Cullen Michael: Address in Reply 
Cullen Michael: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:403] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 Madam Assistant Speaker I begin by congratulating yourself and your fellow Assistant Speaker Madam Speaker Margaret Wilson and Clem Simich Deputy Speaker of the House. The House will be well served I am sure by these officers. 
I congratulate all those who gave their maiden speeches. I am not quite so convinced about this sort of Latinate habit of everyone kissing each other after every maiden speech these days—it is a relatively recent convention within this House. There was a degree of an “h” word in there that one is not allowed to use within this Parliament. For many people it is a terrifying thing on occasion to give their maiden speeches. Many of us—I know; I remember well—were strung up with tension at the point of giving our maiden speeches. 
I was particularly pleased to see a number of the new National MPs subtly distancing themselves from their party’s pre-election policy on matters Maori in a way that I think would have been quite difficult for their leader. I just want to say a couple of things to a couple of the maiden speakers from National. Firstly I know that Mr Groser has been overseas for a long time but I tell him that benefit numbers have gone down under this Government not up. It was under a National Government that benefit numbers went up. If he had been in the country since 1999 he would know that the numbers have been going down under this Government. I say to Mr Finlayson: “Get over it Chris!”. I know that I did not make you a QC but you should not have written that abusive letter to the Solicitor-General because he had nothing to do with the decision and deserved better than that display of bad judgment and bad manners on your part. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The member has been here for some time and he knows that it is out of order to address any MP as “you”. When a member uses the word “you” he or she can refer only to the Speaker. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I apologise for using the member’s Christian name. I say: “Get over it Mr Finlayson!”. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Dr Cullen has deliberately misled the House by saying that I wrote an abusive letter to the Solicitor-General and I think he should be called on to withdraw and apologise for that remark. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I will just rule on the point of order. A member cannot accuse another member of deliberately misleading the House. That is not a point of order. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Dr Cullen tried to mislead the House. As to the form in which I raised that point it is for you Madam Assistant Speaker to determine but I take offence at what the Minister has said. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I need to rule on the point of order. It is a debating point. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker I refer you to Standing Order 116. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I remind the member that he needs to make it clear that he has taken offence. That is different. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: That is what I said. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: All right. I ask the member to withdraw. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I apologise. I say to Mr Finlayson that he should not have written a letter to the Solicitor-General. It was not becoming to Mr Finlayson or to his profession and it was certainly not becoming to Mr Terence Arnold who deserves a great deal better in that respect. I was solely responsible for that decision not Mr Arnold. 
Finally I say to Dr Sharples that in some ways I found his speech quite disturbing and quite worrying from a New Zealand perspective. What he said was in large part right—that in part we have largely ignored our Maori heritage and Maori history within this country and that we need to place that much more securely in the front of our knowledge about ourselves and our past. But he himself in saying that seemed to deny his European heritage. I think it is important for us to say that if we come from a mixed heritage we honour all of our heritage not just part of it otherwise it starts to exclude many of us in this House from being New Zealanders and being part of the heritage of this country. That kind of language is quite indicative of an attitude that I believe that the Maori Party has to look at very carefully in terms of moving forward race relations within this country. 
Tariana Turia 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I resent Dr Michael Cullen implying that the Maori Party intends to create division in race relations in this country. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I will rule on the point of order. That is a debating point. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Now we come to the National Party. It is facing for the first time since it became Government in 1949 the prospect of at least 9 long years in Opposition and it cannot cope with it. The remnants of the brat pack will move from being young hopefuls to bitter elderly middle-aged men by the time they have another chance to get into Government. Are they not already showing that day after day with their behaviour in the House? They are bitter men moving forward knowing that young and not-so-young hopefuls are coming behind them and looking to push them out by the time we reach the next general election. 
It was of course a close-run election. But in the end in my view the outcome can be regarded as an ethical victory for Labour because what we defeated was the Opposition’s appeal to all the basest instincts in human character. No base instinct was left unturned by National in its attempt to win that particular election. 
