Dalziel Lianne: General Debates 
Dalziel Lianne: General Debates 
[Volume:607;Page:4978] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 I think we should look at what Don Brash actually said yesterday when he emerged from the National Party caucus room. He said he wanted to make three comments. His first comment was that he went into politics with the intention of becoming the next Minister of Finance and that was still his primary objective. This is a man who is economical with words and who chooses his words very very carefully. There is an extra word in that statement that I want us to focus on this afternoon and that word is “primary”. He went into politics with a primary objective and in that sense “primary” means the “principal” objective and it is not his only objective by any means. It is also not to say that his secondary objective will succeed or not succeed over the primary objective—unless we accept the  
National Business Review 
 shadow Cabinet line-up which lists Don Brash as leader and shadow Minister of Finance. We have had that before in this country have we not? Who was the leader of the country and the Minister of Finance at the same time? As I recall it was Mr Muldoon and that is the gentle little irony coming from that statement because we know what Muldoon thought of Mr Brash and vice versa. I think it would make for a gentle irony if the two of them were to covet the two top jobs at the one time. 
The second comment Mr Brash made when he came out of the caucus is that he had not been gathering signatures and that he was still not doing that. We heard all about the gathering of signatures on the radio this morning and we know that gathering signatures is the last step in the process: it occurs right before one fronts up with the letter to the leader to say that his or her time is up and that the party has the numbers for that leader to go. The point is that although everyone within the caucus has been quietly talking to the media about what is going on over there nobody has been doing the real work which is counting the numbers. They do not have the numbers for the roll-on to happen. When Mr Brash said he did not know a single MP who would not turn down an offer to be the leader of the caucus we knew that all he is waiting for is for somebody to present him with the numbers and signatures on a piece of paper. I have made this point more than once now and I will make it again: if the National Party caucus wants to install Don Brash as its leader then it had better do it very quickly before rigor mortis finally sets in. 
The third comment Mr Brash made was really ominous—it was the biggie. He said that as the duly elected leader of the National Party Bill English had his full support. We on this side of the House call that the kiss-of-death statement of support. We know that what it really means is that he does not have the support to remain the duly elected leader but we will not be hearing that from Don Brash. I remember Bill English using almost precisely those same words a week before they rolled Jenny Shipley. He said: “It wasn’t me; I didn’t vote against Jenny Shipley. I didn’t topple her from that role—others did it for me. When I was called upon I was there.” He had nothing to do with it and that seems to be Dr Brash’s exact approach. We can see him humbly standing there doing his “Who me?” speech saying: “Do you really want me to be your leader?” As Gerry Brownlee knows many are called but few are chosen. On this occasion we can see Don Brash very humbly saying to his caucus: “Yes you have asked me to be your leader and I will lead you further down the polls than you believed we could ever go.”