English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:644;Page:13524] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Was that speech by Darren Hughes not the Government running up the white flag! We are seeing here today a shambles the likes of which I do not think we have seen in this country in the 8 years of the Labour Government. It is a shambles of things that are symptoms of deep-seated arrogance and paranoia. I do not think we can see it in any other way. 
The question is: when the Government in so much trouble where is Helen Clark? Where is the leader who is meant to be the person who knows everything and controls everything and is always right—and always gets it right if we believe our media? How has the Labour Party managed to turn the employment of a middle-management communications officer in a small minor ministry into such a corrosive destructive personal and negative event? Well I do not know. I do not know how the best political managers the country has ever seen— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: That’s what they say. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: That is what they say that is what the media say that is what half the public believe and that is what Helen Clark tells us every week on Monday mornings. 
How did Labour turn it into the debacle where the ministry has defamed its own employee and the Minister who punched another MP came into Parliament and beat up an employee a person no New Zealander has ever heard of? It is because she got in the way of the Labour Party. And that is what the Electoral Finance Bill is about. Anyone who stands in the way of Labour and its political intentions and its political survival gets dealt to but not with the style or even the consistency that there used to be. 
Labour has built its whole argument for the Electoral Finance Bill around anonymous donations. Who put that provision in there? It was not Labour. When Labour introduced the bill there was nothing in it about anonymous donations. The only reason it is in there is that National talked to the Greens about getting the regulated period shortened so the Greens trotted off to Labour and said: “If you don’t put in something about anonymous donations we’ll vote with National to shorten the regulated period.” Now it is at the heart of Labour’s case. Who sums up better the destructive power of Helen Clark than Annette King? 
There is a trail of other victims. I used to think Trevor Mallard was a victim—but there were crocodile tears for the TV cameras one week and the next week he was ripping up the careers of harmless middle-level female civil servants while Lianne Dalziel sat and watched. Now there is Clare Curran another female. She might vote Labour but her career is destroyed. Erin Leigh’s career is destroyed and Madeleine Setchell’s career is destroyed and Annette King is now another lot of road kill on Helen Clark’s path to a job in the UN. 
Annette King has made Minister Burton look competent and lucky. She has made him look lucky. I could not think of a Minister who could have done a worse job of the Electoral Finance Bill. We questioned her on one provision—just one out of 97; the law that applies to MPs—and what chaos there was. She gave us her interpretation. Her interpretation said: “If you say anything about what the next Parliament will do that counts as an election advertisement.” So the Government can spend $50 million as it plans to next year to talk about its record but if the Opposition says anything about what it will do when it becomes the Government that will be illegal unless it meets the criteria of an election advertisement. 
Annette King is not up to it and the Prime Minister is now going around Koru lounges saying that. Annette King needs to know that her leader is telling people that she is not up to it and that the problem with the Electoral Finance Bill is not Helen Clark; it is Annette King. So the Labour Party that believes in itself and backs itself is now down to one person: Helen Clark. That is it—it is her leadership now. Her leadership is a trail of destruction the worst political mismanagement we have seen for years. I thought National in its dying days made a few messes but none was this big and none was this incompetent.