English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:632;Page:3776] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. What is happening in the Labour caucus when yesterday in the House we saw Clayton Cosgrove get up and talk about “when Dr Cullen gets hit by a bus”? One knows what sorts of conversations are going on when one’s colleagues start saying things like: “What happens when Dr Cullen gets hit by a bus?”. Well one thing is quite clear: Helen Clark wishes he would get hit by a bus because when his Budget went flat when the public did not get the share of the surplus it is entitled to and when he was strongly criticised Helen Clark said and did nothing. In fact it was so extraordinary that it passed the notice not only of the media but also of many politicians. I can never recall a Minister of Finance delivering a Budget then having to handle the criticism without the support of the Prime Minister. That is what happened. 
Helen Clark cannot make up her mind about tax cuts. She knows tax cuts are very popular and deserved among the workers of New Zealand but they are totally unpopular among the people who purport to be the representatives of the workers. So now she has a problem—which is why she kept quiet—and it is how to get some tax cuts on the agenda without fatally undermining Dr Cullen’s credibility. That is why members opposite want him to go because then they will not have to make the choice. Well the bus that will hit Dr Cullen is one sitting in a street in Mount Roskill. And who is sitting in that bus waiting waiting waiting? It is Phil Goff. Not only is he waiting but he is smiling because he has seen the efforts of his friend and colleague Trevor Mallard who in an extraordinary show last weekend on TV said he wanted the job of Minister of Finance. It is OK for John Key to say that and it is OK for back-benchers like Shane Jones to go around saying that they deserve the job but when one’s Associate Minister a close friend of Helen Clark and message boy for her says he is putting his hand up for the finance job then that is another message for Dr Cullen telling him it is time to go. 
I hope Trevor Mallard gets the job because he has no credibility. But that is a short-term point of view. It would be bad for the New Zealand economy for a man who cannot tell the difference between an asset and a liability to get the job of Minister of Finance. In his case though I can understand it because Trevor Mallard’s assets are his liabilities—his ability to make up anything that comes into his head to make up wild allegations he cannot justify including last week when we were faced with the very serious business of electricity supply. Electricity supply is one of the biggest public issues at the moment and that Minister just made up a number. He got up and said that the Government was investing five times as much in electricity supply as was invested in the 1990s. As my colleague Nick Smith pointed out it is actually investing less. It is not investing 500 percent more; it is investing about 10 percent less. But that does not bother Trevor. Well Mr Mallard is not going to get the job and Phil Goff is. Helen Clark knows that the sooner that happens in the Labour Party the better because Dr Cullen— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Why isn’t David Cunliffe in the mix? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: That is a very good question because I think he is an outstanding product of the Labour Party—and I am not the only who thinks that because so does he! The only one who thinks he is a more outstanding product is Shane Jones. The problem is that Dr Cullen has the job and those members are just back-bench pretenders. Helen Clark wants Dr Cullen to go and I think he knows it. Chris Trotter that close friend of the Labour Party has got it right. Dr Cullen has lost his patience with the electorate and with the Labour Party and has ended up being where he always wanted to be—being the only one who is right. Everyone else is wrong and he now no longer has the patience to take the criticism to do the deals to make the trade-offs and to fend off his Cabinet. And his Cabinet colleagues will be putting pressure on him because he is trying to put the lid on their expenditure. He is trying to stop the runaway train of Labour Ministers who have fed and fed and fed money to everyone who ever asked for it. And how is he going to stop them? I do not know. I do not know when Labour is going to take the call— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Will the member please sit down. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: This is the first general debate in history in which the Labour Party has not sought the call. Well I will just keep on going— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Will the member please sit down.