Key John: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Key John: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:637;Page:7246] 
JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That this House has no confidence in the Government led by Helen Clark because it lacks any vision or purpose apart from getting re-elected it refuses to be accountable or responsible for the public services it oversees it is tired and bereft of ideas and all it can offer New Zealand is a collection of empty slogans.  
That speech from the Prime Minister may not have convinced many New Zealanders about climate change but it will most certainly have convinced them it is time for a change. I feel sorry for those in the parliamentary press gallery who have to write something about it. About the best they could say is that she used the word “sustainable” 33 times. That is the new buzzword from the Beehive. 
Hon members 
: No slogans. 
JOHN KEY 
: No slogans. The big idea was that Treasury officials will no longer be writing reports for Michael Cullen—which he ignores anyway—they will be out the back planting bonsai trees in front of the Beehive. That is the big idea from the speech. If ever I heard a speech from a Prime Minister that showed a Government that was out of touch out of ideas out of energy and very rapidly running out of time it was that speech from the Prime Minister. 
It is no surprise that this Government has only 35 bills on the Order Paper—half what it had in 2002. As we saw yesterday its members cannot agree with each other let alone agree what to do. What this Government needs is a reality check. Maybe if the Prime Minister spent a little bit more time in South Auckland and a little bit less time at the South Pole she would get it. She is a Prime Minister who is increasingly aloof and out of touch. 
Members should just look at the way she responded to my Burnside speech by confidently standing up and telling New Zealanders that there is no underclass. Those were Helen Clark’s words: “There is no underclass.” That was the same Prime Minister who the next day was very silent indeed when Rowena Kopara was found dead in a lay-by on State Highway 27 murdered as a result of a violent act. She was a prostitute from South Auckland a P user and a woman who had had three children in her teenage years. She was many things but she will not be remembered as part of the underclass a group of New Zealanders who have lost hope and who no longer see the rungs on the ladder of opportunity—because according to Helen Clark there is no underclass in New Zealand. What we do know from the Burnside speech is that it sent the Beehive’s little speech writers off to change the last half of the Prime Minister’s speech so she could look just a little more caring than she did on the day I delivered my speech. 
This is the same Prime Minister who does not think children go to school hungry. On Saturday we learnt from the “Minister of Mortgage Levies” that she is a woman who is all over the detail. That is apparently the story; she knows everything. That is what Michael Cullen said in the  
New Zealand Herald 
. Maybe the Prime Minister would like to know that severe hardship is increasing under her watch not declining. Maybe she would like to know that violent offences are going up under this Labour Government not going down. Maybe she would like to know that tens of thousands of kids are going to school hungry every day in New Zealand. Maybe she would like to know that the charities trying to help them cannot cope with the demand. Maybe she would like to know—despite what she said in her speech—that police all around New Zealand know they cannot cope with the increase in Los Angeles - style violent youth gangs. Maybe she would like to know that drugs are rife in our community and that the use of them is rising. And maybe she would like to know that kids are not participating in sport the way she says they are. 
This is a Prime Minister who is aloof and out of touch; she is happy in first class in an Air New Zealand jet but is just not that happy wandering around New Zealand finding out what is going on. [ 
Interruption 
] We will get to the Minister later. About the kindest thing one could say about Helen Clark’s performance—and it was not that great—is that it was marginally better than Steve Maharey’s. According to Steve Maharey kids are not hungry; and if they are hungry they do not want Tory charity. That was the word used. The Prime Minister wants Tory charity for her arts—she said that in her speech—but according to Steve Maharey under Labour’s leadership she does not want it for kids. I have never thought of the Red Cross and Countdown as Tory charity but if that is the way Mr Maharey views it he is welcome to it. 
We know that New Zealand children are going hungry; we know that communities are being terrorised; we know that violence is increasing; and we know that an increasing number of New Zealanders are on a pathway to the underclass. We will not wait around for a Labour Government to do something about it because it has long since given up caring about those New Zealanders. 
Today we learnt that the Prime Minister’s new little Beehive buzz word is “sustainability”—she used it 33 times in her speech. According to the Prime Minister that word applies to almost everything except her own caucus. In case Labour members missed it 2 weeks ago she put them on a dead-wood countdown. She said that the country should be reassured and we in the Opposition should be trembling with fear because the likes of Jill Pettis are going to be replaced by Phil Twyford. That is what is happening. 
