General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. I begin with the Government’s congratulations to the new leadership team in the National Party. Mr John Key is a man who one day, hopefully, will live in his own electorate as well as occupy the Opposition benches in the House. We see Mr Bill English, who has returned to a leadership position. The overall configuration of people has changed. Mrs Goudie has made it through to the very, very back benches. A kind of dizzying kaleidoscope of change has gone on. We on this side of the House just wait for the next lot of changes in the National Party, because it is most entertaining to be able to see them every week.

Of course, Mr John Key has said to us that he wants to make a fresh start. Unfortunately for Mr John Key I have this book here; I want to read out the title of the book. It is called The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception. That is the problem for Mr John Key. While that book is around, there will be all sorts of problems.

I have to say, first of all, that the book is highly entertaining. For example, Bill English thinks Judith Collins is incompetent. We have known that for a long time, but it is very good to know that National knows it, as well. We also know that Bill English thinks most people in National—Katherine Rich, for example—were promoted far too fast, and that is why they are unable to accomplish anything in the party. We learn that Mr Murray McCully has lost three elections in a row and still has the job of being the strategic person in the National Party. Frankly, we will have to stop paying the National Party to have Murray in that job, because it is getting embarrassing—one election after another.

But as entertaining as the book is, there is a serious point that the National Party has to deal with. What this book actually shows is not all the entertainment, not all the gaffes, not all the pratfalls, and not all the disunity; it shows that the National Party is run by people who are not elected and who are not even members of the National Party. Those people are a group of extraordinarily well-off New Zealanders who have extreme policies that they want introduced, and over a period of two decades they have made and broken leader after leader. That is why this book is important. It tells us that for two decades the National Party has been run by a shadowy group of people who do not bother to get elected or join the National Party, but who ask the party to deliver for them.

That is what Dr Brash was doing. He was delivering for those people. He was on their side. He was doing their bidding. He was in their camp. He was part of a very small group of rich people who wanted to run this country for their own interest. And Mr Key can say what he likes, he can change policies, he can flip-flop, he can adopt every Labour policy in sight—it is all too easy to watch these changes—but he will have to tell New Zealanders that he knows that two-decade period of being controlled by a shadowy, small group of people is over.

Any textbook we read on politics will tell us that when a Government serves the interests of a small group of rich business people, it is called fascism. They may not wear jackboots any more—they may wear suits—and they may like to think they are better than the rest of the country, but it is still fascism when a small group of people is allowed to take over the party the National Party likes to believe it is, and then put that group’s policies into place.

The next election will be fought on one word: trust. Until John Key brings those people out of the shadows and dispenses them into the dustbin of history, he will not be trusted. The comparison will be between the National Party, with its hidden backers, and the Labour Party, which has said what it will do, and has done it, for three elections—soon to be four.

💬 Christopher Finlayson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The entire tenor of this speech has been contrary to the Standing Orders. I refer you to Speaker’s ruling 48/5: “A member may suggest that a party was given advice from outside, but not instructions or directions.”, and to Speaker’s ruling 49/1: “It is ‘contrary to our practice to say that a political party in this House is, or members of it are, under the direction, instruction … or domination of an outside body.’ ” I suggest that the member needs to be brought into line fast.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank Mr Finlayson for raising that. Mr Maharey may continue. I did not take it that he was talking about direction from outside, but influence—yes, that is fine.

I will just reinforce the point to Mr Finlayson that at the next election the one word that will matter is trust. The National Party, as long as this book is here, and as long as the National Party does not deal with it, cannot be trusted.

Once again on a Wednesday afternoon Labour members have not been talking about their policies; they have been resorting to the age-old argument that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Today suddenly Mr Hager, according to Labour members, is a writer of biblical belief. He is the man who just a short while ago was described by them as a complete idiot for writing a book called the Seeds of Distrust. It is a book that the Prime Minister said was absolute fiction, a complete mistruth, and she said that Mr Hager was not to be believed. But today Labour members have come in here and talked about “St Nicky Hager” and his tome on which anyone could swear as if it were a bible, and presented it as though there were even a skerrick of fact in it, when there is not.

When did the Labour Party decide to take $300,000 worth of anonymous donations? When did the Labour Party decide that it was OK to take $500,000 from a Sydney-based businessman who has no discernible assets at all, but has enough to be able to give the Labour Party $500,000? When did Labour members decide that it was OK to put their hands deep into the pockets of taxpayers and rip out $850,000 to fund their election campaign? Well, they did it progressively over a period of time while they have deluded themselves that they are the great party of the people. They will see a great party between themselves and the people in not too long. John Key and the new National Party leadership team—deputy Bill English and the rest of the troops—will knock Labour over in the 2008 election, because that crowd is completely bereft of any vision whatsoever.

I want to demonstrate that by saying that the sort of delusion Labour members have presented around their own pure state as far as election spending is concerned, and the reference to the fictional book by Mr Hager, is seen also in the way in which they have dealt with climate change in this country over a period of years. Government members might say that the National Party has changed its position, but, no, the National Party has been taking time to see where this thing goes. It is abundantly clear that Labour members do not believe one iota of their rhetoric. If they did, why would we have seen such a huge expansion of thermal electricity generation in this country? Why would we have seen such a massive expansion of carbon dioxide emission in this country? And why would we have seen a constant change in their position on how these matters might be dealt with?

