General Debate

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) Link to this

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Today I asked Dr Cullen, the Acting Prime Minister, a simple question: “Why did Helen Clark not go to Liam Ashley’s funeral?”. He could not answer it. He could not answer because everyone knows now that Helen Clark does not weigh up these events in terms of human tragedy or accountability, but purely in terms of political utility. That is why Damien O’Connor keeps his job as Minister of Corrections. It is not because he should, but because for now it seems to suit Helen Clark. All that shows to the public is that she has lost her moral and political compass.

At the core of the Liam Ashley tragedy is the notion of accountability. If someone is in the care of the State, the State has a fundamental duty to keep that person alive. The duty is not to give those people underfloor heating, or comfortable squabs—maybe they should have that—or whether the handcuffs are just basic ones. The duty of human care is to keep them alive. I would have thought that Liam Ashley’s funeral was a funeral the Prime Minister might have gone to, because the State failed in its duty. The simple basic fact is that no single person anywhere has borne any accountability for the tragic death of a mixed-up young New Zealander in the horrifying, claustrophobic environment of the back of an inadequate prison van. Nothing that the Ombudsmen’s report brings forth has changed that.

Helen Clark still has not got the message. One would think that the polls would be sending the message to her, but no, she has not got it. She cannot tell the difference any longer between a failure of accountability, the duty to protect human life, and, to use that delightful phrase of hers, moving on. The reality is she has not yet calculated that it is in her political interest to sack Damien O’Connor. The day she thinks it is, she will.

Then there is another tragedy she has got mixed up in where a Government agency was said to be responsible. We questioned the Inland Revenue Department this morning about whether it knew whether the Muliaga family were getting all their Working for Families entitlements, which we estimate could have been as much as $400 a week. The Prime Minister has spent a week saying that these cases should be referred to welfare. Well, the Muliagas were not on welfare. They were a working family. They should have been the target of any family assistance package, but they might not have known that, because when they see the ads on TV, it is not families like the Muliaga family they see, is it? It is the people whom Helen Clark is politically worried about who are in that ad. They are a well-paid, comfortable, Pākehā family who can afford to text across the lounge. It is not the Muliaga family, and that is why the voters of Mangere know that the Government led by Helen Clark and Phil Goff has lost its direction.

The ads on TV are telling Labour’s core supporters who it is that Helen Clark really cares about—a family on $80,000 with one child who get assistance from the Working for Families package. They are not really the Muliagas, and that is why she had to turn up to the funeral—she was trying to make up the gap. She is playing catch-up politics and she got it wrong, but, then, she has got most major political decisions wrong since she got re-elected. She got the pledge card wrong, Taito Phillip Field wrong, and the smacking bill wrong. She was wrong to back it and then she was wrong to compromise with John Key to get it through. She got that wrong. She got the Department of Corrections and Damien O’Connor wrong, the Kuchenbecker case wrong, and the Ashley case wrong. Can Mr Goff get up and tell us one political decision Helen Clark has made of any difference since the 2005 election that she got right? The next one she will get wrong is rejuvenating the Labour Party—as if that were possible.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) Link to this

The list of things that this Government has got right is legend. There are 347,000 new jobs. The unemployment figure is a small fraction of the figure in the legacy left by the failed Government in which Bill English was Minister of Finance. We have a KiwiSaver scheme that is applauded for answering the longstanding problem of lack of saving in this country. We have a Working for Families package that delivers for people at the time they need it most—when they have kids and need help.

That member can talk all he likes about the prison system today. Sitting opposite me is Nick Smith, a former Minister of Corrections. When he was the Minister and when prisoners got out of Pāremoremo prison, the explanation given was that the boundary fence was not supposed to stop the prisoners escaping but only to slow them down. Then there was the guy who escaped from his security guard when he had a broken leg and was tied to a drip. The security service let him get away, and it could not explain that, either. That member knows that drug use was six times as much when he was the Minister of Corrections than it is today. He knows that. He knows that the escape rate was 78 percent higher. The member from wherever it is in the Manawatū knows that in his local prison at Linton they used to hand drugs through the window of the cells, because there was no fence around the prison. That is how bad it was under the National Government.

