General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Well, we are at a very interesting time in our political history. Prime Minister John Key is desperate to secure his legacy. He has got only 3 years to do it, and he knows he has got only 3 years. He tried in his first 3 years. He had natural disasters and he had disasters of other people’s making to preside over, and he got through it, and some say he did reasonably well.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: You’ve got less time to deal with your legacy.

Then in the last term—Mr Bridges—he wanted to grow the economy and produce a surplus. Well, that has gone, and so now we are up to the next phase. He has tried changing the flag, at a cost of $27 million—but nobody wants it—but now we know what the legacy is. Now we know what John Key’s legacy to New Zealand is. It is the sleaziest, grubbiest, filthiest, dirtiest smear machine in the history of New Zealand politics, and every New Zealander knows it. Every Government member knows it, which is why those members look down. They lower their heads in shame because they are embarrassed to be part of the John Key Government. It has reached its nadir. It has reached the bottom of the pits, and they all know it.

We now have a Government that has mastered the art of manipulating the Official Information Act request, using prime ministerial staff—not the junior staff, but the senior staff; oh, the senior staff, as this is serious stuff—and the “black ops” operator, Jason “Two Doors Down” Ede, is doing his job. He is doing his job of ringing up the bloggers, manipulating the Official Information Act, and getting the attack lines out. That is John Key’s legacy. That is John Key’s legacy to New Zealand politics, and here is the pity of it. You see, they know no bounds. When you have got no ethics—when you have been a money trader, you do not have to have ethics, because it is the deal that counts. It is the deal that counts. And when you turn a money trader into a Prime Minister, there is only one thing that matters. It is the deal that counts—getting the outcome.

So what has he done this time? What he has done this time is an Official Information Act request, not about finance or about the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, but about our security agencies. It is about our security agencies, which have huge powers: powers of intrusion, powers of invasion, powers to break our privacy rights. Oh, yes, there are no limits. There are no bounds when it comes to doing the deal and getting the outcome when you are a trader.

So what does he do? He sets up his senior office staff and his “black ops” operator, Jason “Two Doors Down” Ede, and says: “Just manipulate it. Hold it up. Share the national security secrets. It doesn’t matter.”—and that is what he has done—“Use your private email accounts.” If it is good enough for Judith Collins, it is good enough for John Key’s office too, because that is the way they operate—that is the way they operate. Now we have in 1 day—1 day—two reports from independent agencies telling us just how this Government operates and just how low it goes.

We have the Prime Minister’s office and Judith Collins’ office, and who is the common rogue amongst them all? Cameron Slater—Cameron Slater. A great friend of Judith Collins; not such a great friend of John Key, but enough to ring him up on a daily basis. And they know exactly what they are doing. They are using prime ministerial staff to carefully draft the Official Information Act request for Cameron Slater—using the taxpayer-funded prime ministerial staff to draft the blogs for Cameron Slater’s blog.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Phil Goff just broke the law.

Where are the limits? Where are the limits, Amy Adams? Where are the limits, Amy Adams? There are none.

You want the top job, Amy. You want the top job, Amy; we know it. Where are your bottom lines? Where are your ethical limits? It is all over for Steven Joyce. Simon Bridges—he was a lawyer once. He knows about ethics. Where are the ethics? Who in the National Government is going to stand up and say: “Prime Minister John Key, we want to have some ethics. We want to have integrity in this Government. Please, Mr Key—please, Mr Key—let your legacy be honest Government. Let it be honest Government for the last remaining 3 years you’ve got in office. Please let it be honest Government.”?

That is not what we have got now. That is what New Zealanders want. They want something better. They want a better Government. They want a better Prime Minister, and in 3 years’ time they are going to get that. They will get a Government that operates by principles of honesty, of ethics, and of integrity. They do not have that now.

This is a bad time for New Zealand. There is one thing this Government must do: stand up and say sorry. Stand up and say: “Sorry, we didn’t mean it. It was wrong, and we will do better for the next 3 years before we hand it over.”

I thought I might start with a quote this afternoon. This is a quote from a parliamentarian last week: “My focus will be on the issues that, actually, New Zealanders are telling me that they’re most concerned about, which is their jobs and whether they can increase their income and earn better and do better and get ahead.” Who was that? Who was that just 1 week ago? It was Andrew Little on his election by the unions of New Zealand to the leadership of the Labour Party last week. And what has his focus been on since then? It has been on dirty politics, it has been on bloggers, and it has been on the Prime Minister being a devil beast. It is actually a rerun of the last two election campaigns, and it worked so well—so well—the first two times that Labour has decided to run it a third time. This time in the House this week he has had days of questions, general debate, and urgent debate—nothing on the economy and nothing on jobs. It is all about dirty politics, and that is his problem. That is his first problem.

