General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. At 2 o’clock today Hugh Logan dropped the bombshell the Government did not want to hear but knew was coming: Trevor Mallard was wrong. You see, Trevor Mallard had used parliamentary privilege to defame Erin Leigh. Trevor Mallard would not make those statements outside the House, and the Prime Minister would not make those statements outside the House, because they knew they would be sued. They knew they were wrong, and it was all part of a strategy dreamt up by the Labour Government to nail Erin Leigh.

We are here debating the Electoral Finance Bill, but that is part of the Labour Government’s wider agenda to turn Government departments into an extension of itself and, in an election year, to use the resources of those departments to curry favour for Labour. So having Labour Party lackeys working for Government departments in the communications area was all part of the strategy for Labour. That is why Madeleine Setchell’s face did not fit and that is why Erin Leigh’s face did not fit. Trevor Mallard, Michael Cullen, Helen Clark, and the “party of the workers” did not care if Trevor Mallard came down to this House, defamed Erin Leigh, and wrecked her career, because they are bigger than the people of New Zealand.

That is the answer from Labour—it is bigger than the people of New Zealand, and to hell with any New Zealander who gets in front of it or who challenges this Labour Government. It is no wonder people are scared to stand up to Labour, because the bully-boy tactics have been going on for 8 years. Trevor Mallard, the little puppy who looked down the camera and said to New Zealanders “Forgive me, forgive me, because I punched Tau Henare. I was under stress and all was not going well.”, is now pleading not guilty. This is the same guy who, at the very first opportunity he had, came to this House and defamed Erin Leigh to the point that she cannot get a job now. Yesterday this is what the Prime Minister of New Zealand had to say about that behaviour: “It was rather mild by Trevor’s standards.” You see, it was—

💬 Hon Member: He didn’t beat her up.

That is right; he did not actually punch her physically. That is what he normally does. He just punched her verbally. He punched her verbally, so that she could not get a job.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: What does Gerry do to pensioners?

Oh, that is the outgoing member for Otaki—the son Helen Clark never had, according to Helen Clark. That is how that member described himself in the Independent. Will he be the son Helen Clark never had, looking for a job in Ōtaki in about 12 months’ time?

💬 Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Cut that stuff out. You’re a coward and a braggart.

But this is the situation. Michael Cullen stands for a Government that wants to bully people and defame them. Its members will not make those comments outside, and he knows it. He came into this House and he was better than that. Michael Cullen was better than that when he came into this House. He stood up for the rights of workers. He stood up for the right of people to go out there and talk against the Government. He stood up for the right to be better, but he has lost the plot. You see, he is so consumed with power that he does not care who gets in the way. Those members are all quiet except for Michael Cullen. He is the last man standing and trying to defend the Government, and the rest of them are in shame because they cannot believe that they are treating their own workers this way. They cannot believe that Michael Cullen is the only one talking.

He is the only one who is prepared to try to defend Trevor Mallard. That is the situation. Trevor Mallard came to this House, he defamed Erin Leigh, and he was wrong. He was wrong, and he will not make those comments outside the House because we know that.

What a disastrous end for a Labour Government this is. We are here, going out there, passing electoral finance legislation from a Labour Government that its own members do not understand, that officials do not understand, and that the country does not want, but Labour members are bigger than the ordinary New Zealander! They are doing this on the basis that they do not care that thousands and thousands of New Zealanders are feeling the way that Erin Leigh feels today. She has been monstered by Trevor Mallard and it is wrong.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I waited until the end of that speech, but this is the second day in a row that that member has dragged the personal lives, relatives, or characteristics of members on this side into the debate. He did it yesterday with my wife, against all conventions in this House, and today he did it again in relation to the Prime Minister. I think he needs to be reminded that there are limits on those matters, or that will come back on members opposite and many of them are exposed in that respect.

I think it is a bit rich for the Deputy Prime Minister to make that statement, when the statement I mentioned was the statement that Mr Hughes had used to describe himself in the Independent.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I thank the member. It is a debatable issue. [Interruption] There is a point of order on the floor. It will be heard in silence.

I am speaking to the point of order raised by Mr Key. I have never described myself in that way; it was written about me by a journalist. Members opposite have lots of things written about them that I am sure they do not take ownership of. They have quite a few embarrassing things, particularly in the case of the member who raised the point of order. But to assert that I said that about myself is not correct.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I would just say that all members in this House are honourable members. Their word is their bond. [Interruption] There is a point of order on the floor.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Firstly, we accept the comments made by the Hon Darren Hughes and we understand why he has made them. But I would also suggest—[Interruption] Well, he has; he felt aggrieved. You should also be aware, Mr Assistant Speaker, that although the Labour members got a bit wound up because of the close-to-the-bone and, I think, issues-focused speech from John Key, there was through that time a barrage coming towards him from the Deputy Prime Minister during which a number of unparliamentary things were said. I think that if we are to be looking at any sort of pointing the finger here, then people need to understand that this is a robust House. There will be debate. If there was misunderstanding over the comments made by Mr Key, because of a misreporting about Mr Hughes, then I do not think that that really was sufficient to justify the sorts of comments that the Deputy Prime Minister was making about Mr Key.

