Jones Shane: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJones Shane: General Debate[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9647. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): The only thing that could be said for that speaker Jacqui Dean is that she did not try to sing a song. Just when we thought that Paul Quinn’s arrival would lower the tone of the House somewhere unfortunately concealed in the labyrinths of Parliament is an office with a Gilmore lock on it a sturdy Samoan security guard outside and that is the price you pay for abusing your status as an MP and not fronting up. The less said about that the better. I am an expert in these matters and you would be well advised to take the advice of someone who still actually shows the scars but that is another matter.I want to talk about the proxy for the National Party given that its members are unwilling to go out and sell their own policies—that very small cabal who seem to think that the households of New Zealand do not deliver an improved cost of living equation. Under the leadership of David Shearer and the architecture of our senior finance spokesman David Parker we will be reforming the lazy self-serving unfair energy sector. We will be bringing in a Pharmac-like agency that will drive down the costs to the ordinary Kiwi household and improve their cost of living enabling them to have more pūtea to do doctors visits which are getting out of control under Mr Ryall to buy sports shoes and to actually have a wee bit more pūtea so that day-to-day living can be made easier. For businesses they are already saying that if they stand and if they are identified by Steven Joyce for example as approving the direction of our policy they will be hammered. In key industrial sectors people have told me very very forcefully: “Do not back down on this policy. Do not listen to Phil O’Reilly. Do not listen to Mr Barnett.” I say to them that they have decided to don the garb of the current Government. From this day on they will be treated appropriately.It is reasonable to have a public policy debate and for advocates from that sector of society to come forward. But do not come back into the political ring on one day presuming that you are even-handed and the next day trot out the diatribes of the Government. Where were they? It was $3.6 billion down the bog hole for finance companies. Never heard a single word from Barnett. Never heard a single word from Phil O’Reilly. Where were they when the $22 billion cost according to PricewaterhouseCoopers has been imposed on society in general for the debacle of leaky houses? Much of that responsibility lies within the stewardship of industry. Not a single word. We stand up for households we stand up for equity and we stand up forlong-suffering Kiwis. And we get this avalanche of hostility which is not based on fact. There is no wealth dissipation or destruction; there is distribution. That is what Governments do. That is what we are going to do. If it was good enough for John Key to deliver the largest percentage of the tax cuts to a narrow range of New Zealanders—if that is not distribution what is? If it is good enough for you to manipulate the tax system through policy changes for those distributed purposes watch this space we will do exactly the same.We are resolute about this. The business of looking after households is miles away from the mahogany-topped tables of merchant bankers and their Kohimārama bases. Get on with it live your life but do not live it on the backs of and do not rip off ordinary Kiwis who by and large are powerless. That is why they look to this side of the House because at the essence of what we stand for is equity reform and improvement. That side is not a party of reformers. The reformers sit on this side: capital gains tax massive reform; compulsory savings massive reform; and changes to our monetary policy massive reform. Getting rid of the self-serving profit-seeking and mean-spirited tsars of the energy sector and their merchant banking friends is a reform well overdue. We will not resile irrespective of how many hired mouthpieces turn up. I accept when the backbenchers come to participate in this debate they need merchant bankers to talk for them because no one knows them.