings that about for families young and old.

Superannuitants were also absolutely delighted. In my electorate alone, 43,000 superannuitants are going to benefit by having up to $420 a year in increased assistance, and that is a lot for old people on a fixed income. That may be something that Mr Brash would be interested in, because his position on Working for Families keeps changing. It flip-flops all over the place. He said at first: “I don’t think of Working for Families as a welfare programme. Then he expressed position two: “You have to apply for it; it is sort of a glorified welfare system.” And he had position three: “Most of that Working for Families programme will certainly remain.” Does that member of the Opposition like it, or does he not really understand what it is all about? Position four came from Mr Key, who said: “National doesn’t support the current Working for Families package.” Is there ever a frisson of friction in the Opposition when Mr Key does not support it and Mr Brash does!

I have listened with interest to this debate today. In fact, I have listened with interest for about 6 months, and all I can say is that I have been truly disappointed by the lack of positive direction, the lack of integrity, and the lack of performance by this Labour Government. I know that this Government is in its third term, that it has lost its enthusiasm and energy, and that it does not think how to make a real difference. But do members of the Government have to be quite so bare-faced, quite so cynical, and quite so cruel as they scrabble around desperately spending taxpayers’ money, trying to hold on to power?

But let us focus on a simple, small issue—noisy exhausts. For some of us that issue is irrelevant, but if one’s home is near a road that has been designated by boy racers as a drag strip—and there are plenty of them all over the country—and if one’s hotel or business is in a central city, noisy exhausts are a disaster. Families lose sleep and patience, businesses lose patronage and income, and our country loses its reputation for being clean and green—all this when there is a very simple solution.

Cheap Japanese cars with modified noisy exhausts have been a persistent and growing problem since this Labour Government came to power, but in the 6 years it has been in office it has done absolutely nothing to solve it. There are now over 90,000 excessively and offensively noisy cars in New Zealand. One can go to Europe, to the UK, or to Australia, and find that those countries are able to solve the problem. There is an easy solution, but this “Minister of Transport Safety and Noisy Vehicles”—

💬 Hon David Carter: Who’s that?

It is Harry Duynhoven, who just cannot, or will not, make it happen. Sure, he has made lots of pronouncements that he can fix it. He has even given dates when he will fix it, but nothing changes. I wonder whether he remembers grandstanding in Cathedral Square in Christchurch 8 months ago promising faithfully that he would deal to noise by putting a specified decibel limit on noisy cars and introducing an objective standardised test to measure exhaust noise—and when? Within 6 months. Can I repeat that? He did a song and dance in Cathedral Square, and said: “Yes, I can fix it.”, and he set a deadline for performing. But, alas, that was a long time ago—it has gone. That is the habitual story of this Government—lots of spin, lots of grandstanding. It promises the earth and delivers sod all, just short-term panaceas that look good on the surface but in practice take us deeper and deeper into the mire.

The reason I came to Parliament is that I believe we need to build a strong, successful country to attract and keep our young people. This Government sells the same message. But what does it offer? It offers a student loan bribe that will totally distort the economy. Students will have even bigger loans and have them for longer. When they graduate they will be able to work in a heavily taxed, low-wage economy. How long will that satisfy our kids?

With such poor quality, short-term thinking, this Government is destroying the future for New Zealanders. The student loan policy, the Working for Families package, and the whole welfare system is a cynical process of entrapment. Instead of empowering New Zealanders to go out there and make it happen for themselves, this Government tempts the most vulnerable with free hits of welfare until they are truly hooked and cannot cope without Government support or interference. We want a safe, prosperous, and healthy country, and we want a future for our kids and grandkids.

What a bunch of whingers! I cannot believe it. We sat and listened to the previous speaker banging on about how bad we are with imported cars. Who wrecked the car industry in this country? It was the National Government—and now they whinge on and on about low wages in this country. What was the biggest driver of low wages in this country? It was the Employment Contracts Act. Who brought in the Employment Contracts Act? It was the National Government. We hear from John Key, who boasts about his upbringing and his hard-working mum—and I acknowledge his hard-working mum—who brought up those children in a State house. He acknowledges that that was his upbringing, but what do he and his party want to do? They want to flog off as many State houses as they can and introduce market rents so that other hard-working New Zealanders do not have the opportunity that John Key and his brothers and sisters did.

💬 Hon Annette King: It’s welfare.

That is right; it is welfare, and that is a terrible, dirty word to the National Party. I would like Paula Bennett to rise and take a call. She boasts that she was a single parent who got a university education. That is very, very commendable. But she received the domestic purposes benefit—which is commendable—and she studied at a time when university education was free. We now hear Paula Bennett and the National Party being so critical of our progressive student loan policy. We feel really, really proud that we will stop that crippling debt for students in New Zealand. When students in New Zealand graduate, as long as they are committed to staying here, studying here, and sharing their skills in this wonderful country, they will not be burdened by debt and interest. We think that is commendable. We think it is great that our young people are saying to us that this policy is a major thing for them and they are proud to be here. It is a really great opportunity. I can see Maurice Williamson sitting opposite and hanging his head in shame. I have met his children, and he knows that they will benefit from those policies. He is ashamed of the policies that came in under a National Government.

I will also talk about the Working for Families package. I want to talk about my hard-working electorate office. One of my staff members recently received paid parental leave under this Government, so we had a staff member relieving. That staff member, who worked very hard in our busy electorate office, is over the moon about the changes that have happened, because under the targeted tax relief she will get so much more income, and that enables her to finish her studies, work part-time, and even get a Christmas bonus. That targeted tax relief will put more money into her family’s pocket. She is so proud to be a Labour supporter and to be part of our Waitakere community and part of our whole New Zealand community. Three out of four New Zealand families will benefit from this wonderful policy. It is one that I think is an absolute benchmark for this Government, and one that I feel proud of.

💬 Hon Annette King: Are they going to keep it?

Who knows? One minute they are, and one minute they are not. One minute they are critical, and the next minute they are not. We cannot rely on National Party members to tell us any of their policies, because, quite frankly, they do not have any. The reason they do not see much need for policies, or to verbalise them, is that in their heart of hearts they know they will never be in a position to implement them. People in this country are forward-thinking and do not want to listen to whingers.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.