Finlayson Christopher: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFinlayson Christopher: General Debate[Sitting date: 26 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11281. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General):I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business . I woke up at 5.30 this morning and as is my wont the first thing I did was lunge for my BlackBerry so I could read theNew Zealand Herald . The first thing I saw was theHerald -DigiPoll and I thought to myself: “I like history especially the history of the Labour Party. I wonder whether Gerry would let me give one of my history lessons to the House.” I asked him and he said yes so here goes.One of the great questions of New Zealand history is: “Why is the Labour Party so disloyal to its leaders?”. Right through history treachery has been the name of the game. Let us look at Arnold Nordmeyer who provided sterling service to the Labour Party through the first and second Labour Governments. He was the MP for Ōāmaru then the MP for Brooklyn and then the MP for Island Bay. He was knifed by Norman Kirk. The rumblings against “Big Norm” started in the second year of his premiership but he died before the conspirators could knife him.Then there was my favourite Labour leader Bill Rowling a good and a decent man who as Mr Mallard knows used to live in Lohia Street Khandallah. He was undermined by a less talented but more ruthless deputy. How often history doth repeat itself. David Lange was undermined by Mr Goff and his then ideological buddy Roger Douglas. Geoffrey Palmer was certainly an interesting person. He certainly was undermined by Helen Clark and by Mike Moore but I have to admit that much of the undermining was done by Geoffrey just being Geoffrey.Mike Moore was undermined by Helen Clark who knifed him straight after the 1993 election when Mike had gained an additional 16 seats for his party—that is loyalty for you. Helen Clark knew her history. She kept her enemies at bay and I am not referring to just the Green Party. She saw off Annette King and Phil Goff in 1996 when they tried to knife her and she went in 2008 before the daggers went in. Then from 2008 to 2011 we had that very angry Phil Goff undermined from the very start by Mr Cunliffe—no wonder he is so foul-mouthed and cannot control his tongue.I recognise that many of the names I have referred to—and I see Mr Robertson looking confused and bewildered—will be unknown to people like Mr Robertson who have no knowledge of their party’s history and so are doomed to relive it. It is like some kind of macabre Byzantine dance of killers. People cooperate to get rid of one leader so that they can turn on the next one.Then we have David Shearer who I think is a very nice guy a good and a decent man a person who has done a lot of good overseas. But none of his dealings with central African dictatorships or Balkan civil wars could have prepared him for the leadership of the Labour Party. Poor David Shearer. He has run out of options. He has nowhere to turn. He cannot rely on his deputy and he cannot turn to his allies. I bet this morning he was reading theNew Zealand Herald  looking longingly at seat 17A from Moscow to Havana.Mr Shearer has been quoted as saying that he was surprised by today’s results but the trouble for Mr Shearer is he is simply too trusting. He is too trusting and too quick to trust people like Mr Robertson to recruit his staff to look after him. He is too quick to trust parties that are out to steal his vote. I imagine that Mr Shearer was delighted when Mr Peters shone that trademark smile and offered to work with Labour to attack the Government. I imagine he was delighted when Dr Russel Norman said: “Let me work with you to design a Stalinist energy policy and maybe it would be a good idea if we both had a podium in the legislative chamber when we announce the speech because it would give you more gravitas.” And now Mr Shearer is surprised that Mr Peters and Mr Norman are laughing all the way to the polling booth. In fact he is so trusting that I have to say I really worry that the hundreds of thousands of dollars in his New York bank account are ripe for picking if a Nigerian scammer ever sends him an email. He would probably be really surprised and delighted to receive it. So what is the moral of the story? There is always a moral. I say this to the Labour Party with the greatest of respect and affection: loyalty is what binds a party together. If you can’t trust your leader you’re done.