Smith Nick: General Debate 
Smith Nick: General Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:2924] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 What Phil Goff has in common with Winston Peters is that for political ends he will compromise New Zealand’s best interests. We saw that with Phil Goff when he abused Foreign Affairs confidences and used them as a Security Intelligence Service to spy on members of the Opposition and we saw it with Winston Peters when on the very day that there was a warming in the relationship between New Zealand and the United States he jumped into the exercise of anti-American jingoism to get a few cheap political points. 
The real reason why Winston Peters and Phil Goff do that and are doing it today is that they are so embarrassed about the pre-run for the Government’s Budget. We remember the “mother of all Budgets”. We remember the “chewing gum Budget” but this year’s Budget will go down as the “collander Budget” because it leaks like a sieve. Never in the history of New Zealand have we seen such a leak from a Budget. This is a $1.8 billion leak for which this Government will do anything to get if off the front pages. And to make it even more embarrassing all the signals are that the leak came from none other than David Cunliffe’s own office. 
But that is not the only leak we have seen in the last week. We have the “leaky homes leak”—and I am not talking about the Beehive. This Government will provide discounted loans for leaky-home owners. After we revealed this the Government said that yes it was planning a pre-Budget announcement. Well that would make a good Tui’s “Yeah right!” ad. When the Prime Minister was asked whether there will be a loan scheme for leaky-home owners did she deny it? No. She said: “You will have to wait.” I say that that leak is significant because every single day leaky homes are being bought and sold. They are being sold at very low prices because of the huge difficulty of the problem and there were speculators out there over the weekend buying them up because of the Government’s mismanagement of secret Budget information. 
What is behind that leaky-home issue is that in the middle of the election campaign 3 years after doing nothing about leaky homes the Government announced a review. The Government said the review would be completed by October and 6 months later we still do not know the result of that. That is why there is such bad feeling about this Government on that leaky-home issue. 
Where did the leak on the leaky homes come from? 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Where? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: It came from Clayton Cosgrove. He has been bragging to his mates. He has been saying he is the big mover and shaker within the Government and that he has this multimillion dollar package for the leaky-home owners and he has been saying it to everybody. We have two super ambitious Ministers in David Cunliffe and Clayton Cosgrove who will do anything to crawl over the dead bodies that lie on the front-row and second-row benches of this Government. They will do anything to replace the worn-out tired and discredited Ministers of the Government front bench. Members will remember that it was Clayton Cosgrove who organised the anti-Clark protests outside his own parliamentary colleagues’ homes in Christchurch back in the 1990s. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Was it really? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Yes it was. Clayton Cosgrove organised personal protests outside Lianne Dalziel’s home and outside the office of Ruth Dyson such is the blatant cynical ambition of Clayton Cosgrove. Clayton Cosgrove bears the scars of the leaks that Helen Clark and her team did on Mike Moore and this Budget is about “leak revenge time”. We are seeing it from Clayton Cosgrove and we are seeing it from the Minister of Communications because they have their ambitions ahead of this Government. I want this Minister to explain this “collander Budget”.