Andrew Little’s second problem, it has to be said, is that little anger issue, which I think we need to talk about. It is a little anger issue. Yesterday I turned the television on, the news, and there was this guy doing his best impersonation of a vein-popping Phil Goff—a vein-popping Phil Goff. We know how well that worked in 2011. But Andrew Little is away, and he is going to cut the crap. He is pointing the finger at everybody already. He is as angry as he can be. His fuse is so short. Mr Little’s fuse is so short he actually goes off before you get a match near him. That is Labour’s problem. This guy has got a big problem, and the Labour Party has got a big problem.

So what are they thinking? What are they thinking, the Labour Party caucus? It is only a week in. It is a bit early for the reviews. It is only a week in. But Labour Party leaders do not actually hang around for long, so you have got to do your reviews quite quickly. So where are all those in the caucus who voted for him? Where are all those people in the caucus who selected Andrew Little? Where are they, and what are they thinking now? Where are all those backbenchers, all those people, all four of them, who voted for Andrew Little? All four of them, what are they thinking now? Well, one of them is David Cunliffe. He has not been here this week. He has not actually—

💬 Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was waiting for you to raise the issue. There are very clear rules about referring to the absences of other members in the House, for very good reasons, and I think that Steven Joyce should respect that.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: And I agree. It is not appropriate to refer to the absence of any member on any occasion.

But what is he thinking? What is he thinking? He brought 25 percent of the caucus votes that voted for Andrew Little to the Labour Party, and how is he feeling now? And, of course, how is Carmel Sepuloni? She is very quiet. She has brought 25 percent of the caucus votes for Andrew Little. Four of them voted for him and, of course, the rest did not.

So who did vote for Andrew Little?

💬 Hon Member: How many voted for you, Steven?

Who did make him the leader of the Labour Party? It was not the caucus, no. Do not worry, Grant, your chance is coming soon. It was not the caucus. It was not the Labour Party. It was six unions. The Labour Party has gone back and delivered us worse than 1970s-style democracy. This time the Labour Party is blatant. The unions selected its leader. As a result, Labour has got a cloth-cap unionist, who is straight out of the 1950s with his little cheese-cutter hat on, yelling and angry and pointing his finger at the Opposition. That is what we have got. I suppose that if you hand your leadership election to the unions, if you refuse to back your caucus, if you refuse to back your party, instead you get what you have got, which is Andrew Little.

So just think: it could have been Grant Robertson. It just could have been Grant Robertson. Just one vote in the caucus, and we might have somebody a little more sensible as the leader of the Labour Party. But that is all right. It is going to be a short run. I predict the ides of March 2015. The ides of March 2015 is when Grant Robertson will finally get his third chance to lead the Labour Party, when “Mr Angry” Andrew Little gets asked to step aside.

The wheels are falling off this Government. John Key has started his final term as Prime Minister, actually in the same way that Helen Clark started her third term: very badly indeed. The creeping arrogance and the cockiness of “third-term-ism” have taken root in National and have been on full display in recent days in the House. First, there are dirty politics and the “black ops” smears being run from the Prime Minister’s own office, by his own staff. The Prime Minister has been looking increasingly nervy in the last 24 hours as the full extent of his staff’s involvement in dirty politics and abuses of power has been laid out for the country to see. That affable smile-and-wave image is eroding before our eyes. The public are finally getting a glimpse of the real John Key and the real National Party, and it is not pretty.

The Prime Minister is making a fool of himself with his absurd denials and political obfuscations. What kind of Prime Minister uses his security intelligence agencies for political purposes to discredit his opponents? What kind of Prime Minister employs “black ops” staff in his office to feed dirt to National-aligned bloggers? And, most important, what kind of Prime Minister refuses to own up and take responsibility for what he has done and set it right again? John Key’s refusal to face facts, to take responsibility for the conduct of his own office and his staff is a response akin to that of a child—a puerile child—who has been caught with his hand in the lolly jar. John Key was like that yesterday, like a child who had been pulling the wings off flies and thought he had got away with it.

But I will give the Prime Minister some credit. I will give him credit that he has come a long way from the days when he did not even bother to read the reports that damned his Government and his Ministers. He did read at least this one; although his comprehension of it would fail any National Certificate of Educational Achievement English examination that you might want to set him. I am not sure how you can describe the findings of a dispassionate accurate record of events as contested. That is a piece of logical gymnastics that could take place only on “Planet Key”, because the reality is that the only people contesting the report’s findings are John Key and his bestie Cameron Slater. John Key and his bestie Cameron Slater are like this and are contesting the findings of the report—nobody else in the country is, because on “Planet Key” black is white, wrong is right, and Cameron Slater is a good guy on “Planet Key”. And given there are no toilets on “Planet Key”, as John Key once confessed, I do wonder about the stench that must be piling up there with all the tiko.

Of course, the other dirty politics report released yesterday was the investigation into Judith Collins. Clearly, the Prime Minister was nervous about the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security’s report because he wanted to divert attention away from it. But, having read the Judith Collins report, I think she should not feel vindicated by it. It is not a vindication because it was not an investigation. To describe it as a once-over-lightly really is an understatement. Key players, including Mark Hotchin and Cathy Odgers, were not even interviewed. No Facebook messages between Collins and Slater were examined. Only Collins’ phone calls to Slater were looked at—not vice versa—and key emails from Cameron Slater were never examined by the judge.

