Hughes Darren: Reinstatement of BusinessText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Darren: Reinstatement of Business[Sitting date: 09 December 2008. Volume:651;Page:78. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour): The Government has chosen to put the reinstatement motion into the urgency motion thereby inviting a much higher level of scrutiny by the Opposition parties than would ordinarily be the case on a procedural motion such as this. The point the Labour Party has been making is that we are looking for some rationale for how these bills have been chosen to be part of a reinstatement motion. I think it is important that we have the opportunity to go through that and to make sure that the work of this Parliament when it is set out by way of this motion is appropriately done.Before I get on to the substance of my contribution I want to pick up on some of the points made by the Māori Party whip Te Ururoa Flavell. He made a number of assertions—many of them derogatory towards the Labour Party—and I think it is important that we set the record straight. The most important thing about the Foreshoreand Seabed Act (Repeal) Bill that sits as part of this reinstatement motion is that it is a member’s bill in the name of the Hon Tariana Turia who now of course is a National Government Minister—the bill will have to pass into the name of a non-member of the executive. But the bill is a member’s bill. It sat on the Order Paper as a members’ order of the day.So when Te Ururoa Flavell said that the Labour Government controlled when that bill came up he was absolutely 100 percent wrong. Every second Wednesday the members’ orders of the day are entirely within the purview of members of the House. Every single bill that he mentioned as coming in above Tariana Turia’s bill came in as a members’ order of the day. It was not within the purview of the Government and I think it was very unfair of him to imply that somehow Labour played a role in the priority given to the bill.The reason the bill kept being pushed down the Order Paper was that the member in charge of the bill the Hon Tariana Turia continually deferred the bill from coming up for debate. Once the bill had been deferred other bills went in front of it on that day which is how parliamentary procedure works. Te Ururoa Flavell shakes his head but the records of the Business Committee will show that the reason that bill was never voted for by the previous Parliament was that the Māori Party chose not to have it debated on the floor of the House.I understand why the Māori Party chose that. The reason the Māori Party chose not to have the bill debated on the floor of the House and brought to a vote was that it knew it would have lost that vote. The reason it would have lost the vote is that John Key when he became the Leader of the Opposition—Hone Harawira: But you would have voted against it.Hon DARREN HUGHES: —gave the Hon Pita Sharples and the Hon Tariana Turia the impression that as the new leader after Don Brash had gone he was prepared to support the Foreshore and Seabed Act (Repeal) Bill. The Māori Party co-leaders acted on that premise and it was not until the last minute when John Key flip-flopped on that and refused to support the bill that the Māori Party then decided to deny it.I heard the member for Te Tai Tokerau Hone Harawira call out defiantly that Labour was going to vote against the bill anyway. He misses one important point: Labour was a minority Government. If National had supported the Māori Party along with the Green Party and if other parties like ACT had supported the repeal it would have got the vote in the last Parliament. The reason the Foreshore and Seabed Act (Repeal) Bill was never passed was that the National Party double-dealt the Māori Party. That is why I wanted to raise that matter in rebuttal to Te Ururoa Flavell because when he talks about the mana-enhancing agreement let me be clear. The Labour Party believes that there can be mana-enhancing agreements but we find it a little bit rich to be told about mana atua mana tūpuna and mana tāngata and then be told that the evidence of this mana enhancement is to abstain from voting in Parliament. I find it hard to believe that it is a mana atua arrangement when one’s vote is to abstain behind the National Party so let us not have that.When that was going on the National members were all in support of what Te Ururoa Flavell was saying. I called out earlier to the Attorney-General the Hon Chris Finlayson and I asked: “What about one standard of citizenship?” because that used to be how most of the existing National MPs were elected. They were elected on the back of one standard of citizenship which was an anti-Māori position. Chris Finlayson smiled and said: “That was ages ago.” Only 2 weeks with a ministerial warrant and the National MPs have already forgotten why they are there.But I want to come to the reinstatement motion because a lot of bills have been chosen to go into this motion but we cannot see the rationale.We were told today in the Speech from the Throne that the past 10 years was a decade of missed opportunities yet everything on the Order Paper is going to be what the Labour-led Government was proposing in office. The National Government is picking up every single bill that Labour had even though National has said it was a decade of missed opportunities—and that of course misses the point that every party policy on which it campaigned on November 8 was a Labour policy.Let us go through some of the bills for which we are asking for a rationale from the Leader of the House and his key supporters sitting over there. The first is the Climate Change (Transport Funding) Bill. This bill does not need to be picked up by the Government because the New Zealand Government is going to have a committee to decide whether climate change exists and the whole world is going to stop and wait while the New Zealand Parliament and the 3 percent ACT Party that is driving this decides whether the world is going to learn whether there is global warming induced by humans. I cannot see why this bill is needed when the world is waiting for the bright