General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. A few months ago the Labour Party produced this very glossy brochure, We’re Making a Difference for Everyone. Taxpayers paid for this document. How do we know that? Because it has the parliamentary crest on it, which shows that taxpayers paid for it. The pamphlet is clearly meant to solicit votes. How do we know that? There are two reasons. First, nowhere in the document does it tell people how they can go and get any of the services it mentions. It just states what Labour thinks it is doing. The other way we know that it is meant to solicit votes is that the Electoral Commission has told us that. Why is the document in breach of the Electoral Finance Act? Because it does not have the appropriate authorisation on it. Why does it not have that? Because Labour does not want taxpayers to know that it is back at it again, fleecing taxpayers of their dollars in order to pay for its electoral advertising.

Here is the good news. Taxpayers paid for this document. Taxpayers received this document in 2008. Actually, I stand corrected; a taxpayer received this document in 2008. A taxpayer gave this document to a member of the National Party. Only one of the booklets was produced in 2008. How spooky is it that the only copy across all of New Zealand was distributed to the National Party!

💬 Hon Bill English: It was destiny.

It was destiny, as my deputy leader said. The odds of getting this brochure were the same as the odds of winning Lotto Powerball on Saturday night. Actually, it cost about as much as Lotto Powerball paid out on Saturday night.

The document states that Labour is making a difference. Well, Labour is making a difference itself in terms of how it can screw the scrum. Labour is not making a huge difference in this document in terms of literacy and numeracy in New Zealand. You see, on page 10 of the document it cannot even spell “exemption” correctly. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent, and Labour cannot even spell “exemption” correctly. Labour thinks it is exempt. It does not understand the word “exemption”. Actually, it thinks it does understand the word “exemption”. On page 9, what do we have? Labour cannot even get the numbers right.

So what is Labour making a difference in? That is a very interesting question. The answer is in screwing the scrum in favour of Labour. It has a pretty cunning plan. It has $1.5 or so million in its leader’s budget. It never spends it because all the expenditure takes place in Ministerial Services. It is nothing short of a slush fund for Labour to try to buy its re-election. Labour is making a complete and utter mockery of the process. But should any of us be surprised at that? [Interruption] He is a good-looking fella, that guy in the poster. I will tell members why we should not be surprised: leopards do not change their spots. This might be a pamphlet I have here, but 3 years ago it was a pledge card. One would have thought that the Labour members would learn a lesson after stealing $800,000 from the taxpayer, but they are back at it again. They have not learnt their lesson.

This is what is interesting. Last year we came down to this House day after day and listened to Annette King lecture this House, saying the elections of New Zealand and electoral finance should be transparent, with fairness and disclosure. She said there should be transparency, fairness, and disclosure. When she tottered back up to her office on the 9th floor of the Beehive, Labour members were up there plotting this document. We were downstairs here debating with the Labour Government, and Labour members were upstairs there plotting to release this document.

One would think that New Zealanders would understand what is going on. I think they do. New Zealanders are a fair-minded bunch of people. They expect elections to be run on a fair and transparent basis. But when the Government realises that New Zealanders see it has blatantly changed the law in favour of itself, and has gone out and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a way that is in breach of the law, for the sole purpose of its own re-election, maybe it will understand why New Zealanders are pretty angry with it.

Gee, the irony of that man impugning this Government on money issues will not be lost on Kiwis. He is the millionaire that Merrill built, the son of the “Hollow Man”, taking on the Government about transparency. Why does he not tell that to the millionaire brokers of the Waitemata Trust or the millionaire sponsors of the Exclusive Brethren? We believe in one person, one vote; not one dollar, one vote. We do not believe that elections should be bankrolled by big business, which is why the Electoral Finance Act is in place.

He is a bit peeved about that, because he has millions to spend and he just cannot spend it. But he is not as peeved as “Brutus” English. Brutus has been working the issue for weeks, and now John has pinched the lines.

💬 Hon Bill English: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member knows that that is out of order. He must address a member by his or her proper name.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I refer to personal reflections, Standing Order 166. The member will desist.

I withdraw. I thought he liked Shakespeare. In recent weeks the contrast between Labour and National could not have been greater.

💬 Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You cannot allow the member to trifle with the Chair like that. He was required to withdraw and apologise. That is it.

I was not.

💬 Gerry Brownlee: There should be an apology; the man is a walking apology

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you, Mr Brownlee. I am the sole judge. I called the member and asked him to desist.

While Labour leads, National bleeds. The press gallery knows that this Chamber sets the tone in New Zealand politics. One thing that has been clear to the media and to everybody else in the last few weeks is that this side of the House has been energised and positive—

💬 Hon Members: Where are they?

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE:—and that that side looks like it has been hit by a truck. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the member. Members know that the practice of members engaging in a constant barrage of interjections amounts to heckling and is entirely intolerable in a debating chamber. We will have order.