So let us not have Bill English come into this House with all the rubbish he is talking. He, Maurice Williamson, Tau Henare, and Tony Ryall are the failed faces of a failed National Government in the 1990s, when this country went backwards. We see the same old tired faces, but there are a few faces that we have not seen much of lately. Mr Ryall is kept off TV. Judith Collins is kept off TV. Gerry Brownlee—they try to keep him off TV. These are the faces that the public do not like to see, because they are the faces of a National Party that has very little appeal.

That National Party is essentially the same National Party that was in place at the time the emails were sent, on which the book The Hollow Men was based.

R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) Link to this

This week we saw the unprecedented move of the Reserve Bank Governor intervening in the currency market, something we have not seen since the dollar was floated in the 1980s. That came just 1 week after the Reserve Bank Governor had raised the cash rate to 8 percent, the highest in the developed world. This, of course, caused the dollar to rise, and speculators and investment funds went on a buying spree. We are doing long-term damage to our exporters, and, in fact, this is as good as telling them to nick off.

The Reserve Bank Governor explained to the Finance and Expenditure Committee the other day that the proposed record pay-out of Fonterra was a concern in that it would add inflationary pressures to the economy. So dairy farmers who were looking forward to some debt repayment and to replacing some plant and machinery are suddenly disadvantaged all over again. In other words, we are killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, all because the Reserve Bank Governor is required to rely on one single blunt instrument, which is the inflation target of 1 to 3 percent.

In New Zealand we either export or die. Export growth is reliant on a favourable dollar. So much work has been done over the past year on Export Year with Business New Zealand coming on board, along with the Chamber of Commerce, and we are finally getting somewhere by forming strong Government agency and business links designed to bolster our exports. Now that is being undermined by the high dollar. The Reserve Bank Act is too restraining, the focus is too narrow, and the governor needs new tools that will recognise the uniqueness of our economy, not some other foreign economy. We need a Reserve Bank Act custom-made for us, not imported from one of the other countries and for the convenience of those on foreign shores.

Exporters—and here we are talking about everybody from agricultural industries to manufacturers to high-tech software companies and the like—need our help. They are our lifeblood, and right now they need a transfusion of new thinking. We must rewrite the Reserve Bank Act. It must consider more than just inflation alone. Right now the only people who are benefiting from the Act are currency traders and paper shufflers. Exporters must be the priority, not the afterthought when things have got out of hand. For far too long in this country we have seen an economy relying on consumerism and forgetting about the lifeblood, which is exporting. We risk losing so much of our productive sector if we do not act now. It was this Parliament that created this problem through the Reserve Bank Act, and it is this Parliament that now must do something to fix it up.

The two old parties in this Parliament have long held the view that we should have a hands-off sort of an operation when we come to monetary policy. In recent years—and particularly the last year—that has been shown to be at fault and we must do something about it. New Zealand First has said for years now that we cannot rely on just the one mechanism of inflation alone. We must have the Reserve Bank Governor looking at things like exporting. We must require him to take into account the jobs in this country before he goes out and raises the interest rates that so badly hurt our exporters. The sheep farmers, the foresters, and the fishers in this country are all suffering under this extremely high dollar—a dollar that has only been exacerbated by the rise in interest rates we have recently seen.

