Collins Judith: General Debate 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Volume:646;Page:15505] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It is a bit rich to be lectured about honesty from the member Lianne Dalziel who has just sat down. She is the member who had to resign as a Cabinet Minister because she could not tell the truth to the media. She is the member who went around and bullied a poor little 16-year-old girl. She then stands up in the House and tries to lecture the National Party. 
All that the Labour members have done today is to hurl personal insults at every single member of the National Party who stood up to speak. I represent a South Auckland electorate and I represent the real Kiwis of this country. I can tell members that real Kiwis do not care about all the nonsense they are hearing from the Labour Party. These are the people who have mortgages for Africa—mortgages everywhere. They are the people in many cases who have seen the equity in their homes just disappear under this Government. What do we hear about that? Labour members do not want to talk about that. Real Kiwis are the people who go out to the supermarket with their couple of hundred dollars and find suddenly they have to start putting things back on the shelves because there is not enough money to pay for the groceries. What has happened under this Government? What has happened is that grocery prices have gone right through the roof. What has happened to petrol prices? Well they have just gone up and up. 
Labour members do not have an answer. The only thing they can do is try to screw the scrum as they have done with the Electoral Finance Act. That is all that legislation is about. Labour members have talked today about buying elections. Actually one of the most appalling instances of buying an election was Labour’s pledge card. Labour took $800000 of taxpayers’ money illegally to pay for the pledge card. What happened and who paid it back? Did Mr Owen Glenn pay it back for Labour or did somebody else? Labour members opposite have gone all quiet. They have gone quiet because what I say is true. 
Another thing that people in South Auckland care about is truth. They want an end to the cynicism shown by this Government. One of the things this Government did 2 weeks before the last election was to send out letters to State house tenants. Labour had got names and addresses from the Housing New Zealand Corporation—absolutely illegally— 
Hon Members 
: Not true; that’s a lie. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Oh yes it did. Labour sent out letters— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but I would like to refer the members on my right to Speakers’ ruling 57/3 and to remind members that interjections are out of order unless they are rare reasonable relevant and restrained and that a running commentary is out of order. Members can take a call if they wish to keep interjecting all the time. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Labour members do not like the truth and just want to shout it down. As I was saying Labour sent out letters to State tenants and as I recall those letters were signed by David Benson-Pope. Well we know what happened to him. The letters said that tenants should be very worried about a National Government because tenants would be kicked out of their houses. That is what that party used taxpayers’ money to do. What an utter lie. That is what it was. It was nothing short of a complete untruth. 
Labour tried to scare people into voting against National and that is the sort of dirty-tricks campaign that Labour will use again. Those members will stop at nothing. They do not care about ordinary Kiwi people. They care more about politically correct nonsense. They trot themselves around the stage telling people they should be grateful because they get to pay more money for their mortgages and their groceries. All that Labour wants to do is to set up quangos Government departments telling people how they should be so pleased and grateful. 
Labour has lost touch with ordinary Kiwis. Ordinary Kiwis want their kids to go to schools get a decent education and come out with a qualification that means something. Do we ever hear from the Government these days about the great efforts and results of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement? Why do we not hear about that? We do not because there are still problems with it. 
National wants to know that we do not have intergenerational welfare dependency yet this Government has got rid of all the records of welfare-dependent people from 1996 and earlier. Why is that? The Government does not want to answer my questions about how many people have been on benefits for 30 or 40 years. The Government actually does not want to know. 
Labour members are also going around telling people that National would do something terrible to New Zealand superannuation. Well let me just tell the House that National will not do anything stupid. In fact I really dislike the fact that Labour goes around telling lies. It goes around telling people anything that people want to hear because Labour is trying to spread fear. Labour tried to spread fear in Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants and it will do the same to national superannuitants. Labour will try to spread fear in anybody it can find—students or anyone. It will do anything to stay in office.