Goff Phil: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: General Debate[Sitting date: 10 October 2007. Volume:642;Page:12224. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence): I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business. I think theSunday Star-Times—Madam SPEAKER: Before we get under way with battle commencing would those members who are leaving the House please do so quickly and quietly.Hon PHIL GOFF:—summed it up. Let me read from it: “Tony Ryall lost his smug smile last week”. There he was prancing down the catwalk that he thought led to National victory and the next minute he was bottoms up in the swamp. As unattractive as that analogy is it is undoubtedly accurate.There was the National Party 2 years into the term of this Parliament with a failure to release a single policy. National members were under pressure so there they were and they thought they would come up with a health policy. When they revealed their policy they revealed a lot more than they intended to reveal. Mr Ryall told the country that National’s policy was to take the cap off doctors’ subsidies. Now it was a televised press conference and there was John Key with the other National MPs around him and they were thunderstruck. They were appalled and they were staggered—not at the policy you understand because that caucus had approved the policy. They were appalled that Tony Ryall had actually revealed what was on National’s hidden agenda. There it wasThe Hollow Men all over again.Mr Ryall was telling the country that his party would hurl millions of dollars of subsidies into the health system but would not ask where the subsidies went. It is clear what would happen in that situation: the subsidies that are designed to keep doctors’ fees down for people on limited incomes would go into the business profits of the practices. Mr Ryall said “No the market will control it and you can trust the general practitioners.”Hon Jim Anderton: Yeah right!Hon PHIL GOFF: “Yeah right!” as my colleague has said. Actually theSunday Star-Timessaid something different. It said “At a stroke Ryall showed himself to be both shifty and silly.” So that was the first case of dropping the ball.But then there was the other one. Bill English came out with the policy that indicated that back on National’s agenda was the privatisation of community-owned assets. Poor old John Key was a bit shattered at that revelation too. He approved it no doubt. He knew it was there but was he going to come out and say that? No. So what do we have? We have John Key saying “No that isn’t our policy.” and we have Bill English saying “Yes”. There they are at it again with the struggle over the leadership emerging in the policy differences.The problem with regard to John Key was that he made his own slip-up—the first of many slip-ups. It was the one where he said that the private sector could and should own and build schools. Yes that reveals more than Mr Key intended to reveal as well. Katherine Rich did not know about it and when the media came to ask Mr Key about it he was nowhere to be found. He went to ground for 24 hours as did Katherine Rich. But there revealed to all of us was a National Party policy that says that is the top of the slippery slope for the privatisation of our public education system. We know National’s track record and we know its ideology—it isThe Hollow Men; “the shallow men” as Mike Moore said. That is what is on the National Party agenda.Then came the third of the policy revelations. It was on foreign affairs and defence but it was a total turn-round. Having spent 7 years criticising this Government’s defence and foreign policy and saying the scrapping of the air combat wing would leave New Zealand defenceless suddenly the National Party has had a revelation: the Labour Party was right all along. Then there is the nuclear-free policy. National members say “Yes we believe in the nuclear-free policy.” but that was not what was revealed in the foreign policy cable that stated the nuclear-free policy would be gone by lunchtime. The National Party has decided that political expediency will govern and it has embraced everything that Labour has done but can we believe it? If a party like the National Party is driven not by political conviction or by principle but by political expediency it will do anything. National cannot be trusted; its agenda is revealed.