Gosche Mark: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGosche Mark: General Debate[Sitting date: 22 August 2007. Volume:641;Page:11366. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie): That member Wayne Mapp wants everybody to forget Iraq. So do all the Governments that have sent troops there who have died. The National Party wants to sweep it under the carpet. We can understand that; its members do not want the words of their leader coming back to haunt them. They would prefer it to be forgotten it is sad that it will not be forgotten and it should not be forgotten by New Zealanders. If that lot were the Government they would have sent young New Zealand men and women there to die and Air New Zealand would have been bringing them back in body bags.Dr Wayne Mapp: Oh no.Hon MARK GOSCHE: Yes that is what it would have been doing. Poor old Dr Mapp wants the public to forget it.But let us get back to some of the earlier comments and speeches about the poor personal attacks on Mr Key and about how sad it is that the Government wants to remind the public about his shallowness. I was at a meeting a couple of weeks ago of about 400 factory workers in South Auckland. National says we are not in touch and that we do not listen to those people. Well I was there and we were talking about housing. Of course we have had the National members lately pronouncing on housing. What have they been saying? They have said that they want to sell State houses to the tenants yet all of this year National’s housing spokesperson Mr Heatley has been railing about the properties in Ōrākei in the eastern suburbs of Auckland. It is a place where many people particularly Ngāti Whātua have lived for years and years despite Governments doing their very best to shove them out and he is saying that we should sell those properties. Will he sell them to the tenants? Will they have the $1 million to buy them?Jill Pettis: No!Hon MARK GOSCHE: No! National will be selling them to its mates yet again. Let us get back to Mr Key’s words. He is afraid of the effects on the underclass. He believes that it is unaffordable for many people to have a house. So what is this Government doing about it? We will actually do something about it up in Hobsonville. We will have affordable housing for people to buy. We will have State housing we will have schools and we will have shops. We will make a community where not everybody in that community is rich or poor because we know the failed policies of the past and what they delivered.What does the man who went up to Waitangi with a young Māori girl saying that he was there for the underclass say about Hobsonville State housing? What does he say about this Government’s desire to have affordable housing in his electorate? He says: “Oh no! We don’t want those poor people anywhere near us. Get them out of here. And by the way do not let them live in Ōrākei either.” This is the man who would have us believe that he is there for the underclass for all of those people I was talking to at that meeting in South Auckland who work in the factories who work in manufacturing jobs and who are trying to bring up families on low or modest incomes. What does Mr Key have in store for them? He says that we cannot have affordable housing anywhere near his electorate that we cannot have low-income people living in $1 million properties up in Ōrākei—they have to be sold—and he pretends that he will sell State houses to low-income people who are in State houses right now because they are so low-income that they cannot afford to buy a house. Where is the logic in that?But we should not get personal. We should not get in there and test his theories and policies. Oh no it is terrible if the Government dares to do that to the Leader of the Opposition. The same people Mr Key says he is concerned about—the people I wastalking to a couple of weeks ago—were saying how great KiwiSaver is. They asked me what the National Party would do to it. We know what it will do to it because it has already said that this Government is spending too much on retirement. What that means is that National will either cut KiwiSaver or cut the pension or both. Those members over there know that. They know that the party led by John Key voted against increasing the minimum wage voted against KiwiSaver voted against increased holidays for average working families and voted against lower doctor fees. It voted against prescription fees of three bucks. This is the man who says that he is worried about the underclass yet he voted against lowering doctor fees lowering prescription costs better wages and better holidays.Of course we are not supposed to remind him about his desire to send troops to Iraq so that they could be killed. It would not be a bunch of Tories’ sons and daughters who went over there and fought in Iraq; that is not the way it works anywhere in the world. Oh no the poor underclass would provide the bodies to go over there. [Interruption] Dr Mapp does not want to be reminded about Iraq; he wants to read hisNew ZealandHerald blog so that he can forget his leader’s idiotic statements which he made 3 or 4 years ago.