1. Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) Link to this
to the Prime Minister
Does he have confidence in all his Ministers?
Hon JOHN KEYDoes the Prime Minister agree with the New Zealand Herald and others that Gerry Brownlee’s procedural blunders in the House last Thursday were “a major embarrassment to the Government, which made it look like it didn’t know what it was doing”; and when is he going to take decisive action against the Ministers that he promised he would act against if they did not perform?
No, I do not agree with the New Zealand Herald, but I can confirm that by the end of this week, at the very latest, all stages of the Electoral Amendment Bill will have been passed. What I do find embarrassing is the way that the first action of the member, when he became the Leader of the Opposition, was to grovel to the New Zealand public to ask for forgiveness for the fact that the Labour Government had passed the Electoral Finance Act in the first place.
When will the Prime Minister apply the Government’s apparent commitment to “three strikes and you’re out” to Gerry Brownlee, who has now made significant blunders on three occasions in just three sitting weeks; or does he expect Labour to go on rescuing him from the consequences of his own incompetence?
It is good to see that the Leader of the Opposition is so deeply focused on the Standing Orders that he does not seem to care about the economy.
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. A Minister, particularly the Prime Minister, is required to address a question, and I do not believe he did so—I think he deliberately avoided it.
Mr SPEAKERI think experienced members know that if they ask political questions like that one, they are likely to get political answers.
How does the Prime Minister expect the country to have confidence in him, when he promised sincerely that the Government would lead by example on wage restraint, but as the Minister responsible for Ministerial Services he has agreed to hefty pay rises for the Beehive political staff, with more than a trebling of the number earning more than $150,000 per year, a trebling of the number earning more than $120,000 per year, and an increase in the average salary by $13,000 a year, while at the same time the Prime Minister generously gave people on the minimum wage a net increase of $3.78 per week?
It is true that we have paid higher salaries in Ministerial Services. It is also true that we have hired a lot fewer staff than Labour did. I might add that it is interesting to see how many extra communications staff members were added between April and October 2008 by the Labour Government—and I wonder why that was.
In respect of the Prime Minister’s answer, can he guarantee, in terms of the number of Beehive political staff, that the figures he quotes represent the total complement of political staff he intends to employ, and that the numbers include contracted staff and political staff who are privately paid for or paid by the Parliamentary Service?
To the best of my knowledge the staff numbers that were released reflect the staff that the Government has. We have fewer staff in our communications department, because we are quite happy to operate with fewer people who are of a higher quality.
How can the Prime Minister justify keeping his promise that “We will be looking at wage moderation across the state sector at all angles.”, and that those in the Government sector should have job security and therefore “should take that on board”, when he triples the number of people in his own department—political hacks—being paid more than $150,000 a year?