We actually agree with the Prime Minister. We do not think sustainability applies to the Labour Government. We think that “bereft of ability” is the correct term. The only thing we missed is that we did not realise until yesterday that she was talking about Michael Cullen being at the top of the list. What was very interesting about the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: This is real light stuff. 
JOHN KEY 
: Well we will get to Phil Goff in a minute. He does not need to worry; his turn is coming. What was very interesting about the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday is that she said she had so little confidence in her Minister of Finance that she no longer thinks he is competent enough to make a speech unassisted without putting his size nine foot in it. She then went on to tell the members of the press gallery that they should not report what a Minister in a Labour Government says; they should write it down only if they think it makes sense. Well they will not be writing much down. If they followed that strategy we could have had months of not having to have a debate on the waterfront stadium that Trevor Mallard was promoting. It will be a very quiet year of reporting things from the Labour front bench if that is the benchmark the Prime Minister wants. 
The Prime Minister told us in her speech that she wants substance not slogans. I might add that that was very funny coming from a speech that was full of slogans. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: It was nothing but slogans. 
JOHN KEY 
: There were nothing but slogans in the speech. It was very funny indeed. 
But let us have a look at what the Prime Minister said because I guess she made an attempt in her speech which was promised to be an hour long but which lasted about 35 minutes. The substance of the speech boiled down to about four things. The first was a minimum requirement for biofuels. I hate to tell the Prime Minister this but National already announced that policy late last year. We had already looked at that strategy late last year. According to the Prime Minister’s strategy it will not be implemented until 2012 long after the first commitment period of Kyoto has taken place. It will save 0.6 million tonnes in the first 5 years. If we look at deforestation in New Zealand last year we see that we cut down about 11000 hectares of forest which cost us 1.2 million tonnes of carbon sequestration. It will take 5 years to save 0.6 million tonnes but under Labour’s policies it is failing to sequester 1.2 million tonnes a year. That is what is happening under the Labour Government. 
Then the Prime Minister told us that biofuels would fix the current account deficit. Maybe she needs to talk to the Minister of Finance because with a 10 percent current account deficit it will take a lot more than a little bit of biofuel. The second thing the Prime Minister told us in a great “motherhood and apple pie” statement was that she was going to make the public service carbon neutral. What a gimmick. It will not include the whole public service—no one who is flying planes or doing things—just the pen pushers at Treasury and the Inland Revenue Department. They will become carbon neutral. If the Government was serious it would tackle its own generators and a few other things but it has not mentioned that. The Prime Minister is now going around claiming victory. It is a little bit like going down to Comalco and making the accounts department carbon neutral but leaving everything else unchanged in the company. That is the scheme of this Government; that will not fix our problems. 
 Let us have a look at the third bit of substance from the Government—the introduction of a waste tax. About the best thing one can say about it is that it is the sort of tax Michael Cullen likes. It is going on and it will be going up; that is what sort of tax it is. 
Hon Member 
: At least he can keep that one! 
JOHN KEY 
: That one was not gone by the time the espresso machine was warmed up. What we do not know about the tax is what it will cost and how much the compliance will be. But we do know that the department that will be administering it—the Ministry of the Environment—has trebled its own waste output in the last 4 years. That is what has happened. 
The last bit of the speech—the substance in the speech theoretically—was a suggestion she might look at parole; it was not a policy and not an idea despite all the things that have gone on but a suggestion that she might look at parole. Nor did she tell the head of the Department of Corrections because on Saturday he stated in the paper that there were no planned changes to parole in New Zealand. 
We agree with the Prime Minister; it is definitely substance not slogans. So let us add to that. We want record not rhetoric. So let us have a look at what this dying Labour Government has been doing around slogans. Does anyone remember the 20 free hours policy? The Labour back bench clapped for it. It was the only time those members did clap so obviously they did not issue enough instructions to the whips. But they gave a half-baked clap. Let us see whether the public of New Zealand will be clapping when they find out the facts. These are the facts: there is no chance of rolling it out and the Government knows it. The Prime Minister said in her speech that there would be a widespread take-up. Well that is not the case. The Early Childhood Council has run the survey and it has already proven that 22.7 percent—less than a quarter of centres—will be uptaking 20 free hours. What she did not say is that people who live on the North Shore whom my colleague Dr Mapp represents will get a 3.7 percent uptake. What she did not say is that if one has a 1-year-old or a 2-year-old the cost of sending those children to preschool will be going up to subsidise the 3 and 4-year-olds. What she did not say is that that is another broken promise and another empty slogan by Labour. So if Labour wants substance not slogans I say “Bring it on.” 