I was fascinated, a few months ago, to get an invitation from Minister of Energy Parker and Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues Tizard to the New Zealand premiere of the film by Al Gore. They said that it was an absolutely magnificent film, a documentary of monumental proportion, and a statement of truth and fact, and that we have to do something about the situation.

But have Labour members done anything in response to what they claim to believe? No, they have actually said: “Well, sorry Al. We are going to talk about it, but in the next short while we are going to commission more coal-fired generation. We have told one of our State-owned enterprises: ‘Go ahead, import a couple of million tonnes of coal in the next 12 months, and burn it.’ We do not want any hydroelectricity because we would rather see the atmosphere polluted, as long as the snails have a nice place to live.” That is the sort of strange logic that we see applied from the Labour Party.

But I think that most fascinating today was the fact that Labour members did not find any basis on which to make any attack on the new arrangements the National Party has put in place in the last couple of weeks.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Ha, ha!

There is my friend Mr Goff over there—and I say that sincerely. He is a nice chap. He does not have quite enough oomph behind him to do the job on Helen Clark. Back in 1989 this man was running little soirees at his lifestyle block some 100 miles distant from his electorate, inviting various members of the Labour caucus to come and share a sausage over the barbecue. Mind, true to his socialist roots, it was a “bring your own sausage” barbecue.

That speech was from Gerry Brownlee, who has just been dumped as deputy leader. He resents it and he will get his own back. Bill English, who was sitting opposite a moment ago, was the man who said about his fellow front-bench colleague Judith Collins that she had an unfortunately high estimation of her own ability. They will get on well, will they not? Then there is Maurice Williamson on the front bench. What did Maurice say about Bill? He said that Bill did not have anywhere near the excitement, the charisma, the humour, the personality, or the talent to be leader. But now Bill English is deputy leader and Mr Williamson is his loyal front-bench colleague! What a gift to the Government for National to put on its front bench seven people who hate each other with bitter intensity. We will see them fall apart.

There is one old lesson in politics: the person who wants to be leader should never be appointed as deputy. National has put in Bill English as deputy. Bill English said that he supports John Key to the hilt, and John Key flinched because he remembered that Bill English had said the same about Jenny Shipley and then the same about Don Brash. So there we have a deputy leader who has already been disloyal and treacherous to two previous leaders. He will do the same to John Key, because there is one truth about Bill English: Bill English thinks he should be leader.

I will take a moment to pay tribute to Don Brash, the retiring leader. Don Brash, I have to say, is a rather sad and solitary figure on the Opposition benches today. The very National member who 2 weeks ago had a cheer group that applauded every word he said now looks at a National Party that is absolutely dismissive of him and his achievements. That is loyalty for you! It is another example of loyalty in the National Party.

What the National caucus is showing, of course, in its new line-up of policies and its support for its new leader, is its consistency. It has made an absolute flip-flop on just about every policy it went to the last election with. National is trying to be closer to Labour, but why would the electorate buy National as a plastic replica when it has the real thing on the Government benches now?

Let us take nuclear policy, for example. John Key said he is in favour of New Zealand staying nuclear-free. That is the latest in a whole series of flip-flops made by this pathetic National Opposition on the nuclear policy. But that caucus, by a large majority, does not believe in a nuclear-free policy. Labour has the policy as a matter of conviction. National is trying to adopt it because it has been watching the polls, so it is about political expediency. This is the same National Party caucus—and it is the same Lockwood Smith over there—that in January last year was begging American congressmen for money to persuade the electorate that it does not really want the country to be nuclear-free. Has Lockwood Smith really changed his opinions? Is he so shallow that he has absolutely reversed his policy? Or does he now have the double standard of pretending he is in favour? National members certainly cannot get away with that.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and what the National Party is trying to do now is cuddle up to Labour. National sees Labour as being at the centre of the New Zealand electorate, consistently supported by the largest group of people and back after three elections, while that party—the once great National Party—has lost three elections running. We are now into the fourth leader of the National Party and the seventh deputy leader since this Labour Government came to power. There have been four leaders and seven deputy leaders in just 6 years. There is Nick Smith. He was the deputy leader once. He lasted a week and then he had to go off and take some leave, and we all felt terribly sorry for him about that.

It was not just Don Brash who was in favour of dumping the nuclear-free policy, and it was not just Don Brash who was in favour of getting involved in the war in Iraq. It was the National caucus, and it was Nick Smith, who was sitting on the front bench then and is sitting on the front bench now. National members blame it on Don Brash but they are all not only “hollow men” but guilty men.

I have a couple of questions for John Key. He is a nice guy. He made a killing on the money market, and I wish him good luck. But where is his experience? Jim Bolger had 14 years before becoming leader and Keith Holyoake had 25.

The amusing thing about Phil Goff is the way in which he praises so heavily former National leaders, then has the audacity to attack the existing one. The big attack on John Key today was that he does not live in his electorate. That attack came from Phil Goff, who lives 100 kilometres away from his own Mt Roskill electorate.

