General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. When members of the board of trustees of Tiaho Primary School have been meeting this year over the sewage bubbling up in its school playground, the lack of heating, and the roof still leaking after 4 years, three plans, and $24,000 worth of consultants—a huge amount of money for a school—they probably thought that the Labour Government, for which many of them had voted, was thinking about the education of their children. They probably thought that someone, somewhere, cared about whether their children were running through sewage after going out of cold classrooms with leaking roofs, but they found out today that that is wrong.

What was the Labour Government thinking about? Well, the Prime Minister was thinking about how to smear the Leader of the Opposition. She got up in the House today, after, no doubt, endless investigation and use of public resources to establish dates and shareholdings, and she tried to smear the Leader of the Opposition, only to find out that she was wrong. Both of the allegations she made were wrong. Did the Prime Minister do that deliberately, in the hope of getting on TV while making some smear against a man who is subject to public scrutiny in front of, I would have to say, much larger crowds than she is getting every day? Did she hope that she could hit and run and that tomorrow it would be gone, or did she just make it up?

Either way, the Prime Minister of New Zealand has no interest in the children of Tiaho Primary School, because the other reason the children of that school and the children of Queenstown School—which needs five classrooms, has spent 2 years trying to get them, and has now been told that there is not enough money—cannot get funding is that the Government has committed $1.7 billion to buying back rail. There is no money to educate our children in decent facilities worthy of a developed country, but there are hundreds of millions of dollars to pay a premium, as Dr Cullen calls it, to Toll Rail to line the pockets of its Australian shareholders, just so that he can buy rail in an election year.

You see, the boards of trustees of Tiaho Primary School and Queenstown School know what it is like to go through the grinder. They have to justify every cent and go over it again. They had 40 meetings in order to get their concerns in front of the Ministry of Education, which then said it did not have $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, or $100,000. But if one goes and spends $1.7 billion on rail, then one does not need to know anything about whether it will make money, what the return on capital is, what the premium was, or whether the last investment one made in rail, in ONTRACK, is even working, because the Auditor-General says it is a mess. That is why Labour is going down the tubes. Every day hard-working New Zealanders are out there, trying to keep to the rules in order to get the cash to educate their kids, while those members opposite are spending billions on trying to garner a couple more votes and 2 more days’ worth of headlines. That is the reason they bought New Zealand rail.

There has been no explanation of why the Government has bought New Zealand rail, but I can tell members this. The plans for why Labour bought rail are less detailed, less thorough, and less well-thought-through than the plans for Tiaho Primary School to get its sewerage fixed. I challenge the Prime Minister to come to the House tomorrow and prove me wrong. The board of trustees of Queenstown School has tried much harder to be responsible over the use of $100,000 of public money than the Labour Government has over spending $1.7 billion, according to Helen Clark’s calculations today.

That is the man who is so concerned about schools that he said 2 years ago he wanted to cut the funding to decile 1 schools because they were getting too much. Decile 1 schools have the kids who come from the lowest-income families in this country, and Bill English is promising to cut their funding so that maybe he can put some more subsidies into private schools that look after people who are in the decile 10 category. That is the man who is so worried about the New Zealand public that, as Minister of Finance, he cut national superannuation from 65 percent of the average wage to 60 percent.

💬 Hon Bill English: It’s not true.

It is on the record, Bill English, and you are on the record—your track record is known.

💬 Hon Bill English: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether you could take members through the rulings and the Standing Order about the use of the word “you”, because today we have had, I think, four examples now of senior members—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right; enough.

💬 Hon Bill English: Well, this member has done it twice. The Speaker has made it clear. The member is an experienced member who should know and he continues to breach that rule.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I understand that. I will keep an eye on it. I have to say that I almost pulled you up, Mr English, from the Chair for doing exactly the same thing. [Interruption] Yes, the member did, and I almost pulled him up. I have sought not to. But I would ask members to please desist from using the word “you” or “your” as much as they can.

The member does not like the truth—that is why he interrupted the speech. But the other truth that came out about Bill English last month was at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, where it was found that Bill English, in 1998, spent $45.7 million of hard-working New Zealanders’ tax money on privatisation and on getting advice on how to sell State assets, and $5 million of that went to his mates Merrill Lynch to try to sell off Auckland International Airport. That is Bill English—so worried about the taxpayer’s dollar and the kiddies at a school that needs some more funding to fix a problem, that he wasted $45 million of New Zealand taxpayer money.

But it is worse than that, because we found out from Merrill Lynch today that the National Party has a secret plan to privatise accident compensation. Merrill Lynch was very happy about that. Merrill Lynch—the same company that the Leader of the Opposition once worked for—is very happy because that will put $200 million of New Zealand money into the pockets of big insurance companies in Australia. Merrill Lynch raised the question of why the National Party would do this, because the premiums in New Zealand are low and the service is better than that of Australia. In fact, the premiums on employers are 2½ times higher in Australia, which has the very system that National wants to adopt. Why does National want to adopt it? There is no economic logic. It is either ideology or it is to line the pockets of the party’s business mates and donors, or it is both. I believe it is both. It is certainly not acceptable to New Zealanders.