The report was short on hard facts but big on accepting the version of events presented—who by—by Collins herself and Cameron Slater.

The smug arrogance displayed by Judith Collins at her press conference yesterday was typical of the arrogance setting in with this Government. There is a deteriorating economy. New Zealanders are feeling the pinch at every stage, whether it is in housing or in electricity prices. Bill English is now softening up the country for failing to maintain the economic goal of running a Budget surplus. We know that we can see the Muldoon arrogance in John Key and the Muldoon financial failings in Bill English. Muldoon stalks the land yet again through this Government. All this is bad news for New Zealanders because when a Government is thinking mainly about itself, it is not thinking about you; when a Government is preoccupied with watching its own back, it is not watching yours. The wheels are falling off this Government. Thank you.

I do pick up, actually, on the member Metiria Turei’s last point. This Government is focused on the people of New Zealand, and it seems that the Opposition did not knock on enough doors. It did not actually listen to the people of New Zealand. We have heard many times over the last 4 weeks as those members have been going around talking about their leadership and what that meant, which is that they wanted to listen to New Zealanders, and here we have evidence this week of not a skerrick of that. So instead, what they are doing is thinking, quite proudly and quite smugly, that New Zealanders have an interest in a blogger and that New Zealanders have an interest in the Opposition trying to besmirch the good name of the Prime Minister when we know that the report simply does not state that. So I just encourage Labour. I encourage you.

💬 Hon Annette King: Thank you.

I encourage you to stay—“Mrs Beltway”, it is great to see you here, with the new “Mr Beltway”, and, of course, with the “Prince of Beltway”; so that is the top three. Stay beltway, I say. So think that what you are actually standing on—that very wobbly pedestal, I might say—is of relevance to New Zealanders. Do not ask about the economy and the fact that we have more jobs and that we are having to do job fairs overseas and everything else. Stick with trying to besmirch and do your dirty politics, because, remember, we have been hearing for the last 4 weeks about how you are wanting to listen and listen to what New Zealanders really want so that you can learn the lessons after such a great, tragic response.

Ask yourself, Mrs Mahuta, do you think the people of Huntly are mildly interested in what the Labour Party has been talking about for the last 24 hours? They are mildly interested, but those members think that they are—they think that they are. What people are actually interested in is housing that they can actually live in and that will make a difference for them and the fact that people are getting off welfare and into jobs and that there is something better for them and their kids down the road, and that is what this Government is focused on every minute of every day. So stick with your sideshows and think that that is winning.

We are on leader No. 5 now. I will take bets that this Prime Minister will hit a six, you know. It is just a matter of the timing of it. [Interruption] You would go for seven? I will see you seven. I am not going to defend that one because I think you could be quite right. Actually, I am hoping that Andrew Little sticks with his past performance and hits it out in the next couple of years for his future, because we will remember that, actually, our very good National MP in New Plymouth, against Andrew Little, doubled his majority. So if we could take that across the country, under “Mr Beltway’s” leadership, then I think that that will actually get us into a great place and see us making a difference. So I have bets on the Prime Minister—well, hitting a six, it is a matter of when, of how many months shall we go for, as we then get to No. 7, and we see the difference that that can actually make.

How is it going to be, though, when you are sitting there as the new leader of the Labour Party and you are thinking: “Who are the four who actually backed me?”. With all actual respect, Mrs Mahuta, more of her colleagues backed her to be the leader of the Labour Party than backed Mr Little. Far more backed Mr Robertson, and actually saw him there. So those members are having a bit of a week there, concentrating on themselves. “Mr Beltway”, “Mrs Beltway”, and the “Prince of Beltway” are deciding that this is the issue that really matters to New Zealanders, after going out there and telling us how much they want to listen and take lessons from the election result, and they have not had them. They have not heard those lessons. They still want to actually sit there and talk more about what they perceive to be the myth of dirty politics—you know, the myth of dirty politics.

💬 Hon David Parker: The “myth”—the “myth”?

Yes. Keep going, Mr Parker. Bring it on—bring it on. It is fantastic. Let us keep you talking about what it really means and what is of significance to New Zealand. So while we concentrate on the economy, while we concentrate on those New Zealanders who are now no longer leaving but are wanting to come back to New Zealand, and while we are concentrating on welfare reforms and social housing and, actually, on how the children who are currently living in hardship can do better, you keep listening to what you think New Zealanders really said during that campaign and stick with your beltway issues, which have zero relevance to them. Good luck!

I have to say that I was very, very disappointed in Steven Joyce’s speech today because he seems to have had a big dose of amnesia. He seems to have forgotten that it was he who brought in Jason Ede—“Mr Black Ops”—into the Beehive, one of his ex - radio station workers; that it was Jason Ede who worked with Mr Joyce for the election campaigns of 2011 and 2014; and that it was Mr Joyce who made Jason Ede disappear when things got very nasty indeed. Mr Joyce has kept his head down until today, but I think today he made a terrible, terrible mistake. I would also say that I have to tell Paula Bennett, who has gone from “Ms Fake Fur” to “Ms Dior” while her former constituents have gone to the camping ground, that her contribution today was pathetic.