What National wants to say today is that on the real policy issues this Government is rotten to the core. We started the year with Taito Phillip Field. Do members remember that man? This is the guy whom Labour and Helen Clark rely on to cling to the Treasury benches. Taito Phillip Field, a man who abused Thai migrants, is still supported by members of the Labour Party. The middle part of the year was dominated by Helen Clark’s rort of the electoral laws that saw her break both the Electoral Act and the Public Finance Act as a result of that pledge card. Labour also passed retrospective law to make legal its illegal activities.

I point out this afternoon that a similar fraud has occurred in respect of the issue of climate change. I know that Government members do not want to talk about policy and real issues; well, we do. I am quite sure that Helen Clark’s spin doctors worked out that the Government was on the ropes in respect of Taito Phillip Field and in respect of the pledge card. So they asked for some big, bold vision that would get those issues off the headlines, and here it was—carbon neutrality. That was going to be Labour’s big answer. Well, did it get some advice beforehand about carbon neutrality? No, it did not. Has it been given advice since about how to achieve carbon neutrality? No, it has not. In this House Helen Clark has dodged and dived on the issue of when we might get carbon neutrality. As my colleague Maurice Williamson said, she was dateless and desperate on trying to provide that information.

Then we received the figures—the real numbers—from Statistics New Zealand. Since Labour has been in Government, far from it meeting its promise of increasing the amount of renewable energy, we are down to an all-time low of just 57 percent of our power being produced from renewable sources. The Government has since rolled out all the same strategies it used in respect of the pledge card. The first strategy was denial. The Minister of Energy said the figure was not 57 percent, as Statistics New Zealand said, but 70 percent. Whom are we to believe? Then the next strategy comes out, and that is to blame others. Labour members say it is not their fault; it is the damn weather—

💬 Anne Tolley: It’s the rain!

So that is why the figures drop! Well, hang on a moment. In every year that Labour has been in Government the proportion of renewables has been coming down, so how can the weather be blamed? Now the economy is to blame for the appalling figures. Well, the economy has been growing, but the real reason we have an increase in the amount of thermal generation is quite simple. It is because Labour built it. Labour agreed to build a dirty great oil-fired power station in Whirinaki. If a new power station is built, surprise, surprise, emissions go up. Labour has approved the E3P, which is a huge new gas generating station that will start next year.

The Prime Minister misled the House yesterday. She said that all the power to come on stream in future will be renewable. I ask Mr Hughes whether the E3P is renewable. Of course it is not.

💬 Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member for Nelson got carried away with himself and made an unparliamentary comment about the Prime Minister. I ask him to withdraw and apologise before he continues his speech.

Speaking to the point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, I point out that it is offensive to say that somebody deliberately misled the House. I was very careful in my choice of words. I said she misled the House, and I will produce the facts that very clearly show she did so.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know. That is why I did not intervene. But I take on board what you said, Mr Hughes. Thank you for raising it.

The Prime Minister told the House that all new energy coming on stream would be renewable. But she sat in the Cabinet room that provided the Government guarantee for the 320 megawatt thermal power station that is due to come into effect next year so that those figures will continue to decline.

The reality is that this Government’s Kyoto policies are an absolute mess. We heard on the radio this morning that we do not have a bolter’s hope of achieving those goals. We have record low renewable energy, record high deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions growing at the fastest rate of any developed country in the world, and the Prime Minister said carbon neutrality is the answer. I say to members opposite that they have lost the moral courage to govern, they are on death row, and they should put themselves out of their misery and let us have a new Government.

A number of points have become very clear since Mr Key was elected the current leader of the National Party just a week and 2 days ago. The most obvious of those many points is the National Party’s disunity. Who could be surprised at the disunity in the National caucus when John Key has Bill English as his deputy, with Bill English pledging to John Key exactly the same loyalty he pledged to Jenny Shipley. I have a quote before me from the New Zealand Herald of 29 November 1999, in which Bill English said: “The caucus is solidly behind Mrs Shipley, as I am, and the party is solidly behind Mrs Shipley.” And he said—and this is almost word for word what he said in regard to Mr Key last week—that that would last through to the next election. Barely a year later Bill English rolled Jenny Shipley.

My colleague Phil Goff described the feeling of Bill English backing John Key to the hilt. It is no wonder John Key wanted Bill English sitting beside him. Would members want him sitting behind them, if they were leader of the National Party? Absolutely not! So National members’ first problem is that their deputy leader wants the job. He has as much loyalty to John Key as he had to Jenny Shipley—zilch, none—and as much loyalty as he had to Don Brash. Zilch, none!

John Key should have chosen a little more wisely. And National members still have their key strategy advice coming from Murray McCully. What did the deputy leader say about Murray McCully? He said: “You”—talking to Don Brash—“need to know now that the experienced people you will have will NOT work in a government run by McCully. I and others will not tolerate him exercising the same influence he does now.” But who worked with John Key and Bill English over the weekend, securing the leadership team and securing Gerry Brownlee’s sacking as deputy? It was none other than Murray McCully. Well, is it not interesting how people can change in a matter of just a few weeks, if it looks like a bit of a ladder-step on their own career paths?