Let us talk about Labour’s other slogan “the top half of the OECD”. Do members remember that one? Well I have a little bit of news for the Prime Minister. When she came into office in 1999 New Zealand was 20th in the OECD. Today we are 21st. Under Labour we have gone down not up in the OECD. We are not in the top half. We are in the bottom third of the OECD. It has not changed under Labour and it will not. 
Let us talk about “carbon neutral”. That is another slogan that theoretically the Labour Party is standing by. We heard all about it last year. Let us look at a few of the facts of the record of this Government. It is burning three times as much coal to produce electricity as it was in 1999. 
Hon Member 
: How much? 
JOHN KEY 
: Three times more. Eighty-five percent of our new electricity generation since 1999 has come from coal. Last year’s renewable and hydro activities—anything around Dobson and anything else—was stopped. The only thing the Government actually supported was the Marsden B power station and the EP3 Orions. One does not go carbon neutral when one supports Marsden B and EP3 Orions. We are chopping down more trees than we ever have in the history of this country. We have net deforestation. Our emissions are rising faster than Australia and three times faster than the US. So if the Prime Minister wants substance not slogans then let us bring it on with things like a carbon neutral policy. 
What we do know is that the public really wants responsibility because that is something they do not get from a Labour Government. That is something they have long since forgotten about getting. The Prime Minister had the audacity to come down to the House and make one minor mention of parole. What she did not talk about was the performance of that department and that Minister. She knows that that department is operating in a culture of denial with a catalogue of failure. That is what she knows. 
She knows that if that department were doing its job properly Liam Ashley would be alive. She knows if that department were doing its job properly a New Zealander would not have died at the hands of Graeme Burton. She knows that. She knows that it is a department in which landscaping takes a higher priority than rehabilitation. She knows that it is a department that cannot control its costs. She knows that under that department drugs are rife in those prisons. She has had nothing to say about that and the Minister responsible has had nothing to say about that. New Zealanders have died yet Damien O’Connor and Helen Clark have had nothing to say about that—not one word. The day Karl Kuchenbecker died at the hands of Graeme Burton we did not hear one word from Damien O’Connor and the duty Minister on service that day refused to front up to an interview at TV3. So if the Prime Minister wants to be taken seriously then I suggest she come down to the House and start to resolve some of those issues rather than waving around the slogans she used in her speech. 
Talking of responsibility I say that it would be nice if she took responsibility for Taito Phillip Field because we have had 8 months of an inquiry that was designed by that Prime Minister to fail so she could park him on the back bench and bring him back again. That inquiry has cost the taxpayers of New Zealand half a million dollars. It has asked more questions than it answered. Helen Clark said that Mr Field had been cleared emphatically of wrongdoing yet before Christmas she was on the radio calling him unethical. When he told the New Zealand Police he would not cooperate the Prime Minister had nothing to say about that. So the message is that law-abiding New Zealanders are expected by the Prime Minister to front up to the police but if that person is a member of the Labour Party who is holding up the Government by a one-seat majority he does not have to cooperate. 
How about some responsibility when it comes that I say to the Prime Minister. How about a bit of responsibility in paying back the money for the pledge card? We know that Helen Clark did not put any conditions on paying it back but Mike Williams has not paid one cent back—and he will not if he is given half a chance. 
The phrase that was missing from the Prime Minister’s statement today was “tax cuts”. Watching Michael Cullen on the topic of tax cuts is like watching the longest striptease in New Zealand’s history. We have been waiting 8 years and he is still fully clothed. But what has been laid bare in the last few days is the war raging between Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. New Zealanders have seen a Labour Prime Minister and a Labour Minister of Finance fighting before. They have seen the movie and they know the way it ends. They know that Michael Cullen is taking more tax off them than he needs to. They know they are struggling. I say to New Zealanders today that a National Government will be cutting taxes and they will not have to wait 9 years for it. It will not be cynically rolled out mysteriously a day before an election is due. We will be committed to tax cuts year after year because that is the right thing to do in order to grow our economy. 
We are witnessing the dying days of a Labour Government. The infighting is horrible. The arrogance is bad. They are uncaring. They are attacking the media. They are attacking the messenger. They are rapidly running out of time. New Zealanders will be pleased to see the back of Trevor Mallard the uncaring Steve Maharey the aloof Helen Clark and the “Minister of Mortgage Levies” Michael Cullen.