Hipkins Chris: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: General Debate[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11867. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):When Mr Banks gets back to his office he can reflect on where he went wrong with that speech. He went wrong right at the point that he decided to introduce Parliament to the women on the National side of the House. He got two out of three and he could not remember the name of the third one. At that point it went wrong for Mr Banks. We know that his memory is not particularly good.John Banks could not remember being flown in Kim Dotcom’s personal helicopter to his mansion where he met the giraffe and got given $50000. The same man put on a fireworks display for Auckland but John Banks could not remember. Kim Dotcom is the guy who put on the biggest fireworks display Auckland has ever seen. John Banks sent him a note to say thank you and then claimed he could not remember. And hecould not remember Melissa Lee’s name when he was speaking. That is the point at which his speech all started to go very very wrong.If I were John Banks I would not be talking about secret bank accounts or Skycity. Bear in mind that John Banks is the man who pretended not to know that Skycity gave a massive contribution to his campaign. He said he did not know about it even though they personally handed him the cheque. Well I do not know about you but if someone gives me a cheque for $15000 I generally tend to remember that. That is not the sort of thing I would forget.Who else have we had from National today? Well we have had the great Mount Albert maestro Jonathan Coleman. Jonathan Coleman—Grant Robertson: He wishes he could forget things.CHRIS HIPKINS: He wishes he could forget things. He wishes he could forget the Mt Albert by-election. Jonathan Coleman decided to give us a lecture on corporate box etiquette. When Jonathan Young was the Opposition spokesperson on health he took money from the tobacco industry and decided to blow smoke in their faces in their own corporate box. Who else did we have? Well we had Judith Collins. “Cruella” herself decided to make a contribution. I want to know why Judith Collins had to speak after Steven Joyce. Has the deal already been done? Has the succession planning already been mapped out for the National Party?The deal has been done. We know that John Key does not want to stick around after the next election so has the deal been done? Yes they have stitched it up. It is going to be “Corporate Jones” Steven Joyce and “Cruella” with the Dalmatians lined up behind them. That is the deal. It is another deal that National has done behind closed doors a lot like all of the other ones that John Key is so keen on doing.John Key cannot sit down for a meal without whacking New Zealanders with another massive bill. Every time that man sits down for a meal New Zealanders end up paying. He sits down with Warner Bros and there is a law change that they pay for. He sits down with John Banks—another dodgy deal—with Peter Dunne with Skycity. Every time John Key meets somebody he does another dodgy deal.I found it very ironic that Jonathan Coleman decided to ask why it was that David Shearer always asks John Key whether he stands by all of his statements. [Interruption ] Well I will answer that for Jonathan Coleman. It is because for the first time in New Zealand’s history we have a Prime Minister who has to think about it. He actually has to pause and think about it: “Oh my goodness what did I say? What did I say?”. He has to think about it.I found this comment from John Key very very revealing when he was talking about his relationship with the parliamentary press gallery. He said: “I’ve found in my time as Prime Minister I’ve had less engagement with the press gallery simply because I do not mislead people so I have to answer the question if they ask me a question.” So his solution to dealing with the press gallery is that he does not want to mislead them so he just does not talk to them. He just avoids the question in the first place because he does not want to get caught out not telling the truth which has happened so many times before.This is a Government that is simply intent on doing all of the dodgy deals that advantage its mates. It is not interested in the issues that hard-working New Zealand families care about. Power prices are going up all the time and this Government says it does not have a problem with that. It thinks the power prices are right for the environment—that is what National says. Actually New Zealanders are saying that they do not think that is right. This is a Government that wants to take hundreds of millions of dollars a year out of the electricity industry—out of Transpower in particular—individends and force New Zealanders to overpay for their power. This is not a Government that is concerned about the issues affecting ordinary New Zealanders.