It is ironic that within a week—as I said before—the governor had to come out into the market and buy New Zealand dollars. We think that has gone some way towards alleviating the problem but commentators, countrywide and overseas, are telling us that that will not work for long and it is not a long-term solution, and we agree. Something has to be done and that something is to rewrite the Reserve Bank Act.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) Link to this

Last Saturday the Christchurch Press ran a story with the headline “John Key, overachiever”. It should have been headed “John Key, over-promiser”. The entire story represents an individual who will say anything to get elected, whose approach is to reflect the concerns of those he addresses, no matter whether they represent the party’s policy or not. This story confirmed the story I heard about a presentation to the party faithful in Christchurch recently where John Key said: “I will be saying things you won’t like hearing, over the next 18 months. Don’t worry, I am going to get us elected to Government.” That is what he said: “I am going to be saying things you are not going to like hearing, but don’t worry about it, I am just saying these things to get elected.” That is what he is saying very privately.

He is also saying, more publicly, that he will negotiate with any party because being in Government is what he wants to be. He does not care what he has to say or do in order to get here. That is because he has actually worked out something that Don Brash did not work out—that is, that one needs partners under MMP. I have to say that, despite his arrogant predictions of a landslide, he has finally worked out that he needs someone to negotiate with, and National has really trampled over every other party in this Parliament, and now he says he needs friends. He says terrible things about the Greens behind their backs when he thinks nobody is listening, but would offer them a Cabinet position in Government. All I can say to that is “Yeah, right!”.

I think this confirms what I read in the Independent back in April. This is a quote from an article on 18 April 2007: “One Auckland businessman said he attended a small, private dinner last month at which National’s deputy leader, Bill English, was a guest. English, he said, was open about the fact he and Key would do ‘whatever is needed’ to win next year’s election. National’s strategy, if one existed, was not about producing a coherent political vision or sensible policies to differentiate the Opposition from Labour. ‘They simply want to win at any cost,’ the businessman said. ‘Where’s the principle in that?’ ”.

Well, the bottom line is that there is no principle in that. Another businessman quoted in the same article said the National Party disappointed him. “ ‘Where is National’s direction and where is its traction?’ he asks. … This businessman says he cannot believe National is naive enough to try to tell voters it’ll sort out policy once it becomes the government. ‘They won’t get away with that,’ he says. ‘Voters aren’t stupid and National can’t constantly attack the government’s performance with no credible alternative. It takes a long time to put policy into place. We don’t have a hell of a lot of time and the expectations on the streets are enormous. But I don’t see too much articulate argument going on.’ ” I agree with that. I think that absolutely sums up the situation.

Let us look at the Press article. It states that John Key wants to know from the political editor what he thinks of the Prime Minister speaking out about the Muliaga tragedy. He actually wants to gauge what the media thinks before he decides what he will say and do. In this article John Key is asked the question: “Why vote for Mr Key?”. “Aspiration,” he says, “And we’re really nice people as well.” That was the answer he gave to students who are going to be voting for the first time in the next general election.

When he said National members were really nice people as well, he did not mention Tony Ryall running hospitals or Judith Collins running social development and employment. That is because—and I have heard this from many sources now—behind the scenes, he is telling people that if National did become the Government, the last person running hospitals would be Tony Ryall, and the last person in charge of social development and employment would be Judith Collins. He is telling people behind those members’ backs that they are holding those portfolios only in Opposition.

If members look at that article, the strategy that this guy has developed all becomes very clear. The students grilled him about whether National would keep Labour’s interest-free loan scheme. The answer was “probably”. As to whether tax cuts would drive up interest rates, he said: “Not if it’s done properly.”

KATHERINE RICH (National) Link to this

That deep political insight was from Lianne Dalziel, underachiever, and what we have seen from what she has just outlined is a lack of understanding of what politics is about. She criticises John Key for working hard to get elected. Well, hello—what is the aim of every single political party that has ever come to Parliament in New Zealand’s history? It is to get elected and to be in Government. Then she criticises him for talking to journalists. Does not everybody? Does not every member of Parliament talk to journalists? Is that not what we are supposed to do? The whole idea that people can make small talk might be totally anathema to the Government side of the House, but on the Opposition side members are working very hard to get elected to govern.