You see, there is something quite rotten in the State of “Planet Key”. You know, it has been brewing and festering away there for the past 6 to 8 years, and now the rot has been exposed for everybody to see, even those who wear Key-coloured spectacles. You see, this rot has permeated its way down from the ninth floor of the Beehive to infect all those who have been caught up in the sludge and sleaze campaign operated out of the Prime Minister’s own office. We have seen neutral public service advice become political cover-ups. That is what we have seen. In the last 2 weeks we have seen what used to be given as political advice—neutral political advice—being used as political cover-ups in this country.

Although the Prime Minister and his “black ops” rubbish Nicky Hager and his book on dirty politics, what the Prime Minister cannot hide from and what he cannot bluster his way out of is the report from the office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security—a report that shows that dirty politics by the National Party was and is condoned by the man who is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Not just dirty politics, but grubby, filthy, unprecedented politics, and all aimed at undermining political opponents and holding on to political power at any cost.

If you were in the United States it would be called moral turpitude. That is what it would be called. It would be conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty, or good morals—acts of vileness and baseness. I believe it is contrary to honesty and community standards of justice and good morals to employ people paid by the taxpayer to dig up dirt and to pass their filth on to others to disseminate and to undermine your political opponents. That is exactly what happened with Jason Ede, two doors down from the Prime Minister’s office.

When you read that report, this is what shocked me the most. This is what the inspector-general said: “Jason Ede had destroyed information to avoid any public record.” Does it not shock the people of this House that someone working in the Prime Minister’s office destroyed information that should have gone to an inquiry, in order to avoid any public record, to misuse and abuse the Official Information Act, to smear and blame others, to use malicious fabrications to make political points?

But on the radio this morning the Prime Minister said that he approved of the practices and processes run out of his office by people who were just two doors down. That is morally bankrupt—morally bankrupt—to know that such behaviour was taking place two doors down and doing nothing about it, saying: “There’s nothing to see here. You can’t blame me.”, and then to denigrate a report by saying that it is contestable. There is nothing contestable in that report. What is true about it is that the Prime Minister allowed one of his own staff members to work in a way that is despicable and not seen in New Zealand before.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—

💬 Pita Paraone: This is going to be interesting.

It will be, and you want to listen. I do not want to take too long on the Labour Party and its leadership vote, but the first thing New Zealanders need to know is that the Labour leader, Mr Little, did not win because the unions voted for him. He did not win because the unions voted for him. He won because selected members of the unions voted for him. Under that union vote, not every member of the unions got to vote. In a democratic party and in a democratic Government and in a democratic country you would think that every unionist would have the ability to file a vote. It is not the case. Under the Labour Party rules, 14 unionists make one voter. And those “one voters” for each of those people, for all those unions, were the mates of Andrew Little. His mates are not here; they are the people out there who run the unions.

It is the hierarchy of the unions that determines who the leader of the Labour Party is. It is not the actual workers out there. It is their hierarchy—the people who are taking advantage of them. That is a shame for New Zealanders and that is a shame for the Labour Party. Grant Robertson—go and get a recount. Go and do it. Go and get a recount. Get all the union members to vote, not just the one of 14 whom Andrew Little controls under your proposals and under the democracy of the Labour Party. Let us have a look.

💬 Hon Annette King: Why isn’t that man a Minister? How many votes did you get for Cabinet?

We have got the new deputy leader of the Labour Party asking how many votes. Well, I will tell you how many votes. We had over 10,000 in Hamilton East and that is because National delivered for that city. Mr Macindoe had over 5,000 votes in that seat, against Sue Moroney, and that is because National has delivered for that seat. We have built roads in that city that the Labour Party could not even commit to. The Labour Party was asked, year after year, whether it would commit to the Waikato Expressway, and no, it would not. It would not commit to it. Then, at the last moment—this is a month before the election—the Labour members came down and gave a hollow promise, saying that they would think about doing it. The Greens actually controlled the Labour Party’s transport policy. Julie Anne Genter, to her credit, stood up and said that they were not building the Waikato Expressway. The voters of Hamilton knew that. The voters of Hamilton knew what they would get after the election.

You have a Labour Party in trouble, that does not know who its leader is, and that has capitulated on internal politics since that time. You have got a Green Party that is now licking its wounds because it thought it was going to do better than it actually did. You have got a New Zealand First party where no one actually knows who the members are, and where the leader still does not know who the members are, and he will never know who the members are by the end of the next 3 years. But that is OK. It is unfair to pick on New Zealand First. I will not do it, because it is too easy. We will leave them to speak next. Ron Mark—I am going to love to see what is going to happen in 2 years’ time with you and Tracey. Who is going to win—you know? The old boy might be going, but who is going to take over? That will be interesting, eh? So we will look forward to seeing what happens with New Zealand First.