Yesterday I was out of the House when the Leader of the Opposition dragged my wife into the debate. That is a complete breach of every convention in this House. It was the action of a person whom I described by interjection as a scumbag, and if I am required to apologise, I will do so. But when the member today compounds that by then referring to the Prime Minister in that way, that is unforgivable and members opposite will get retaliation for that kind of behaviour.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you. By and large, these things happen through frustration, and that is understood, but often they are out of order in being personal reflections. I refer members to Standing Order 116 and Speakers’ rulings 26/6 and 26/7. It can lead to disorder.

If anyone has lost the plot, it is John Key, and it was in the House today. There slipped the nice guy mask, there he exposed himself as a common or garden politician, attacking people personally for their relationships and what they did. If Mr Key wants to talk about people appearing in court for assault, then he should look to his left to Gerry Brownlee, who lost a civil assault case in court and was convicted of that offence. Let us not have any of Mr Key’s double standards. If Mr Key and the National Party look a little angry at the moment and it has something to do with the Electoral Finance Bill, it is because that party and Mr Key got caught out at the last election by having been supported by narrow, sectoral religious groups and right-wing vested interests that did not have the guts to say publicly that they were supporting National.

Mr Key knew there was $1 million coming from the Exclusive Brethren. He appeared on television talking to them. He was told about it—he was emailed. Here is the email Ron Hickmott sent to Mr Key, headed “Urgent, important, and confidential”, the email that Mr Key said he never read. What did it say? It said that the Exclusive Brethren sought to launch a “very extensive election campaign” using $1 million “with the sole goal of getting party votes for National”. Mr Key knew about the Exclusive Brethren. He knew about the $1 million. He went on television and he denied that. That was untrue; that was dishonest. Why did the National Party get hundreds of thousands of dollars through trust funds? It got hundreds of thousands of dollars through trust funds because the wealthy vested interests that were buying privileges in the hope that National would get elected were not prepared to be transparent about the fact they were giving that money to the National Party. So if the National Party is angry, it is because it knows this bill restores democracy by stopping that sort of vote-buying tactic from narrow, unrepresentative religious groups and narrow, sectoral, right-wing business interests.

If Mr Key is angry, it is because of his botch-up about the DVD where he breached copyright. That was bad enough, but then he denied responsibility for it. Mr Key, who approved the DVD, saw the DVD, and heard the DVD, said it was the fault of his staff. Then he said it was the production company’s fault. We recall that last time, when Mr Key last breached the Electoral Act by spending $100,000 more on advertising than National had declared because he did not include GST, he said it was the company’s fault. I say to Mr Key that it is always somebody else’s fault. Mr Key should listen to his own advice, which he gave in May of this year: “The temptation is to blame anyone but yourself for your situation. That kind of attitude is self-defeating and it won’t solve your problems.” Mr Key should listen to his own advice. He said that he recalled the DVD immediately. The news about the DVD was out on Friday. Friday went by, Saturday went by, Sunday went by, and on Monday Mr Key withdrew the DVDs, not, as he says, because of his high standards but because he got a lawyer’s letter and the DVD was going to cost the National Party hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was dishonest, too, I say to Mr Key. He should have come clean. He should not have tried to cover it up.

National members should be grateful that the DVD was withdrawn; it was such a shallow and vacuous piece of material. Here it is in my hand, illegal though it is. What did John Armstrong say about this DVD? He said it “manages to make National’s leader look about as deep as one of ‘The Stepford Wives’.”—as deep as one of the Stepford wives! Then there is Fran O’Sullivan. Fran O’Sullivan is no enemy of the National Party—she largely speaks in favour of it. What did she say about this DVD? She said: “I downloaded it from the National Party website and I found myself cringing at the artificiality of 12 minutes of staged intimacy.” The National Party has egg all over its face.

That was really a work-up, was it not? That was really a work-up by Phil Goff. But let us just mention the one sentence he said that I think is completely apposite to the Government today. He said: “Blame anyone but yourself.” Here we have the headlines about Wellington Hospital: “Dysfunction, mistrust, morale at rock bottom” and “Hospital crises”, and what does the Minister of Health limply say about who is responsible for this? He says: “Oh, it’s all the board.” But he does not admit that the failed Minister of Health Annette King appointed half the board of the Capital and Coast District Health Board for the last 6 years. Her hand-picked flunkies have been running that hospital for over 6 years. They have been running it down into the ground, and now we have report after report about how people are dying because of the way that the Government is administering the public hospital.

Patient after patient is revealed in the paper today as having died because of a hospital that cannot provide decent services to the people of New Zealand. A man lost his life because he was sent home from the emergency department three times despite the fact that he had life-threatening pneumonia. What about the man who could not get an X-ray and subsequently died within hours? What about the people who died because of surgery delays at Wellington Hospital? There has been nothing from this Minister except some sort of pathetic comment about oysters and sand. That is all we got from him.

Labour used to be the party that said it stood for the public health system and for ordinary New Zealanders getting a quality health system. How the hell do Labour members explain the front page of the Rotorua Daily Post today, which says that patients, within days of having surgery, had to scrub the toilets in the hospital during the weekend? How do they explain that? In Rotorua, surgical patients disgusted with hygiene standards at Rotorua Hospital have resorted to cleaning the toilets themselves.

💬 Hon Bill English: It’s their fault.

Yes. Do members know whose fault it is? It is the patients’ fault for being there. That is what Government members say—it is the patients’ fault for being there.

