Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) Link to this

When I finished up my speech last week I was talking about National’s sudden change to style over substance, and about the blatant plagiarism of style from David Cameron in the UK and the blatant plagiarism from Mark Latham of the Australian Labor Party in the Burnside speech. I understand that tomorrow Mr Key is off to Gisborne again. Of course, National had its 3-day caucus meeting in Gisborne. They swanned in, told us how bad we have it in Gisborne and what a sorry state we have it in, and then hermetically sealed themselves inside the Emerald Hotel, which is a hotel and conference venue only recently opened—like so many other developments in Gisborne that were inconceivable until Labour came into Government. They came down and told us how bad we had it and what a sorry state we were in, and they did not bother to go and talk to anyone about it. They got a lot of criticism for that, so now they are going to have to come back and talk to some of the stakeholders in Gisborne.

John Key is a man who obviously never went to Gisborne or the East Coast when his party was last in Government, when unemployment hit 22 percent in Gisborne and when surveys showed that tourists were staying away because they were afraid to come to Gisborne because it was regarded as a place high in unemployment and crime. I could not put it any better than our mayor, Meng Foon, did in his letter to the Prime Minister at the beginning of this year. He stated: “I write to convey my appreciation of all your Government’s policies and the funding support you have given to our region over the past few years. Your Government’s support has certainly given us economic transformation.” I could not put it any better than that.

Of course we still have problems, but we do not need someone with no knowledge of our district swanning in from Auckland to point out what is obvious to those of us who live there every single day. Every community in this country has problems, and I am sick of our community being constantly singled out and being defined by the negatives when I am sure that if Mr Key looked around his community in Parnell, he would find that many, many problems exist there also. I say to the National Party that it is easy to criticise and point out problems; it is far harder to get results, as this Labour-led Government has done.

I want to say three things to John Key, who is becoming “Mr Everything to Everyone” and “Mr I’ll Tell You Exactly What I Think You Want To Hear”, even though he contradicts himself constantly. He told Māori at Rātana that he wants more dialogue and then decided that National’s policy on the Māori seats is that it will not consult Māori at all. Even Dr Brash said he was going to consult Māori on the Māori seats policy. No, John Key does not need to; he is not going to consult them at all. I say that I believed the Māori Party when it said it thought the National Party was going to vote for the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. I believe the Māori Party now, but of course then John Key went to his caucus and they focus-grouped it, and now they have found that it might not be as palatable. So rather than saying he had told Māori that but now he disagrees, he said he had never said it. Maybe he was just being polite—as he was to Dr Michael Cullen in their meeting.

I want to say to John Key that if he is going to visit the worst streets of Gisborne—and I am interested in what streets he thinks are the worst—I want him to be honest and tell any Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants whether he is going to put up their rents. He should not go in there, play volleyball with the kids, and take one of them for a ride in his limousine, then not tell them—and deliberately mislead them—about the fact that his party’s policy could see their rents rise 140 percent, like they did last time his party was in Government. I want him to apologise for his party’s policies of the 1990s that saw the percentage of children in sole parent families living in poverty go from 15 percent to 63 percent after the “mother of all Budgets”, and saw the percentage of children living in families where an income-tested benefit was the main source of income go from 25 percent to 75 percent overnight. I want him to apologise to those families if he now cares about them so much.

I want to tell him—and I want to hear him say it—that he is never, ever going to implement those policies again, that the National Party has admitted that those policies were a failure and that they were destructive to New Zealand, and that they are never going back there again. But do members know, I do not think we are going to hear that, because, as Chris Trotter pointed out—and it is a very good point—why are all the big right-wing backers of Mr Key and the National Party not crying out about his sudden lurch to the left? Why are they not very concerned about where this National Party is going? The answer is because they know it is not true. They know that what he is saying is not what the National Party will do if it gets into Government.