The voters out there are smart. They know there is a country that has got a Government that is delivering a strong economic base. They know there is a Government that is actually looking forward for New Zealanders and that is looking at economic growth in the most testing of economic conditions. It is a Government that is actually trying to make sure that we are part of this modern international world.

If we do not take our opportunities, if we do not embrace immigration, if we do not embrace trade, then we will miss out to Australia. Look at what was happening in Australia last week. Australia embraced those things. Australia embraced India, Australia embraced China, and that is the balance that we need to meet as well, because we are a trading country.

New Zealanders have low interest rates and they have a strong economic base, and they see that investment in health and education that is going on—new schools in Hamilton. Sue Moroney, when she was in the Labour Government, could only come and have a look at a bit of land and say: “This would be a lovely place to build a school.” Well, we actually went out there and we bought that land, and then we actually committed to building that school. Thank you very much to Mrs Anne Tolley, in front of me, who did a great job as Minister then. We are delivering for New Zealanders, and that is why they vote for us, because they see what is coming. They see the infrastructure that is needed for New Zealand to grow and prosper. Thank you.

Kids, that was a low point in this House. The Prime Minister is full of puffery and bovine scatology. Claims that he did not know about his office giving SIS information to Cameron Slater to smear Phil Goff are impossible to believe. The media in this country sometimes get it wrong, but on this issue they can see through the Prime Minister’s dopey denials. The Dominion Post’s Vernon Small yesterday said: “Key took aim squarely at his own foot and fired at will.” He went on: “Key chose to completely ignore what was patently obvious …” from the report of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The New Zealand Herald’s John Armstrong went further. He said: “The Key administration has plumbed new depths of arrogance and contempt …”. I could not have said it better. Mr Armstrong said: “The report’s findings should be cause for a full prime ministerial apology to Parliament …”.

The fact is this: the report of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has confirmed what is in the book Dirty Politics. It is now fact—it is uncontested—that Mr Key’s office, for which he and he alone is responsible, used security information to smear Phil Goff. His office used State security information for political point-scoring. This is reprehensible. But what is worse is the Prime Minister is refusing to confess that he knew about it, or to take responsibility for his office staff—those who work for him. He should confirm to the nation that his office staff were either directly doing precisely what he wanted them to do, or were acting beyond their brief. Either way, they were doing something for the benefit of one man and one man alone: John Key.

Ms Gwyn states in her report: “Had it been necessary, I should also have sought the Prime Minister’s appearance before the inquiry. However, had I found that the Prime Minister’s involvement in these particular events was limited to a briefing given by the Director to the Prime Minister by phone on 22 July …”. That is a farce. How could she know about the Prime Minister’s involvement without first asking him? That is the No. 1 thing any simple inquirer would have done. The Prime Minister was the Minister responsible for the SIS at the time. These matters concern his office, and to excuse the Prime Minister from this inquiry does not suggest a whitewash; it confirms it. Ms Gwyn had a very difficult job to do. See, she was being warned off by an army of lawyers acting for the Prime Minister’s staff—warned to not dig too deep, because she had, they claimed, no responsibility.

Look at the facts. Mr de Joux, the Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff, is so trusted, has so much authority, that he can speak on behalf of the Prime Minister and attend meetings on the Prime Minister’s behalf. This man gave State security information that was downright wrong and misleading to the Prime Minister’s “black ops” man to then give to Whale Oil for the sole purpose of smearing the then Leader of the Opposition. It is dirty politics. Mr de Joux gets the bullet from the SIS and gives it to Jason Ede to give to Whale Oil, who then fires it at Phil Goff. We must remember here that the deputy chief of staff works directly with the Prime Minister. If he is acting either unethically or illegally, then when he does the Prime Minister is responsible. The buck stops with him.

Once the Prime Minister’s windy rhetoric has blown away, what are we left with? A Prime Minister who behaves like a mendacious sybarite. Worse still, the National Party’s two key campaign managers are the man who opened the debate today for the National Government, Steven Joyce, and Mr de Joux’s wife. This is filthy American-type politics that has no place in this country, and “Mr Spray and Walk Away” has been caught out telling porkies over and over again. You can always tell because he sucks the air in so rapidly he can almost whistle. He could almost whistle on the way in. You can always tell by his body language that he ain’t telling the truth. Even those kids could see that today. I saw them shaking their heads. They were horrified. It was appalling behaviour from the Prime Minister who said when he got the job that he wants to raise parliamentary standards. Well, they are so low now they could parachute outside the backside of a snake and still have room. That is how bad his behaviour is, and he should have gone. He has been caught out for the umpteenth time.

I shall start my contribution by not offending that senior member of the Opposition, Winston Peters—I am a good Korean girl. But I shall just say, as Mr Peters actually started, that children, listen: that is not how you actually do it. That is an example of how you should have quit a long time ago. That is what happens if you stay here a little too long. He is a little too long in the tooth, and he should have perhaps actually quit when he was out the last time. As I said, I am a good Korean girl, and I do not like to actually insult an elderly gentleman.

