Collins Judith: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8986. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Yesterday Patrick Gower from TV3 said that the Prime Minister “owned” Mr Shearer yesterday. Well today not only did we see him being owned but also we saw Mr Grant Robertson being owned—owned over and over again. Mr Robertson’s best theory now is that Mr Key’s mother knew Mr Fletcher’s mother. Well golly gosh I did not know that was against the law yet in New Zealand. But it is a fantastic sort of indication of what they will do. Poor old Mr Robertson! If you want to know what Mr Robertson is really trying to do we just have a look at Eddie on The Standard. It is a left-wing blog site that  
Trans Tasman  
talked about today and what it tells us is what is really going on in the Labour Party and why it is that Mr Shearer is being set up day in day out to ask the Prime Minister about whether or not he stands by his statements. Why is it that he does not want to talk about his statements? Because he has got bank statements— 
Andrew Little 
: Why doesn’t the member talk about justice? Because she’s running it down. She’s got nothing to say and she’s running it down. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: —and Mr Little is an angry little man— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! [ 
Interruption 
] Order! Would the member Andrew Little lower the tone of his interjection so that at least I can hear the member. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: Take a chill pill. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: Mr Little really should take the chill pill should he not Dr Coleman? Having said that we can see why Mr Little is angry. Of the three factions in Labour there is the right which apparently is led by Mr Shearer or Mr Goff and the left which is led by David Cunliffe and we have got the careerist left which Mr Robertson leads. But where is Mr Little on the list? Mr Little is last on the left faction—last on the left faction. Why would that be? Because Eddie of course is a woman not a man working at the Amalgamated Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union which of course is Mr Little’s union. So Mr Little is actually behind the factions. Mr Little is getting louder and louder and angrier and angrier and he might have to take that little—calm down have a nice bit of peppermint tea and he might be all right. 
So let us talk about what the country really cares about. It actually cares about us the Government doing work with the people of New Zealand with the marvellous Public Service which is working so well with the National-led Government and our coalition colleagues. Have a look at law and order. Under Labour what happened? Well I do not know. Four more prisons were built crime was up—what else did we have—and the prison population was up from 5000 to 8000 in nearly 9 years. What is happening under National? Four years of a National-led Government and crime is down—absolutely right down— 
Dr David Clark 
: 30000 jobs gone. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: —and Mr Clark over there from somewhere in Dunedin says that the jobs are down. Yes they are in the prison service and the reason Mr Clark is that crime is down. Is that not a good thing? Anyway what we are also seeing is that crime is down people are safer prisoners are being rehabilitated great work is going on in the Department of Corrections great work is going on in the police and great work is going on in education and in getting people to actually learn to read and write not like Labour. Labour’s response to crime was always: “Let’s talk really tough about it and then do nothing. Lock them up. Don’t rehabilitate them.” The other policy we got from Labour—the only one we got on law and order in the last 4 years—was Charles Chauvel’s “Let’s get rid of three strikes.” That is actually the only policy on law and order that the Labour Party has not yet reneged on. So let us just see what happens. The other day we saw Mr Shearer saying: “No we’re not going to now have no GST on fruit and vegetables. We’ve now reneged on Mr Cunliffe’s policy.” Let us see what he does on Mr Chauvel’s policy. 
But at the end of the day all people want for New Zealand is that we work for them. The Labour Party is working for itself with factions going around factionalising. My dear old friend Shane Jones—I think he is part of Mr Shearer’s faction at the moment. It could change. It depends on how the votes are. Mr Shearer is doing a great job. I was thinking of actually saying to Mr Shearer that I could start up a “Citizens for Shearer” campaign. It worked really well in 1975 for Mr Rowling. I am thinking of starting it. I will get 100 worthies all of whom obviously are friends of the Labour Party and we will go and help Mr Shearer because we want him to stay. I am his biggest supporter. I think he is a great man. He has no memory of the US$100000—it is US$175000 is it not as I recall now—in that New York bank account. That is the rumour I have heard and why not? It sounds like a good rumour to me. But actually this is the poor man who day in day out is asking the Prime Minister about statements—can he remember them? This is the man who cannot even remember US$175000 in a bank account. 
But of course he could always just show us the money—show us the money. Show us the money Mr Shearer. Why do you not just show us the money? And we will all see how it is that he can forget that. But this is the man whom the Labour Party at the moment says it wants to lead the country. Well we know what that means. It means Russel Norman as Minister of Finance or possibly Russel Norman as deputy leader even of the country. And what will that mean? Utter oblivion for this country.