One of the things we would like Labour members to do, to make sure they do not get elected to Government ever again, is to change their leader. I have an idea: they should appoint Steve Maharey. Steve Maharey, who has been the kiss of death for every single portfolio he has touched, would be the final nail in the coffin for Labour.

I would like to spend my 5 minutes talking about the failures of Steve Maharey, but I have to say there is not enough time to do so in any general debate. Do members remember the Community Employment Group? He was the guy who brought to us bread-tag earrings, hip-hop tours, and the much-vaunted social entrepreneur scheme that lasted all of about a couple of years before it died a slow death. When the Minister took over Television New Zealand, that company was worth in excess of $1 billion. It would be lucky to be worth a third of that now. He is the person who gave birth to the charter, which has brought us more reality shows than we have ever seen on New Zealand television before. He has created a television company that is now a mere shadow of its former self.

Then, of course, he got stuck into tertiary education. He spent $400 million just thinking about tertiary reforms. He took the Tertiary Education Commission from a staff of 30 people to a staff of over 330 people. We do not know what they are doing. He also oversaw the debacle that was the wānanga and the massive growth in community courses, which brought us highlights such as homeopathy for pets, pendulum swinging, colour selection, twilight golf—which was one of my personal favourites—and also the radio singalong courses.

Then, of course, the Labour Government, not content with causing chaos in those other portfolio areas, decided to inflict Steve Maharey upon every single New Zealand child by putting him in charge of the education system. If we look at what he has done with the 20 free hours policy, we see that that policy was very clear in 2005. Every single 3 and 4-year-old child was to have access to 20 hours’ free early childhood education come this July.

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

That was the Paris Hilton of the National Party. When she talks about fizzy drinks, we know which member has had too much Coca-Cola for many years—Nick Smith.

Only Bill English could stoop as low as he did today. Just after we had had the debate about the corrections tragedy, only Bill English, pretending to be some sort of statesperson, could stoop so low as to dance on the grave of someone who had died and play semantic political games.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this

The Minister who has just spoken, Clayton Cosgrove, was described recently by the Listener as too sinister to ever be a leader of the Labour Party. If we were to compare him to anyone, I would have to say Tony Soprano. He is the hit man of the Labour Party, more interested in spilling blood and dark deeds.

Hon MITA RIRINUI (Minister of State) Link to this

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. I listened to Dr Mapp’s speech with absolute interest. It was actually quite a good speech. There was not a lot of accuracy, but it was a good speech. As the saying goes, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. That is the only way I can describe that contribution to the House today. The member described the speech of the previous speaker, the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, as “quite sinister”. Well, I would describe his as quite cynical. However, that is the nature of the debate we have had in the House this afternoon.

I listened to the debate surrounding Liam Ashley’s tragic death, and I acknowledge the Ombudsmen’s report and the rigorous debate that followed in the House this afternoon. A lot of the issues have been debated quite well and quite appropriately, but I also want to join the leader of the United Future party in acknowledging the tragedy of Liam Ashley’s death, and, particularly, the impact it has had on his family. Their subsequent response to the Ombudsmen’s report demonstrates their humility. They could have taken a much stronger position, but they decided to maintain their dignity and to remain considerably silent, given the circumstances. That is something this House needs to acknowledge this afternoon. On many occasions it happens that we get so wound up in a debate that we forget the people who have been affected by the tragedy. I put it on record this afternoon that I do acknowledge the tragic circumstances surrounding Liam Ashley’s death.

There has also been a lot of debate around the polls and about John Key’s leadership. I have been in this House since 1999, and he is the fourth leader of the National Party since then. In every case, the new leader has gone up in the polls but has also fallen in the polls not too long afterwards. It is interesting, when one reads the papers, to see the similarities, in terms of popularity, that John Key has with Don Brash. Don Brash, who was the third leader of the National Party in my time, was gone by lunchtime. But is it not also interesting to remember that although Don Brash is gone, the Ōrewa I and Ōrewa II speeches are still with us? If we think that the National Party has softened its approach in terms of extremism, particularly on race relations matters—or the lack of race relations—then we need to think again.

