Key John: General Debate 
Key John: General Debate 
[Volume:645;Page:14620] 
JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. I hope there is a second-hand market for those nice red shiny boxes in about 6 months’ time because I am not sure anyone else will want them. 
I know that Labour members do not like to talk about the polls. I know that they do not like to talk about the polls and who can blame them? Because in 6 months’ time there will be more chance of finding a Mr Whippy man on Mars than a Labour MP in a Maori seat according to the  
Marae 
 DigiPoll. No one should be surprised that the polls are doing what they are doing. New Zealanders are not surprised because they see a Prime Minister who seriously lacks judgment. This is a Prime Minister who thought it was OK to take $800000 of taxpayers’ money and who did not want to give it back. This is a Prime Minister who thought it was just fine to issue an inquiry into Taito Phillip Field that she did not ever want to respond to—but she was caught napping. “This is fine.” came from a Prime Minister who thought David Benson-Pope was just following her instructions to politicise the Public Service. 
This is a Prime Minister who broke every convention in the book when she changed the electoral finance law for her own self-serving reasons. And Labour members are wondering why they are so unpopular! They are unpopular because this is a Government that has forgotten about the people who put it there. This is a Government that has delivered a doubling of interest rates to New Zealanders. There are 200000 New Zealanders who are preparing to change their mortgage rate to 10 percent. The base rate was 4.5 percent when Labour came into office. Now the base rate is 8.25 percent and the interest rate at the banks is 10 percent. Labour delivered that for New Zealanders and Michael Cullen says: “I don’t care because I can spend your money better than you can.” He will sit smugly on $11 billion surpluses for years because he does not care anymore about the little people who put him here. 
The reason it has all gone wrong for Labour is its economic record its social record and its environmental record. It does not matter which record one measures—all of it is bad. But guess what? There are three people in the Labour Party caucus who are not so worried about the polls being bad. One of them sits quietly over there—Phil Goff. Phil is waiting waiting waiting. According to Chris Trotter he is the new Barack Obama of the Labour Party. You see Phil has given up the barbeque tongs. He has found Chris Trotter’s cellphone number and he is on the phone every single day. Chris is responding by writing nice little letters and nice little articles day after day. Today’s  
Independent 
 had yet another one. 
One has to say that No. 2 on the list is a newcomer to the list in the Oscars of who is going to take over when Helen Clark gets the flick. [ 
Interruption 
] No not Michael Cullen; we will come back to him in a minute. It is Shane Jones—Shane “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble” Jones. Last night was a real classic on TV3. There he was on TV3 and do members know what he said? I will tell them. He called up Howard Morrison to try to give Labour’s Maori caucus a pep talk before they get annihilated. When Shane Jones was asked what they should do he said he might get them to sing “We Are the Champions”. Five polls show Labour at about 20 points behind. The  
Marae  
DigiPoll has all the Maori seats gone from Labour and Shane Jones wants them to sing “We Are the Champions”. What about singing Split Enz’s “Six Months in a Leaky Boat”? What about Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream it’s Over”? There are lots of songs that Labour’s Maori caucus could have sung last night but that was it. 
And No. 3 on the list who is very happy about the polls is David Cunliffe David “Winston” Cunliffe. He says he is running the show; he is doing so quite badly I have to say. What was fascinating yesterday was when I asked the Prime Minister about the health service in New Zealand. She would not answer the question. She has years of experience as a Minister of Health and what that tells us is that it is sicker than it was. She would not answer the question. What has David Cunliffe done? He has sacked the entire Hawke’s Bay District Health Board because it is contracts for cronyism. That is what he has done; he has sacked the entire board. There will be many more stepping up in very short order. I am happy to take another 5 minutes if we want.