The National Party is fast developing a reputation for lack of openness and transparency. It will not even own up to the fact that it is now paying vast sums of money to Crosby/Textor to be its spin doctor. It will not even own up to whom it is employing to manipulate public opinion. Is it any wonder? Crosby/Textor is the company that got push-polling down to a fine art. It is the company that libelled Labor candidates in Australia and had to pay out because of lawsuits from those people. We are getting a picture of this National Party still doing exactly what The Hollow Men revealed through the party’s emails. Do members remember what the party was told? It was: “The secret of success is sincerity and conviction. Once you fake that then you’ve got it made.” That is the level of the sincerity and conviction of the National Party. It is absolutely fake.

💬 Hon Bill English: That was Mike Moore!

I tell that member to read it in The Hollow Men. The paranoia of National members about leaked emails knows no bounds; they are claiming it again—John Key this time. For heaven’s sake, we have just had a police investigation 2 months ago that found that there was no evidence that the National parliamentary computer system had been hacked into. In fact, it concluded that no unauthorised or unlawful breach had taken place. That backs up what Nicky Hager said. The people who leaked those emails, I say to Bill English, are the people within the National Party who had had a gutsful of the deceit and the manipulation of public opinion within the National Party. There are still some decent people within the National Party who do not tolerate that form of politics. It is bad politics, it is politics that lacks transparency, and it is the politics of deceit and connivance.

That is what we have got from the National Party, once again, on the accident compensation programme. In 2005 the Insurance Council revealed that it had been told what the National Party wanted to do. It did not intend to reveal it; it was another leaked memo. It said that the National Party had the detail but was not prepared to disclose it. National is not prepared to tell the New Zealand public what its secret agenda is. We know what its secret agenda is; we have seen it before. This is the party that says it is against buying New Zealand rail, but will not actually admit to the fact that it will sell it. It is time the National Party came clean.

Yesterday we saw the most amazing confluence of two issues within the transport sector. We saw that on the very same day that this Labour Government became the owner of KiwiRail, it fired up road-user charges to the trucking sector, unilaterally, overnight, and with no warning. The trucking sector is furious about it. I have to say that if there is ever an example of a conflict of interest, it is where a Government becomes the owner of a transport operator and on day one puts up the charges on the people who have to compete with it.

The Road Transport Forum is known for trying at least to be balanced in how it deals with issues. It always has to stay onside with the Government on matters about how the road sector is worked. But yesterday the Road Transport Forum put out, in bright red headlines on its press release: “Deliberate deception by Minister of Transport Annette King over increased Road User Charges”. That is what it says: “Deliberate deception by Minister of Transport Annette King …”.

I want members to listen to what the press release from the Road Transport Forum said: “Trucking operators have been deliberately deceived by the Minister of Transport Annette King in announcing an immediate increase in Road User Charges, says Road Transport Forum Chief Executive Officer Tony Friedlander. ‘The Forum was assured by the Minister after last year’s increases that operators would be given a month’s notice of any increases in Road User Charges in future. This was confirmed in writing by her officials. The Minister undertook to change the law to allow notice to be given. Clearly our members cannot rely on the Minister and the Government to keep their word.’ The Minister fully understands how much a Road User Charge increase without notice damages all operators, Mr Friedlander says. ‘We explained to her last year how the lag between an immediate increase in costs and being able to raise charge-out rates to cover them can drive some operators to the brink. She said she understood. So she obviously doesn’t care.’ Operators are already struggling because of the downturn in the economy and historically high fuel prices. ‘For a number of operators this will be the last straw. The timing of this increase and the way it has been done mean the Minister could not have done more damage to our industry if she had deliberately tried.’ ” That is what he said: “could not have done more damage to our industry if she had deliberately tried.”

The release goes on: “ ‘She should not underestimate how angry our members and the industry are.’ Mr Friedlander says as well as inflicting real damage on the trucking industry, the increased costs of higher Road User Charges will inevitably flow through into higher costs for businesses and higher prices in supermarkets and for other goods.”

There is a lot more to the press release but I want to use the few minutes I have to let members of this House know that on Friday morning in the central business districts of our main towns—Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin—the Road Transport Forum will use their power with their trucks and bring those cities to a halt in protest at the arrogant behaviour of this Government. I warn people that on Friday morning around 7 o’clock, that is the plan.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Catch a plane; don’t use your car!

That is what will happen. If there is ever a conflict of interest, it is from this Government that wants to increase the charges to those truck operators. Trevor Mallard seems to think it is funny, but I can tell members that some of those truck operators are absolutely on the margin of being able to stay in business—absolutely. With diesel prices where they are, and with interest rates on the cost of borrowing for their truck fleets where they are, some of those Road Transport Forum members are right on the margin.

Then they got an overnight announcement posted on the Minister’s website. That is how they found out about it; that is how secretly it was done—posted on the Minister’s website. There was no notice to the industry or the forum. It could not have been more deliberate deception. The Government could not have done more damage to the industry if it had tried.