I am very cynical, because I think the reason the National Party members are talking about an underclass is not because they care about it; it is because they want to make the rest of New Zealand afraid of it. They want to make people—as Jenny Shipley said when she talked about Pacific Islanders crawling in people’s windows—scared about a growing underclass. They want to drive another wedge. They used Māori in the last election; they will use the poor and disadvantaged of this country at the next election. I say to Mr Key that at the end of the day, it does not matter how nicely he says it. It does not matter whether he changes his tone. It does not matter what politically correct shirt he wears. At the end of the day, it is substance and policy that put food on the table and a roof over people’s heads. The people of New Zealand deserve to hear the truth from John Key.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Are you aware that New Zealand First will be splitting its speech time?

RON MARK (NZ First) Link to this

Firstly, I welcome all members back to Parliament—I know we are into the second week of the House’s sittings, but this is my first opportunity to speak. I trust that everyone is rested. I would like to pass on my thanks and the thanks of my partner to the people of the far north. We had the opportunity to holiday up in Whananaki, at Winston’s home, and in Matauri Bay, with Dover and his whanaunga. We had the opportunity to spend time up at Whangaroa—and what a beautiful place that is. I thank very much Doug and Robyn Gower for their hospitality.

I also spent a bit of time camping down in the South Island, in Canterbury. The downside of that holiday experience was that, once again, I found myself the victim of crime. Although I could cry in my teacup about what that feels like, when I inspected my property and found that once again it had been burgled and that once again we had lost property—that makes it about the 12th or 15th time that rural property of mine has been burgled—I was reminded of the reason why people do not report crime. It is that quite often there is no point, because quite often when people report a crime to the police very little happens. They simply get a number to quote to their insurance company, and they get on and make the claim. If people in a particular area do not have insurance or if it is not worth insuring something because the premiums are so high, then there is no reason to report the crime. This time, however, we did report the crime. This was done out of recognition of the fact that if people do not report such crimes, the statistics look bad. I have long said in this House on behalf of New Zealand First that the reason some of the statistics that have been quoted in this House look as good as they do and have been painted positively is that two-thirds of crime in this country still goes unreported—my source is the victimisation reports that get tabled in this House, too infrequently for my satisfaction.

New Zealand First will again be focusing on law and order, and we hope to do so in as constructive a manner as is possible with the Government, in line with the confidence and supply agreement we have with it. In that respect, it behoves me, having listened to much of the rhetoric after the festive season about corruption in prisons, again to remind the Minister that he is not being briefed of all the facts. The question I asked in the House today was based on information passed to me by a prison officer, and supported by other people, that corruption is again rife not just in Rimutaka Prison and Waikeria Prison but also in Canterbury. I remind the House, and the Minister—who is, after all, the sixth or seventh Minister of Corrections; I have lost count of the number we have had—that although we have a chief executive officer in the Department of Corrections who is new in the job, underpinning him essentially are all the same people who were responsible for the activities of the infamous “goon squad”, defined by Ailsa Duffy QC as being not only corrupt but illegal, and I remind the Minister that no one was fired. If the Minister has any doubt about or any reason to wonder why the information he gets on occasion is embarrassingly wrong, he need look no further than the people who are advising him. We in New Zealand First have long said that a clean broom needs to go through the Department of Corrections. I am going to take it upon myself, on behalf of New Zealand First, to take some things to the Minister and encourage him to get out the broom and start cleaning out the department.

At the same time as I do that, we will be pushing the Government to ensure that our target of 1,000 extra police is achieved by 2008. I will also be pressuring this House, from a New Zealand First perspective, to pass our Youth Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill so that we might give ourselves a chance in this country to come to grips with violent youth crime. I congratulate Judge Boshier on his brave and courageous statements in the paper over the weekend. I encourage him to step forward and inform his Government and the Ministry of Justice that all is not well in the Youth Court. All is not well in youth justice, and we need to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12 in order to save—and I say “save”—some young people. To allow them to enter a life of crime and rack up 40, 50, or 80 appearances in front of the police only to then wonder why we are imprisoning them at the age of 21 for murder is a crime in itself. We are ducking our responsibilities if we do not do this.