I just want to say, in support of my colleagues from this side who talked about Mr Little and the leadership of the Labour Party, that I would just like to actually start by saying congratulations to Mr Little and commiserations to Mr Robertson. But, Mr Robertson, take heart. Here on this side we actually love wearing our T-shirts saying “I’m a Key person”. I do not know too many of you who might actually like to wear “I’m a Little person”, so perhaps you would be forgiven for not wearing one of those T-shirts.

This side wants to talk about what is actually good for our country. This side is actually focused on growing our economy, and this National Government has actually delivered for New Zealanders. Our economy has grown by more than 3.9 percent in the last term, and we have actually provided more than 72,000 jobs in the last year. But when we are talking about all the lovely trade we have overseas, one thing somebody reminded me of was that we do not as a nation become rich by trading by ourselves. We need to trade with overseas nations. I am very, very proud of the work done by our Minister of Trade, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, and our Prime Minister—and also I have played a little part in it as well—in bringing together the free-trade agreement with Korea.

There are 50 million people in South Korea alone who could be eating our food and using our products. Immediately once we actually sign it, the $65 million in tariffs we pay will be gone. We currently pay more than $200 million in tariffs alone. It is unproductive for our producers to be competing against EU countries, Chile, and the United States, which Korea already has free-trade agreements with. So it is not just about trading with Korea but trading and competing on the same footing as those nations who already have a free-trade agreement with Korea. Kiwifruit growers’ tariffs are 45 percent going into Korea, and that will be a saving of millions and millions of dollars. And for milk producers, Korea is one of the biggest importers of our cheeses. As a Korean who is actually a little bit lactose intolerant, I do not know why, but they do actually take a lot of our cheese. We export a lot.

Also I want to say that when we have this kind of free-trade agreement with a country like this, we actually reduce the cost of the products we use in New Zealand. I know that many people will be using Samsung whiteware, such as washing machines and dryers. I know that many people use Samsung telephones. Samsung even sponsors lots of our sporting codes as well. But many years ago, before the free-trade agreement, I remember having to pay $6,000 for a mobile phone.

💬 Tim Macindoe: How much?

$6,000 for a mobile phone. I was a bit silly paying that—actually, my mother paid for that. Nowadays it costs way less than that. I remember when the MicroTAC II first came out—and it did nothing like the technology we have now—people were paying $6,000 for a mobile phone. Now we pay a heck of a lot less, and that is all due to the free-trade agreements we have managed to get, so it is way cheaper for New Zealanders.

The relationship we have with foreign countries has also developed things like technology. In the Selwyn retirement village in Mount Albert, robotic technology was trialled. It was a joint venture between Auckland University and a Korean technology company. I celebrate that, and this is as a result of the good work that the National Government is doing.

It is quite clear which politician John Key would aspire to be. He wants to be Keith Holyoake. He wants to be the National Party leader who goes on and earns a fourth term, who gets a moniker like “Kiwi Keith”—

💬 Hon Annette King: And becomes Sir.

And becomes Sir—absolutely. He wants to become pragmatic and go on to become Governor-General, be somebody whom New Zealanders across the divide respect and like. That is whom John Key wants to be.

But the politician whom John Key resembles most today is not a New Zealand politician; it is Richard Nixon. That is the politician John Key is becoming. Make no mistake—this work is John Key’s work. This sleaze is John Key’s sleaze. He is the person who employed these people. Any argument that Phil de Joux or Jason Ede are somehow or other doing something that John Key has no knowledge of is rubbish. These people—Jason Ede and Phil de Joux—are doing the job that John Key employed them to do: to run a smear machine out of the Prime Minister’s office. That is what John Key asked them to do. He cannot walk away from this responsibility.

So the National Party, the once-great National Party of Keith Holyoake, is now mired in sleaze and smear in a campaign to undermine a political opponent by using security intelligence information. That is why he is Richard Nixon and not Keith Holyoake—because he is prepared to take the information from the Security Intelligence Service, which has the right to spy on New Zealanders, and hand it on down the chain to Cameron Slater to use to advantage him; to give that information out, as Cheryl Gwyn said, for political purposes. That is what the National Party has become.

Then they take on a further Nixonian element—they destroy it. To put it into the modern age they have to burn a phone, like a character from Breaking Bad, which they throw away. They delete the personal emails. They hide their tracks. This is the work of our Prime Minister’s office. This is what is authorised by our Prime Minister. This is how low the National Party has sunk.

One of the things that Cheryl Gwyn says in the report is how concerned she is that the Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff, a political appointment, is the person for whom the SIS was the direct contact in that office. John Key has effectively outsourced security intelligence work in his office. This is a change from any Prime Minister before now, and the result of that is that the information, kept on behalf of New Zealanders, taken in a privileged manner by the SIS, is then used for political purposes because John Key says that is what he thinks of it.

John Key has let New Zealanders down. When they look to the office of the Prime Minister they look to find somebody who will stand up for New Zealanders. How many times when Helen Clark was Prime Minister did people say: “I might not agree with her policies but I respect her.”? What John Key has done through this episode is demean the office of Prime Minister. He has demeaned every single one of us in this House. Yesterday in question time and today in question time I felt embarrassed for this Parliament, because we had a Prime Minister who chose to divert and diminish and demean what is one of the most shocking episodes in New Zealand political history.

