Power Simon: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Power Simon: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a call on the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill. I find myself taking a very keen interest in this bill at short notice. The thing that I am most looking forward to about this bill is not the discussion or the debate that we have in this House but more particularly the debates and discussions that will occur on the platform during the election campaign next year when we are able to have a discussion with the public on the issues around the Government’s original promises to remove income and asset testing. I am very much looking forward to asking the Labour candidate in my electorate exactly how that candidate along with previous candidates and MPs who are currently in the House has got around the issue of having stood on a platform of removing income and asset testing when that has not occurred. 
But the Labour Party did not just quickly scuttle to the current position that we see before us in this bill. We have seen a series of scuttles occur since 1999. Initially the promise was held out to the elderly of New Zealand that income and asset testing would be removed. Then the Government softened that position considerably and said it would simply remove asset testing. Then it changed its position again by saying that it would keep the regime for asset testing in place and raise the level of assets that an elderly person can keep to the $150000 mark with $10000 a year added to that. But that is not what Labour MPs sitting in this House promised the elderly of New Zealand prior to the 1999 election. 
I tell members opposite that they and the candidates they choose in electorates around New Zealand during the general election next year will have to face down the question as to how they campaigned in 1999 to remove asset and income testing which they did not do. Those candidates and sitting MPs will have to face down the question as to why asset testing was not removed. Then those candidates and sitting MPs will have to face down the question as to why that regime has remained in place. 
National will not sit silently at those meetings and let those candidates get away with convincing the elderly of New Zealand that they have their best interests at heart. We have seen here a direct and unequivocal broken promise from Ruth Dyson. To be honest I would have expected more from Ruth Dyson. Members can say what they like about her but I would say that she is a bit of a straight shooter. I am pretty disappointed that we now find ourselves in this situation. I do not believe for one moment that Ruth Dyson is happy with this. Minister Dyson should not grin across the House. I would think that she feels completely bought off and cheapened by the little scuttle-bug deal that has been done to pull up short on promises to the elderly people of New Zealand. Although I do not agree with a lot of Ruth Dyson’s politics I know that she will not be happy with this because she has a reputation as being a bit of a straight shooter and this legislation sells her considerably short. I think that is a shame because Minister Dyson had the opportunity to fulfil the election promise of 1999 to the elderly people of New Zealand and she has been pushed out by the rest of the Labour Cabinet to take the fall with the senior citizens around this country. 
Ruth Dyson is the person who will have to front up during the election campaign and give the answers to questions that she wanted to answer completely differently had she not been the fall person for this miserable Labour Government. On one hand it takes $7 billion worth of surpluses from the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand and on the other hand instead of redistributing that money in a way that many of the Labour members would feel proud of and which is in keeping with the great Labour mantra of redistribution it does nothing—despite having run two election campaigns with promises of scrapping asset and income testing. 
That will be this Government’s legacy. If it was able to stand on a platform and say that it is genuinely a party that believes in the redistribution of wealth and with one hand it will take $7 billion of taxpayers’ money but with the other hand it will farm it out to the elderly of New Zealand then whether or not people agreed with it that is a genuine political philosophy that other political parties in this House—not National—may hold to. But it cannot even do that with honour. It takes with one hand and it holds on with the other hand. Ruth Dyson is the fall guy for this legislation which can be summed up in a series of very simple words: broken election promises. 
A party vote was called for on the question that the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.