Hon DAVID CARTER (National) Link to this

It is a pleasure to follow Mr Ron Mark from New Zealand First in this debate, because in the next day or two that member will have the opportunity to put his money where his mouth is. I understand that in the Justice and Electoral Committee, National members of Parliament are calling for a select committee inquiry that can finally resolve the inadequacies of the Department of Corrections. Whether that select committee inquiry proceeds will be based entirely on the vote of Ron Mark. So he can come into this House day in and day out protesting and questioning the Minister, but he will now finally have a chance to do something about it. I will be watching his vote, as will many New Zealand First voters throughout the country.

I start by welcoming to our caucus Katrina Shanks. She was dealt a fairly harsh blow at the last election: she was an MP for just over 1 week. When the final results came in she held her head high, and I think it is great that we now see her as a member of our caucus. I also record my thanks to Don Brash, who departed as a member of Parliament over the Christmas break, and say he did a remarkable job for the National Party. He took us from 20 percent in the polls to nearly being in Government, and I assure the Government side of the House that this party intends to build on that success and make sure that at the 2008 election there is no doubt at all that National will be the Government.

A week is a long time in politics when we consider that it is now just over a week ago that the Prime Minister stood here and gave a very boring 35-minute speech. The buzzword on that occasion was a new one—I give her that—sustainability. I watched with interest the body language of the Labour members of Parliament as they listened to that rather turgid, boring speech. They knew that the Prime Minister, who has delivered, to date, seven such speeches, has, at best, only one more of these shocking speeches to deliver before the next election.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) Link to this

That was a classic National Party speech in this debate—10 minutes long and not a single policy, not a single positive statement. Let me say one thing to the member. If he had listened to Morning Report that day, he would have heard Bill English say at 8 a.m. that it was an idea worth considering and say by 9 a.m. that it could not possibly be done at all. That was, even for Bill English, a quick flip-flop, and it showed the clear choice that this country faces—on the one hand an experienced and effective Government, with strong positions and policies for the future, and on the other hand an unprincipled and weak National Party, with a co-leadership of “Mr Empty” and “Mr Angry”.

Let us deal with the Government first. We have a stronger, fairer, more confident nation than we had 7 years ago. One can visit any provincial centre and feel and see the difference. Tomorrow and Thursday Mr Key will be in Gisborne, trying to make up for the fact that when the National caucus went there it spent all its time having a good time and not visiting anybody, so he has to go back. I do not know what designer T-shirt he will wear in Gisborne; it will be interesting to see.

We have had uninterrupted economic growth—the second-longest period since the Second World War. In employment, we have created 330,000-odd more jobs. We have the second-lowest rate of unemployment in the OECD. National said we could never get the unemployment rate down below 4 percent. In terms of skills, we have Modern Apprenticeships and industry training, and we have had a major revamp of the tertiary education system. The Working for Families programme is reducing by 70 percent the number of children living below the poverty line. New Zealand superannuation was increased in the first step we took as a Government and has been maintained at that higher level ever since. Through the primary health care system there are cheaper visits to the doctor and cheaper prescriptions. The total crime rate has actually reduced under this Government.

Now we need to move to the next stage—the stage of putting in place, in a range of areas, key sustainability policies that will see New Zealand into the long term. We have done so in relation to New Zealand superannuation with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and now we need to move on the issues of the environment and climate change, because our long-term goal must be to be carbon neutral. The Opposition has poured scorn on the long-term goal and asks when it will be: “Will it be 15 August 2010; if so, how are we going to get there by that time?”. Well, we have to be carbon neutral at some point. The Opposition does not seem to understand that particular, very simple environmental point. We have to deal with the damage that has been caused over the last 50 years in particular, and 200 years in general, to our environment. That is a goal that all members ought to share; all National can do is try to make up its mind as to what it thinks about the issue in the first place.

