Cunliffe David: General Debate 
Cunliffe David: General Debate 
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Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 The previous speaker the Hon Tony Ryall has seven stages of grief. The first one is when he remembers the days when it cost 50 bucks to go to the doctor not 10 bucks. The second is when he remembers it cost 15 bucks for a prescription not three bucks. Then he remembers the world before decent primary health care or when we still promoted healthy food in schools. He is really enjoying this is he not! He is really enjoying a fight; he loves a good scrap. What a resolute spokesperson for the Government the Hon Tony Ryall really is! Is that really the best that this tired Government could put up? Let me remind that member of a couple of other things. I remember when the Ministry of Health staff actually turned up and enjoyed their work and when the ministry believed in the direction of Government policy—before it was gutted and put out to scrap because of the ego of that man who is not prepared to stand and get his medicine back. Those are the seven stages of grief. If Mr Ryall wants to argue about it he should come back and face the music. 
Ordinary Kiwis are facing the music this Christmas. This Christmas they are faced with rising costs at a time when their wages are frozen and Bill English is doing the double-talk. He is telling them the world is in recovery but that they cannot be part of it. He is telling them that the previous Government lavished expenditure on them and they had it too good which is why they cannot have it now. The problem that Bill English has is that nobody trusts him any more. People do not trust his personal judgment they do not trust him not to get his wires crossed when his own interests are at stake and they distrust him even more after today to correctly quote Treasury’s figures. Manipulating Government expenditure numbers is about as bad as it gets for a Minister of Finance. Apparently Bill English cannot tell the difference between nominal numbers and real numbers. He is so fixated on Labour that when describing the previous Government’s expenditure he included his own last Budget. Talk about integrity! He cannot tell the difference between his own Budget and ours. The reason for that is that the only Budget that did anything for ordinary New Zealanders in the recession was ours. It was Budget 2008. That Minister ought to be very grateful that the so-called rough edges were taken off the recession because people had a Government that cared only 18 months ago. 
But it is all downhill for Kiwis now because the stalking horse of the 2025 Taskforce has been revealed for what it was. It was not a serious attempt at policy. Oh no! Mr Key saw to it that before the report was even released it was dissed to the media. It was just like what happened regarding Mr Hide’s trip to Hawaii. A little phone call from the ninth floor to the press gallery put paid to that one. This country is faced with a Budget in 2010 that might actually start to line up National’s actions with its intentions and that might actually start to claw into the basics that New Zealanders have had to get by on during this terrible recession. The Government cannot have it both ways: it cannot be both popular and decisive. 
We all know that the only decisions that National is prepared to make are the wrong ones: the decision that says the answer to a recession is to make cuts or the way to give New Zealanders a future is to take away their educational opportunities or the way to have healthy kids is to take away healthy food in schools. I say: “Mr Ryall come back; your country needs you!”. The Government cannot have it both ways. It cannot be a kinder gentler “Labour-lite” National Government and deliver what New Zealanders want and also give New Zealanders a clear plan because it is obvious that the only idea of a plan is one that Don Brash serves up to the Government. Why is it that when the Government ship is becalmed in the sea of ideas the word goes out to the denizens of the old right—the Murray Horns the Graham Scotts and the Don Brashes—and the sign goes up saying “Help we need an idea.”? But when the idea comes in the National members say: “Ah that wasn’t exactly the one we wanted to try to sell. We wanted a new idea.” Well I say so do New Zealanders as they are at home worrying about this Christmas.