Power Simon: General Debate 
Power Simon: General Debate 
[Volume:643;Page:12859] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 That sounded like a Minister of Finance who is on the way out and wanted to make a few closing remarks before the curtain finally came down. I tell members that I watched question time with interest today. Unfortunately I was not able to be here yesterday but I got the sense that the Prime Minister had made a statement to the nation that went something like this: “Don’t worry I have reshuffled Cabinet. All is well.” If we wanted to know what was going on in her mind all we needed to do was wait for Charles Chauvel to put out a statement because he would certainly alert us to what he was up to prior to anybody making any decisions and he would no doubt let the rest of the country know what else was on the Prime Minister’s mind. 
Today we saw the cracks in the new Cabinet appear for the first time. It was most interesting. The sweepstake at our caucus has been won by Tony Ryall who said it would take David Cunliffe only 48 hours to overstretch and he was about on the money—about on the hour. Now we know that David Cunliffe who puffs himself up in his corner seat over there has stuck his chest out 2 days into the job and said: “I’m running this show.” Well those words will come back to haunt that Minister for the remaining 10 months he is in that job. I was sitting here watching this new line-up in operation today and thinking that Maryan Street had so much promise. Phil Heatley took to her today in question time and left her struggling on her feet to string a sentence together. Michael Cullen had his head down during question time today. He was thinking about how he could sell the tax cuts he had spent 8 years arguing against. 
The key to today’s question time was a bit more subtle than that. The really revealing thing that happened today was a question asked in the name of Russell Fairbrother who refused to stand on his feet and ask a question in his name while he was in this House. That in itself says more about what is going on in that caucus than any other single incident in the last 24 hours. We know that there is a member sitting back there who knows that the person running against him for the Labour nomination had his nomination signed by the Deputy Prime Minister. Frankly it is surprising that Russell Fairbrother even decided to come to the House today let alone ask a question that was set down in his name. This is the first time I have seen that in 8 years in this Parliament and that is a deep reflection of the types of bitter and desperate struggles that are currently going on in the Labour Party caucus. 
We also know that while an axe murderer is on the loose in greater Wellington Phil Goff is off overseas and Damien O’Connor is back in the game with two supplementary questions in his tourism portfolio desperately trying to recover his credibility. But what we know about the Department of Corrections and the justice sector is this: same problems same issues different Ministers. Phil Goff had been the Minister of Corrections for a day and a half when under the watch of the Labour Party an axe murderer went on an unsupervised work party and wandered off having left a note in his cell that said words to the effect of “the hunt is on.” This is a Government that has never taken a stick to the Department of Corrections. We know that the police said this about that individual: “No crime is more violent than murder. The very nature of his crime makes him a risk.” Helicopters are deployed the Miramar Peninsula is cordoned off police dogs are on the look-out for this guy it is on the news every night and what does the Department of Corrections spokesperson say? “He breached the trust we placed in him.” Well that tells us about the culture of denial and stupidity that still exists in a department with 15 media and communications people. We know these problems are not going away. 
How many other axe murderers or for that matter just plain murderers are also on unsupervised work-party schemes as we sit here today discussing this issue? Is it everybody except the Department of Corrections that thinks an axe murderer being on an unsupervised work party is a bad idea? Is it just that the department could not see the problem as it presented itself over the last few days? What we know is that this Government is struggling. It does not matter who it puts in place; the same issues that that Government created will continue to haunt it right up until election day no matter who is in charge of the show or any ministry or department.