So now what is happening? The Labour Government is happy about it. It paid $1.7 billion—I think the number is up to that now—for a train operation that it cannot justify. Somehow Toll threatened the Government that if it did not spend that, Toll would close some lines down. Well, of course Toll would say that. Why not take it at its word? Why not let it get away with it?

The “member for Telecom” has just become the “member for the road transport industry”. It is a very interesting transition. For most of his speech he was reading out one of the industry’s press statements. I think that shows how little original thought occurs in the National Party, and how little the National members are prepared to say.

I want to focus on the issue of the day, and that is the Merrill Lynch secret report into National Party policy. I want to say that things are consistent. National members are not being inconsistent. They are taking the approach of deliberately keeping details of policy out of announcements, and they have been consistent about doing that. Both my colleague Phil Goff and Maryan Street will be talking about the substance of the issue, but I want to talk about the ethics of the issue.

I want to know why John Key, when he was in Sydney, was talking about selling and leasing back State-owned enterprise assets. Why did he brief Merrill Lynch on that? John Key is a shareholder in Merrill Lynch. He is someone who has worked for Merrill Lynch. I want to know why it is appropriate for someone who is a shareholder in an organisation to give a briefing to that organisation—not even in New Zealand, but in Sydney—and to say something he is not prepared to say in New Zealand. I just think that is wrong. I think it shows a tremendous lack of judgment on the part of someone who aspires to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand. I just do not understand how he could do that.

I vaguely agree with Pansy Wong. In the House today, Pansy Wong said it is no secret. She confirmed the National Party policy in this area. It is like the policy that the National Party is going to cut superannuation. Everyone knows that the National Party plans to cut superannuation or to put the age of eligibility up. Everyone knows that it plans not to sell the State-owned enterprises, but to sell and lease back the assets. John Key has been involved in discussions on that. It is what we call an open secret. National’s plans in relation to accident compensation are an open secret.

But the question I have is, why, when National was making an announcement, it made it to a small group of mates in Australia, who then did a report that shows very, very carefully how they are going to make money from it, and that advises a wider circle of mates how to make money out of it—it is just wrong. I think if someone did that in Zimbabwe, we would call the person corrupt. We will not do that here, because it is an inappropriate thing to do in this Parliament. But it reminds me more of politics in the United States, where people are beholden to little groups of funders, or to bigger groups of funders, for large amounts of money, and they make policy decisions on the basis of that, and they make inappropriate commitments on the basis of that sort of approach. It is the sort of thing that we just do not do in New Zealand. We think it is wrong. We think people should be open about their policies.

If there was one thing that was learnt from the period of the 1980s and the 1990s in New Zealand—and I had thought it was learnt by both sides of the House—it was that one did not promise one thing, and do something else. This is a very, very clear example of an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the vast majority of New Zealanders. It is a clear example of an attempt to hike up the costs, and to transfer to private owners the profit, of the accident compensation system. That system has generally worked very well for New Zealand. A previous attempt to privatise it was an absolute failure.

I just go back to something that is not the key substance of the issue, but is a question of the ethics of the method of announcement and the approach that was taken. New Zealanders will, in the end, if something is hard and we tell them it is hard—if we tell them the truth—back us. Why did John Key not take that approach?

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. There are some moments of inspiration that cause us all to reflect, but, believe me, that is not what happens in this House. But one of those moments happened this last weekend. Hēnare O’Keefe told a crowd of more than 2,000 people: “My faith has been restored in mankind today”. The Hastings District councillor was reduced to tears by the outpouring of love that came from a community that cared, a community that had had enough of violence, and a community that had been shattered by the brutal home invasion of a young family in Flaxmere.

The No. 1 issue facing Aotearoa today is not about KiwiRail, KiwiSaver, Kiwibank, or any other aspect of Kiwiana; the question facing us all is, what can we as everyday families do to transform our lives? What can we do to step up to the challenge, put on our own walking shoes, and take our streets, communities, and homes back? Last night in this House a lot of emphasis was given to the need for a moral code—the need for standards. I wonder whose standards we are being judged against, and whose code of morality prevails. I recall a release issued by the Muliaga family that described what it called the strange silence from Blue Chip in failing to offer to repay one cent of the millions of dollars owed to New Zealanders who had lost their life savings. Their release concluded: “These people continue to live in million dollar mansions and drive luxury cars, while the Muliaga’s struggle week to week, living in a state house”.

Every day the newspapers tell us of the grim reality of poverty and deprivation, of violence, of crime, and of desperation. There is no denying that those are the defining issues of our time, but they must not strangle hope. In addressing the rally in Hawke’s Bay, Hēnare O’Keefe ended by saying: “no amount of legislation, no number of social workers or policemen, can substitute what has happened today”. And he is right. We must look to each other for our solutions. We must actively harness the strengths of whānau as an opportunity for the people to flourish. We must all search our collective histories for examples of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility, and the power of service that we can draw on to inspire our next steps.

We have many solutions within our reach. Pio Terei, in his no-sweat parenting approach, tells us that the essentials in every child’s school-bag are good sleep, good food, a hug and a smile when they wake up, and a huge repertoire of encouraging words. Pat Ngata inspires us to raise our sons as gentle men. Project Mauriora tells us how we can draw on our kaupapa and tikanga as tools to help us to work towards a lifelong restoration of peace within our whānau. And that is just a start.