The reason this Government is happy is that we have lots to be happy about—1 April; just think about it. There are the business tax cuts down to 30c, KiwiSaver numbers are up, and we have introduced a 15 percent research and development tax credit. We have raised the minimum wage to $12 an hour. Superannuation and the Working for Families rates have been adjusted. We are working for ordinary New Zealanders with good, positive policy, and people are asking: “Where is John Key? What is wrong with John Key? What is going wrong with that bloke?”. Could it be that the press has finally found a definition of “slippery”? Could it be the fact that he cannot take a position and hold it? Could it be that he has had a rough time on the financial markets lately? Who knows? Even Matthew Hooten, who is no apologist for this Government, says: “He seems not to be able to even answer fairly simple questions.” John Armstong says: “The party seems to have gone into suspended animation.”, but even the twitching of Bill English’s fingers on the dagger cannot hide the fact that he is in trouble. He is looking very, very down.

He knows the honeymoon is over. He has been caught being slippery once too often. He said New Zealand was missing in action in Iraq, and then he said National would not have sent troops there—just a slight difference. He said that climate change was a hoax, and then later said he is a firm believer in it and always was. We know the typical pattern here. As was once said in a pub by a National Party staffer to one of ours, he would be a great candidate if he would just learn to shut up. If he would just learn to stop at the briefing notes and not go past his prepared lines, he would be a great candidate, but he cannot help himself. He cannot stop himself from trying to please all the people all the time, going one step too far and having to correct himself. But here is the integrity issue—he will then say he did not.

At the end of the day, that is why the public will not trust this Opposition and why they will keep trusting this Government, which is rolling out positive policy, as we did on 1 April, as we did with splitting Telecom, as we did with the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill, and as we did by solving a lot of industrial relations issues. This Government is committed to ordinary New Zealanders and to making their lives better on a day-to-day basis. We are not even talking about what we have done; we are talking about what we will do. We are talking about the rash of new candidates coming through and the renewal that is going on in the Labour Party. This party is on a roll. The press gallery knows it. The National Party knows it. That is why John Key is looking as he does. He looks like he is depressed. He looks like he is on what others on his front bench are on. [Interruption] On no—now he is awake. Maybe he was just exhausted after the last couple of minutes. But it goes on. He said that antinuclear legislation was bad news for economic growth, but now National supports it.

The Hon David Cunliffe is no Shakespeare. Here is his poetry. It is called “I am Harvard” and reads:

For one short year or two

I suckled you

with potent milk

of truth and learning.

You know my strength

you know my weakness.

They are in you

for I am Harvard

And I am yours.

Too right we know his weakness!

But it is his predecessor as Minister of Health who worries me, and that is Annette King. What we have seen with the booklet We’re Making a Difference for Everyone is Labour’s voracious sense of entitlement to public money. Labour members have a voracious sense of entitlement to public money for Labour’s partisan purposes. As John Key said, one would think they would have learnt. Absolutely nothing has happened in the last few months in respect of this booklet that is different from what happened before the last election with the same people and the same material. Mike Smith, Heather Whatever-her-name-is in the Prime Minister’s office, and Mike Williams cooked up the pledge card using $800,000 of public money. They worked out how to spend that money in a way that escaped the election cap, and this year they have set out the same people to do the same thing all over again—the same thing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money has been spent on Labour’s partisan material. One would think those people would have learnt, but they did not.

But it is worse than their not learning, because in between times they wrote the rules to stop it. Is that not hard to believe? Not only did they not learn from having to pay back $800,000 they stole from the public for the Labour Party coffers, but in the meantime they lectured everyone else about breaking the rules, then they wrote the rules to stop it, then they went and did it even though they had just spent 2 years writing the rules to stop it.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: What’s that called?

Well, I cannot think of a name for it. It is absolutely unbelievable—and some other words we cannot use in this House. Here is the question: did they know they were breaking the rules? The answer is yes. How could they not know? How could they not know, when this House went over the electoral finance legislation in detail week after week last year? How could Heather Simpson, Mike Smith, Michael Cullen, and Helen Clark not know? They set out to deliberately steal taxpayers’ money again. That is not just hypocrisy and deceit; they deliberately set out to steal taxpayers’ money again, and the horrible beauty of it is that they got caught and they got off. When did that happen before? It happened before the last election. They got caught with the $800,000 and they got off.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day. And what else has happened again? The Minister of Justice made an undertaking that this pamphlet would be added to Labour’s election expenses. When did they do that before? Five days before the 2005 election they promised the Electoral Commission—not just a media journalist or a politician but an electoral official—that the $800,000 would be added to their electoral expenses, because the Electoral Commission had been tracking them for weeks to make them do it. Two days after the election, they withdrew that promise and they did not put that sum on the election return. What do we call that, coming from a Government that is meant to be upholding the rule of law in this country?

The person responsible for it all is Helen Clark. She oversaw it last time, and she is overseeing it this time. That is a disgrace to this Parliament. It is a disgrace to this country that our Prime Minister is stealing taxpayers’ money.

I think we have had two speeches from National now. Although the last one was louder rather than more logical, at least it had a bit of style and a wee bit of substance to it, which contrasted with John Key’s speech. I must congratulate John Key, though. This was the first time I have seen him stay in the House past 3 o’clock this year.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

I am pleased that John Key was here for the entire question time today. It is something I have not seen from him for quite a long time. He appears to be able to work until about a quarter to three, and then he has to run off and have a break.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

I know it is a stressful job. I know he is finding it hard—

💬 Hon Bill English: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member knows the Standing Order about referring to a member’s absence. I think he has now referred to it three times, and you have not stopped him. It is actually out of order. That means it should not occur, and you are allowing it to occur.