What about National’s welfare spokesperson, Judith Collins? She got the job when Katherine Rich was sacked from that job. What does Bill English, the deputy leader, think of her? He said that Judith Collins had been “pushed beyond her capacity”, she had an “unfortunately high estimation of her own competence”, and she had “spent too much time cultivating the media herself and believing the resulting publicity. She will find it hard to recover her credibility in caucus where she has been a tough critic of her colleagues …”. Those comments from the deputy leader were about the welfare spokesperson. But what does John Key, the leader, think of her? According to the Listener in March of this year, John Key on his own, a single individual within the entire National caucus, thinks Judith Collins is “terrific”. Well, he is keeping that quiet, that is for sure.

The disunity is so obvious, in the House, in select committees, and in the Koru lounge at the airport, and I am sure that it will just increase over summer. Any party that goes into the Christmas adjournment with that sort of disunity so obvious is in for a barbecue-filled summer, which is what I predict will happen as members of the National Party leave this house and go their very, very separate ways into the summer break.

So can John Key carry on the farce of being the leader of a team with Bill English as his deputy? Can Bill English work—ever—with Maurice Williamson, with Judith Collins, or with John Carter? Can anyone in the National Party work with Lockwood Smith? I think that the answers to those questions will become more obvious over the coming weeks, and the answer to every one of those questions will be no.

Mr Key has a couple of very big challenges facing him. The first one is to instil genuine unity within his own caucus, and in my view that may well mean a smaller caucus, because it will be impossible to unite the caucus as it is. I am sure that the movement of more than one National member out of caucus, alongside Don Brash, is being considered as we speak—if not by Mr Key, by his No. 1 adviser, Murray McCully. And I bet he is not planning his own exit; it will be the exit of others who have not backed him up.

The second challenge, in my view, is harder than the first one. Despite how hard the challenge of uniting the National Party will be, the second challenge will be harder—that is, for John Key to become a substantial politician; substance rather than just style.

Last month has reminded the nation of the supreme importance of a game of football. In fact, it would seem so important that even a coup can be put on hold while rugby is played. The Government was so focused on the football of the future that it was prepared to reach up to $1 billion for a white elephant on the waterfront, but all the time disregarding the inevitable blowout that would be carried by city ratepayers, or taxpayers, for years to come; the potential for environmental damage; or the injurious damage endured by Ngāti Whātua through tokenistic consultation.

I am the first to be there at the kick-off, cheering our boys along, but no one can stand in this House without recognising the “game of two halves” being played out in this land today. For now, that hype and hoopla has subsided. The Government has indicated that most of the cost of the stadium infrastructure will be carried by Auckland ratepayers. As the member for Tamaki Makaurau, I know that the children of our poorest suburbs will be the ones faced with the bills for the upkeep and maintenance of facilities they will probably never go and visit, and that money going into rates, or into higher prices for goods and services as higher rates get absorbed, is money that is not available for schools, medical treatment, or improved public transport or housing.

Martin Luther King once said: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” The Māori Party will never be silent about the grip of poverty that has seized our people. It is a poverty of material means; our poorest families are being left behind. The proportion of all children in severe and significant hardship in New Zealand has increased from 18 percent to 26 percent since 2000. But it is also a poverty of spirit, a poverty of relationships where opportunity and access to support is stifled by fear, shame, and social exclusion. It is a poverty where one’s mauri or toiora is out of kilter. Mauri is achieving that balance between the wairua, spiritual well-being; hinengaro, intellectual well-being; ngākau, emotional well-being; and tinana, physical well-being. That is demonstrated through the experience of te ihi, te wehi, te wana—the absolute joy of being; the delight of being alive.

When mauri is disrupted it creates dis-ease and imbalance, leading to a void of meaning, and purposeless lives that are stuck in a rut from which there is no way out. Understanding the crippling impacts of poverty of spirit is understanding that misery is about much more than money, poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion. They breed despair, and when one is sunk in despair it is nigh impossible to find opportunities for change.

But the politics of aspiration and the politics of poverty are two sides of the same coin, and we in the Māori Party know that there are strategies and solutions that can create genuine progress. Progress can be achieved in caring for our communities, caring for our environment, and caring for our world. We know that this nation can lead the world in facing up to its failures, and in drawing on the courage of our convictions to change those unjust structures that made possible the foreshore and seabed legislation. More than any other Act in Parliament, that Act divided the nation into two halves—not Māori and Pākehā as some commentators would like to believe, but a nation divided by myths and prejudice perpetuated by a political force that sought power at all costs.

The nation was misled into believing the propaganda of a party machinery that sought to paint tangata whenua as a negative life—party spin that implied that we Māori would put up fences and gates, and that we would greedily deny and deprive other New Zealanders of the right to go on the beach. It was the ultimate affront to crush the spirit of a people who live by a kaupapa in which generosity is expressed, the environment is protected and treasured, and where the call for kotahitanga—that is, unity—comes through diversity and is a lifelong commitment.

We know too well the risk of being consumed by gloom, and we also know the passion that comes when the fire is reignited—when the vital spark for life is invested with new energy. We believe that the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act will burn a flame of hope that we can use to bring this nation back to a foundation of justice, a climate of respect for each other, and an ever-brimming optimism for the possibilities that lie ahead. Let us bring it on! Thank you.

