McClay Todd: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcClay Todd: General Debate[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9653. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): I want to follow along the lines of something I heard on television a little while ago from somebody few New Zealanders respect: “Hey Clint what do you think of that last speech? But are we pleased Clint? Clint are we pleased?”. Well how am I going to explain this? You have heard of the “ghost chips” ad on TV. Well that was the ghost Greens-Labour Minister: “Hey Gareth. Clint thinks you’re dumb.” It is as simple as that.I want before I get into the meat of this speech to pay a tribute to and recognise the Hon Parekura Horomia on his passing. I have not had an opportunity to speak in the House since yesterday. It was a very sad day for New Zealand. Yesterday I think in this House the way members came together showed the great respect that we had for Mr Horomia and all that he did. I remember being down playing rugby with the Parliamentary Rugby Team a couple of years ago in his home district. The great hospitality he showed to all members of this House but also indeed what the public showed to him is a mark of the man. I want to recognise that and put it officially on record.I come now to the issue of today’s debate. It is really about who is fit and able to govern this country. We have heard other speakers talk about this Government’s record over the last 4½ years coming on 5 years. Indeed after the first 3 years of our Government New Zealanders looked at what was put before them and went to the election. They had a chance to vote and we were returned to Government with a larger number of votes than was cast 3 years earlier. So through some of the most difficult economic times that New Zealand had faced in certainly a generation after 3 years of the great difficulty that the rest of the world had faced New Zealanders had faith in the job that John Key and Bill English were doing in a National Government and they returned us.A year and a half from now there will be another election and again the Opposition will come forward and the same old rhetoric the same messages of the previous 3 years and the re-election will be that the Government has not done a great job. New Zealanders will be able to judge and we will be very happy to come forward on the campaign stumps and make our case. But what New Zealanders will also be able to do for the first time in the 6 years we will have been governing is have a real snapshot of what an alternative Government—the current Opposition—would be like. Whatever Opposition members said at the last election New Zealanders did not believe them. They did not trust them. The Opposition will be able to come forward and talk about what they believe they will do for New Zealand.It is very important that New Zealanders get to balance that because what we have seen over the last few weeks and what we hear in this House today is about a Green-Labour coalition and the direction it will take New Zealand in. It has very extreme left-wing—extreme left-wing—policies around the economy which I actually think the Green Party are driving more than the Labour Party. I know there are moderate members over there who are much more sensible than what has been brought forward in public but we often know that in Opposition members of Parliament will do and say anything to get over to this side of the House and that is what I think is happening here. So I think New Zealanders will accept what a lot of the Labour Party members are saying at the moment but the direction that the Greens are driving them in is of great concern.Let us have a little look at what it might be like under that Green-Labour Government of the future. Well the first thing they would want to do is go out to New Zealanders and say: “We have the ability to manage affairs properly to work out what policies we should have and to put them in place. You can take our guarantee that these things will work.” So they could say for instance: “Well we’re going to go out and collect 400000 signatures for something and that’s the feeling of what New Zealanders want.” Then we would find when they brought it back to this House that all of a sudden oh no it was not 400000 signatures. They were a few wrong. As Mr Henare said earlier 100000 signatures were collected by the Green Party and the Labour Party by many of the Labour Party’s hard-working volunteers and by the Green Party—people they paid with parliamentary money taxpayers’ money. They paid on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayers to collect signatures. And what did we find when they said “We’ve done a great job.” and they brought the boxes to Parliament and were so very very proud? What did we find after their hard-working volunteers around the country had been out in the markets and the sunshine and the rain collecting these signatures? What did they find? They found they had got their numbers wrong and the job was not done properly.So to every single New Zealander out there who voted for this Government in the last election and who will have a chance to weigh up the two sides in the next election mark my words: they got it wrong there and they will do and say anything to get over on this side. Question all of the promises that they make and make sure that they can count properly when it comes to simple things like signatures.