Power Simon: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Power Simon: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3394] 
SIMON POWER (NZ National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 That was a sad sad reincarnation of the speech we hear every time that Minister gets on his feet: $18.95—buy the CD and cut out the middleman. That is the same speech we hear from Paul Swain every time he gets up. Was the “Minister for Business Lunches” in the first term pretty popular? He ingratiated himself with the business communities around Wellington and Auckland put on a bit of weight came back to Wellington and the Prime Minister decided: we cannot have too much more of that; he is getting too popular. How can we solve that in one swift move? Make him Minister of Transport! That will fix him; we will never hear from him again! He got one paragraph in the Prime Minister’s statement and despite the Hon Richard Prebble during the course of his speech asking him to refer to it he cannot remember what was in it. He does not have a clue what he is supposed to do for the next 3 years. He has no idea at all so he comes down here and gives us a re-run of the same old tired general debate speech we heard from him over the last parliamentary term and year.  
I have been sitting down here listening to the Labour Party speeches over the course of this debate and one thing struck me when we were listening to Lianne Dalziel’s speech. How sad is she when she spends her New Year’s eve with members of Parliament driving around New Zealand on motorbikes! How sad is that? I ask those members opposite who were involved in that where those members’ friends are. Where are the real people those members should be spending Christmas with instead of getting around the North Island—[ 
Interruption 
] The young member for Otaki chirps out there. There was only one group I felt more sorry for and that was the penguins on Auckland Island having those Labour MPs trapped there with them and having to put up with them while they sat around. All the penguins wanted was peace and quiet and what do we get? A picture in the newspaper of Chris Carter in his togs with Darren Hughes standing behind him holding his clothes! I will leave that there.  
It is an absolute privilege to be back in the House in 2003. This will be a great year for the National Party and for the centre-right political parties in this Parliament. This is the time when it will all happen. I support the motion of no confidence in this Government put by our leader Bill English. I listened to the sad tired pathetic drawn-out speech that the Prime Minister gave. It was so bad she had already told the media how bad it was going to be before she delivered it—cut out the middleman forget the spin just tell them it will be bad. She reported it as bad and then delivered it badly. There was no expectation and that lack of expectation was certainly met.  
I did not hear one new idea. There was not one new policy thought or piece of vision. There is no direction for New Zealand. There is no map set out. There is no plan we can follow. This Government is concerned with only one thing and that is staying there. It is not about advancing any policy ideas or any agenda. It is just simply not good enough for a Prime Minister to sit and give a political commentator’s overview of the last 12 months and a bit of a view about what she thinks will happen in the political scene over the next 12 months.  
What is the Prime Minister’s view? What is her plan? What will she do? We can all read newspapers about the current political situation. We do not need to hear it from her. This is not an academic exercise where one is handing in a project for POLS 352 at Auckland University. This is about leading vision and having a plan. There was no conviction in the Prime Minister’s statement at all. It is pretty clear to me and to members on this side of the House that the reason that today’s economy is doing well is a result of the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. There is no question about that. 
Government Members 
: Oh! 
SIMON POWER 
: Those members scoff. What have those members changed from the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s? Not one thing! Have we had a reversal of any major legislation? The Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act? No. The Fiscal Responsibility Act? No. None of that has changed. Did we get the benefit rates put back up? No. Nothing has changed. It is just more of the same.  
This year Bill English and National will be making the Prime Minister talk about the Treaty of Waitangi. We want to know about its role in legislation and the way in which its interpretation will affect the lives of ordinary New Zealanders. has been said on this side of the House today it is simply not good enough to call anyone who raises those issues a racist. I see Rick Barker yelling out from the other side of the House. He has had a busy afternoon obviously. I say to him that he should go back to his office and sign off a couple more JP nominations.  
This year for the first time we will see the operation of the Tertiary Education Commission up and running the nub of which makes it the education equivalent to a district health board. That is simply what it is. The worry I have for this organisation is that it will be used as a political buffer designed to put space between the Minister and the sector and the users of the sector. The fee maxima solution offered by Steve Maharey is a short-term stopgap measure and I worry about the damage it will do to the flexibility of institutions to introduce quality courses and run themselves in the best interests of their students.  
This measure does not address real structural cost at all. It does not address any long-term problems in tertiary education. It is short-term thinking and it is shallow. In tertiary education the real problem is that in the 1990s the participation issue was solved. Essentially anybody who wanted to attend a tertiary institution was able to do so. Now it is incumbent upon this Government to solve the problem of quality. That is the next step not some stopgap band-aid measure whereby one tries to lock in the student vote by half-hearted fee maxima legislation.  
Quality issues involve looking at real questions about the delivery of international competitiveness in our tertiary education sector. This Government’s reforms do not address structural quality or funding reform issues in tertiary education at all. It is not real policy and I say to Steve Maharey this reform is a disappointing attempt to address those issues. Rest assured National will be watching and monitoring the progress of the Tertiary Education Commission right from the beginning because it is the quality of education that matters not who owns the institution or how the Government can get short-term political solutions to keep the student vote. Students I say to Minister Maharey are far smarter than that. I want to know what this Government will do to make our institutions internationally competitive.  
I am delighted today to take over responsibility in the area of defence for the National Party and with Ohakea and Waiouru in the Rangitikei electorate and Linton Army Camp on its doorstep it is an excellent opportunity not only to fight for local interests but also to put a wider international viewpoint when it comes to our international commitments and international defence arrangements.  
This Government has become tired arrogant and dull and the best way for us to sum that up is to look at the way it has reacted to the situation in Iraq. This Prime Minister is desperate to embrace multilateralism only if it means no involvement in any conflict while balancing that with her future job at the UN and not letting go of what she perceives to be a real chance of a free-trade agreement. This is not a commitment to an international role at all; this is a badly designed domestic balancing act and the Prime Minister has no idea from day to day where to sit on this issue. Every time it is raised in the House she shifts her position.  
In conclusion this year is one in which National and the centre-right parties in the House will not be doing anything other than holding this Government to account on every single decision it makes and more to the point every time it refuses to make a decision by taking short-term stopgap measures for political purposes rather than advancing a pure political agenda.