For those people who are listening on the radio out there, this is the general debate—a debate that takes place each Wednesday afternoon with 12 members from around the House participating. I am amazed that we have in this debate the opportunity to sell policy and express a way forward, yet week after week members of the Labour Government have done nothing but look over their shoulders and criticise a fast-finishing National Party. They seek only to try to discredit members on this side of the House. This debate is the opportunity they have to sell their policy, but clearly there is no policy—

💬 Jill Pettis: Didn’t you listen to Gerry Brownlee?

The member on the other side said there is policy. Now, there is a point, because at the Labour Party conference, the Prime Minister said: “We will be carbon neutral.” Well, that is a policy and I am happy to debate it today. If that is the policy the Labour Party is promoting, then I think it needs a great deal of scrutiny. We have a Labour Government that signed us up to the Kyoto Protocol. And, yes, I am a believer—I believe we must respond to climate change, and I have made that comment before in the House. So I am not coming from the point of view of a Luddite who does not believe that there should be a response. But being a signatory to Kyoto will not solve the problem.

Let us look at the Government’s record on this matter. There is an intention to get the levels of greenhouse gases back to 10 percent less than 1990 levels. That is the objective of signing the first section of the Kyoto agreement. Then the Government, blaming agriculture, announced a “fart tax”. It said that 49 percent of our greenhouse gases come from agriculture. I have asked again and again in this House for it to give us the science to support that. But then the Government said that it would not go into that debate, and backed away from the “fart tax”. Then it said that we needed to have a carbon tax. It announced it, then abandoned that idea. Then it calculated what the sale of our carbon credits would be—and that was a billion dollars out. The Government stopped the tendering of renewable energy projects. It negotiated greenhouse gas agreements that a whole lot of businesses in New Zealand spent a lot of money on getting involved in, and now that has been abandoned.

So we have never been given any vision or any ability to connect back to the commitment made when Kyoto was signed and we said that we would hit those 1990 levels. It is absolutely factual that we have no hope of doing that. At the climate change guidelines conference in Nairobi New Zealand was perhaps the worst performer, certainly out of countries of the First World that were attending that conference. So we do not have a hope of hitting those 1990 levels, and the Government comes out and says we are to become carbon neutral. Well, goodness me, we cannot see any possibility of our first commitment to Kyoto happening, yet the Government says that, no, we are going to do better: we are going to be carbon neutral. That is an impossibility.

For a start, we need to know what that means. Does that mean—and I ask the next Government speaker to explain—that we will offset in some form every tonne of fossil fuel consumed in New Zealand? That is what I take it to mean. If I have it wrong, I ask the Government to please explain. And how does the Government say it will do that? It says it will do it by planting trees. Under this Government forestry is declining. Does it mean that the Government will sequester carbon in some form in the ground? Will it do it by having scrubbers in chimneys, or by doing something that is not yet in operation anywhere in the country? Will it buy carbon credits somewhere around the world in order to be carbon neutral? Because under this Labour Government we have slipped back and we are nowhere near having carbon credits that we can use in our own right. Not only that, the industries that might produce them are moving away from it.

The Government has the fine ideal of New Zealand being carbon neutral but it has not explained what it means, how it will get there, or what the cost will be. We need leadership on this situation, not platitudes and rhetoric. It is absolutely critical that New Zealand pulls its weight in the international forums around the world, and we need to have a credible plan. If we do not do that, that is when the consumers will start to boycott our goods. We have heard the comments made about food miles. We need to act credibly in order to come up with an acceptable plan that will work.

The previous speaker identified that this debate is called the general debate and that it is a debate where policies are discussed. He bemoaned the fact that people were not following it, but anyone who had been has long since gone to sleep because of his performance and delivery.

I want to turn to Mr Bill English and Mr John Key, because future events will show that they have no ideas and that they are still influenced by the forces that brought down Don Brash. It was perhaps just 2 months ago when Don Brash stood up and described our Government as being the most corrupt Government in our history, and he lays today a wasted man. Boy, did those words—those stones he cast—come back upon his head! Of course, it was a little harsh for my relation Hone Harawira to wish him hasta la vista. No doubt he will issue his farewell to us, and although I personally wish him good fortune in his life, politically he spread poison and now he has disappeared in an air of toxicity.

I want to focus on the Māori Party. Members of that party had an opportunity yesterday in this House to uphold the democratic rights they enjoy every single day. They had the opportunity to stand for those democratic rights in such a way that they should be shared throughout the Pacific. But they were conspicuously silent. At a time when the people of Fiji are rent asunder, members of the Māori Party had an opportunity to stand and affirm the primacy of democratic rights. Why did they not do that? The first thing is that they are confused and at war with one another. They have the odd and unsustainable view that indigenous rights, or property rights, should eclipse constitutional and democratic rights. That is pathetic. It is the democratic franchise that our Māori people enjoy that has brought them to this House. What do we hear instead? We hear that Dr Pita Sharples, in an attempt to emulate Kissinger, wants to go to Fiji and make peace. He wants to be what we might regard as te kaihohou rongo, the person who brings peace and understanding. Well, he seeks to emulate, or replicate, Jesse Jackson—as I have said in other places, I do not know whether it is Jesse, Michael, or Peter Jackson—but he has no business going over to Fiji, especially when he is unwilling to stand in the face of his own people and affirm the legitimacy and the importance of democratic rights.