Can I say, Mr Assistant Speaker, that I am sure you heard me refer to the member’s presence. I did say that it was an unusual thing, but I was referring to his presence and not to his absence.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I thank the member. I also say that I called for order several times as an indication.

Today I celebrate John Key’s presence in the House for the entire question time. It is something that I welcome. It is a wonderful thing. He normally runs away because he cannot take it.

💬 Hon Bill English: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I ask you how long you will allow this member to defy the Standing Orders. You brought his attention to it, then I raised a point of order, you ruled on it—quite appropriately—and now he has got up and done it again. I do not think you can allow him to consistently defy the Standing Orders and to now defy you.

Mr Assistant Speaker, as I am sure you are aware, there is no such Standing Order.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I just say for the benefit of all members that they should refer to Speaker’s ruling 23/8, which states: “It is a convention that we do not make reference to the fact that a member is away or is not in the member’s seat.” I think that is quite clear. I ask the member to come to order and to continue.

I am pleased that John Key was here for the entire question time today. It is such an unusual event. It is something that I want to celebrate. I commiserate with him for the pressure that he is under and for the fact that the bags under his eyes are looking more like mine and will approach Mike Moore’s as he goes on, but it is clear that John Key has not been enjoying his job recently.

We are wondering what flop will follow the flip that John Key is heading towards now. We are listening really carefully. We heard him go on about asset sales—it took only a day, between 5 March and 6 March this year, for him to flip-flop on asset sales. It took him a lot longer when he flipped on Iraq. On climate change it took a year and 5 months for him to change his view from “It is a complete and utter hoax.”, to “I have always firmly believed in climate change.” It took him a year and 5 months to make that decision.

We are wondering what John Key is wrestling with at the moment, in trying to make a decision. You know, I wonder whether it is that he should seek out Tame Iti and hongi him again. Is that what he is trying to work out? Well, he did not have the bottle to say no. He did not have the backbone to say no. He could not stand up to Tame Iti and say: “I will not hongi you, because I do not think it is appropriate.” He could not do that. He is not strong enough, and if one is not strong enough to do that, then one is not strong enough to be a leader of a political party in New Zealand. I look around the Chamber. I look at Rodney Hide; I know that Rodney Hide would not do something as unprincipled as that. I know that Winston Peters would not do something as unprincipled as that. I know that even Jeanette Fitzsimons would not hongi Tame Iti in those circumstances.

I would say that the National Party is clearly looking at its leadership. It is looking at Bill English and it has heard a relatively strong, if not that logical, speech from that member compared with a weak comic performance from John Key—the sort of weak comic sort of performance that even Gerry Brownlee can do better. If John Key is to demean himself by doing Gerry Brownlee imitations in the House, then that is a very, very sad place for him to be.

This debate, of course, is mainly about 1 April and the changes that occurred then. The adult minimum wage is up to $12 an hour. Nine increases have been made by this Government, and every single one of them was opposed by National members.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: How much did they increase the minimum wage?

Tell me; I do not have it in my head.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: By 87c.

National increased it by 87c in 9 years, and for young people it has gone up $7.80 in the entire time that Labour has been in Government.

New Zealand First members were helpful in that matter, and I thank those members. They helped focus the issue and kept us going, and I know that they want to do that again and keep it going in the future. We know that the only way they could do that would be through having a similar arrangement with Labour as they have now.

John Key wants wages to drop. He told a northern newspaper that he wanted wages to drop. He then said that he did not mean it, that he did not say it, that he had not finished his sentence yet, and that it was the sort of thing one says in a cafe.

The Green Party is opposed to New Zealand’s preferential trade agreement with China signed in Beijing this week. It makes little sense to reduce our tariffs to zero for products from the country we are least able to compete with. China is a very low-cost producer. Its factory owners spend very little on health and safety or good environmental practices. Wages are kept low by the absence of genuine trade unions. Our manufacturing sector, and some of our service providers, will find it difficult to survive such competition.

The Greens are not against trade with China, but we should recognise that we already have a big trade deficit with that country, which is a major contributor to our overall trade deficit. If the consequences of the free-trade agreements we have signed with Singapore and Thailand are anything to go by, the China free-trade agreement will only increase our trade deficit. Yes, exports to those countries increased after the signing but there was more damage in the other direction—the trade gaps widened.

It is true that New Zealand might sell more agricultural produce in China, although it must be said that Fonterra is more interested in joint ventures with China rather than dairy sales, for which there are already plenty of markets worldwide. But the gain in agricultural exports is likely to be greatly outweighed by increased imports here from China, a further hollowing out of our manufacturing sector—reducing New Zealand’s overall export capacity—and growing capital outflows as Chinese firms take over more and more of the New Zealand economy. China has huge currency reserves that it can pour into taking over New Zealand firms, and under this agreement any future New Zealand Government will have fewer lines of defence than we have now.

Rather than the Government trying to decide for itself about a takeover, as it is currently trying to do in relation to the bid by the Canada Pension Plan for Auckland International Airport, New Zealand under this agreement will have to place its faith in the hands of some international arbitrators who usually come down on the side of the foreign investor. As we have seen with some other international arbitration under World Trade Organization rules, environmental protections are often overridden as being protectionist.