Later on in this House we will continue the interrupted debate on Tony Ryall’s continued attempts to erase Māori and Pacific representation from the landscape of this country’s political environment. He is a person who has tried to do that on many occasions and who has made many public speeches about his views on Māori representation, particularly at local government level, and at central government level. He is the same person who has repeatedly attacked Māori attempts to improve the health statistics of their own communities. In fact, he has also attacked attempts by mainstream organisations to achieve the same. To add insult to injury, that person will also go out there and tell people that he is the friend of the Māori Party. I am sure the Māori Party does not agree with that. Why would it? But like the Hon Lianne Dalziel stated earlier on, it is about power at all costs. That is what it is all about for some parties.

Those members made it clear that they do not go to funerals, no matter whose funeral it is. They say that if the Prime Minister of this country decides that she wants to make contact and join in the tragic parting, and share her sympathies with constituents out there in the community, at the very bottom of the community, then that is a bad thing to do. Those members should wake up and get a life. Politics is not like that any more. If a Government wants to be caring and sharing, then it has to take notice of what is happening out in those communities, particularly in light of Liam Ashley’s case and the circumstances surrounding the tragedy for the Pacific Island family in Auckland. You, Mr Assistant Speaker, would probably be more in tune with those circumstances than I would be.

When Opposition members in this House stand up and criticise the Prime Minister’s attempts to share in tragic circumstances and to provide support to those families, what sort of description would we give to an Opposition party that carries on in such a way? I would give it this description—Don Brash is still here. The views that he promoted at Ōrewa in 2004, and again in 2005, are still here.

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

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. You know, the general debate must be the worst hour of the week in the House—an hour where people are slagged off for 5 minutes at a time. There is no policy debate, and no one smiles. It is all based on the politics of nothing. There is a Nat King Cole song that goes: “Smile, what’s the use of crying? You’ll find that life is still worthwhile if you just smile”—and so it would seem. All the psychological studies tell us that doors open to people who smile, people listen to people who smile, and employers look favourably at job applicants who smile.

So today I want to talk about a serious primary health issue, and I have to say how disappointed I was when the Minister of Health today said that he did not believe that oral health issues were as significant as other primary health issues. Yet we in the Māori electorates know the significance that poor oral health plays, and its impact on the overall well-being in our communities. It affects something as simple as trying to get a job—if someone smiles, people can see the damage to that person’s teeth at that time.

Two days ago in my electorate I spent time with dental health providers who told me about being constantly blocked in their ambition to provide quality dentistry to low socio-economic and vulnerable communities—and it is not the first time that a dental health provider has raised these matters with me. They showed me the policy spin—the Minister’s pledge to address “Māori, Pacific, rural, and low socio-economic populations that are all showing progressively poorer oral health”—and they shared with me their ideas around providing services that address the very real barriers of cost, of access, and of fear. But, despite their innovation, and despite their commitment, they keep getting turned away.

The district health boards say there is no money for low-income adults, and Work and Income’s subsidies are limited to the relief of pain and infection—preventive oral health is not a priority—and essential dental contracts for community cardholders who have infection and pain are being denied. They shared with me their belief that their services can reduce the pervasive inequalities, as most dental disease is preventable. They talked, too, of the all-important need to address the whole person and to make the connections between one area of health and another.