This Prime Minister is in the gutter. This Prime Minister is at the lowest ebb of politics, with people like Cameron Slater and Jason Ede directed to smear a political opponent. It is an abuse of the power and knowledge of the office of the Prime Minister to use security intelligence information in a political way, to destroy evidence, and to try to attack an opponent, using the offices of the Security Intelligence Service.

This Government has sunk lower than any Government in New Zealand’s history, when it comes to smearing people. It has lost the respect of New Zealanders. There is no dignity in the office of the Prime Minister today, and that should hurt every single one of us in this House. John Key should be ashamed of himself. He is responsible for the actions of these people—of Jason Ede, of Phil de Joux, and of those in his office. He is the person who should be apologising to New Zealand. His failure to do so means he is not worthy of the office of Prime Minister.

I would like to talk about the Westpac Stadium and, more specifically, I would like to talk about the number of people one can fit into the Westpac Stadium. More specifically, I would like to talk about the number of people we can fit into three Westpac stadiums, because that is the number of people who left New Zealand to go to Australia between 2000 and 2005. They did that because they chose to leave this country because of the situation they found themselves in and the Government they were having to deal with.

The trend has been changed. Today there are not three stadium-loads of people leaving—or two or even one. In fact, people are arriving. People are voting with their feet and returning from Australia to choose to live in this country. Why is that? Because things are on the up. Things are going well. We know the economy is performing at a rate of close to 4 percent, and that 72,000-odd jobs have been created in the last 12 months. That is why people are coming back. Inflation is lower than wage growth. That means that people have more buying power in their pockets. Unemployment is lower than it has been and Government debt is well under control.

The way we have got there is because this Government has invested in infrastructure. We are continuing to roll out ultra-fast broadband and the Rural Broadband Initiative. I can say that the guys over in the Wairarapa with their blue cables are flat out up and down the streets of the Wairarapa—through Masterton, and soon to be in Carterton, Dannevirke, and even in a small town like Waipukurau. These people will be connected—connected to the rest of the country and connected to the world so that they can communicate with those offshore communities to sell their products and their services.

The other thing we are doing, and it has been touched on by my colleague Melissa Lee, is negotiating and completing free-trade agreements. The Korean free-trade agreement is not just about the $80 million tariff here or the $65 million worth of savings there; it is about the opportunity. It is about the ability to let businesses get on with business. It is about creating an environment where people can take the opportunity that is laid up for them by this Government.

Look at the Chinese example of a free-trade agreement, multiplying the number, volume, and value of exports—not just dairy but forestry, fisheries, and wines going across to China. And that is what we are going to be doing into Korea. So it is not just about $43 million worth of kiwifruit; it is the opportunity to enable them to double, triple, or quadruple their value. I know the kiwifruit industry is well set up to take advantage of that opportunity. It is about creating demand. It is about creating demand for our primary products. That is what we are about. We can feed only 40 million - odd people, so we need to make sure that the food that we are supplying to those people is safe and has the technology associated with it so that it is traceable. That is why Chinese and Korean people are paying top dollar for our products. The opportunity is there for all.

This infrastructure growth continues to contribute to the positive growth in my electorate of Wairarapa. The South Wairarapa district is one of the fastest-growing districts in the country. That is because this Government is building roads and infrastructure to enable people to get on. I encourage more people to join us in the Wairarapa with those people who see the benefits of the Wairarapa—the people, the climate, and the commutable distance that we have from Wellington. This enables rural electorates to prosper under this Government. Thank you.

We have just heard from the last speaker, Alastair Scott, about how the Government is creating an environment where people can take the opportunities that the Government is laying down for them, as if we are living in some utopia of opportunity and engagement.

I would like to talk this afternoon a little bit about some concerns I have from what I have been hearing in the community. I have recently been quite worried by the number of very senior, well-respected community leaders who have been saying at public events that basically there is no point expecting anything from the Government or even in engaging with the Government. Of course, we are hearing this sentiment every single day on talkback radio, in the media, and in our communities. We saw this sentiment realised in the last two elections with our appallingly low voter turn-out.

I get it, but it worries me, and it worries me deeply, because it threatens my hope in change. I get it because sometimes I struggle to get through question time without despairing of the hope of the future of this country. I get it when in just the last week we have seen male senior public servants, including the chief of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, standing alongside Roger Sutton while he breached confidentiality around a decision that found him guilty of misconduct—a huge mistake, with national consequences, but one not condemned proactively by a Minister.

We have seen a report that clearly says the SIS released partial information and misinformation that was used to discredit an Opposition politician—another mistake, apparently, but nothing to do with the culture of this Government. The Prime Minister has publicly condoned the use of his office for smear campaigns, suggesting that that is just politics. There is now a possibility that if a gap arises in Cabinet, Judith Collins will be back, despite her socially irresponsible decision to shelve the Law Commission work on sexual violence, in the face of massive public demand and evidence and the now established fact that she closely associated with and fed information to attack bloggers who were trying to take down a senior public servant.