In the area of savings and investment, KiwiSaver comes in on 1 July this year. We will need to think about further moves to ensure that we promote savings and investment in New Zealand. We have changed the tax laws already in order to reduce the overtaxation on low-income earners—those earning below $38,000 a year—who manage to save, and we have put in place a fairer offshore investment regime. We need to think about the next steps to build a stronger savings culture in this country. There is no point in whingeing about foreign ownership if we are not saving enough to generate our own investment in our own country. We need to build our national identity more, which is not to build a midi-America but to build a better New Zealand. That is what this party in Government stands for.

Against that is the empty rhetoric of the new co-leadership. Mr English, of course, claims to be the brains of the team, but we can see that that is not a high claim to make when we look at the other half of the team. Mr English says that he does the policy and writes the speeches. He boasted that he wrote the Burnside speech because Mr Key did not know anything about social policy. Well, going on what was inside the Burnside speech, Mr English did not know much about social policy, either. Mr Key is there to provide the veneer, but beneath that veneer there is nothing. We used to ask in politics: “Where’s the beef?”; with Mr Key we ask: “Where’s the wood—what is actually below that veneer?”. He has an extraordinary ability to take no firm stand on anything at all. He is all veneer, no wood; all surface, no substance; all gloss, no paint. That is Mr Key.

In the Burnside speech he had two ideas. The first was to have a bit of coordination with the voluntary sector, and to show how important that was he put in charge of it—who? Was it one of the front-benchers? Was it one of the key figures? No, it was Paula Bennett, a person unknown in the community at large—never heard of. Most people who come from where I come from probably think she is Gordon Bennett’s daughter. Secondly, he had a food-in-schools programme—and then he did not have a food-in-schools programme, because he discovered we already have a Fruit in Schools programme that he did not know about—

NATHAN GUY (National) Link to this

It is with pleasure that I rise this afternoon and wish my colleagues a happy New Year, and I extend good wishes to our newest member of the National caucus, Katrina Shanks, who will be giving her maiden speech anytime shortly. I welcome Katrina. She did a fantastic job in Ohariu-Belmont and was not far away from taking that seat. I believe that in the 2008 election, Katrina Shanks will take it. I welcome Katrina and her colleagues into the House this afternoon.

It is a special occasion for me that I can follow on from the Minister of Finance—“Mr Mortgage Tax”, or “Mr Chewing Gum Tax Cut”. He is someone who is on the way out, like this Government, which is extremely tired, and has a lack of ideas and a lack of vision. Prime Minister Helen Clark, in her address last week, mentioned the word “sustainability” 33 times. That is obviously the key word, and that is how this Government thinks it will get back into power for a fourth term. The Greens are holding up in their poll rating, and Labour members have worked out, with their little bit of polling, that if they scare people into thinking that icebergs are going to float up their street, their creek, or their canal, that climate change will hurt everyone. So we heard the Prime Minister mention sustainability 33 times. Her address last week was full of slogans, without any detail.

Last week I was walking across the street when a person yelled out to me. He said: “Hey, Nathan!”. I turned round and saw an old university colleague of mine crossing the street. I stopped and shook his hand. But it was not his normal hand, because he was wearing a brace, out from his shoulder down to his elbow, and had things screwed into his arm. I said to him: “What’s happened to you?”. He said: “I’ve been shot.” I said: “Shot?”. He said: “Yeah, have you heard of Graeme Burton?”. This is a true story. I said: “Yes.” He said: “Well, I was out on my mountain bike, with a mate of mine, happily on a Sunday afternoon.”—I think it was. He was riding through the tracks on his mountain bike, going flat out, and came around a corner and came across a person who had been shot dead by Graeme Burton, and stabbed. He could not stop quickly enough to help this person. He braked, locked up his bike, and there was Graeme Burton. He cycled away as quickly as he could. Graeme Burton had a shotgun, full of buckshot, and blew the bone in this person’s arm into seven pieces; he blew it apart.