Human rights hardly get a look in, in this agreement. It is bad enough that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Trade were in Beijing signing the agreement against the backdrop of Tibetan monks being shot in the streets, which has seriously tarnished New Zealand’s image as a human rights advocate.

The free-trade agreement’s memorandum of understanding on labour and environmental issues is little more than a joke. Those memoranda have no teeth. Occasionally officials from the two countries will have a chat about the issues. The labour issues memorandum is worse than that attached to the New Zealand - Thai free-trade agreement, on which it is modelled. For example, point 1.2 in the Thai memorandum, which states that labour laws should be in harmony with internationally recognised labour rights, has been replaced by a clause reinforcing China’s—and New Zealand’s—sovereign rights to set its own labour laws. The labour situation in China is pretty atrocious. It is not just that workers do not have the right to form genuine unions; there is also forced prison labour and child labour, and a lack of political rights in the whole society, which makes it very difficult for Chinese workers.

The Greens are worried that the free-trade agreement quota for 1,000 Chinese skilled workers to come here every year will undermine our wages and working conditions. There is a provision that in certain circumstances Chinese workers can come in with a lower qualification than do those of other nationalities currently getting work visas in that area. For example, we do not want less qualified, lower paid Chinese nurses coming here for up to 3 years. We do, rightly, have special Pacific access quotas for immigration from Polynesian nations but, beyond that, those coming in on work visas to help in areas of skill shortage should be non-racially selected. What is allowed in the China free-trade agreement is a bad precedent that has been rightly condemned in a press release by the Maritime Union.

It certainly does not help Chinese workers struggling for more rights to see our Government, from a liberal democracy, cosying up to their rulers and being the first Western Government to give the Chinese Government a comprehensive preferential agreement. Our efforts should surely be to put the spotlight on human rights in China, particularly Tibet, in the lead-up to the Olympic Games. I think we have failed New Zealanders in signing this agreement. Thank you.

It is particularly galling to hear this afternoon successive Labour speakers talk about principle. They suggest that Labour is a principled Government, somehow better than everybody else on the political horizon, and better than everybody else in this House. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Labour Party is the biggest burglar of taxpayer funds—which have been applied for its own electoral benefit—that this country has ever seen. The burglary is far worse than any of the old pork-barrel politics of the old first-past-the-post days. The spectacular burglary of taxpayer funds by the Labour Party in 2005—and, it admitted today, in 2002 and 1999—and now again in 2008 should have every New Zealander utterly disgusted and completely cynical about anything this Government claims.

I have in front of me a quote from the great poet Sir Walter Scott: O what a tangled web we weave, when first we set out to deceive! That is exactly what Labour has done with the Electoral Finance Act. It is a two-faced approach to a law such as has never been seen by this country before. As my colleague Bill English so well put it, Labour has spent 2 years telling the nation it would get rid of corruption from the political process, and all of that time it was planning how it could rort its own laws. Now Labour is caught in the most tangled web of a mess that anybody could possibly imagine. Not only is Labour’s own material found to be breaching the current electoral law on a number of counts but it has also got its coalition colleague New Zealand First in a very, very deep mess.

The Rt Hon Winston Peters can say what he likes in the House today; the reality is that the Fonterra issue will not be resolved before the election, the Auckland airport issue is unlikely to be resolved before the election, and if he keeps holding out on the free-trade agreement, that also may not be resolved before the next election. So every single defence—thin as it is—he mounts against the proposal that he has broken the law is wrong. He will be caught, because he stuck his hand up and said: “I think Helen Clark is really smart. I think she has worked out a cunning way to rort the people of New Zealand, and I am going along with it.” I hope that when the Electoral Commission considers this matter in the days ahead it brings down a judgment that will see New Zealand First paying the price for getting tied up with such a deceptive character as Helen Clark.

We heard today the Government members, after they had got over their little groans at the start of their speeches, trying desperately to talk about some of the things they say were good for New Zealand from 1 April this year. I heard Trevor Mallard say how wonderful it was that the minimum wage in this country has now gone to $12 an hour. Yesterday the Minister of Finance stood in the House and told us that under Labour’s watch we have had the longest period of economic growth ever in New Zealand’s history. The members over there nod their heads. If the New Zealand economy has grown so big, why have the pay packets of hard-working New Zealanders not grown? Why have the pay packets of hard-working New Zealanders not grown along with the rest of the economy?

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: They have!

Well, that member should go through the supermarket with an average family on an average wage and see what it costs just to buy food. That member should go out with an average family to the service station and see what it costs to fill the car to take the kids to school, to take the kids to their sport on a Saturday afternoon, and to get to work during the week. That member should go to the homes of New Zealanders during the coming cold winter and tell them they are lucky to be paying an extra 48 percent for their electricity under this current Government. This is what economic growth under Labour is all about. Economic growth under Labour is about economic impoverishment of average workers, and that is why Labour will lose the next election.

I have found it fascinating this afternoon listening to the priorities for the Government and for the Opposition. Never could two parties be more poles apart than Labour and National. For the Government the priority is the signing of a historic free-trade agreement with China, amongst a wide range of initiatives that have taken effect in the last week.

