Cullen Michael: General Debate 
Cullen Michael: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19241] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. It is roughly 6 months until an election has to occur in New Zealand. At this stage New Zealanders are asking themselves a question: not just who is the Government but where is the alternative Government? Not who it is but where it is. There must also have been the question: where is the Opposition? Because if there is no Opposition there cannot be an alternative Government and there is not an Opposition. 
This Labour Government has proved that it can work with other parties in the House and shortly we will achieve the longest-lived successful coalition in New Zealand’s history under MMP in terms of the support from United Future. We work with our friends in the Greens. We work on occasions with New Zealand First. The National Party has nobody to work with at all. It is a party whose members yesterday when offered the chance to debate the issue of the day the vaccines instead chose to spend 2½ hours trooping into the voting lobbies most of them on the wrong side to lose time after time after time with poor old Pansy Wong ending up voting on both sides for a brief period of time. 
What we see around us now is a National Party with no friends. There is no other party in this House that wants to work with the National Party. The National Party is reduced to Dr Lockwood Smith and Pansy Wong sitting together. Talk about the odd couple! Look at the ACT party. ACT was buddying up to National only a short time ago. Now we see the savagery of the cornered beast at 2 percent. They have to take a chunk out of the National Party’s legs and the mad dogs have been let loose on the National Party as a consequence. National loathes ACT. Look at the comments it makes about the ACT party because ACT has the courage to say what the National Party only dares to think in the privacy of its caucus room. 
Where has Dr Brash gone the great man who admired Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas the archpriest of the ultra-dry right? I can remember the morning when I received a breathless phone call from the Governor of the Reserve Bank. He said: “I’ve got a shock for you Michael. I am resigning to go into politics.” I said that I did not remember choosing him for our list. He said: “No I’m going to the National Party because there’s things I’ve got to do. I’m a man with a mission; a man who wants to follow on the great tradition of Richardson and Douglas.” He is the man with no tolerance for recreation without purpose as his biography says. 
He thought we were wrong. Labour was all wrong because it believed in not selling State assets. It believed in supporting modern industrial relations law. It opposed increasing inequality. It supported public investment in health and education. It was saving for the future by means of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and it was nuclear-free. It was all wrong for Dr Brash. It all had to change under a National Government. There he was in his pyjamas vacuuming out the concrete garage floor saying: “This Government’s got to go this terrible left-wing Labour Government. We’ve got to get back to the programme of Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas.” He said: “All these programmes will be tough and we will be tough now.” 
Where has that strong line of the far right gone? Now it is all: “How do we close down the issues? The Superannuation Fund now is wonderful. We will support it. We are not really that much in favour of selling State assets just a bit here and a bit there and maybe in a second term maybe a little bit more. And of course we now do not favour all those terrible other things we said we were going to do. We were not really that much in favour of being not nuclear-free any longer. In fact what we are going to be is a kind of Labour Government with a slightly friendlier image amongst the business community.” That is what Dr Brash is trying to say. He is really saying that he is a kind of social democrat in drag or at least in pyjamas I think it is fair to say. 
Well nobody believes it. Nobody believes that Dr Brash has undergone this conversion. He gave up 80 percent of his salary when he came into this Parliament merely to echo the policies of the Labour Government. ACT is right to say to National: “Stick by your principles and don’t throw them away.” Who is waiting in the wings? The person who is waiting to come out of the freezer is Mr English. Mr English is quietly working away promoting himself asking three times as many questions in the House as Dr Brash making four times as many speeches as Dr Brash and being five times as visible as Dr Brash and he waits because he will be the next leader of the National Party.