Cullen Michael: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Cullen Michael: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3355] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 Coming to the House this afternoon and leading the debate for the Government on the second day feels a bit like turning up for a funeral with a wreath and finding it was the day before. Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition actually buried himself in the Chamber in the first set-piece debate of the year by telling the Government that we were going to be a 3-term Government. I know he is a young leader but to bet on outlasting the rivals at this early stage of the second term seemed to me to be taking an enormously large chance on one’s future. I think it is actually clear that Mr English will soon be the youngest ex-leader of a major party in New Zealand’s political history and the only doubt about that statement is whether the National Party will still be a major party when he is the ex-leader of it. National is a party that to become a major party and a Government party again has to recapture the centre of New Zealand’s politics yet it has decided to move sharply to the right as its brilliant Christmas thinking contribution about how to recapture the centre of New Zealand politics.  
Mr English does not believe in that; he describes National as a mainstream party. But he fails to articulate a clear position on any issue of major public significance. What is National’s position on Iraq? We know ACT’s position. ACT’s position is that we New Zealanders should be the policemen of the world and if the Americans join us that is our good luck. That is the ACT position on Iraq. The Green Party’s position is that it does not matter what Saddam Hussein does because a group conference therapy session is the appropriate treatment for him. The National Party’s position is that it would like to find something different from the Government’s position but it knows that the Government’s position is that of the majority of the people and therefore it is not quite sure what it is supposed to say on Iraq and Mr Brownlee has been told not to write an article about it.  
As Dame Thea Muldoon so nicely put the National Party’s leadership problems: “It’s not as though there is anyone else is there?” She was talking about Bill English. Then cruellest of all she said: “Eventually someone good will come along.” This is why the young ones are looking very hopeful in the National Party at the present time. Who will the next leader be? Will it be Gerry Brownlee? Before Christmas Gerry Brownlee thought he had the numbers. He got up to the big toe on his right foot and then decided that he had the numbers in the National Party caucus. He made the profound mistake over Christmas for a National Party person of thinking—and thinking before he wrote something which no National Party person should ever do. Even though what he wrote was exactly what Bill English had said it got him into trouble with his colleagues because nobody wanted his or her colleagues to agree with Mr English. So Gerry Brownlee has been punished simply for agreeing with National’s leader which is a whole new approach in party politics in New Zealand.  
Who will be National’s leader? Will it be Dr Brash who plans to lead a new sort of eponymous National Party of Brash Power and Rich? He believes so. He is going around asking journalists for their advice about how to become the leader of the National Party and they are drawing a picture of a dagger on a piece of paper for him. He keeps asking what it is and they keep saying it is something one can buy at the post office. But is it credible that Dr Brash could be the leader of the National Party? An appropriate personal advertisement for Dr Brash in this position would be: “Elderly gent seeks post office view job.”  
It is clear that Dr Brash is totally out of touch with the reality of the world in which most people live. We heard that extraordinary speech in which he really did say that the unemployed should queue up at post offices and then be offered a job. Problem No. 1 is that there are not any post offices any more. If someone turned up at Books and More and asked for a job the staff would wonder what that person was doing. They are there to sell books and things not to actually give people jobs. Then Dr Brash said that local government could be the employer of last resort. I bet every mayor in the country loved that idea! They are going to pick up 98000 unemployed people and find them something to do giving them cash at the end of the day! Indeed a further brilliant suggestion was that people could queue up at a south Auckland post office get a job in Queenstown that day be paid in cash and be back in south Auckland the following morning to queue up again for another short-term temporary job.  
Dr Brash’s final contribution to how we were to make New Zealand grow faster in the long term apart from saying that Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson were wonderful—which even if we try saying it and do not believe it does not do actually do anything for the growth practices in New Zealand—was to say that we should teach phonics in schools. I have always loved the notion of phonics because anybody who says that a word that starts with “ph” is pronounced “f” has a bit of a problem teaching phonics in the first place. My wife when she heard that said: “ker ra a p!” That was her response to the notion that teaching phonics is the ultimate answer to New Zealand’s future growth problems. Dr Brash believes that we teach by the “look and say” method in New Zealand still. We did not do that even 30 or 40 years ago—it was a caricature. But he thinks that that is the way reading is taught in schools today. My wife teaches in a decile 1 primary school. She will be happy to have Dr Brash come in and try to teach phonics by itself for a while and to see how far he gets. I suggest that he start off with a good phrase from a tourism brochure: “Four hour tour.” Now let him try to teach that one by phonics and explain it to 6-year-old children very simply indeed.  
Dr Brash is determined to leave the 20th century behind and to reverse at full speed into the 19th century his natural home. As one commentator says it is as though the mistakes and excesses of the past 20 years have passed him by unseen.  
The National Party vehemently claims that its agenda on race is not about Maori-bashing but it looks surprisingly like that to many of us in this country. National is trying to distort a simple fact. The entire argument that the National Party is putting forward on the treaty is an illusion—a historical and intellectual conjuring trick which anybody can see through in the simplest form. It relies entirely on one simple thing: reading the English language version of the treaty and ignoring totally the Maori language version. If one does that one can arrive at some simple conclusions but unfortunately they have no historical or legal validity. Given that Dr Mapp is so opposed to the Supreme Court Bill I invite him to read the Privy Council’s judgment on precisely that matter. As he so slavishly believes in the intellectual excellence of English judges he might as well go and read what they have said. They seem to know a damned sight more about the treaty than the front bench of the National Party does in that particular respect.  
As for the rest of the parties in the House I have dealt with ACT. New Zealand First wants to seek votes on the outer fringes of Courtenay Place and in the stranger regions of talkback radio. The Greens took my breath away. I did not think they would finally manage to do that but the Greens moved a motion of no confidence in the Government because we insist on living in the 21st century. I am a historian and I am reading a very long history of Europe at the moment. I am still trying to find the century that is appropriate for the Greens to live in if it is not the 21st century. They have no confidence in us because we believe in economic growth in trade in working through the United Nations and in all sorts of other strange things that I thought most people who occasionally ventured out into the real world believed in. The Greens are the other side of the Don Brash coin in many respects at the present time. They will have very little influence from here on in the life of this Government.  
This Government is proud of its achievements and its programme. We have the strongest fiscal position of any developed country in the world at the present time and we continue to strengthen that position from month to month. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the developed world and the lowest rate in this country for 15 years. We have one of the highest economic growth rates in the developed world. It will be over 4 percent on an annual basis by the end of March this year. All that the National Party can do is to turn not so much green as deep blue with envy and to wonder how it can find anything to criticise within those kinds of achievements. At the same time we are delivering real social gains to our people in the areas of education and health. We are producing workable programmes of sustainable development. We are working on issues of how we may better deal with matters of crime. We are working in a way that this country is supporting. I ask members to read the opinion polls; the Labour Party is back up to around 50 percent in the opinion polls. Almost every other party including New Zealand First has dropped in numbers since the election. At the last election Mr Peters held up three fingers to the public of New Zealand and at the next election they will take one off.