I find it a bit rich that Gerry Brownlee could mention electricity without mentioning Max Bradford and the wonderful contribution he made to this country. The priority for National members today has been to vent, in their aggrieved state, that their mates are not able to spend $1.2 million surreptitiously to discredit other parties in an election year and to hide their true identities behind fake addresses, which is what happened during the last election campaign.

National told the public last year that free speech would be denied by the Electoral Finance Act, but that has been proved to be absolutely, completely, and utterly untrue. It is paid speech, electoral advertising, that is now subject to the spending limits that have been put in place by this Parliament. The spending limits were completely ignored by the previous Government. Now we have financial limits of $120,000 in place for third parties and a ban on anonymity—a ban on hiding behind fake addresses, as happened last time.

The National Party could be accused of treating the public with contempt. The bottom line is that National wants to buy its way into Government essentially by spending beyond the limits that are set by Parliament. National tried to do so last time and it wants to do so this time, which is why it is so upset that it cannot. Money cannot buy votes. I think we will have to rewrite the lyrics of “Can’t Buy me Love” from “money can’t buy me love” to “money can’t buy me votes”.

We know that certain National MPs are in the caucus today because they were guaranteed Cabinet posts after the last election. I can name the names. They were told that National was going to win the last election; it was stage-managed down to the last non-attributable dollar. That is what those members were promised. But the National Party made promises it could not keep. It made promises to its secret funders. It intends to deliver on those promises this time.

I have a message for the hollow men on the other side of the House: it is a slippery slope, a slippery slope indeed, when one plays fast and loose with the New Zealand voting public. That is essentially what National is doing. Members on that side of the House can play “Mr Angry” all they like; they are not focusing on the real issues that concern New Zealanders today. The real issues are that this Labour-led Government is working apace, delivering on commitments we made. We said what we were going to do before the election, and we delivered on what we promised. And we are developing new policies to build on what we have delivered, because we believe in New Zealand and we believe in taking New Zealand forward.

But what about National? Has National got a policy on anything? Actually, National’s strongest supporters are running around saying that National has not got a policy. One of National’s strongest mouthpieces said that National is showing precious little evidence of having any agenda, hidden or otherwise. I actually believe that National has a hidden agenda. It has a lot of promises it must deliver on. There are more promises than the one to the insurance industry on privatising accident compensation. National has made a lot of promises to a lot of people, and asset sales and privatisation of accident compensation are only a small part of them.

I think National is just pretending it does not have any policy at the moment. It is just downplaying its intentions ahead of an election so that it can say “Surprise!”, like it did last time with the Employment Contracts Act, which nobody had anticipated. Would anyone have thought that the promise of the freedom to negotiate directly with one’s employer and the promise not to remove penal rates would not be kept? Does National think that people would have expected that from an Employment Contracts Bill? No, that bill was written well before the 1990 election. The people of New Zealand were misled by a National Party that would say anything and do anything to take the Government benches.

The Employment Contracts Act was one of the main reasons for the large differential in wage rates between Australia and New Zealand. National was responsible for that situation, but Gerry Brownlee stood up in this Chamber earlier and argued the opposite. My goodness!

It is a bit rich to be lectured about honesty from the member Lianne Dalziel, who has just sat down. She is the member who had to resign as a Cabinet Minister because she could not tell the truth to the media. She is the member who went around and bullied a poor little 16-year-old girl. She then stands up in the House and tries to lecture the National Party.

All that the Labour members have done today is to hurl personal insults at every single member of the National Party who stood up to speak. I represent a South Auckland electorate and I represent the real Kiwis of this country. I can tell members that real Kiwis do not care about all the nonsense they are hearing from the Labour Party. These are the people who have mortgages for Africa—mortgages everywhere. They are the people, in many cases, who have seen the equity in their homes just disappear, under this Government. What do we hear about that? Labour members do not want to talk about that. Real Kiwis are the people who go out to the supermarket with their couple of hundred dollars and find suddenly they have to start putting things back on the shelves, because there is not enough money to pay for the groceries. What has happened under this Government? What has happened is that grocery prices have gone right through the roof. What has happened to petrol prices? Well, they have just gone up and up.

Labour members do not have an answer. The only thing they can do is try to screw the scrum, as they have done with the Electoral Finance Act. That is all that legislation is about. Labour members have talked today about buying elections. Actually, one of the most appalling instances of buying an election was Labour’s pledge card. Labour took $800,000 of taxpayers’ money, illegally, to pay for the pledge card. What happened and who paid it back? Did Mr Owen Glenn pay it back for Labour or did somebody else? Labour members opposite have gone all quiet. They have gone quiet because what I say is true.

Another thing that people in South Auckland care about is truth. They want an end to the cynicism shown by this Government. One of the things this Government did 2 weeks before the last election was to send out letters to State house tenants. Labour had got names and addresses from the Housing New Zealand Corporation—absolutely illegally—

💬 Hon Members: Not true; that’s a lie.