In a New Zealand public hospital, the patients are resorting to cleaning the toilets because this Government wants to spend the money on 10,000 bureaucrats. That is what this Government is doing to the public health system, and not one of the Government members takes any accountability. Annette King repeatedly appointed her mates, people completely bereft of any skill whatsoever, to the board of Capital and Coast District Health Board and to district health boards around the country. Things have turned into a mess, and there is no accountability from that woman for what she has done to the people of Wellington or for what she is now doing to the people of Rotorua.

How can the Labour Party stand proud as the defender of the public health system when in Rotorua patients recovering from surgery 2 days earlier are finding scrubbing brushes and rubber gloves and are cleaning the toilets themselves? This is happening in a New Zealand public hospital under Labour. What do the patients say? I could not sum it up better myself. They say: “We can’t blame the nurses. Where is all the money going that Prime Minister Helen Clark says they are putting into hospitals?”. Well, I will tell members where it is going. It is going into 10,000 bureaucrats—there will be 10,000 bureaucrats by the time of the election.

This Government has employed two bureaucrats for every extra doctor in the health system. It has employed two health bureaucrats for every extra doctor working in our hospitals. That is the record of the Labour Party in the health system. With $5 billion extra spent on health there have been fewer people getting elective surgery, emergency departments are turning patients away, and now in Rotorua patients are being forced to clean the public hospital toilets themselves within days of having surgery. Within days of having surgery they are having to clean the hospital toilets themselves. And this Government wonders why disease is being passed around our hospitals and why we are closing hospital wards up and down the country to deal with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Labour is failing the public health system.

When the Minister of Health stood up to answer questions in Parliament today those answers could best be described only as extraordinarily arrogant, flippant, and, for the most part, totally irrelevant. Quite what oysters have to do with Wellington Hospital I do not know, but I suspect they have never been on the menu there or anywhere else in the public health system.

Instead of answering questions and actually being up front with what exactly has gone on at Wellington Hospital over the past 7 years, the Minister resorted to personal attacks on me. Well, I have thicker skin than that, I say to the Minister. Personal attacks will do nothing, not one single thing, to address any of the problems that Wellington Hospital is afflicted with at the moment. The Minister has just revealed that he is totally out of touch with everything that is going on in the health sector.

The Minister then went on to try to pretend that he is the friend of the hard-working doctors, nurses, and health professionals who are beavering away at the coalface at Wellington Hospital, and of those employed at the Capital and Coast District Health Board. Those people are not fooled for one moment. I suspect that I have spoken to dozens more doctors and nurses than the Minister has in the last week. If he really cared about what is happening at Wellington Hospital, then he would have investigated the budget. He would have looked at where the money is being spent and at where it is not going. He would have picked up that a terrible dissociation has developed between the management and the clinical staff. The rift is so great that neither the clinicians nor the management actually have any confidence in each other. There is a great deal of mistrust. That is reflected in the drop in confidence that the people of Wellington have had about their public health service. For the Minister to totally ignore those things shows just how out of touch he is.

Minister Cunliffe—the self-professed socialist who can count—obviously has not bothered to count how many people are on waiting lists at Wellington Hospital. He obviously has not bothered to count the dollars being spent not only at the Capital and Coast District Health Board but also elsewhere around the country, and I suspect that that is because he cannot count. I think he has been very slow to come up to speed with his new portfolio. He has been extraordinarily slow to act. He cannot decide. The reason we are to get an announcement some time in the next week is that he cannot actually decide what he is going to do with this issue, which is proving to be a huge embarrassment for the Government.

What needs to happen is very clear. A commissioner should have been put in place years ago. At the very least, the Minister should be announcing today that an independent commissioner will be put in place to deal with the problems that exist. That person has to be independent, has to have a proven track record of turning organisations around, and has to be able to think outside the square, because innovative ideas and a brave approach is needed at this district health board, which is in terminal crisis.

The Minister is quite right; the hard-working doctors, nurses, and health professionals need support and they need it immediately. They need it from him. He, who is aggregating responsibility for the crisis we are currently experiencing, is doing no favours for these hard-working health professionals. There is talk of the Minister again just putting a few of his cronies into the appointed positions at the district health board. The membership of the district health boards changes over next week, on 10 December. If all the Minister is to do is ministerial, namby-pamby tinkering, then that will solve absolutely nothing, and Wellingtonians will be able to look forward only to more of the same.

The Minister never answered the question I asked him in Parliament today. I asked him how many more people needed to die at Wellington Hospital before he would consider sacking the board, doing the right thing, and putting in place an independent commissioner who could tackle the real issues. There must be no political interference with this independent commissioner. We should forget the meddling that has gone on by the Ministry of Health and the Minister’s office with the 21 district health boards up and down the length and breadth of this country. There should be no political interference. The commissioner needs to be able to have a free rein to put in a team of his or her own with confidence, in order to change the culture at Wellington Hospital.

The commissioner should first address the financial statements that have been of huge concern since the district health board was put in place in 2001, and then deal with the culture that exists at Wellington Hospital. Anybody working at Wellington Hospital will say freely that it is a very unhappy place to be working in. People tell me that freely. Once upon a time they tried to cover that up, but it is an extraordinarily unhappy place, and the sooner a commissioner is put in place the better.