Oral health is as important as, and must be considered equal to, all other primary health matters that are fully funded by the Government. Oral health is a core health service issue. We know that it is linked to other chronic health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, malignant melanomas may appear orally, ulcers can indicate deficiencies in vitamins B and C, and infections may present first in the mouth. The World Health Organization has defined oral health to the extent that “an individual can eat, speak, and socialise without discomfort, pain, or embarrassment for a lifetime, and which contributes to general well-being.” It seems such a simple wish, a humble aspiration, to eat, speak, and smile. We have providers out there who want to meet those humble aspirations, and we know it can be done. In Rotorua, for instance, a mobile dental clinic operates under the Lakes District Health Board, and there is another two-chair mobile dental clinic that the Tipu Ora Trust will be shortly rolling out to service low-income families in schools. In Whakatāne there are six mobile dental clinics, which cover Tauranga, Whakatāne, Te Kaha, Murupara, through to Ruatāhuna. Yet, in Te Tai Hauauru, which has providers out there ready and willing, with mobile clinics, they are told it is not a key priority.

The Māori Party believes we can and we must return to a time when Māori again can have the finest teeth of any existing race, a time when the closing of gaps takes on another meaning—reducing regional difference, addressing whānau ora, and helping people to smile again. This is a Government policy that would go down well in Māori communities right throughout the country. I urge those Māori members on the other side of the House—who are talking and taking no notice of me—to introduce this into their communities. It might help them to do well at the next election. Kia ora.

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

The bit the Government has simply not got in this debate is that the reason it is on the ropes is that in almost every area of Government policy we see major failures. Over the period of the adjournment, in corrections, our economy, the performance of our State-owned enterprises, and climate-change education—in one area after another—we have Kiwi dreams being killed off because of failed policy from the Government. My colleague Simon Power has done an extraordinary job of identifying the failures in the Department of Corrections. The reason the National Opposition is angry, and will continue to pursue the Government, is that there is absolutely no confidence that those problems will be fixed.

We have seen the tragedy of Karl Kuchenbecker and we have seen the failure in relation to the death of Liam Ashley. Yet still we get excuses after excuses from this Government. We saw over the adjournment the failure of Government State-owned enterprises. We had Solid Energy New Zealand, a Government State-owned enterprise, spying on ordinary New Zealanders. We saw the awful tragedy of another State-owned enterprise, Mighty River Power, with totally inappropriate systems for cutting off the power of New Zealanders, and we saw another State-owned enterprise, Landcorp, being prosecuted and found guilty of breaches of basic environmental standards.

Then we saw what I thought was really a summary of one aspect of this Government’s failure. We saw tax freedom day. This is the day on which New Zealanders could finally start working for themselves. For the first time in New Zealand history, tax freedom day made it into the month of June—6 June was the day this year when, finally, New Zealanders were able to work for themselves. That was 7 days worse than a year ago, 27 days worse than when Labour came to Government, 4 days worse than the United Kingdom, and 30 days worse than it is in Australia. But what this Government does not understand is that hard-working New Zealanders want to keep the efforts of their own work, and they do not want to see tax freedom day continuously getting later.

We also saw, over the adjournment, interest rates rise to the highest level of any country in the OECD. Why that matters is that ordinary New Zealanders are out there, struggling with the dream of owning their own home, but under this Government that dream is getting so much worse.

Let me take an area that I am passionate about, which is climate change. We have heard so much rhetoric from the Prime Minister in talking about carbon neutrality. Over the adjournment we had the most recent forestry data. It showed that in the last year we have lost 14,000 hectares of forest. That is over 2 million trees. It is not surprising that we did not have a single Minister this year doing a photo opportunity on Arbour Day, because it was a day of shame. What is going on out there in New Zealand is a chainsaw massacre—7 million trees lost in just 3 years. Why does that matter? Those 7 million trees represent 25 million tonnes of carbon. How can the Prime Minister have the audacity to talk about carbon neutrality when we have that sort of chainsaw massacre going on in New Zealand?

I asked a simple, straight question of the Minister: will he let New Zealanders who plant trees this year get the credits from those so we might change those appalling trends? We heard all sorts of weasel words, such as: “Well, if they’re permanent forests they might.” But the Government is continuing to deny credits for people who plant commercial forests this year. That means we have vacant land. It is bad for forestry and it is bad for the environment, and that is why we are seeing this Government on the ropes.