The Māori Party believes that families are the foundation of any society, and the value that society places on its people determines the quality of that society. We must promote the special role of the whānau, the first educator, in the well-being of this nation. Whānau must be supported to care for and make decisions affecting their own members, and must be able to access all the resources that they need in order to thrive. We have to restore to ourselves the value of taking responsibility for the actions of the members of our families, and for the impact that those actions have on others. Hēnare O’Keefe did exactly that. He stood and addressed the children, and I quote: “To our children, I want to say I’m sorry. If you have been hurt in any way, shape or form, I’m so sorry”. That district councillor, that distressed dad and grandfather, could have stood up and railed against the gangs, and hyped up the crowd to get tough and to get even. But instead he practised what Mahatma Gandhi once said: “An eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind.” Hēnare O’Keefe opened our eyes to a different way: a way of stepping up and creating community unity, of inspiring hope, of recognising injustice, and of taking responsibility. That sort of action is what restores my faith, too. Kia ora.

Well, well, well—another day, and there is another shifty, slippery National Party cover-up of another National Party attempt to sell off or dispose of our State assets. It is funny, because a couple of months ago the leader of the National Party, John Key, told the public that National would not sell off State assets in its first term, but what is he telling his Australian insurance company mates in private? He is telling them that he will dismember the accident compensation scheme—our $10.3 billion public asset—and sell it off, or, in the fudged and slippery language used now, that he will open up parts of it to competition. So he has dressed this up as “providing New Zealanders with choice”.

Today Mr Key has been compelled to spell out the National Party’s position, which he says is to allow private insurers to compete. But I ask why he is being compelled to release the National Party policy on accident compensation today, when he has not felt compelled to release policy on any other matter before this week. Has, in fact, Crosby/Textor told National to do this today because the strategy to date is not working and is backfiring?

But let me get back to accident compensation for a moment, because Crosby/Textor will, no doubt, have an interest in how this policy runs out, as well. What is meant by opening up some of the accident compensation accounts to competition? It means that Australian insurance companies will be given the choice to decide who to cover and who not to cover. It will mean that a whole lot of people will miss out on accident compensation for wages, physio bills, paid caregivers, and the like. This policy is not about giving injured New Zealanders a choice; it is about giving Australian insurance companies the right to play Russian roulette with our nation’s injuries and health. It would seem that the $200 million in profit these insurance companies will reap from New Zealand taxpayers—and people should make no mistake that that money will come out of New Zealand taxpayers’ pockets—will be handed to those companies by the man who wants to be Prime Minister of this country, Mr Key. It seems to me that Mr Key is batting for the wrong country, and what we have seen in the House today is one nasty underarm bowl.

What must be particularly galling for New Zealand businesses is that Mr Key is telling them that they will pay lower levies under privatisation or a competitive model. Well, let us look at the facts, which are these: in 1999 when National privatised the work account—and let us call a spade a spade; the shifty National Party cannot call a spade a spade but I am happy to—employers were paying $2.14 per $100 of liable earnings. What are they paying now under a State monopoly? They are, on average, paying $1.26. So that means that employers are paying about half of the levies they were paying under the National Government’s last effort at privatising accident compensation. What are employers paying in Australia? On average, they are paying about two and a half times more than our employers are paying. Yet Mr Key is going to allow Australian insurance companies to take over parts of our accident compensation scheme. Those are the facts, and employers need to think about them. Mr Key may not spell this out; he may continue to be shifty, to prevaricate, and to be slippery about it. But the employers of this country know what the facts are, because they have seen the average levies come down in the last few years.

Employers also need to think about the fact that a significant amount of their levies will end up being wasted on regulation. In fact, the PricewaterhouseCoopers report found that accident compensation administration costs were significantly lower than those of insurers in Australia. But the report stated that those costs would go up by an increase of well over 10 percent under privatisation. So levy costs will increase to pay for more red tape, and that is an irony, considering that the National Party professes to be the anti - red tape party.

Fancy hearing the lead chorister talking about a secret agenda! For at least 4 years now National has been saying it wants to see competition in the accident compensation scheme. That is hardly a secret; it is truly bizarre for the Minister to suggest that this is some secret agenda. All I can assume is that she needs to get out more and read the newspapers, look at television, or maybe look at the Internet, and then she will actually find out what our policy is. If that member looked at what happened in 1998, she would see that competition brought the accident compensation rates down. Indeed, that has been an enduring effect over the last 9 years. It would never have happened, but for competition.

I turn now to an important issue relating to the New Zealand Defence Force. One of the key hallmarks of defence is leadership. Those who have the duty and responsibility to lead have the responsibility to protect those who serve, yet we have had the extraordinary situation of a senior, decorated officer being brought back to New Zealand nearly 12 months ago and kept in uniform specifically for a court martial, just weeks before he completes 38 years of service. What had he actually done wrong? The whole saga stems—as, indeed, the Minister knows—from claims made by seconded personnel for a housing allowance in New Zealand. The officer was told, in fact, by senior officers in the Defence Force to make precisely that claim—that it was normal practice. The Prime Minister has had to find that out only this week. That is why National has taken this issue so seriously, because we believe that this has been an issue of a failure of leadership. The officer was led to believe he could make the claim, then the Defence Force sought to court-martial him precisely on that issue.

