Moroney Sue: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 01 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4169. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 Can I first of all take the opportunity to say happy birthday to every horse in New Zealand. They all turn a year older today and they have got a wonderful birthday present with a bronze medal from our eventing team. Congratulations to them. 
The member who just resumed his seat Chris Auchinvole has asked for good ideas from this side of the House. Well I will give the member some. One is extending paid parental leave. What about a $15 minimum wage? What about requiring 75 percent of our Parliament to agree before we sell our precious State assets? These are just three great ideas that have come from this side of the House in just the last week alone—just the last week alone. Mr Auchinvole asked for great ideas from this side of the House. I think they have been flooding forward in this Parliament not from the Government but from this side of the House. 
I want to focus for a little while on the requirement for a 75 percent vote in this House before we can sell State assets. That is what a sensible Government would do but not this Government. It is hell-bent on selling our most profitable State assets to private interests. And why is that? Why is it so hell-bent on it? Despite everything going wrong for the Government and the shambles that it is turning out to be it is still hell-bent on doing it. I think the New Zealand public know in their gut that the reason for that is that the Government and its rich mates get to profit out of buying shares in our most valuable and profitable assets. That is the real reason that underlies this. 
It is a complete shambles from the public’s perspective. We have a loyalty scheme that the Prime Minister is talking about but he does not know the cost of it. He never costed the loyalty scheme before he announced it. What a shambles. The estimates go from $250000 to $500000—oh no there are several more zeros than that. The brokerage fees—there has been $1 million spent so far and nothing has even been sold. Nothing has been sold yet but there has been $1 million spent so far. Then there is the cost of iwi settlements over water rights and the cost of advertising and public relations. John Key and Bill English will not say what the cost of that is. They will not even tell the New Zealand public how much money they are spending on advertising to flog off their State assets. Then there is the lost revenue—the lost revenue from those very profitable State assets that the Government did not even write into the Budget. So it is a complete and utter shambles but it is hell-bent on doing it despite the interests of the New Zealand public. 
I want to talk about amnesia—I want to talk about amnesia—because it is an affliction; it is something that is deeply afflicting the National-ACT Cabinet. Take John Banks for example. He seems to not remember despite the fact that the police can confirm it that he personally solicited at least $80000 in donations. He cannot seem to remember it. There is a video game called  
Amnesia.  
Its subtitle is  
The Dark Descent 
— 
Amnesia: The Dark Descent.  
I think that is exactly what is happening to that Cabinet opposite. It is catching—this amnesia is actually catching—because Bill English had amnesia last week too. He could not remember that he over-inflated the cost of paid parental leave by almost double in order to try to justify his financial veto on that. So the amnesia seems to be spreading from John Banks— 
Hon Annette King 
: John Key forgot his shares. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Oh John Key! He forgot about shares that he had bought. He forgot about what his position might have been on apartheid. There is a whole range of things a whole lot of amnesia that is going on there. I would say are they fit to govern? If they cannot remember really important facts like personally soliciting at least $80000 in donations and are seeming to forget that I would ask whether John Banks is fit to be a Cabinet Minister if he has got that level of amnesia. But of course the New Zealand public know that he does not suffer from amnesia. What he suffers from is a lack of ethnics. 
 What the Prime Minister also suffers from now is a lack of ethics. He once said that he was going to lift the bar. He was going to have high standards for his Cabinet Ministers but he seems to have forgotten that—amnesia again. Now he says that ethically it is perfectly fine for John Banks to have actually broken the electoral law but to remain as a Cabinet Minister. That shows that the higher standards are actually dropping. In Mr Key’s defence that was last term. This term he seems to be a tired Prime Minister who has forgotten all about higher standards.