Hughes Darren: General Debate 
Hughes Darren: General Debate 
[Volume:641;Page:10925] 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 If there is any message that the leader of the National Party John Key should take from this week’s activities in the House despite his state of absolute and total confusion the message should be a pretty simple one. The Labour Party does not want him as its leader. The National Party is absolutely welcome to that man as its leader and he can get up at any conference he wants up and down New Zealand and proclaim himself as Labour’s leader and we will decline decline decline. It does not matter how focused this Government is on jobs and how committed it is on reducing unemployment in this country there is no vacancy in the leadership of the Labour Party. That is an undeniable fact that any single observer of politics should know. It astounds me that John Key the Leader of the Opposition who is paid the same salary as a Cabinet Minister cannot work out that he is not welcome to lead the Labour Party. 
It has been a particularly bad week for John Key but it was a bad week in the last week of the last sitting period as well. What we have learnt about John Key is that this man is very prone to criticism. He does not like being criticised and he does not like any negativity being spread around about him. When Colin James wrote that very perceptive article about his antics on the therapeutic joint regulator with Australia in that last week of the last sitting period John Key came into this House like a deflated balloon and sat there looking grumpy with his shoulders and his head down and nobody noticed. To be fair there was another little political drama on at the time. But the seeds were sown in that week when we started to see that the leader could not quite take the heat of this Chamber. 
Then we went into the adjournment and I think it is fair to say that most observers in politics assumed that John Key was going to have a fantastic National Party conference. It really was my opinion and I thought that was going to happen. He had had quite a good run in the polls. He had had very soft little feature pieces about himself. People were talking about him and I thought: “How could you possibly stuff up going to speak to your own party faithful at that weekend?”. One would think it would be a coronation. One would think he would walk in there on water. What did we find? The conference was a comprehensive disaster. The one thing that should go well for one in politics is one’s own party conference. The National Party members are interjecting— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not want to interrupt the speaker but I just ask your advice on this. That member cannot stand up at her bench and barrack while a member is on his feet giving a speech under your call. That member over there beside Mr Clarkson stood barracked and continued standing right through that speech. That is out of order and I would ask for your assistance. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I thank Mr Cosgrove. I did actually call the member to order because it is not in order to move to facilitate interjection. I advise the member to look at Speakers’ rulings 58/4 and 59/1. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: I have been here only 5 years but I have never seen a member stand on her pins and interject and screech like a banshee from the background of the National Party Opposition benches. Dr Blue’s behaviour just now highlights the enormous sensitivity the National Party is feeling at the present time. After yesterday’s blood bath in here when the front bench of Labour mowed down the Leader of the Opposition it was pretty clear to me that the National Party had a strategy from its meeting this morning. Mr McCully came back to Wellington and he said: “We’ve got to go into the House hard today.” So they were all prepped up and wound up. They were going to come into the House and were not going to put up with anything. 
How do I know that? At the moment Jacqui Dean is screeching out and she yelled out all during question time. One does not hear a lot from Jacqui Dean it is fair to say. She is not one of the great heavyweights in New Zealand politics but she was speaking out. Chris Auchinvole who is a normally a member who speaks in the evening was chirping away all through question time. David Bennett that great strategist in politics was wound up and speaking and poor old Gerry Brownlee who is not normally working by this stage of the week even got up and made a couple of points of order as well to try to defend it. They had obviously said: “We are not going to sit there and take it. Let’s go in there and show how tough we are.” The problem is that if a party has a strategy the cleverest thing to do is to make it look as if the party does not have a strategy. Of course this point was lost on those National front-bench potentials Jacqui Dean Chris Auchinvole David Bennett and one or two of the others. 
You know the conference was extraordinary and I noticed two things about it. The first was that John Key decided he would walk in to a conference theme like an American politician. He ran a website and said: “I can’t decide what song I want to walk into my own conference to—could you decide for me?”. It is a bit like when he goes to McDonald’s to order a Happy Meal and when he is asked: “What would you like sir?” he says: “Oh no—what would you like me to have?”. He is not quite sure what he should order; he would like the people to decide for him. Mr Key finally decided on a very good Coldplay song—Dr Cullen read some of it out to us—the great song “Clocks”. The second paragraph is: 
Confusion that never stops 
The closing walls and ticking clocks 
Gonna come back and take you home 
I could not stop that you now know … 
Cursed missed opportunities 
Am I part of the cure 
Or am I part of the disease 
Well it is pretty clear that the National Party leader is now part of the problem in that regard. When he walked in to that Coldplay song it just described the week he was about to have. Members should remember that this was before he declared himself to be the leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. 
The other thing I thought was really interesting about the National Party conference was the way it looked. National members went to the Langham Hotel’s ballroom. When the camera panned around I did not see many faces that were not white at the National Party conference. I did not see a modern 21st century multicultural New Zealand there. I saw a lot of white New Zealanders—Pakeha New Zealanders. That is a pretty good thing. I am a white New Zealander myself. I am in favour of Pakeha New Zealanders. I saw a lot of older people. I am in favour of them too. I would not mind being one one day. But this country is broader than just that. This is a party that claims to have a revival going on yet its conference room floor did not look like New Zealand and that is a fundamental problem. Some of the smarter ones like Jonathan Coleman actually know that. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.