When the Defence Force could not get the officer on the housing allowance, it continued to prosecute him, even though there are other options available under military law to deal with the issues of cigarettes and tobacco. I understand that responsibility was required for those issues, but I have to contrast that situation with the Prime Minister’s numerous transgressions of the law and ask what happens to her. The most she ever gets is a warning or maybe a letter, but basically she is never held to account for those transgressions.

The Chief of Defence Force has ordered an internal inquiry. It is a bit extraordinary, really. Senior officers have known about this issue the whole way along, so can we really say that an internal court of inquiry is the right process here? Given that it covers the senior ranks of the Defence Force, surely an independent inquiry is required. At least I would acknowledge that the Minister may see the need for that.

The other extraordinary feature of this whole event is that the Minister said on Sunday, and, indeed, repeated in the House today, that he knew nothing about this entire event. The Defence Force has only about 12 colonels; one of them was about to be court-martialled. The Minister was not told about that, despite answering specific questions from members of Parliament on the specific issue. Those questions were not veiled questions; they were right to the point about the housing allowances in the United Nations of seconded officers. How many seconded officers were actually being court-martialled? The answer is one. Apparently, members of the Defence Force took it upon themselves not to tell the Minister about that, even though they had answered specific questions on the very points at issue. How is that for a no-surprises policy? I would have to say to members of the Defence Force they will need to account for that failure. National wants to be given clear answers on these issues. We want them to come from the senior officers. They are the ones who are responsible for this issue. We want there to be an independent investigation. Given that the issue is within the realm of the senior officers, only an independent investigation can have the powers and the abilities to get to the bottom of it.

The issue is really quite straightforward: the integrity and ethics of leadership are at stake here. This is not an issue to be lightly washed over, and where one person is essentially held to be a scapegoat. There has to be accountability.

It was a very interesting question time today in the House. From all the barracking, and from all the yelling and screaming from the National Party about what a terrible idea it is for the Government to have bought back rail, and how it is the worst thing we possibly could have done since the last worst thing we possibly could have done—which National has now adopted as its own policy—one would be excused for thinking that National had said that it was not going to sell it. One would be excused for thinking that the National Party was going to hock off KiwiRail the first chance it got, because clearly National hates it. National members were frothing at the mouth at the very thought of the Government owning a national rail system just as Governments all around the world own national rail systems, because privatisation is in their blood. If it is not for profit, they do not get it. If it is not for profit, why would one do it? Even if it is good for the country and it is geared towards responding to the needs of communities, why would one do it if it does not make money all the time? They do not get it.

I think it is completely unreasonable for any New Zealander, on hearing question time today, to think for a second that a National Government would not sell off KiwiRail as quick as it could, because that was clear from question time today. Of course, we will never know, because as Crosby/Textor has told the National Party: “Don’t release any policies.” The problem is when one releases policies one goes down in the polls because people do not like them. That is a real political problem. So the political solution is to just not tell anyone what one is going to do—[Interruption] well, Katrina Shanks does not know what National is going to do anyway—and then one will be fine. We are 4 months at the most out from an election and we have a National Party whose members arrogantly think that they are going to easily wander into Government. They are not going to have to do anything; it is theirs, because after all they are born to rule. It is their natural place to be over here.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Not lately.

That is quite right. Four months out from an election, National members think that they can get away with releasing one A4-size, two-sided, piece of paper that they say is their policies. Well, I say one thing to the National Party members: saying one is not going to do something is not a policy; saying “Me too!” is not a policy; and when one has absolutely no detail about how one is going to fund it, that is not policy.

The people of New Zealand deserve to know what the National Party would do with Working for Families. Can Dr Hutchison tell us? No, apparently not—[Interruption] National members are all yelling now but they will not answer the question. New Zealanders deserve to know what National would do with the KiwiSaver contributions, and National members will not tell us that either. New Zealanders deserve to know which public servants would be fired, and which provincial offices of Government departments would close because the National Party would be firing public servants. Maybe Mr McCully can tell us that now? No, nothing.

In fact, any policy would be nice from the National Party, because let us not forget, this is the second election in a row that we have not had any policy from the National Party. At the last election National’s health policy was: “We’re going to review the health sector.” Well, given that it would fire all the public servants in the Ministry of Health, I do not know who National thinks would do that review. I think they think the pixies would go out and do all those reviews after the election. But it is absolutely unacceptable that a party that wants to be in Government, and that wants to lead this country, can go through two election campaigns with no policy. We can conclude two things from that. One, National has policies and its members do not want to tell us what they are because they are really unpopular, or, two, 4 months out from an election, they actually have no policies. They actually do not know what they will do if they become the Government.