I start my contribution to the general debate this afternoon by offering my congratulations to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, the new Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. They are from the Australian Labor Party, which has stormed to victory and to a pretty comprehensive win for a new Government for Australia. It has been interesting to watch what has been happening in Australia in recent times, because a lot is mentioned about it in our media and politics. The thing that strikes me most about what has happened in Australia is that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard won office on the policies that Helen Clark and Michael Cullen have been implementing here in New Zealand. You know, for a long time there was a group of workers in Australia who voted for the previous Government. It was not until that Government went to the right and to the style of the Employment Contracts Act of National in New Zealand that those people—who were known as the “Howard battlers”—moved over and voted for a Labor Government.

I congratulate Kevin Rudd on the stand he has taken on climate change. He has adopted a clear policy—just like New Zealand Labour has adopted. His opponent was a last-minute convert to the climate change challenge, just as we have a half-hearted effort from the parliamentary Opposition here in New Zealand in that regard, as well. Of course, Kevin Rudd supports Helen Clark’s stand against the war in Iraq, and in not committing troops into that combat zone, just as we have done in New Zealand. I congratulate Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on the work they will do in Australia.

The other thing I think is interesting about Australian politics is the way in which a certain style has been allowed to enter the conservative side of politics, which is most easily illustrated by the activities of the Exclusive Brethren Church. We are debating that in Parliament at the moment with the passage of the Electoral Finance Bill. It is a bill about which the National Opposition, basically alone in Parliament, is causing all sorts of outrage and false crocodile tears, with its stand against it. The bill has been introduced because the book The Hollow Men exposed behaviour at the last election that not one National MP opposite will say he or she is proud of.

💬 Anne Tolley: It’s a work of fiction.

Mrs Tolley knows it is not. She knows that basically it is an encyclopaedia. Does she deny that the emails and the footnotes in the back of that book are true?

💬 Anne Tolley: It’s a work of fiction.

I hope National members keep up this approach through the rest of the afternoon and week, because that book puts out absolutely clearly why electoral finance reform is needed in this country. It is why not one of the speeches of bluster we have heard from Mr English and his cronies has gone any way to try to defend what the National Party did in 2005 when its campaign was basically run by the Exclusive Brethren Church. It is why the National Party has not offered one word of defence for the way Bill English ran the campaign in 2002 when National’s election campaign was basically funded by Parliamentary Service. That is a point he has never denied in Parliament and a point he never refers to in debating the Electoral Finance Bill. So let us have just a little bit less of the moral outrage from that side of the House in that regard.

Something they should feel morally outraged about is the DVD that was going to be the great circuit-breaker for John Key. We found out that he is ambitious for New Zealand. One of the members of Parliament in this Chamber whom I dislike the most is Tony Ryall. He is just a mean, nasty person—but I think he is ambitious for New Zealand. I do not deny for a minute that he is an ambitious person for our country—I mean that as a compliment, incidentally—I have not met a single member of Parliament who is not ambitious for New Zealand. We are all in that state.

I put on the DVD and tried to watch it for 13 minutes, which felt like a lifetime—trying to work out how John Key was differently ambitious for New Zealand from the rest of us. There was not a single answer on the DVD. But I am glad they chose the DVD, because DVDs are interesting things. They are all shiny, but hollow at the core. That reminds me a lot of the Leader of the Opposition. While I was watching the DVD I thought that if I were John Key and I knew that people thought I was all style and no substance and I put out a DVD, I would try to counter that claim by packing it full of policy. But John Key did not put one thing on there, because the policies that National has released are all desperately unpopular.

Tony Ryall’s health discussion document—the only discussion document National members do not want us to talk about—puts up general practitioner fees for New Zealanders accessing primary health care. Bill English’s State-owned enterprises policy is the one whereby he partially privatises the family silver. National members do not want to talk about that. Those two policies were not on the DVD, either. The other policy National had was about the war in Iraq. That was not on the DVD, either. National members do not want to talk about the policies we know National has, and the policies they keep trying to hide are the ones that were not on the DVD. We saw that in Australia right-wing industrial relations law led to the defeat of a Government. In New Zealand we know that National wants to go back to an Employment Contracts Act style. We have had a couple of quotes around the place that refer to it. But National members are never up front about what industrial relations law they want. It is about time they reissued this DVD and put some policy on it.

Was that speech by Darren Hughes not the Government running up the white flag! We are seeing here today a shambles, the likes of which I do not think we have seen in this country in the 8 years of the Labour Government. It is a shambles of things that are symptoms of deep-seated arrogance and paranoia. I do not think we can see it in any other way.

The question is: when the Government in so much trouble, where is Helen Clark? Where is the leader who is meant to be the person who knows everything, and controls everything, and is always right—and always gets it right, if we believe our media? How has the Labour Party managed to turn the employment of a middle-management communications officer in a small, minor ministry into such a corrosive, destructive, personal, and negative event? Well, I do not know. I do not know how the best political managers the country has ever seen—

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: That’s what they say.

That is what they say, that is what the media say, that is what half the public believe, and that is what Helen Clark tells us every week on Monday mornings.

How did Labour turn it into the debacle where the ministry has defamed its own employee, and the Minister who punched another MP came into Parliament and beat up an employee, a person no New Zealander has ever heard of? It is because she got in the way of the Labour Party. And that is what the Electoral Finance Bill is about. Anyone who stands in the way of Labour and its political intentions and its political survival gets dealt to, but not with the style, or even the consistency, that there used to be.