However, that bout of silliness was not actually matched by his co-leader, the Hon Tariana Turia; it was exceeded. In a fit of enthusiasm on National Radio, she said she has decided that the Māori roll that she has bitterly complained about being under threat should now be opened up so that people from Samoa and other Pacific Islands who are entitled to vote are able to join it. So at a time when the National Party—its brown wing, te kanohi Māori of the National Party—in order to coordinate better, is trying to suck in our relations from the Māori Party and befriend them, we have Tariana Turia wandering around terminating the Māori roll. I can tell members that our tribes will not forgive her for that. The Māori roll is a taonga with roots back to the Treaty of Waitangi and from colonial history. If she does not want to support the diminution of the roll and movement on to the mainstream roll, then it is certainly not good enough for her to define the roll as being available for other minorities. Rest assured, at the next election, and at hui up and down the country, the absurdity of that call of hers will be brought home to bed.

Do people know what the National Party pretends to stand for? We do not hear from these new leaders—well, actually one is not new. One of them is wearing a constant pout that any self-respecting female would be jealous of. The other is highly aspirational, but will be the first New Zealand politician who, with a flick of a finger, could fund an infinitely expensive campaign, and Kiwis will not like that. There is one thing that New Zealanders do not warm to. They do not warm to the constant chiming and reminding of how affluent a person is. In fact, people who really have power and financial resources do not wander around, showing it on their sleeve. My word to John Key is that the story he tells about having come from rags to riches has been told once or twice too many times, and, rest assured, we will use it to his peril. Therefore, Mr Deputy Speaker, kia kaha, kia ora tātou katoa.

This has been a very, very long year for the Labour Government. Here we are, nearly at the end of our parliamentary term. It is almost time to pack our bags and go back to our electorates—for those of us who are lucky enough to have electorates—do our Christmas shopping, and spend time with our family. I know that Labour members of Parliament, both list, and there are many of those, and electorate, and that is a shrinking number, will be reflecting on what a long, sad, sorry year it has been for them. First of all, they had the enduring embarrassment of one of their members, Taito Phillip Field. The Prime Minister and Government members spent months and months defending the reputation of their fellow MP Taito Phillip Field, who is, electorally, a very useful MP. They commissioned an inquiry of sorts and then spent months trying to defend that. In the end, of course, they had to concede that perhaps they were losing that fight, so now that particular member is back in his electorate and taking his pay, yet doing no work. But the Labour Government thinks that that is OK, because it still has his vote.

Then, as another part of this long, long year for Labour members, they had the unfolding story of the corrupt practices surrounding their use of public money to fund their pledge card for the election campaign. So what did they do about that? Those members brought in some retrospective legislation to put right something they knew was wrong. Indeed, it has been a very long year. Then the Prime Minister thought: “I know what we will do. The press has been so bad for us all year. We are under pressure; we do not like it. Hang on a minute—it is the Labour Party conference. What will I do? I will have to pull out something big from the box. I know what I will do. We will call for carbon neutrality.” And I can just see the Labour Party conference and all the little unionists gathered there. I can just see them there saying: “Yes, Prime Minister, yes. Carbon neutrality—fantastic! We will buy that. The country will buy carbon neutrality. Gosh, you are a good Prime Minister, Prime Minister.” And for a brief moment it pushed the little problems that this Government has been grappling with all year, Taito Phillip Field and the pledge card, off the front page.

However, the unfortunate thing about carbon neutrality is that it is almost impossible to obtain. In fact, when we asked the Prime Minister’s Minister of Energy about it, he replied that the Government had not yet picked a date by which New Zealand would be carbon neutral. Has Mr Parker not yet picked a date for when New Zealand will be carbon neutral? He went on to say that we would find that it would become more clear over the next 6 months. Well, I say to Mr Parker that I have a good memory. Christmas or not, early in the next year I will be asking him when he plans for New Zealand to become carbon neutral, because I do not believe that he has a clue as to when that will happen.

What we need to do now is to back up the talk by looking at the Government’s environmental track record. Here we have a Government of 7 long years, and, of course, it has built up a consistently good track record on the environment, has it not? No! Unfortunately, it has been exactly the other way around. Let us look at some of the environmental indicators. New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, under Labour, have been growing at a rate faster than in almost any other country.

That does not make for very good reading, so I will go on to something else, because I am sure I can pick something good that this Government has done. Here is a figure—emissions are growing at 50 percent faster than when National was in office. So here we have a Government that has been in power for 7 long years, it is aiming for carbon neutrality, but this is an unpleasant little fact for it: a major increase in the growth of greenhouse emissions has been caused by a drop in the renewable proportion of electricity generation. So how credible is it for the Prime Minister to have this lofty aim of carbon neutrality?

This year, 2006, has been a very big year in health, and when I say “big”, I do not mean big in the sense that a lot of good things have happened, but just that a lot has been going on. It has not been a very rewarding year for those who work at the coalface, and too many Kiwis who need health care have missed out in 2006.

