McCully Murray: General Debate 
McCully Murray: General Debate 
[Volume:648;Page:17563] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 Those who have been listening to this debate this afternoon as I have and in particular those who have listened to the members opposite who hold the rank of Minister will be shaking their heads in wonderment. After listening to those contributions particularly those from Ministers one would imagine that this country is not confronted by any serious challenges and that this is a place where there are no serious issues to be debated and where all there is to focus on is the personality of the Leader of the Opposition and the internal workings of the National Party and its policy machine. One could be excused for overlooking the fact that something like 80000 New Zealanders a year—according to the Government Statistician—are departing these shores to live somewhere else. About 45000 people are moving to Australia every year because for them New Zealand is no longer the land of opportunity. 
It is hard to believe that debate such as we have heard can take place in an environment where finance companies and associated vehicles are collapsing virtually by the day and taking the savings of elderly New Zealanders with them. It is hard to understand when we listen to the debate that we live in a situation in which the cost of living—the price of filling up the car or going to the supermarket—places most average New Zealand families under serious pressure. It is hard to believe that this debate is taking place in an environment where the average income in Australia is now 35 percent more than the average income in New Zealand. Dr David Skilling of the New Zealand Institute tells us that at the current rate of progress by 2030 that gap will be 60 percent. At that point the game is all over—as Dr Skilling puts it New Zealand will be “Fiji with snow”. 
With that sort of challenge confronting the country it is hard to imagine that the people sitting opposite—particularly those with the flash BMWs the chauffeurs and the ministerial houses—have the gall to come into this House and focus on cheap shots directed at the leader of the National Party. It is hard to believe that they can come along to the House with nothing better to contribute than a few cute lines about the National Party policy machine. The Labour operation is focused now on one thing and one thing only and that is political survival and today political survival for Labour means taking whatever Winston Peters decides to give it. 
In the latter stages of 2007 Parliament was dominated by the passage of the Electoral Finance Act. The Labour Government assisted by the Greens and New Zealand First conspired to pass legislation that limited donations to political parties required disclosure of those donations and moved to constrain what parties could spend that money on. The National Party had accepted some time before that that the previous law needed to be changed and it offered to assist with those changes. The Labour Government rejected that offer because its mission was not really just to change the law in a way that might improve it; it was to try to ensure that the National Party and those who might support it would have to fight the 2008 election campaign with one hand—or preferably two hands—tied behind their backs. Labour instead of focusing on laws that would have made sense created laws that were draconian and it now finds itself hoist by its own petard. 
There are a number of matters that we should reflect on today in the context of the developments of the last week. The first of those is anonymous donations. After listening to the piety from members opposite one would imagine that no member of the Labour Party has ever heard of or seen an anonymous donation. I want those who are interested to know that according to the official returns of the Labour Party itself in 1999 it received $824000 of anonymous donations in 2002 it received $380000 in 2004 it received $85000 in 2005 it received $315000 in 2006 it received $100000 and it received $230000 in 2007—while it was writing the very law that would outlaw those sorts of donations. I want those who understand what is going on here to reflect upon those numbers and on the sort of gall it takes for members of the Labour Party to rail against anonymous donations.