Oh, yes, it did. Labour sent out letters—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the member but I would like to refer the members on my right to Speakers’ ruling 57/3 and to remind members that interjections are out of order unless they are rare, reasonable, relevant, and restrained and that a running commentary is out of order. Members can take a call, if they wish to keep interjecting all the time.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Labour members do not like the truth, and just want to shout it down. As I was saying, Labour sent out letters to State tenants, and, as I recall, those letters were signed by David Benson-Pope. Well, we know what happened to him. The letters said that tenants should be very worried about a National Government, because tenants would be kicked out of their houses. That is what that party used taxpayers’ money to do. What an utter lie. That is what it was. It was nothing short of a complete untruth.

Labour tried to scare people into voting against National, and that is the sort of dirty-tricks campaign that Labour will use again. Those members will stop at nothing. They do not care about ordinary Kiwi people. They care more about politically correct nonsense. They trot themselves around the stage telling people they should be grateful because they get to pay more money for their mortgages and their groceries. All that Labour wants to do is to set up quangos, Government departments, telling people how they should be so pleased and grateful.

Labour has lost touch with ordinary Kiwis. Ordinary Kiwis want their kids to go to schools, get a decent education, and come out with a qualification that means something. Do we ever hear from the Government these days about the great efforts and results of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement? Why do we not hear about that? We do not, because there are still problems with it.

National wants to know that we do not have intergenerational welfare dependency, yet this Government has got rid of all the records of welfare-dependent people from 1996 and earlier. Why is that? The Government does not want to answer my questions about how many people have been on benefits for 30 or 40 years. The Government actually does not want to know.

Labour members are also going around telling people that National would do something terrible to New Zealand superannuation. Well, let me just tell the House that National will not do anything stupid. In fact, I really dislike the fact that Labour goes around telling lies. It goes around telling people anything that people want to hear, because Labour is trying to spread fear. Labour tried to spread fear in Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants and it will do the same to national superannuitants. Labour will try to spread fear in anybody it can find—students or anyone. It will do anything to stay in office.

One of the headlines in the papers in the last week was “Labour can take heart”. This is reflected in the fact that Labour is doing relatively well in the polls, and National is going backwards. National, until about a month ago, was 18 percent ahead in the polls. The most recent poll has seen a remarkable turn-round: Labour has advanced in the polls by 8 percent, while National’s lead has dropped from 18 percent to 10 percent. Labour is on the way up; National is on the way down.

What is behind this trend? It is a combination of good Government performance and poor Opposition performance. Under the heading of “good Government performance” we have things like 4 weeks’ annual leave, which was initially opposed by National, but now it says it supports that. We also have KiwiSaver, with over 500,000 enrolled. That is very important to people who are trying to save for their first homes. They not only get $1,000 when they join the scheme; they also get $1,000 per annum, plus a tax credit, plus what they save themselves. So a couple, after 10 years, will have a $10,000 contribution from the Government, plus their own savings, plus their tax credit, and they will be on the way to acquiring their first home.

What did John Key say about KiwiSaver just a couple of years ago? He said it was “fundamentally flawed” and a “glorified Christmas club”. Of course, we do not hear those sorts of statements from National now about such a popular policy. KiwiSaver will be important for New Zealand’s savings record for years to come. We have restored the baseline for superannuation; the previous National Government cut it. With the support of New Zealand First we have increased superannuation again. That makes a weekly difference to every superannuitant in New Zealand.

National spins the myth that there have been no tax cuts under this Government. This Government has lifted so many families—and the children of those families—out of poverty. When we came into Government a shameful 30 percent of all children were living in families with an income so low that, according to the standard international measure of poverty, they were living in poverty. We have reduced that figure by 70 percent through the Working for Families tax policy, which has conferred real income increases on those families.

But we do not want just those families to go well; we want the economy to go well, so we have cut corporate taxes, as well. We have cut corporate taxes, from 1 April 2008, from 33 percent to 30 percent. That move was opposed by National. The last Government to cut taxes was actually a Labour Government, which cut them from 45 percent to 33 percent. National pretends that it knows how to run an economy. National knows how to run an economy into the ground but not how to grow it.

As a consequence of the popularity of these policies, we had a period earlier this year when National members were running “Labour-lite”. They were pretending that we could have a change of Government without a change of settings. They were pretending that nothing would change, except the name of the Government, and that it was time for a change. But, of course, the people started to wake up to that—it is obviously rubbish. National was also annoying its own supporters, who were starting to describe it as “Labour-lite”. National members did not like it, so they chose to differentiate, but again they misjudged, so they are being criticised and are suffering in the polls. What did they differentiate on? Investment in research and development in agriculture! That is a heartland area for National, one would have thought, but having called for more research and development in this fundamentally important part of our economy, it opposed this. National was criticised roundly up and down the country by people who were absolutely amazed that it had made such an incomprehensible decision.

That poor judgment has been reflected in other poor judgments. One of the key issues in this election will be whether there should be borrowing for tax cuts. Labour says no; National says yes. National says that it should increase debt from 20 percent of GDP to 25 percent of GDP. The interest bill of the country would go up by $700 million per annum. That would be a $700 million per annum increase in the interest bill. Which was the last Government that got New Zealand into dire financial straits? It was a National Government. It increased debt to 60 percent of GDP—$1 out of every $4 of tax was being spent on interest. We have got that figure down to 20 percent of GDP. That is a prudent level of debt, particularly in these days when we have financial markets in turmoil internationally. National would put that at risk. It would borrow for tax cuts. That is why Labour is going up in the polls while National is dropping.