Let us look at the round-up. In June there were 5 days when junior doctors went on strike. Just over 2,000 junior doctors participated in that strike. Also in June there was a 5-day strike by radiation therapists. In September 250 radiographers went on a 5 day - long strike, and in October 260 of them went on a 10 day - long strike, which will be fresh in the minds of those who work at the coalface—those who had to cancel patients’ names from waiting lists, yet again. In November we have just had a 7 day - long strike, which ended this morning, with 1,200 members of the medical laboratory workers union taking part, and next week, on 13 December, we can expect 3,000 hospital service workers to go on strike.

All is certainly not happy in the health workforce. Health professionals are expected to be grateful for whatever the Government dishes up to them. They often have very little choice, if any, over whom they work for, and unlike other workers, in many cases they cannot shop around for better pay and conditions. It is a monopoly situation that benefits nobody—certainly not patients waiting for health care.

Earlier this year I had a member’s bill to remove Pharmac’s exemption from the provisions of Part 2 of the Commerce Act. It was narrowly defeated, but had it been passed it would have given New Zealanders a much greater choice in medicines than they have at the moment. Because of Pharmac and Government policies, too many patients are being denied the medicines that would help them with their quality of life. Herceptin was big on the agenda this year in the health area. Research strongly suggests that Herceptin halves the reoccurrence of HER2-positive breast cancer. The Government has a billion dollars to invest in Mr Mallard’s folly on the Auckland waterfront, but no money to give to women who have been given a death sentence and no chance of survival. Many of those women are young, and the best present they could have had this Christmas from the Government would be the funding of Herceptin.

Plunket has also suffered at the Government’s hands this year. In the same week that PlunketLine celebrated its 12th birthday, it lost the contract to provide Well Child services through Healthline. Plunket has now been able to secure private funding so that PlunketLine can continue. That is a victory of communities and charity over Government interference.

Pathology services, too, have been in the news. Diagnostic Medlab has lost its contract to perform tests in Auckland, and a new provider with no staff, no laboratory, and no track record has the contract from 1 July next year. Aucklanders—and the rest of the country should beware—have a valid fear of a looming disaster with regard to their laboratory services. In Wellington patients who are referred for tests by private specialists will have to pay for services that their general practitioners or their public specialists could prescribe, and are prescribing, for free. Yet again, the private sector is being hit. The result will be a disincentive for people to use private health care, more pressure on general practitioners and public hospital specialists, and a lot of suspicion about the trustworthiness of what are actually very good pathology services. Other district health boards around the country look set to adopt similar strategies to those adopted in Wellington, and we will continue to battle for an even playing field for both public and private services.

The perennial problem of waiting lists continued to worsen in 2006. Tens of thousands of patients face treatment that is either delayed or denied, or that is being delivered across the Tasman. Thousands of Kiwis have been sent back to their family doctor by district health boards that have been threatened with losing their funding. However, because of the way that the Ministry of Health now collates the figures, we have no idea how many patients are actually being short-circuited in this way: how many are being sent back to their general practitioner when, in fact, in the first place they were sent to a specialist because they needed a second opinion or needed care that their general practitioner was unable to provide. In reality, district health boards are the meat in the sandwich; they are the scapegoats caught between patients and politicians.

We know that the health system is in critical condition, but the real, inconvenient truth is that it is struggling because of Labour’s failing health policies.

What an interesting general debate it has been. We have had National Party member after National Party member get up and complain about the fact that Labour has policies. Although I accept that this may be a foreign concept to the National Party—which, can I point out again, did not even have a health policy going into the last election—this Labour-led Government will not stop making changes in this country that will benefit all New Zealanders.

A lot has been said today about the Nicky Hager book The Hollow Men. I have to say that although a lot of the revelations about the links with the Exclusive Brethren were very surprising in terms of their extent, for my part it was the revelation of the disunity in the National Party caucus that really surprised me. It was the utter, utter disdain with which National MPs hold each other, particularly those along the front bench. I am not sure how things will work with Mr English as deputy leader after he said of his colleague Judith Collins that he thought her health presentation at caucus was awful, she was pushed beyond her capacity, and she had an unfortunately high estimation of her own competence. It is not just that Bill English thinks that but that he is willing to put it down on paper and send it to his leader. Mr English said that John Carter had been promoted beyond his capacity, and we all know what he thinks about Murray McCully. Now, of course, Maurice Williamson has been promoted to the front bench, and we all know that there is no love lost between Mr English and Mr Williamson. I do not know how strategic it is to put them within such close range of each other.

The other very important thing that came out of the book was the utter disdain displayed by the National Party for the voting public of New Zealand at the last election. We heard about the superannuation policy, whereby National thought it might need to put up the age of entitlement to 68. National members suggested that rather than just be honest about the fact that that was what they believed in and what they wanted to do, perhaps they should just not tell the voting public that they wanted to do it. Dr Brash said he was even prepared to lie about it, if necessary. I think that that is a very important revelation for many New Zealanders, who, let us be honest, after 6 or 7 years of a Labour-led Government that has made promises before elections and kept those promises after elections, have forgotten what it is like to have a Government that says one thing prior to an election and then does exactly the opposite afterwards. I suggest that with recent comments from Bill English on asset sales and on how the Government owns too many things, we can look forward to more asset sales should National ever gain the Treasury benches.