This Government’s stance on parole is hopeless. What did we see from Damien O’Connor when Graeme Burton was running large in the hills above Wellington? Nothing. A colleague of mine, whom I went to university with, was out having a joyride on his mountain bike, and had the bone in his upper arm blown to bits in seven places, and this Government is silent. We thought that even the Prime Minister would get tough on the Parole Board. We thought there would be something in her state of the nation address. But there was nothing. There were more words, more slogans, but they did not address the core issues for this country. Yet she comes out and talks about selling the VIP car fleet, because that will save $500,000 in 3 years’ time. That will reduce our carbon emissions. What will happen? This fleet of cars will be sold on the open market in New Zealand, and another New Zealander will buy them. So we are going to move into vehicles powered by bio-diesel. I cannot wait to see Parekura Horomia trying to fit himself into one of those vehicles, powered by biofuels.

When we are talking about climate change, what about the people involved in forestry? What about those people who are scared of this Government bringing in a tax for changing land use? Whereas farmers or landowners might have been going to harvest their trees at 28 or 30 years’ maturity, they are now out there firing up their chainsaws as we speak, because this Government is going to impose a $13,000 a hectare tax on changing land use from trees. Under this Government we have a terrible wishy-washy policy on climate change. It is all over the place. The Government has scared foresters and landowners who want to steal the carbon credits. It has forced them to fire up their chainsaws, and more pine trees are being felled in this country now than are being replaced. The Government needs to look very hard at itself, because it is the one that has inflicted this terrible deforestation that our country is incurring.

I thought that the Prime Minister’s statement would be great. I thought that surely she would mention something about the backbone of our economy—surely she would mention something about the farming sector, which I am pretty passionate about. [Interruption] I say to Mr Hughes, who represents the most marginal seat of Otaki, that the Prime Minister had one sentence about farming, on page 4 of her address. She said, when talking about emissions: “In agriculture part of the answer lies in changing farming practice now, …”. There were no ideas; no solutions.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister for Building and Construction) Link to this

For the uninitiated who are listening to this on radio, I say that the last speaker was one Nathan Guy who harks from a province near here. I was very interested in his speech. I know he is a new member, but he asked what his role is. He was challenged by members on this side of the House to provide one policy in his speech. He was not equal to that challenge; he had not one policy, not half a policy—he said it was not National’s role. What is the role of an Opposition? Well, apart from Opposition members sitting on their backsides and claiming 120 grand a year, the role of Opposition members is, yes, to oppose. That is the natural role of an Opposition. One would have thought that after 7½—nigh on 8—years in Opposition Nathan Guy, who is part of the new world order, with a few of the other “newies” who have come in on that side of the House, would be told to get up and put out an agenda and a policy.

Michael Cullen used a very interesting phrase. I will give Nathan Guy a little history lesson. In American politics, every candidate for leadership goes through a particular phase. Michael Cullen used the term for it; it is called the “where is the beef?” moment, or “where is the substance?”, or “where is the policy?”. National members can go with the “slick willy” routine. They can paint John Key with as many coats of varnish as they want, but at some time he will come to that American political moment when he has to come up with the beef. He will run out of stunts like the one at Waitangi where he used a young Māori girl. I have never in my life seen such a blatant use of a young person in politics. As Shane Jones said in his address, the kaumātua nailed him and told him not to bring a pet up there. He got nailed at Waitangi on that. Then there was the so-called food in schools stunt. He got unzipped, slit open, and stitched back up again because he tried to pull a fast one not only on that principal and that school but on our communities.

John Key, of course, is a person who thinks in transactions. He was a foreign-exchange dealer: a man who made his pile as a junk bond dealer trading down the Kiwi dollar. He thinks in transactions. As Michael Cullen said, when John Key was asked what his position as a 19-year-old was on the 1981 Springbok Tour, he thought about it as a transaction. He thought that if he said he was for it, he would maybe brass off a historic group in the community; if he said he was agin it, he would probably alienate a few others; but if he told the truth and said what he believed—if he knew what he believed—then he might show some leadership. He copped out and took both plan A and plan B. He could not even answer when asked the simple question—and I am not moralising here, as a not-very-good Catholic myself—of whether he believed in God; he thought in transactions. He could not quite—after four attempts—give a straight answer.