John Key is sitting in his office thinking: “How can I please everyone?”, because we know that he formulates all his discussions on his conversation with the last person to whom he spoke. It is very hard to come up with a stand on things when one does not want to offend a single person. But the fact is that that voters of New Zealand deserve to know what they will get with a National Government. If the National Party would follow Crosby/Textor’s advice and not tell New Zealanders what they deserve to know, because they do not trust them or because they know that New Zealanders will not like their policies—which are exactly the same as their policies in the 1990s—New Zealanders will not trust them and we will see the Employment Contracts Act come back. They will probably give it a better name; Crosby/Textor will probably tell them to call it the “We Love Workers Act” or something like that—

💬 Hon Judith Tizard: Like they did in Australia—workplace reforms!

That is right—“Work Choices”. What a great name for something that is terrible for workers. Now maybe Mr Hutchison will give us some policy. He is a man of substance. I ask him to give us some policy.

I am afraid to report that the Prime Minister has done it again. First, of course, there was “paintergate”, where she did not sign the painting. Then, of course, there was “speedgate”, where she sped across the Canterbury Plains at 180 kilometres per hour, 80 kilometres above the legal limit, and denied that she knew. Then, of course, there was “pledge card - gate” where the Labour Party overspent almost $1 million and refused to pay it back, but now there is “disability car-park - gate”.

It is ironic that the Labour Government introduced a bill, only yesterday, to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities—ironic, indeed, when one reads the news from last Monday: “PM’s blocking of disabled carpark ‘unacceptable’, says pensioner.” That, of course, refers to an 81-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease who comes from Christchurch, and who was forced to struggle down a wet Christchurch street last Friday night while Prime Minister Clark was sitting inside enjoying the soothing sounds of the symphony. Well, what really did happen as Helen Clark’s motorcade parked over that disability car-park bay? Even if Prime Minister Clark feigned that she was shocked, the real questions are: is she really shocked and what is she doing about it? Has she apologised to the 81-year-old? Have we heard anything about that? Well, not as far as I know. I had a phone-around today, and there were no apologies so far.

No one in this House, of course, will ever forget 2004, when four policemen and one civilian were actually charged for conveying the Prime Minister across the Canterbury Plains at that extraordinary speed of 180 kilometres per hour. She, of course, not only denied the situation but was prepared to dub them in—fairly and squarely dub them in. And the Prime Minister, to this day, has denied that she was actually speeding 80 kilometres per hour more than the legal limit. But there is another irony to the fact that the Prime Minister’s motorcade blocked the disability car-parks last Saturday night, which is that on the very day before, her Government had introduced a $150 fine for using a disabled parking space without a valid permit. So, bingo, within 24 hours of her Government having increased the fine, what should be found on a disabled car-park bay? None other than the Prime Minister’s motorcade! To make matters worse, I think it is important to stress the discomfort of the 81-year-old Parkinsonian, who, with his wife, had to struggle down the wet street helped by ushers from the Christchurch Town Hall.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why are you smiling?

I tell Mr Peters that it is a very serious matter. Indeed, the only reason for smiling would be the great concern I have that the Prime Minister has failed to follow up the situation, in the light that her Government, this week, introduced a bill that will ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and last week increased the disabled parking fine to $150.

Once again, has Helen Clark apologised to the 81-year-old man? Has she checked to see that he is all right? Has she bothered to follow it up, and has she, indeed, made sure that the $150 fine will be paid? None of this we know—absolutely none of it. What Colin Waite of the New Zealand Parking Association has had to say is interesting. He said that it is infuriating for disabled people to see people abusing these special parking spaces, and the tougher fines should significantly reduce the problem for them. But apparently the Prime Minister is relatively oblivious to what happened. What does the disability sector have to say? It has become cynical about New Zealand Prime Ministers.

“Mysteriouser and mysteriouser”—what an interesting week it has been for the National Party. First of all we have had the confusion around rail and its response to that. I was expecting my good colleague Moana Mackey to ask a question about the rail line from Gisborne to Napier and I am sure she will get the chance to do that. If the Government had not intervened, then that line would have been cut—

💬 Moana Mackey: Not good.

—not good—along with many, many other lines.

Today we found out that Australian insurers are getting ready to make a killing out of New Zealand taxpayers, because they are expecting National to privatise accident compensation. It is all as we suspected. There was an innocent little statement on National’s two-page policy announcement that it would provide choice, and now I hear the words “competition and choice for accident insurance in the workplace”. That is something National members were hoping to keep below the radar, and now we know why.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: We’ve been saying it for ages.

They have been saying it for ages, but they are still denying it. Their leader was denying it today. He said that there would be competition and choice, but what is unclear is how it would happen.

💬 Moana Mackey: He said yesterday: “We haven’t released any ACC policy.”

That is right. And he said today that he would release it at the end of July.

The insurance industry has revealed National’s plans to give its mates millions of dollars of new income through the privatisation of accident compensation, should it ever become the Government. We are talking big money; it is something like $2.1 billion of new premium income from insurers and another $200 million going into the industry’s after-tax earnings. That kind of money motivates the buying of an election. The insurance companies tried it last time and I think they are at it again.