While the National Party was courting extreme support groups during the election, its members were waxing lyrical about mainstream New Zealanders. Members said they knew hardship. One of the very interesting things that came out in the book was that Mr Bryan Sinclair suggested to National MP Sandra Goudie that she might want to find some assistance to meet “Don-specific” expenses. He was asking for her help in contacting rich donors so as to get some of Don Brash’s clothing expenses paid for, because Dr Brash had gone down in salary by $250,000 and was now on only $200,000.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: Practically a pauper!

It is difficult to buy clothes on $200,000—Dr Brash was practically a pauper, as my colleague Mr Swain said. How can a party that believes things like that actually claim to represent ordinary, mainstream New Zealanders?

That is why, I suspect, National has ushered in the age of the sensitive new-age Tory—the David Cameron wannabe, the compassionate and conservative Mr John Key. His first speech was all kittens and cuddles. Was it not lucky that National got rid of the PC eradicator, Wayne Mapp, because his detector would have been going off all through that speech; it would have been going off the scale. Mr Key has proceeded to systematically endorse every single policy that Labour has put in place and he has turned his back on all the National policies that he campaigned strongly for at the last election. Mr Key is a man who trades on his State house past, but he is now the leader of a party that would deny the same protections to New Zealand families and New Zealand children today that he had growing up. He is a man who thinks he has done well despite growing up in a State house. That underlines a fundamental difference between a John Key - led National Party and this Labour-led Government. John Key is a man so in touch with ordinary New Zealanders that he said it is a privilege to be a New Zealander because we have the world’s best oysters.

I say to John Key that all the rhetoric, all the nice words, all the fluffy language in the world, and all the going forward that he is going to do will not put food on people’s tables, will not put a roof over their head, and will not educate their children. His words will not ensure that every child in this country has the right to health and education if there is no policy behind them. We are looking forward to seeing that policy, because around Mr Key are the same 47 people who were there when Don Brash was leader. I suggest to Mr Key that it might be easier if he just signed up to the Labour Party—I have brought a membership book down here. On this side of the House he might find it a bit easier to get his policies through.

New Zealand First wishes to thank the Minister of Immigration for his policy announcement yesterday. For far too long immigration, as we all know, was an issue everybody was too scared to talk about or to do anything to address the underlying concerns that ordinary New Zealanders had. One political party broke that mould and was prepared to speak out. One political party was in touch with ordinary New Zealanders on this matter. One political party stood up to the criticism and castigation of the woolly, lily-livered left—and right—to challenge the failings of our immigration system. When others were too PC to stand up and do what was right, one political party had the backbone and courage to speak out on behalf of New Zealanders.

That party was New Zealand First. We remember the snide comments and the outright abuse we copped when we dared to raise immigration issues. We remember how others ran and hid, or put their heads in the sand, over immigration matters. Now we see the truly glorious irony that fundamental changes to our immigration laws, aspects of which we had been championing and defending for years, are going to happen. It was New Zealand First that had long said that our appeal system, for example, needed refining and tightening—and it is about to be done. It was New Zealand First that wanted greater powers to deport those we do not want or need in this country, and this will happen. It was New Zealand First that advocated we must match our immigration policy to demands in the labour market, and this is becoming a reality. It was New Zealand First who not only highlighted the failings of our border security systems but promoted robust change; we now see this coming into effect. It was New Zealand First that said there were too many loopholes in the visa system, and this is now being tightened. For years New Zealand First has highlighted the failings in the decision-making process, and now this is getting addressed. I want to thank the Minister for that.

We could go on, but it is worth making two points before I come to a conclusion. The first is that we welcome the Government’s move on this front, which we ensured was part of our supply and confidence agreement with the Government. The second is that the media needs to reorganise, and to recognise that it was New Zealand First, not all the johnny-come-latelys who all now want to jump on the immigration bandwagon, that ensured the issue got addressed. In short, New Zealand First blazed the trail, and we are here now working towards a solution. Some talk in politics—and some act.

Whilst I am at it, I tell members I noticed that in a certain book called The Hollow Men, at page 83, there is a deliberate strategy on the part of the National Party in the last campaign to try to steal New Zealand First’s policy on immigration. We forecast, of course, months earlier that National would do just that. But how they got to announce a policy, closing into the campaign proper, without the media mentioning it, is slightly beyond us. In short, I say to the New Zealand media that if they truly want to report to the market place what products are out there on show—so that voters might be able to make a fair choice as to who they will vote for—then for heaven’s sake they should follow what is going on in the political arena.

If we go again to that book, to page 159, we see an enormous effort to try to counter the policies that a party, namely New Zealand First, has held since its formation. That happened on the issue of one law for all. It happened even on the issue of having referenda used far more widely in New Zealand. You know, it is said that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Well, it is if we recognise it. It is if we admit it. It is if we tell people that, actually, this is not our policy or National’s policy, but this is the policy that belongs to New Zealand First. My message to the media is that if they had told the public that, then their desire to get National into power might have happened. But the media did not—and National did not get into power.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.