Simpson Scott: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: General Debate[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4716. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Listening to that member Grant Robertson the current member for Wellington Central and hearing the advice from the Hon Marian Hobbs a predecessor of that member that the Attorney-General gave earlier in this debate—that when in Opposition you should use that time to be thinking and investing in policy and hard work: doing the thinking and the hard work—clearly that is not occurring from either that member or members of his caucus. Here they are 7½ years into Opposition and there is not a new idea amongst them—no thinking no new ideas and certainly no new work.The speech just completed by Grant Robertson was a good classic example of how bad the situation is within the Labour Party. It is bereft of ideas bereft of new thought bereft of good thinking and bereft ofany sense of wanting to do the hard work that should be done in Opposition in preparation for returning eventually to the Government benches. Looking at its efforts so far 7½ years into its term in Opposition it is clearly nowhere close to being ready for Government. It is a party that says no. It is the party of “no”. It says no to everything. It has no new ideas no new vision and it is a party of no change. About the only thing that it changes is its leader and it does that with monotonous regularity. There is a very high chance in my view that it will change its leader again before we go to the polls in 2017 because the performance of its leader this afternoon would have left the Labour members feeling very concerned indeed about the coming election in 2017.A party that has recently changed its leader—or indeed half of its leadership—is the Green Party. This is the first opportunity I have had to congratulate James Shaw who was another candidate for the Wellington Central seat along with Mr Robertson and my good friend and colleague Paul Foster-Bell. James Shaw has now become the co-leader of the Greens and one would have you think that all is happiness—that the morris dancing is being danced with vigour and the singing of “Kumbaya” is all happy and loud. But actually we know that it is not because it was a tightly fought contest—it was a tightly fought contest. The protagonists all said that it was a tightly fought contest. Actually I have to say that most pundits expected the hard-working and diligent Kevin Hague to win that election and that he did not was cause for considerable surprise amongst the political commentariat. I think that those who follow politics were genuinely surprised that James Shaw came through in the end.The Greens have a system of electing their co-leader whereby each of their branches elects a delegate and the delegates then go and vote by secret ballot at their AGM and a winner emerges. I know that all is not well in the Green Party when members—active members; members of longstanding in the Coromandel Green organisation—go out of their way to come and tell me how unhappy they are with the decision that was made and how disappointed they are. I suspect their concerns are about how that process of voting actually took place and occurred because the news that is reaching me is that clearly some of those branch delegates did not vote in the secret ballot according to the directions of their branches. That would account for the surprise result that occurred in terms of the co-leadership of the Greens. I am not one to get too concerned about the internal machinations and the democracy of the Green Party but it strikes me as fundamental that if the branches give to their delegates a direction on how to vote and then those delegates do not vote as they have been instructed then that causes great concern amongst the rank and file of the Green Party.We on this side of the House are part of a Government that has a plan that is working and unlike members of the Opposition in both the Labour Party and the Green Party we have a functional leadership. We have a functioning organised caucus. We have new ideas and new plans and the plan is working.