lights of the National-led Government in New Zealand.Then there is the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill. I cannot understand why the Government is picking this bill up because we were always told that the Electoral Integrity Act was a terrible control mechanism by political parties. The only reason I can think that the Government is picking this up is that it does not believe it can hold all the members inside the National caucus during this term of Parliament. I believe that is why the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is getting a second wave of life out of the National Party. When we start to go through some of the disappointed people we can understand why that might be. Tau Henare is in the House tonight purely to make sure the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is not picked up because he is ready to walk. He is ready to make the big hīkoi over to the Māori Party where he believes his enormous talents—self-described—will be recognised as a consequence of the Government formation. He will cross the floor tonight against this reinstatement motion to make sure the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is not picked up. I ask who else will not be in the caucus. Well I see David Bennett in the House. Now how David Bennett is not on the front bench—Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Who?Hon DARREN HUGHES: Members ask who but that is very unfair. He is a very distinguished member who should have been included in the executive because he made big promises about transport in the Waikato area. In fact he got his figures wrong by $400 million but that will not bother the Minister of Finance—he is constantly getting the numbers wrong in this respect. He should have been included and I think the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is aimed at him.It is hard to believe that Allan Peachey was not included as a member of the executive. He wrote a book about education and whether Anne Tolley has even read a book about education remains to be debated. Allan Peachey wrote one and that shows that he may be looking for this bill. We want a rationale from Government members about why this should be. And the Government whips—I ask why the Government whips were not put into LTDs and driven around Wellington at the present time. They are constantly telling us what talented parliamentarians they are. I ask why they were left out of the executive. I think this bill is a control mechanism by the Government to try to make sure it can keep control of its parties. I want to know why that bill is being introduced.I want to know why the Oaths Modernisation Bill is part of this reinstatement motion. We heard Hone Harawira’s oath that he authored yesterday and I think this bill is being put in here to make sure that he can give effect to what he was saying in regard to his swearing in yesterday. There are other bills on which I want to know whetherlocal members of Parliament have been consulted. I see the member of Parliament for Palmerston North in the Chamber tonight my friend Iain Lees-Galloway. I ask whether he was consulted on the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill. I suspect he was not consulted on this bill and he is the person with the local knowledge to know whether the new Parliament should cover that.Then there is the Public Health Bill. This is of enormous interest to the Government because this is a bill that Jackie Blue—I believe—and Jo Goodhew raised all sorts of matters about in the last Parliament because they were concerned about hairdressers. If I remember that was the big issue for them before the election and covered by the Public Health Bill. That was obviously a confidence motion for the Government in its caucus and that should be covered by that point. I know that the Public Health Bill with regard to hairdressers will be of enormous interest to the Minister of Defence at the present time because Dr Wayne Mapp is sporting a slightly different appearance than he had before the election. He may well want to take an interest in that provision; it could be the real issue he wants to take care of.The Rail Network Bill is of enormous interest to the Labour Party because of its commitment to public transport and making sure that we get those issues and particularly the State-owned assets requirement of the rail network that we need to make sure New Zealand has a 21st century rail network. We have had no view from the National Government as to whether it is supporting KiwiRail. We have not heard a rationale for why that bill should be coming in. The previous Government was told by Bill English now Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister that if we bought the railways back a National Government would immediately sell it. So we are waiting to see whether the “for sale” sign will go up now.There are two other reports of select committees that I want to mention. The first is the report of the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation—the Cullen fund. Of course that was one of the missed opportunities of the decade—apparently! However that report formed a key part of the Speech from the Throne today in terms of the economic stimulus that the Government was mentioning it wanted to undertake. Secondly I am very surprised the Government has picked up the report of the Commerce Committee in respect of New Zealand Post Ltd because that report mentions in glowing terms the contribution of Kiwibank to the New Zealand Post Group.Now Kiwibank is something that the Labour Party is very proud of having introduced with Jim Anderton’s Progressive party to make sure that there was a banking option for all New Zealanders. Not one single branch of any bank anywhere in New Zealand has closed since Kiwibank started up because we have made sure that we have been able to put together real choice for New Zealanders in the banking system and that is part of the report of the Commerce Committee. I want to know from the National Party why it is picking that up because we want to see those issues debated fully before we get onto the work of the forty-ninth Parliament.