“We are making a difference for everyone.”, Labour says. That is what this Labour-led Government claims. Actually, it is making a difference—but for the wrong reasons. This Labour-led Government tells everyone else to obey the law, but that it does not have to. This Labour-led Government passes a law that allows taxpayer money to be used for all but the most blatant election advertising. It passes a law that exempts the same material from the electoral spending caps, then it spends hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on a pamphlet that is blatant election advertising. There is one rule for Labour and another rule for everyone else. In this country, at least under a National-led Government, no one should be above the law—not even Labour. Yes, this Labour Government is making a difference for everyone.

One would have thought Labour would go out of its way to ensure that in regard to the Electoral Finance Act it operated well above the law. But no, the arrogance of this Labour-led Government is absolutely astounding. This Government has been criticised for cynically manipulating the loopholes of a system it set up in the first place, and that is exactly what it has been doing. Yes, this Labour-led Government is making a difference. It is setting a precedent that says it is OK for it to breach the law, not once, not twice, nor even thrice—it goes on, and on, and on. It is OK for it to breach the law but not for anybody else to do so.

Labour has the dubious distinction of being the first Government to breach its own law, and then it tries to justify that. The Minister said even today that Labour seeks to obey the law. I say that is absolute rubbish. There was an $800,000 pledge card. It was illegal; it broke the law. Labour passed retrospective law to try to fix that up. It rushed through an incompetent law, and now it is the first to break it. Labour seeks to obey the law? Yeah, right! The Minister, in the press today, was quoted as denying that the law was unclear. Actually that makes it worse. If she thinks this law is not as clear as mud, then not only is she misguided but, worse, it suggests that the breach of the law—the inaugural breach of the Electoral Finance Act—was blatant. It was not a mistake at all. It was a deliberate, flagrant, arrogant breach of the law, which can be regarded only with some considerable cynicism, if not, with absolute disbelief. Yes, this Labour Government is making a difference all right. It has taken its own disdain for the law, its own disregard for the law, to levels not often seen before.

Can we really be expected to believe that only one of Labour’s taxpayer-funded booklets We’re Making a Difference for Everyone was handed out—only one; just one? And can members guess what? This unique, collectable pamphlet fell coincidentally into the hands of National. No one else in the country has one. There is only one copy, and National has it.

This is an arrogant disdain for the law. It is a law that this Government wrote. This is an arrogant disregard for the law that this Government wrote. It is an absolute disgrace. It was bad enough that the Electoral Finance Bill was rushed through without any thought being given to the proper democratic process. That was bad enough. Now this Government—this Labour-led Government—has the absolute arrogance to think it is above the law. It is the first to breach that law. This is a law not for Labour but for every other New Zealander to comply with. I say again that no one is above the law—not the Labour-led Government; not the Minister—and it is time this Labour-led Government realised that.

Labour members talk about the Government having a good record. They talk about good governance, and they talk about making a difference. But the headlines state: “Criminal justice system in crisis”; “Court delays a national disgrace”. Yes, this Labour-led Government is making a difference—“Court delays a national disgrace”. There are delays of up to 4 years; cases are being delayed for 4 years. That is what is happening in our courts today. We have a bill of rights that says people are entitled to be tried without undue delay, yet some people have to wait 4 years. Two men in their 20s in Christchurch who were accused of assault were given a stay of proceedings 114 weeks after they were charged—a delay of 114 weeks. The average time for a trial committal date is 283 days, and it is 305 days in the High Court. The number of delayed cases is getting worse and worse. That headline is right; the court delays in New Zealand are a national disgrace.

On 1 April 2008 we marked the 30th anniversary of the commencement of the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act 1977. In that 30-year period approximately 360,000 abortions have been performed in New Zealand. No words can express how distressing I find that figure.

For that reason, I want to talk today about my member’s bill, the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion (Informed Consent) Amendment Bill. Before I do so, however, I need to make my personal position in relation to this matter clear. It was in 1974—around 4 years before the current abortion law was enacted—that, following a time of reflection and extensive reading on the subject, I came to the simple and irrefutable conclusion that abortion ends a human life. In my 60s I am Gordon Copeland. I was Gordon Copeland in my 20s, when I started school, the day I was born, and during the time in my mother’s womb. The inescapable fact is that had my life been ended by any means at any time after conception, then I would not be standing here today. The same is true for each one of us.

Having said that, however, I need to make it clear that my bill does not attempt to ban abortion but rather to update and modernise the existing law in two ways. Firstly, it introduces the concept of informed consent. The present abortion legislation pre-dates by many years the Cartwright inquiry and therefore the principle of informed consent as a prerequisite to patients agreeing to a medical procedure. To the best of my knowledge this is now standard practice throughout the whole field of medical practice in New Zealand, with abortion being the sole exception. Secondly, my bill stipulates that, in line with the situation in European countries such as the Netherlands, a decision to proceed with an abortion made by a woman with child must be certified as having been made on a completely free-will basis.

