Mallard Trevor: General Debate 
Mallard Trevor: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19646] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. It is my very great pleasure as a member from the Wellington region to take the lead in this debate today. I want to say how interesting it is that when John Key sees a Bill English supporter as a possible candidate to run Marian Hobbs close at the election John Key does his best to undermine his campaign. That is what John Key has done. He knows that Blumsky is on Bill English’s side and that is why he has very deliberately undermined his campaign. That is what happens when Tories scrap; that is one of their approaches. But it is interesting that so far before the election—due in September—the various alternative leaders after Dr Brash ceases to be the leader are already jostling for position and sticking their knives into people who are not even in this House before they have a chance to get here. That is what John Key does. 
It is particularly interesting that that member has not named which schools the teachers will be going from. We have 2700 extra teachers over and above the roll growth and he will not say which schools the teachers will come from. He will not say which of the hospitals he will close as he gets rid of the 3300 extra nurses. That is the number of extra nurses. There is a new hospital in Helensville. Will he take the nurses out of that hospital? 
John Key 
: No. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Oh so he will not. He will pick on Mr Brownlee’s electorate. He has promised to slash the numbers in the State sector and that—[ 
Interruption 
] Maybe what John Key will do is to take out some of the 950 extra doctors who are now in the system and not use them. 
John Key 
: No. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: He will not take out any of the 900 doctors. Well what about the prison officers? Will he slash the number of prison officers? He will slash the prison officers and let the criminals roam free. That is the approach of John Key. 
Maybe John Key will take out some of the 400 new Child Youth and Family Services social workers who have come in during the time of this Government. There has been more than a 50 percent increase in the number of social workers. They are public servants. John Key is quiet now. I tell members that he will not deny the cuts for the social workers—that is John Key. What about the police? There are 1080 extra police staff. Will he knock them out of Wellington Central? Is that not an interesting approach? We have Tony Ryall on the one hand saying Wellington needs to have more police and John Key on the other saying National will cut their numbers. What an approach! But we know of course that Tony Ryall is on Bill English’s side and that is why John Key says that—and it is confirmed with a nod and a wink from Gerry Brownlee on this occasion. 
There are some interesting facts that need to be said. National says that we have a bloated public service. But after the cuts of the “mother of all Budgets” of 1994 when Ruth Richardson had done her worst—[ 
Interruption 
] John Key knows when he is in trouble does he not? He gets noisier and noisier. In 1994 we had a lot more public servants than we have now after Ruth Richardson had done her worst. What has happened in recent years? The public service has grown at about the same rate as the growth in jobs in the rest of the economy. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: About the same. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well at about the same rate. People are getting more and more jobs. Actually more people are paying tax so we do need to have some more people at the Inland Revenue Department. We have more students and therefore we have more student loans so we need to have some more people at Work and Income in order to do the processing for that. 
Is National’s leader to be John Key or is it Bill English? That is the question.