You know, every time John Key makes a bit of a botch-up National members hold their breath. Their dreams of the big time go on hold for a few hours. They beat up on the journalists, they go into denial overdrive, and they ring up Crosby/Textor—the professional manipulators.

A typical, cheap, shallow National - Crosby/Textor line is “time for a change”. I want to talk about change because there is good change and there is bad change. Labour stands for good change. Let us talk about some of the changes that this Government has brought in: a change that has given workers jobs and taken them off the benefit; a change that gives workers more holidays and extra pay on public holidays; a change to having better wages, particularly for low-paid workers; a change to the minimum wage, which has increased it by more than 70 percent and tripled the minimum rate for young workers; a change called Working for Families, which is lifting families and children out of poverty and helping families to get ahead; a change that gives us cheaper visits to the doctor and lower prescription charges; and a change that has introduced Kiwibank, KiwiSaver, and KiwiRail—and we still do not know what National thinks about them.

This is good change. It is change that has made, and will continue to make, a difference for New Zealand workers and their families. It is change that has built a strong foundation to address the pressures of the day and the needs of future years. And there is more to come.

Just last week there were more rights for seasonal and casual workers in respect of accident compensation, as well as compensation for workplace injuries due to mental trauma. National voted against that. Yesterday paid parental leave payments were increased, and on 1 October there will be tax relief for workers and families. We are bringing in rights for workers to have tea breaks and meal breaks—and I have to say, having heard some of the submissions, that one would think that that was the end of the world. There will be a change for the better to the rights of casual and temporary workers. The vast array of this Government’s programme is on show in this Parliament every day, and National continues to vote against most of these measures.

Let us talk about bad change. Bad change means the sorts of things we can expect National to do if it ever regains the Treasury benches. We know that from its record the last time it was in Government, its voting record over the past few years, and the refusal of its members to tell the public about their intentions. The changes I listed earlier—the good changes that Labour has brought in—were all opposed by National members. They stood up and voted against them time and time again. That is their record in this Parliament.

National is short-changing the people of this country by refusing to own up to the treatment it dished out to ordinary working people the last time it was in Government. It continues to short-change people by voting against every single measure in this Parliament that will make a difference for them, and it short-changes the workers and the voters by treating them as though they are stupid by not telling them what its policies are and what it stands for. Right now most of its 14 little policies—or is it 15, now that we know about Crosby/Textor—are slogans, promising to undo the good job this Labour-led Government has done.

The National Party did not include GST in its election spending calculations in the last election. Its members later claimed it was a misunderstanding with media agents Rainmakers—the firm thought the GST was inclusive; it was not. National’s campaign manager, Steven Joyce, told police that he had informed Rainmakers the amount was $900,000 GST inclusive. Rainmakers says he did not. The police file has emails that raise questions as to why Joyce did not pick up on the problem prior to the 17 September election. One email, a month before the election, from Rainmakers to Joyce, warned they would overspend their $900,000 allocation if they continued with their booked advertising. However, the National Party went ahead with it, and as a result received $112,493 in free advertising: Television New Zealand (TVNZ) $57,000, the Radio Bureau $24,000, TV3 $20,000, Prime $6,000, and Sky TV $3,000. To pay the money back would have been a violation of the Broadcasting Act, in that the amount would have been over the cap.

The National Party drafted a member’s bill, unique to this Parliament, to allow it to pay the outstanding GST. It was the only client that ever came along in seven elections and said: “We’d like you to change the Act, not for our group, not for our sector, but just for us.” This means the National Party wanted Parliament—the highest court in the land—to validate an illegal action by a political party, and that is serious stuff. The bill was blocked by MPs from New Zealand First, the Māori Party, and the Greens. The Electoral Commission referred the case to the police in January 2006. The police said they could not prosecute the National Party, because they could not decide whether National or the media agency was at fault. Rainmakers and the National Party were at loggerheads over this, but it appears the agency has the edge and is being used as a scapegoat.

Instead of paying National’s GST debts to media organisations, Judy Kirk, the president, announced on 22 November 2006 that the party would make donations of media advertising to charities. I ask members to hear that—to make donations of media advertising to charities! This is the party that wants to be the Government. This is the party that makes huge mistakes. This is the party whose deputy leader was a Minister of Revenue. This is the party whose deputy leader was the Minister of Revenue back in 1999, but in 2005 he and his mate Steven Joyce, a prominent media baron, could not work out the GST on its broadcasting allocation.

But hang on a minute! Is not Mr Joyce somebody with serious radio interests and a long background in broadcasting? This is a party whose leader says he does condone push polling and then he does not, all in the same 8-second sound bite—and people think Russel Norman is supposed to be the one with the clean, green image!

These are the facts: TVNZ is not a charity under the law; the National Party broke the law at the last election on three occasions: one, it did not pay its GST; two, it broke the broadcasting cap allocated to political parties; and three, it thought it would get away with it by paying the money to a charity. But TVNZ and the other people it paid the money to are not lawful charities in the context of avoiding gift duty. They broke the law three times and I want to ask the media up in the press gallery how on earth they can get away with it.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Because it’s rubbish!

