English Bill: General Debates 
English Bill: General Debates 
[Volume:612;Page:8975] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 The veil is slowly lifting on the arrogance and deceit of this Government. Just at the time when Tony Blair’s credibility is being eroded the more we see of the inner workings of this Government the more obvious it is that calculated deceit is part of its way of doing business. We have learnt today that New Zealanders cannot trust the Prime Minister of New Zealand with their medical information. [ 
Interruption 
] Government members do not take it seriously and that is right because they regard anything as a legitimate political tool. So the Prime Minister just dropped in the New Zealand Parliament confidential private medical information about an older woman in order to make some political point. 
We also found out that the Government uses public money to contract quite precisely with lobby groups to lobby us. We are quite happy if they do it for free. We do not think they need to be paid. Here we have the Government pretending that these lobby groups are at arm’s length. It puts together a contract made up of taxpayers’ hard-earnedmoney specifically requiring those lobby groups to lobby members of Parliament. That is a disgrace and we will certainly hear more of it. The worst of it is that the contract says that the parties can never criticise the Government. That is absolutely outrageous. 
The Government has been using deceit as a tool on matters that are much more important. I ask Government members this: when were they told by the United States Government that the United States Government was not prepared to schedule bilateral trade negotiations? When were they told? Because today the US Ambassador is reported as having those comments in a speech that he could not actually give. If the Government knew that it should have told the country. It has spent 4 years trying to curry favour with the US administration with the odd complete summersault when it insulted that administration all for the purpose of maintaining official optimism that it could secure a trade agreement with the US. Today the US Government has officially and finally said that it would not negotiate. That puts the nail in the coffin of 4 years of the Government’s top foreign policy objective. 
Here is another question. If that is the case why is the Government making extensive and expensive commitments of New Zealand troops to Iraq and Afghanistan if it was not to make up for the insults that the Prime Minister gave the US Government earlier this year? I want the Government to explain what it is on about with the US relationship because it has deceived the New Zealand public. The official view has been that the relationship is all on track and that we are making progress towards a trade negotiation. That trade negotiation has mattered to New Zealand because the potential for the World Trade Organization round to succeed is not great and it will not happen in a big hurry. It will certainly not happen in a big hurry if it does happen. This was what the Government was hanging its trade policy on. 
I want the Government to tell us whether it knew before today that the US Government has killed any prospect of negotiation. If the Government did know why did it not tell us; and if it did not then why is the relationship as bad as that? When will the Government explain to the primary producers and the manufacturers of New Zealand the backbone of this economy why those trade negotiations have finally died? When will the Government explain that? It is time this Government was honest about that relationship and stopped pretending it is working when it is not.