National’s election campaign was backed by huge money—not just huge money from the business sector but also huge money from a small religious sect that says it does not even participate in politics. Dr Brash’s definition of the mainstream somehow includes a small enclosed Protestant sect that does not vote and that excludes over half the population by definition. That I think is utterly disgraceful. In relation to a man who has a proud heritage to call upon and who is descended from one of the great liberal tolerant ecumenicist leaders of Christianity within this country it was a particularly sick sight to see the way in which the National Party was bought and paid for by a small religious sect. 
It was a matter of organisation as well. In our region push-polling was organised out of an Exclusive Brethren school. When people insisted that they were going to vote Labour—when they repeatedly said: “No I’m voting Labour.”—often a teenaged voice on the other end of the phone said: “Of course you know they’re going to legalise incest don’t you?” and remarks of the sort. That was the kind of dirty politics that National tried to pretend it knew nothing about at all. They were “deep-donkey-do” in with that kind of approach to the election campaign and Dr Brash himself had to admit that he knew about those pamphlets and that he knew about the campaign that was going to be waged. Is it not funny that the day the pamphlets came out and everything hit the fan activity started to cease in a building near the electorate office of Mr Brownlee—who knew nothing? That building had been the site for a lot of activity by the National Party. 
So we had a campaign based around issues of homophobia based around greed and based around a word that we are not allowed to use in this House but that is about denigrating people of different ethnic origins within this country and saying that they are not part of the mainstream. When Dr Brash was finally challenged to say what the mainstream was he said: “Er it is those people who support the National Party.” So nearly 60 percent of the population immediately were not mainstream New Zealanders. Only those who supported the National Party—which presumably in the 2002 election was 21 percent of the population—were mainstream New Zealanders. So over 60 percent of New Zealanders were not mainstream but a few thousand members of the exclusive sect were mainstream. How can the National Party look itself in the face over those kinds of claims? How can it build linkages to other groups in society? And that has gone on since the election. 
Goodness me just yesterday afternoon National yet again decided to alienate every minor party in Parliament by refusing leave for people to sit on select committees as members without the right to vote. What was the purpose of that exercise except pique on Gerry Brownlee’s part because he hated the fact that one has to allow minor parties to speak on first second and third reading debates? Mr Brownlee should get used to it. It is called MMP and I am afraid the two big elephants do not get to fight by themselves any longer; we have to make some room for other people to come in and participate within the process. That was another extraordinary indication of what the National Party is about these days. 
What happened after the election is that everything that was said before the election went by the board. National said: “Maori seats? You can have those again now. We’ll repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act to let you have private title to the foreshore and seabed—no price is too high to pay.” But of course what National has done since is to say: “How terrible of Mr Peters to do a deal.” Well National should explain to me why about 2 months before the election Mr Key at a meeting in Wellington was boasting that National had already done a deal with Mr Winston Peters for him to become the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mr Key was boasting about that at a function weeks before the election. I wonder how National members can explain that. Can they tell us the following: if National had had the chance to form the Government would it have offered Mr Peters the job of Minister of Foreign Affairs? 
Hon Members 
: No! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Really? But then this is the party that would never do anything except get rid of the Maori seats—until it thought there were four votes in the Maori Party that might help them get into Government. The National Party is as firm as a bit of jelly sitting on the Equator when it comes to political principles and getting into office. That is the reality. 
Finally since then we have had the farce of the National Party spokespeople appointments. You see they had so many candidates for foreign affairs such as Mr Hayes—who now wishes to rid himself of foreign entanglements so I understand particularly Japanese ones—and Mr Groser who has some claim to knowledge in these matters. And there was Locky Smith. With all those people who could they compromise on? “Murray McCully—he knows nothing about foreign affairs. Let’s make him the spokesperson.” I have a lesson for Mr McCully: his first job is not to do the numbers on overthrowing foreign leaders. That is not the job of the Opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs. 
Then they had to find a job for Mr Mapp and he could not be liaised on with all sorts of different people because he has various problems there. So his job is to stamp out political correctness. I ask what he can denounce so far in all these weeks—what has he stamped out?