Labour has built its whole argument for the Electoral Finance Bill around anonymous donations. Who put that provision in there? It was not Labour. When Labour introduced the bill there was nothing in it about anonymous donations. The only reason it is in there is that National talked to the Greens about getting the regulated period shortened, so the Greens trotted off to Labour and said: “If you don’t put in something about anonymous donations, we’ll vote with National to shorten the regulated period.” Now, it is at the heart of Labour’s case. Who sums up better the destructive power of Helen Clark than Annette King?

There is a trail of other victims. I used to think Trevor Mallard was a victim—but there were crocodile tears for the TV cameras one week and the next week he was ripping up the careers of harmless middle-level, female, civil servants while Lianne Dalziel sat and watched. Now there is Clare Curran, another female. She might vote Labour, but her career is destroyed. Erin Leigh’s career is destroyed, and Madeleine Setchell’s career is destroyed, and Annette King is now another lot of road kill on Helen Clark’s path to a job in the UN.

Annette King has made Minister Burton look competent and lucky. She has made him look lucky. I could not think of a Minister who could have done a worse job of the Electoral Finance Bill. We questioned her on one provision—just one out of 97; the law that applies to MPs—and what chaos there was. She gave us her interpretation. Her interpretation said: “If you say anything about what the next Parliament will do, that counts as an election advertisement.” So the Government can spend $50 million, as it plans to, next year to talk about its record, but if the Opposition says anything about what it will do when it becomes the Government, that will be illegal unless it meets the criteria of an election advertisement.

Annette King is not up to it, and the Prime Minister is now going around Koru lounges saying that. Annette King needs to know that her leader is telling people that she is not up to it and that the problem with the Electoral Finance Bill is not Helen Clark; it is Annette King. So the Labour Party that believes in itself and backs itself is now down to one person: Helen Clark. That is it—it is her leadership now. Her leadership is a trail of destruction, the worst political mismanagement we have seen for years. I thought National in its dying days made a few messes, but none was this big and none was this incompetent.

You know, it is one thing to make a cheesy DVD; it is entirely another thing to pinch someone’s intellectual property. That actually sounds like a Coldplay song: “It is one thing to make a cheesy DVD, quite another to pinch someone’s IP.” You see, there is a little rhyme at the end.

I will talk just briefly about the cheesy DVD. I had a look at it on YouTube and I tell members that I lasted about 2 or 3 minutes. It was kind of shallow and insincere, which is what we would have expected, but it was also cringingly bad. It was humorous. It was cringingly bad and humorous. We have not seen a pre-Christmas release as humorous since Paul Holmes’ CD. Do members remember his CD? What was it called?

💬 Hon David Parker: “Snoopy’s Christmas”.

It was called “Snoopy’s Christmas”. Paul Holmes put out a CD on which he tried to sing songs he hoped people would play at Christmas time. The problem is that it was the kind of present that people bought for someone who had everything, but who had an enormously good sense of humour. We just knew there were people at Christmas time, gathered around their stereos, listening to that CD and having a good old laugh over a bottle of wine. That is the kind of thing that was going to happen to this DVD until National had to pull it because the party had pinched the intellectual property.

The first point that members need to know is that the offending song was “Clocks”, which is from an album by Coldplay called A Rush of Blood to the Head. Is that not appropriate that the National Party copied a song from a CD with that title? But I say to members that I have the titles of more Coldplay songs here. You see, the National Party and John Key could have used a whole pile of songs from Coldplay. Here are some of them. From the Parachutes album, which was released in July 2000, there is “Don’t Panic”—the first song on that album. Here is another one: “Spies”. That is the song for when they want to know who pinched all the emails. There were spies. The next song is called “Yellow”. That song is appropriate because National members say one thing before the election and do something completely different afterwards.

Another song on this album is called “Trouble”. But members should listen to the title of this one. There is a song—I think it is the second to last song on the album Parachutes—called “We Never Change”. National could have used that song. Of course, National members are the hollow men—they never change. They want to convince us that they have changed but, deep down, they really have not. The last song on the album is “Everything’s Not Lost”. They could have used that song as well, after the gaffes they have made.

The album A Rush of Blood to the Head, which has the “Clocks” song on it, was released in August 2002. I like Coldplay; they are fantastic group. But here is one song National members could have used for the Exclusive Brethren: “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face”. That is a song they could have had playing in the background with the Exclusive Brethren handing out its little leaflets.

Here is another Coldplay album: it is called X & Y and was released in June 2005. The first song on that album is called “Square One”, as in going back to square one after someone has made a few botch-ups and tried to get out of a few curly things. Here is the second song: “What If”. What if we had some National Party policy? That would be good, would it not? What if we had some National Party policy? The next song is called “White Shadows”. I think that kind of summarises the Ōrewa speech—the kind of speech in which someone does not want to say something but instead gives out coded messages.

Here is the next one: “Fix You”—as National will do to the workers of this country, if it ever get back in to Government. If it ever gets back in, the Employment Contracts Act will be back in. Here is another song: “Twisted Logic”. That is a great song National could have used. The sub-theme of that song could have been Iraq. Do members remember? National would have sent troops, then it would not have sent troops, then it would have sent troops. That song is one that National could have used.

What about climate change? There is the twisted logic of National’s climate change policy. It was all a big hoax, do members remember? Then Mr Key said he had always been a believer in it. That was twisted logic.

