Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Volume:641;Page:11579] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) 
: 
 I will reply briefly to the comments made by Steve Maharey about a matter National considers to be extremely important—that is the issue of trying to curb the excesses of violence against children in this country. The point I make is that we will not follow blindly a Labour line that says we should sit in a room wring our hands get a few more committees together have a commission somewhere and go through all of those steps a commission normally would go through on all sorts of issues but never come under any scrutiny in Parliament because everybody is brought into it. Well our role is to be an Opposition. Our role is to hold the Government to account and on behalf of the many children whose lives are made miserable by Government failure in this matter we will hold the Government to account and we will not sit in a room somewhere being told what to do by the Minister. 
One of the most interesting things about question time today was the response that the Hon Mark Burton gave to the Hon Bill English when Mr English asked him some questions about the need for there to be an election period in New Zealand. In the case of next year that period is likely to run for some 11 months—not just the standard 3 months we have always had not the 6 weeks they have in Canada not even the proportionate 12 months they have in the 5-year cycle in Britain but a whole 11 months inside the 3-year parliamentary term in New Zealand. For those 11 months the Government is attempting to shutdown criticism and to shut down any opposition to its policy programme. The Government has virtually said to New Zealanders that if it does something it is OK but if National does something it is wrong. So the Government is saying that it will bring in a law to say that what it does is OK that what National does is not OK and that New Zealanders can lump it. The problem with that is that it is a direct attack on the freedom of speech that makes New Zealand the wonderful country it is. 
We saw today the Minister stand in the House and suggest that billboards were already out there attacking the Government and therefore that those attacking the Government must be the friends of the National Party. Well let me tell Mr Burton that thousands of New Zealanders who have invested in forestry in this country are not happy with the Government’s policy regarding the reuse of land and the cost of carbon credits. They have every right to say what they like about Labour’s policy in that regard without receiving the accusation that the member might like to make about them. That there is now to be a law constructed around the idea that any criticism of the Labour Party or the Government is somehow at the hands of Opposition parties or is hand in hand with Opposition parties and must therefore be shut down because it may influence an election is a dreadful step for this country to be taking. 
So we would ask the Minister and the Labour Government why the election period is such a long period of time. What are they afraid of? Why can they not allow any New Zealander who wants to question them to do so freely during a period of 12 months prior to an election? What is so frightening about the scrutiny that ordinary New Zealanders will put on a Government? I think the Government will need to answer those questions over the next couple of weeks because if we go much further than that then New Zealanders will have no say on this matter whatsoever because Helen Clark has decreed that this will be law by November. The Minister has stood up day after day and said there are matters the select committee should be dealing with. But at the same time he has said that the Government will bring in a Supplementary Order Paper—which is effectively a new law—at the time the bill comes back into the House and that he will jackboot the Government’s proposals through this House and shut down anyone who wants to criticise the Government in any way whatsoever. 
The worst of it of course is that this bill is before Parliament at the same time that the chief of staff from the Prime Minister’s office is trying to collude with other parties to enable members of Parliament to spend any amount they like on election activities from their member’s support budgets. We know people are aware that after the last election when there was the dreadful rort over the pledge card Michael Cullen came into this House and pushed through a bill that made legal everything that had been illegal for a period until 31 December 2007. So those members are now saying that when that period expires at the end of 2007 there has to be a new law in place that continues to make that legal. It is a disgrace it is an attack on freedom of speech and it will cost Labour big!