Mr English says he is hand in glove with Mr Key, and I believe him. Mr Key is the glove puppet and we all know where Mr English’s hand resides. It resides right in that glove puppet. We know who writes the speeches. I say that the Prime Minister—unlike the Opposition—set out an agenda. She reminded this Opposition that we have the second-lowest unemployment in the OECD and that we have created 330,000 jobs as a nation. I ask people to ask what National did when they were in power for nigh on a decade. We re-created, recrystallised, and backed our young people with apprenticeships after National had destroyed apprenticeships. Lockwood Smith gets up in Parliament and says he is proud of the fact that he did over and destroyed the Apprenticeship Act.

We backed our young people. We backed our elderly folk with a sustainable policy. The Opposition hates that word “sustainable”, because it cuts to the quick of the shallowness and the hollowness of every member on that side who cannot, in every speech in this debate, come up with one policy idea. They lambaste us for talking about sustainability. They lambaste us for saying what we believe and that we are going to promote policies and ideas that will protect our environment. In doing that we do a simple thing: we protect our communities, we protect our social fabric, and we protect our natural and public environment.

They lambaste us for putting a policy agenda on the table in our third term in office. But when challenged, would the hollow men, the hollowed-out crew, over there give us one answer, one idea, or one thought? Even if they cannot give us a policy, can they give just a thought to say they had an idea they wanted to kick around with the communities? Not one of them will front up. They are great superstars with their wonderful careers in the private sector. They are great intellects who wandered into Parliament. They are the disappointed men who were lawyers and trade ambassadors on the outside and now, of course, they sit languishing over there, not quite realising their dreams and their ambitions.

There is intellect over there somewhere. They hide it well, but it may be there. I challenge them. They have had a Prime Minister’s statement setting an agenda and setting a number of policies: what we are going to do in the transport area, how we are going to take apprenticeships to the next level, and how we are going to sort out things close to my heart—energy efficiency and health and safety within housing. They have all our ideas, and, unlike Nathan Guy, we are not afraid to put them out there. We believe we actually get paid to propose and to challenge our communities with policies and ideas.

I say to Nathan Guy that if he wants to know how to earn his pay, he should go back to wherever he came from, go out and do a clinic occasionally, speak to more than his little inner circle of the silk suit - wearing brigade, and ask the communities what they think. Maybe he should go out and apologise for what he did in the last election when he made jokes about climate change and laughed about sustainability. Maybe he can go back to where he comes from and answer the challenge of why, for 9 years, National members have denied there is a problem in the environment. For 9 years they said it was a joke—it was smoke and mirrors. The man who walks in now was the proponent of that, and now they have had a road to Damascus experience. Suddenly they believe it—but only because it is politically palatable.

JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I notice that the Labour Party has just exercised a proxy vote for Taito Phillip Field. You will recall that this afternoon in Parliament there was quite an extended debate about the definition of “public business”, so I assume that under Standing Order 156(4)(d) the Labour Party will be claiming that the vote is being exercised on the basis that Mr Field is on public business. I wonder whether that would be an opportunity for you to reflect whether Mr Field is, in fact, on public business. We know that yesterday he was interviewed by the police. This is a wonderful opportunity for you, Madam Speaker, to give us an indication as to whether you think that is the case.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I am very happy to accept the Labour Party whip’s word. I just want to know what the word is. Is the Labour Party whip saying that Taito Phillip Field is on public business or is he saying that Taito Phillip Field has told him he is on public business? What word is it that we are actually accepting here?

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Under subparagraph (i) of Standing Order 156(d) anybody can be away from Parliament “for illness or other family cause of a personal nature,” but that has not been raised. The issue being raised now is whether he is away on public business, and it has been very clear that he has given his vote to the Labour Party whip. He has said that publicly, and if he is away on business that is of a personal nature, that is allowed. It was certainly allowed to me when I was on my own. So I cannot see what the argument is about, actually.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.