Here is another song for the Exclusive Brethren—this is a little beauty—“‘Til Kingdom Come”. National could have used any of those songs on the DVD, not just “Clocks”.

We can certainly see that these are the last days of a very tired, desperate Government when we start to see the arrogance and the out-of-touch nature that is being exhibited. We needed only to listen to the speaker who has just resumed his seat to realise that is the case, as he rambled on with no direction. It is a very concerning situation when we see a Government that is as out of touch and as arrogant as this Government. We now have a serous situation whereby Labour members want so determinedly to hang on to their roles in Government that they have rendered parts of the country, such as health, education, and law and order, down to a low, low level of priority. When we hear of patients cleaning toilets, we start to realise that we now have a Government that is completely out of touch and full of paranoia about being sent to Coventry.

The last speaker mentioned that workers were afraid. I would like to take this opportunity to relate a little story. The villains in it are Helen Clark and Annette King; the heroes are 240 enrolled nurses. Those enrolled nurses, who were the best carers we had at the time, followed the endorsement of Helen Clark and Annette King, who publicly took the photo opportunities and verbally endorsed the 2004 enrolled nurses programme, which specialised in long-term care and rehabilitation. The programme started at Whangarei and ended at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. When the last of those courses were run and the nurses received their qualifications as enrolled nurses, the next day they had their title taken off them. All the words and rhetoric of that Labour Government did not count one ounce. That was abominable.

The Labour members talk about workers, but what did that do? It rendered those people, who had earned the right to be called enrolled nurses, down to a level below that of toilet cleaners. They could not get a job. They got the useless title “nurse assistant”. What on earth does that mean? There are 240 people who did that course, and fewer than half of those people are in the sector today. Who is to blame for that? Annette King and Helen Clark are to blame. That is hugely serious. One of the members on that side, Lianne Dalziel, did, to her credit, say that those people went in for a BMW and came out with a Mini. I must correct Lianne Dalziel, though she was quite right and noble. They did not even come out with a blasted Mini; they came out with something much worse than that. The enrolled nurses had to take a collective case to the District Court. They got together $15,000 and they had their case heard. The judge did not have the capability within the law to award them costs. He told them that although they did have a case, they would be better to go to the High Court.

Now, the heroes here are those 240 enrolled nurses. They did not roll over like everybody else who is afraid of this paranoid, arrogant Labour Government. They got a hearing at the Regulations Review Committee, and what was the outcome? The very learned chair of the Regulations Review Committee, Richard Worth, found in favour of those 240 enrolled nurses. What did the committee say? It said to the Government it was the committee’s view that the Government should invite the Nursing Council to reinstate the title of those enrolled nurses. The sad thing is that when we look, we see that at this very moment a public email has been sent around to all and sundry and the Nursing Council is still trying to screw the scrum.

So, effectively, we have here a Labour Government that sells its workers short. At a time when we need to have plenty of employees inside our health sector, the Government has turned them away. The Government has completely crushed and ruined the people who did that intense year’s study. I ask the Government members not to be arrogant and not to assume that they have the high ground when it comes to looking after workers. That case is a classic case whereby they have rendered the very best of people within the caring fraternity down to a level below that of those who clean toilets, and they should be ashamed of that.

Where are we situated at the moment? When we count the cost of that situation, we find that it cost $1.4 million in tertiary education fees. It cost one of those ladies $22,000 to do the course. From that point of view, those people have had to give up 12 months of employment. That is shameful.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Before I start I want to advise the member who has just completed his speech, Colin King, that in such a robust speech it is quite important to have the correct facts. To that end, I remind the member that it was actually a National Government that stopped the training for enrolled nurses, and National stopped the training for the dental therapists, as well. So although the speech was given in a robust manner, it is important to have those facts correct. In case the member forgets, I point out that it was actually National that stopped training for both enrolled nurses and dental therapists.

I take the opportunity to place on record some of the positive things that this Labour-led Government has promoted. Some of the positive promotions of our policies have been through, for example, the economy. Unemployment has been reduced to just 3.6 percent. More than 200,000 New Zealanders have already been helped with their personal savings through KiwiSaver. I move on to the issue of sustainability. New Zealand’s household sustainability programme will help households to identify practical steps to cut their electricity and power bills. We are quite proud of the policy we have adopted in relation to climate change.

These policies are all designed to help, and they explain why Helen Clark enjoys such a comfortable lead as a leader and a Prime Minister. I do think that that was the underlying reason why the Opposition decided to go with the DVD—a DVD that breached copyright. Is it not amazing that Temuera Morrison is currently campaigning against copyright piracy, yet we have an Opposition party that has been caught out on that same problem? From what I can gather, those members did not get caught out immediately. It actually took them 4 days to pull the DVD—a whole 4 days. On the Friday the issue was exposed, on the Saturday it was published in the papers, and on the Sunday the papers were still covering the story. But it was not until the Monday that John Key decided to pull it. So the rubber hit the road and it took him 4 days to do it. And those members are saying that he might be a possible Prime Minister! Will it take him 4 days to make a decision if he is Prime Minister? I doubt it.

This is very reflective of other gaffes that have happened in the past, is it not? There was the flip-flop on Iraq. The extent of the policy was “Do we send troops there? Do we not send troops there?”. The release of National’s health policy showed that National would increase doctors’ fees. There was also the policy of selling State assets. All those things show what a typical disaster the Opposition is in promoting its opportunity to become the Government.