The Government just does not get it. We do not want more spin. We do not want more distractions. New Zealanders just want good, solid policy. They want to be able to keep their money, which they work so hard for. They want to see tax freedom day coming earlier in the year, not continuously later. They do not want the highest interest rates in the world; they want real progress on those issues that are so important to New Zealanders.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour) Link to this

I was a young worker in my first job when the National Government scrapped Norman Kirk’s superannuation scheme in 1975. I remember that, and so do thousands of other New Zealand workers, many of whom still tell me at public meetings about the betrayal they felt from that National Government. I remember that, and I remember—as do thousands of other New Zealand workers—the lying National Government’s dancing Cossacks campaign. It was the lowest point reached in New Zealand political campaigning, only to be matched by the hollow men in 2005.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

New Zealand is privileged to have the Dalai Lama visiting our shores next week. He is currently in Australia. It was a little disturbing to me when I asked the Prime Minister a question yesterday about whether she would be meeting the Dalai Lama to be told by the Acting Prime Minister that the matter was still under consideration. I was concerned that this shows disrespect to such an important world leader—a leader in the Buddhist community worldwide and a Nobel Prize winner for his contributions to peace in trying to help solve the situation of the Tibetan people under Chinese rule and enable them to have full rights within a truly autonomous Tibet. I was disturbed, because this visit has been long in the making.

The Prime Minister’s office has known about this visit from the Dalai Lama for a couple of years, and it is now just a few days away from his arrival. Obviously, putting two and two together, one would think there has been considerable pressure from the Chinese Government, which was certainly the case in Australia. The pressure there initially convinced the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, and also the leader of the Australian Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, not to meet the Dalai Lama. But after a huge public outcry—of which the Australian Greens party was a part, particularly in the form of Senator Bob Brown—the Prime Minister John Howard suddenly found a little space in his diary, and the leader of the Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, also seems to have found space in his diary, to meet the Dalai Lama. That is very good, although, as an indication of the pressure from the Chinese Government, a spokesperson came out and expressed its “strong dissatisfaction and staunch opposition to the Australian side for allowing the Dalai Lama to (come to) Australia to engage in splittist activities,”—“splittist activities”, despite the fact that the Dalai Lama accepts that Tibet will not be completely independent, but will be, in his view, fully autonomous within China. Obviously, the Chinese officials are taking an interest here, too. The Green Party was visited and asked whether we would be seeing the Dalai Lama. Of course we are, and we will be part of a reception hosted by the Hon Nick Smith on behalf of the Parliamentary Lobby Group for Tibet next Tuesday afternoon at 3.30 p.m. I hope there is a good turn-out of MPs at that event.

I think it is important that the Prime Minister meets the Dalai Lama, because if she does not it could be taken as the beginning of a slippery slope. All sorts of interpretations could be put on the situation, such as that it is because of the economic power of China. It could be interpreted that somehow in the background is the issue of the free-trade agreement and that we do not want to upset the Chinese too much in terms of pursuing that.

I still have hopes that the Prime Minister will meet the Dalai Lama. Yesterday in the House in question time, the Acting Prime Minister, Michael Cullen, told me he thought the Dalai Lama said he was coming here as a religious leader not a political leader. I think that comment was used a year or two back, which was the last time a Government leader met the Dalai Lama—that they were meeting, but not in the Dalai Lama’s capacity as a political leader. It is true that the Dalai Lama does not have a formal political title, but he does represent the political aspirations of the Tibetan people to self-determination within China. When one reads his speeches, it is clear they are very much political speeches promoting a peaceful Middle Way. In that respect he is seen, politically, as not only a religious leader internationally but a leading political figure.

Another thing I will be doing is putting a notice of motion on the Order Paper so that the Parliament can recognise the visit of the Dalai Lama and welcome his visit here, as other Parliaments have done.