The public is now being told that everything is fine, this is acceptable, this is politics. We have been told that a 1-week consultation is perfectly acceptable for a piece of legislation that is 45 pages long and curtails core civic and civil rights and provides increased surveillance, because our Government has our best interests at heart, because that is what good leadership looks like! No wonder people are giving up. It makes me tempted to give up.

Underlying all of this is something that is almost invisible: the erosion of some of our core democratic structures. Research that came out this week from Victoria University found that now 10 percent of community organisations believe debate is actively silenced, compared with less than 1 percent in 2008. Almost 60 percent of them believe that an organisation’s funding is at risk if it criticises the Government. Over a quarter of community organisations now have gag clauses in their contracts preventing them from criticising the Government, and 70 percent—up from only 42 percent in 2008—believe that New Zealand has positive attitudes that encourage public debate in this country.

This is the foundation of our society. If a Government is to function effectively, it needs to listen. Every single citizen has the right to a voice, and we need to be encouraging them or we are going to lose our democracy. Where is the point going to be where suddenly people tip over and lose total confidence? This Government—every Government—has a responsibility to our people, to all of our people, to listen, to respond, to act with integrity. That is why the Green Party is in Parliament.

The confected outrage by the Labour Party in the debate this afternoon has been tragic and hilarious. You expect the confected outrage from the Green Party—barely a day goes by when Russel Norman is not in a state of high dudgeon down in this House, accusing the Government of being the most corrupt in New Zealand history and everything like that—but we do expect a little bit better from the Labour Party.

I have got to say the confected outrage is tragic and hilarious. To be lectured on this side of the House by a party that engaged in scurrilous actions when it was in Government is hilarious. This is the party that sent taxpayer-funded spin doctors to Melbourne in Australia to dig for dirt on John Key in 2007. Annette King spent 5 minutes of her speech talking about how taxpayer-funded spin doctors are terrible. That is exactly what Labour did. Annette King decried people in the Government talking to bloggers. This was the party that established The Standard blog—established the blog—out of the ninth floor of the Beehive in 2005. I suggest to members opposite that they go and visit The Standard because it is a cesspit of bile and hate—bile and hate. It was run by David Cunliffe’s campaign manager, who set up the secret trust for him. It is an absolute cesspit, and they over on that side of the House established it.

We were lectured on leaks by a party that has Phil Goff in it, who took a secret confidential Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade memo and leaked it in 2004 to try to embarrass Don Brash. Just 2 days ago Phil Goff leaked another secret document and secret report in an attempt to gain political advantage. So to be lectured by the guys on the other side about scurrilous behaviour, ladies and gentlemen, is just ridiculous. I predict the overblown hyperbole of the Opposition will be seen for what it is, because it continues a trend of the last 6 years, which is that the Labour Party and the Green Party opposite focus on what they think is important and what matters to them, and not on what matters to New Zealand.

So let us talk about what matters to New Zealand. There were two very significant events and pieces of data released in the last week that I think warrant some attention of the House. The first is the announcement that we have had a positive household savings rate for the last 5 years—this is the first time since 1989 to 1994—of 2.1 percent. Members opposite often talk about and decry our lack of a savings culture in New Zealand: “We don’t save enough. We borrow too much from offshore.” Well, we have had a positive savings rate for the last 5 years. We are shifting this economy away from debt-fuelled consumption, which is what we had under the last Labour Government, towards an economy built on savings and investment. These are very important economic numbers, and I think that the House should spend some time focusing on them.

The second piece of important information was the migration numbers, which were just highlighted by my colleague Alastair Scott. There has been the smallest net loss of people to Australia since October 1994. People are literally voting with their feet. Fewer people are leaving to go to Australia and more people are arriving.

💬 Tracey Martin: 47,000 net gain—net gain.

Yes, that is right, Tracey—47,000 people net gain to New Zealand. People are literally voting with their feet. They are coming from Asia, they are coming from the UK, they are coming from Australia, and they are coming from all over the world because our economy is growing at one of the fastest rates in the Western World. I know you do not like people moving here and I know that the member opposite does not like people from other countries coming to New Zealand, but people are literally voting with their feet.

Over here in the National Party, on this side of the House, we welcome people moving to New Zealand. We welcome foreigners wanting to spend money and invest in New Zealand. We welcome people wanting to relocate here or relocate their businesses here, because we are a confident, multicultural nation that is outward facing, not insular and closed to the rest of the world like the closed minds of members in New Zealand First. Those are the very important migration numbers released.

In my area of Lower Hutt, we are focused on improving the innovation in our economy. That is a key part of the Government’s economic plan to make sure that this country continues to drive our economy forward. We have got some fantastic businesses in Lower Hutt like Pertronic Industries, like Tekron, and like Label and Litho. This is a Government that is making a record investment in research and development so that we can get our economy going forward and continuing to grow at one of the fastest rates in the Western World. Thank you very much.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.