So can we trust John Key? It does not look as though we can. At the end of the day, he would not take the responsibility of accepting the blame for the DVD. He blamed his staff, and when that did not work he blamed the publisher. So his measure of credibility is far gone. I think that the reason why the Opposition wanted to promote that DVD was to try to oppose the positive things that this Labour-led Government has been doing. I mentioned some of those positive things earlier. Regarding our seniors, under a Labour-led Government there will always be superannuation for retirement. We have also invested heavily in raising the rate of New Zealand superannuation from 60 percent to 66 percent. In the area of health I can say that just the other day we recommitted the new Kaitāia Hospital. So we are investing in health, and we are conscious of our obligations in relation to providing safe health care and providing education.

I think it is important for us to acknowledge the good things that this Labour-led Government is promoting. We will continue to do that. We have a heavy Order Paper to continue with, particularly with the debate we are having at the moment over the Electoral Finance Bill. We all know that the reason we are promoting that bill is due to National’s experiences with the Exclusive Brethren.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Just before I call the next member I would like to refer members on my left to Speakers’ rulings 58/4 and 59/1. They refer to members moving from their seats to facilitate interjection.

Our maternity service statistics are quite shameful, and the grandiose headline that we read in today’s newspaper, “Heads may roll”, and a baby’s death that could mean the axing of a health board are not going to fix the situation in either the long term or the short term. The bottom line is that this situation should never have got to this stage in the first place. Making an example of one district health board is going to do nothing to solve the operational problems and the staff shortages caused by successive Governments, right throughout the country.

We like to consider ourselves as a First World country, but there is too high an incidence of death and injuries in relation to newborn babies for anyone to be even vaguely satisfied that we have the best possible maternity service operating here in New Zealand. We have the Health and Disability Commissioner conducting continual ongoing investigations into the injuries and deaths of mothers, and the deaths of babies. The issue seems to be never-ending, and we can feel very, very sorry for all the families who have suffered these tragedies.

What is going wrong? Many, many things! We know that having a baby is not the same for everybody; it does vary from person to person—different to the textbooks—but the last thing that most mothers want is to be kicked out of the hospital as quickly as possible with the promise of a grocery voucher. What an insult! Mothers need some experienced care, and they want some support to ensure that they are on the right line. It is absolutely essential. To think that someone would leave hospital for a $100 grocery voucher is absolutely chronic. It is wrong, just so wrong. At this stage, after having a baby most mothers find it even challenging to think logically, let alone to think through the consequences of leaving an environment where medical assistance is available, and where, if it is required, it is very, very close. If beds are in such direly short supply, then other measures must be taken. To wave a grocery voucher around in front of mothers is not an option.

I think we have to realise that many of today’s mothers are older than mothers used to be, and probably far less fit than mothers used to be, because they have worked for longer and they have sat behind desks for many weeks—many years, in fact. When the mothers of present-day mothers went in to have babies, 2 weeks in hospital was the norm, not 6 hours. Basically what it means is that mothers nowadays need greater care and their needs are often far more complex. And, of course, they need time to establish their bond with their babies. Babies are far more complex and challenging to deal with than filling out a piece of paper or playing on a computer. Motherhood is not an easy job. Mothers require far more guidance and expertise than quite often they receive.

So what do we have now? We have the Minister of Health with an outstanding opportunity to act decisively in order to solve the problems within our maternity service. And the problems are not just in Wellington; there are problems New Zealand – wide, and we have all heard of many examples. Perhaps Wellington does need to be first, but every other district health board in the country needs to focus on this. So rather than the usual line of blaming the district health boards and then offering some soothing words about another report that “should throw light on the problem”, or of setting up another committee, the Minister has to look for solutions to a problem that is not going to go away, because the statistics all show that the birth rate is rising.

It is a big problem. We know that we are currently short of 200 midwives, and the likelihood that we can actually fill that number of vacancies is extremely remote. That has to be of great concern to everybody. We know that it takes time to train midwives, and that there is not a queue of people out there lining up to become midwives. The Minister has to look for alternatives, and rapidly.

New Zealanders, beware the nanny State, and this very, very arrogant Labour Government. Be very afraid. Helen Clark and Labour are surreptitiously sucking out the lifeblood of New Zealanders. They are taking away our independence, our confidence, our freedoms, and the very essence of the Kiwi lifestyle of getting out there and making it happen. Helen Clark and Labour just do not trust Kiwis. They do not trust us to spend our own money, they do not trust us to look after our families, and they do not trust us to eat the right food. This week, as a final insult, we are losing our right to the freedom of speech without Government control, one year in three, because they do not trust us to vote for them. Do the latest polls have anything to do with this desperate defence of this indefensible bill?

History is going to describe the Clark Government as the most aggressively domineering and the most arrogant control-freak regime that New Zealand has ever seen. Labour does not trust any of us. It does not trust us to spend our own money, because it is absolutely focused on taking it away from us. Despite Treasury advice back in 2003 that we are overtaxed, Treasury said that Labour has the scope to cut taxes and still increase expenditure and build up financial assets. But it would not do it. No way. Labour is waiting to buy the 2008 election, and it is using our money to build an enormous bureaucracy, an empire, to control us.