I believe that these two principles will have majority support both in Parliament and in New Zealand. I have reached that conclusion for three reasons. Firstly, people who adopt a pro-choice position in relation to abortion would nevertheless, I think, agree that informed choice is always better than uninformed choice. The same rationale applies to free will. A woman who is forced to make the decision to abort her child under duress—from the child’s father, her family, or her friends—-is, in truth, making no choice at all. Yet that was precisely the situation faced by Angela Thompson, a pseudonym, in her moving story published in the Dominion Post on 21 January 2006. Angela is just one of the thousands of women who were placed in exactly that position. Thirdly, many people from both sides of the debate, whether pro-choice or pro-life, are now agreed that New Zealand’s abortion rate is too high. Women in New Zealand are 2½ times more likely to get an abortion than in Germany or Holland. Likewise, our abortion rate is high. The number of abortions per 1,000 live births was calculated to be 312—that is the average for the years 2003 to 2006 inclusive. That compares with the USA rate in 2001 of 246, which, I am told, has dropped further since.

New Zealand now has the highest abortion rate in the developed world. The downward trend in the USA is attributed both to a growing awareness that abortion harms women and to a trend to pass bills such as that I am advocating today, at the State level. Similar legislation is being talked about in the UK. The Christchurch health and development study, which has been following the progress of 1,265 New Zealanders born in 1997, has found that women who have had abortions subsequently have significantly more mental health problems. The same conclusion has been reached by the Royal College of Physicians in the UK, which recently released a statement on women’s mental health in relation to abortion. It recommends that women who want to have an abortion undergo counselling before that decision is made—exactly as my bill proposes.

The trend internationally is to place the woman with child at the very centre of the abortion decision process—in other words, to treat these women as human beings with the ability to consider carefully all their options, including adoption, before making what is perhaps the most important decision any human being could ever make: namely, whether to abort a child. That is the proposition I bring to this debate today, and I believe that the people of New Zealand think it is timely for our Parliament to have a proper debate, and a proper bill, on this very, very important issue 30 years after the original Act was passed.

I seek leave to introduce the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion (Informed Consent) Amendment Bill in my name, despite Standing Orders 276 and 277, and for the bill to be set down for its first reading.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member is seeking leave to introduce the bill. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is my great pleasure to engage in a general debate for the first time. It is an honour for me to be part of a Labour team that has a plan for the future, and we have the policies and people to prove it. On 1 April many of our policies came to fruition, and it is worth noting that National voted against every one. So what happened on 1 April? The business tax rate was cut to 30c in the dollar; National voted against it. KiwiSaver employer contributions and employer tax credits began—and I note that over 500,000 hard-working New Zealanders have joined KiwiSaver—but National members voted against it. They did not vote against it just once—oh, no, they voted against it 40 times.

💬 Hon Members: Forty?

Yes, 40 times, and now, through their slippery behaviour, Mr Key has said that he—and I presume his party, given he is the leader—was always in support of KiwiSaver. Yeah, right! The 15 percent research and development tax credit began; National voted against it. The minimum wage rose to $12 an hour, effectively ending youth rates. This means a great deal to working New Zealanders and I note that when we became Government in 1999, the minimum wage was $7 for adults and $4.20 for under-20s. Today it is $12, and that amount will not end here. But National voted against it. The amount of superannuation has been increased; National voted against it. There is now an automatic consumer price index annual adjustment to Working for Families, benefits, and student allowances, but, surprise, surprise—National voted against it.

I note that right-wing commentator Matt Hooton said recently that National seemed to not be able to answer fairly simple questions—not just about the detail of policy but even about the general direction of policy. Does National think that New Zealanders do not care about policy?

So what is National’s plan for the future under the leadership of John Key? I will let him speak for himself. About student loans, Mr Key said in November 2005: “an unaffordable and irresponsible cost to the country!”; and in January 2008 Mr Key said: “We will keep interest-free student loans for tertiary students.” That is great Labour policy. About being nuclear-free, Mr Key in October 2003 said: “bad news for economic growth and for our job market”. Mr Key in September 2007 said: “we’re going to stick with the anti-nuclear legislation.” What great Labour policy! Mr Key in February 2006 said that KiwiSaver was “fundamentally flawed” and “a glorified Christmas club”. Mr Key in August 2007 said that KiwiSaver “was probably gonna be successful and not too bad”. Again, that is more great Labour policy.

As John Armstrong recently wrote: “Forget about National sleepwalking to victory. The party seems to have gone into suspended animation.” The country is well served by this Labour-led Government. I am proud to belong to it. Our leadership is sound, and it has been fantastic watching our Prime Minister perform on the international stage, yet again. Our policy is substantial, as I have outlined this afternoon, and future-focused, which is very important. And by Mr Key’s own words, it is clear that he agrees with our policy. So why do we need change? The reality is that we do not, and more and more Kiwis are realising that.

I now want to talk about my electorate. I am standing in the wonderful electorate of Tamaki Makaurau, and I am looking forward to working with the people of South Auckland, west Auckland, north Auckland, and east Auckland, and ensuring that this Labour-led Government continues to build on the fantastic policies that we have had since we became the Government in 1999.

I want to highlight the difference between Labour and National yet again in our Māori policy. We will not be getting rid of the Māori seats. That is a huge difference between our Labour-led Government and the Opposition. Kia ora.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.