Because it is corruption? It is corruption; it is the most corrupt act to seek to avoid the law on three counts. [Interruption] He said it was, not me.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I said it was rubbish, and the members would know that the word he used repeatedly is not parliamentary. I suggest you bring the member to order.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Which word is that?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I do not wish to repeat the word that the member used repeated times.

Hon member: Three times.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Three times.

I heard him say “It’s corruption.” It is corruption; I agreed with him. Now he says it is something else. If he kept his mouth shut and allowed the debate to go on he would not have heard the thing in the first place.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are you continuing the debate?

I am trying to.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just hold on please. I will just satisfy the member here. Yes, you did use the word “corruption”. In my view you did not say “Bill Smith is corrupt.” or the National Party was corrupt. There was an inference, and it is getting a bit close, but you did not say directly those words.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for a fine lawyer’s decision on what is a very narrow point.

The National Party did a cover-up job with the media it owes the GST to, but it still is not out of the loop. It is caught with gift duty. Why does it not pay the $15,850 of gift duty it owes? It is not exempt, and Mr Mapp, who is a former law lecturer, knows what I am talking about. It is not saved by the fact that it is a charity when we pay to TVNZ or TV3. We might think TVNZ is a charity. We might think that some of the behaviour of TVNZ represents a very much in-need charity, but it does not qualify under the law—so pay up the money! If we are going to talk about New Zealand First, we did pay the money in the only way the leading international published tax lawyer in this country said we could, and that is the distinction. He said: “If you pay it back to the revenue, it’s going to catch gift duty, so pay it to a charity—a registered one.”

Members of the New Zealand public who are listening to this broadcast from Parliament will be intrigued to know that the last address they just heard was from a man who holds a warrant in this Government that makes him responsible for the conduct of New Zealand’s relationships with other countries. It is a very important task in this Parliament, and today we have heard him bring all of the attention to that portfolio, which has become his characteristic. I say to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and to other members of the Government who have contributed to this debate, that I have sat here and listened to it and asked myself one simple question: what planet are these people on? They imagine that there are people out there who are pulling up to the petrol bowser, putting the nozzle into their tank, and then when they see the dial tick over to $100, they are saying: “Those nasty people at Crosby/Textor are making me pay more for my petrol.” Those members imagine that people are going into the supermarket to buy their block of cheese, and saying: “I wish those people at Crosby/Textor didn’t make me pay so much for my block of cheese.”

Those members over there, who have the warrants, the new BMWs, the chauffeurs, and the flash houses, have lost the plot. The people who are paid handsomely to discharge the affairs of State in this country can do no better than throw stupid inaccurate insults in the direction of the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues. Quite frankly, the public see right past it. I have a message today for the Minister of Foreign Affairs and his colleagues in the Government. If they think the next few weeks leading up to the election will be a good roll around in the political gutter with the members of the National Party, I have news for them. They will be very, very lonely. The Leader of the Opposition has made it clear that he will not buy into that sort of campaign. He will not have a roll around in the political gutter with the Prime Minister, who demeaned herself and demeaned her office at question time in this House today. John Key is better than that. John Key has made it clear that he will front a campaign that is about the opportunities that this country has over the next few years. He will not be diverted by the grubs and the people on the other side of the House, like the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who cannot seem to focus on the issues at hand.

In the couple of minutes I have left I want to endorse some comments made by my friend and colleague the National Party spokesperson on defence. We have a serious situation now in the New Zealand Defence Force. A senior officer has been brought back to New Zealand from New York and held here, without undertaking any duties, for many months, in the expectation that he was to be put on court martial for the abuse of UN housing allowances. The Defence Force decided, in the week ahead of the court martial, to abandon that charge and bring some different matter before the Court Martial. But the fact of the matter is that for 8 or 9 months that has been the matter at hand. For those 8 or 9 months every single senior member of the New Zealand Defence Force must have known that the charge that was levelled against that officer was a charge in which all of them were complicit. Someone very senior in the New Zealand Defence Force decided in 2001 to knowingly try to rort the United Nations housing allowance. Someone very senior since that time has decided to continue the practice of rorting the United Nations housing allowance. Someone very senior has sanctioned and probably ordered officers—at least five of them—to fill in a declaration to the United Nations saying they were not getting any benefit from the New Zealand Government, because that was a condition of the United Nations housing allowance being received. At least five officers were ordered by their superiors to lie in a declaration to the United Nations. It could hardly be more serious.

But it is more serious. Behind that question of our relationship with the United Nations, and the integrity of our conduct, lies an even more important matter. This is the New Zealand Army we are talking about. These are people we send out to the trouble spots of the world, to places where they take risks with themselves. These people are entitled to know that they will be backed to the hilt by those who sit in command over them, not be stabbed in the back by those who sit in command over them. Lieutenant General Matepārae has some very serious questions to answer. Who knew about the receipt of these housing allowances under these suspect circumstances? Who gave the original order to knowingly try to rort the UN arrangements? Who renewed the decision to rort those arrangements when the change of command took place? Who else knew and was complicit in that process? What did the Minister know, and when did he know it? These are important questions, because these people need to be held to account.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.