Back in 1999 there were 30,700 civil servants, but by 2006 there were 42,200—a 41 percent increase.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the rules permitting interjections are predicated on the assumption that the person being interjected on has the call. Now I noticed an instance on both sides of the House where we had members interjecting on each other who do not have the call.

To house all those workers the cost of office space leased by Government departments has grown by more than 70 percent. Labour will not even leave the army of civil servants alone to get on with the job. It arrogantly micro-manages them, because civil servants cannot be trusted. They cannot be trusted to deliver Government services without Labour’s prescribed political spin. Madeleine Setchell was a threat. She was too professional, and too impartial. Erin Leigh was painted as incompetent, erroneously as we have now discovered, because she was too principled to kowtow to their airbrushed spin doctor view of the world, as was her boss Neal Cave. Instead the Labour Government promoted Labour-lovey, party faithful Clare Curran. How impartial do members think her public relations will be?

Labour has thrown huge lumps of money at every possible Government service, but it is to deliver propaganda and political spin, not any real benefits to the people who are paying for it. An extra $5 billion has gone to health, yet the patients are cleaning the toilets! Millions more dollars have gone into education, but it is not to teachers interacting with students in classrooms, it is to ministry bureaucracy. More millions have been put into nanny State spending on social engineering and more billions spent on regulations on just about everything. It is regulation that so often impedes and frustrates ordinary New Zealanders, for no real tangible benefits. Ask any small-business owner, ask anyone trying to build a house or fix a leaky home, ask any ratepayer or the local councils that have to administer these rules and regulations—the direct and indirect costs of excessive regulation are stifling this country. And here we hit the nub of the whole issue.

I seek leave for Nicky Wagner to have a 30-second extension of time. Because she said “And here we hit the nub”, I was gripped, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Mr Hide, you have been here a long time and you know you cannot seek leave for someone else. You are being naughty.

That was an extraordinary speech, but quite frankly I did not want to hear about the nub. What a fiasco these last couple of weeks have been for National. First, there was John Key’s big announcement. What was that? It was that, hey, he is ambitious. Wow, what an announcement that was! I think we all figured that out some time ago when he pushed Bill English aside and dumped Gerry Brownlee, so there is nothing new in that. Then, in addition, we get $50,000 worth of boring propaganda on DVD, no doubt paid for by National’s rich mates out there. The DVD is all sugar and syrup with no insight, no policy, and no answers. There are no answers about doctors’ fees, no answers about asset sales, no answers about workers’ rights, and no answers for families. The National Party is very embarrassed about this ridiculous DVD. It was meant to convince New Zealanders that John Key is a real person, not some kind of Merrill Lynch dummy. It was the big secret weapon. In John Key’s own words the DVD is intended “to give Kiwis a closer look at my life and what I stand for”. How sad is that? After all this time as the National leader he has had to make his own DVD because most New Zealanders would not have a clue who he is, let alone what he stands for. That is how out of touch he is with the rest of New Zealand.

The commentators, along with the rest of us, had a good laugh. John Armstrong gave the DVD two out of five. He said: “Hold the popcorn. Citizen Kane this isn’t. It’s Citizen Key in a 13-minute epic saturated with more artificial sweetener than The Sound of Music and ET combined and which manages to make National’s leader look about as deep as one of The Stepford Wives.”

Then we found out that National ripped off someone else’s music for this DVD and it is now attempting to spin its way out of that debacle by blaming the production company. We need to remember that “Clocks” by Coldplay, which has been stolen, was not chosen at random. It was the song National used when John Key entered the male, pale, and stale National Party conference some months back. It even ran a competition to pick it, trying desperately to show us how cool it really is. It is a miserable song. Actually, it is a lovely tune, and I do like Coldplay, but let us just remind ourselves what the words to that song are:

“Lights go out and I can’t be saved

Tides that I tried to swim against,

You’ve put me down upon my knees.

Oh I beg, I beg and plead …

Confusion that never stops

Closing walls and ticking clocks, …

Am I part of the cure?

Or am I part of the disease, …”

Let us remember that this was the conference where John Key was in this fantasy world where he thought he was going to be the leader of the Labour Party. It says it all about National’s conference and it says it all about John Key and the National Party.

Now that the DVD has turned to custard, National is trying to point the finger elsewhere. That is typical of National members. They cannot take responsibility; they blame the workers, they blame the staff, and they have a go at them. They do not take any responsibility. What we can be really sure of is that this DVD is not on anyone’s Christmas list. I would say that it is the gift from hell. It is the gift one gives the most disliked person one has to give a gift to, and that person throws it in the rubbish bin pretty quickly. The good thing is that Labour members do not need DVDs to tell the public who we are or what we stand for. We do not need to convince New Zealanders that we have one of the best Prime Ministers this country has ever had, and neither does she need DVDs for people to get to know who she is, because they know who she is.

It is deeds, not words, that matter, and Labour demonstrates this every day. All year we have been getting on with the people’s business. We have not been distracted by petty politics or campaigns run by huge money interests like National’s friends out there right now. We take the job of governing seriously. It is important that we talk about policy and ask some questions. Doctors’ fees and prescriptions are now cheaper. They are down by 50 percent. What would National do about that? I think it would put them up. We have built more hospitals, from Kaitāia to Invercargill, and they do not have a cash register at the door.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.