Pettis Jill: General Debates 
Pettis Jill: General Debates 
[Volume:612;Page:8984] 
JILL PETTIS (NZ Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 I say to Mr Ardern that there is an old Confucius saying: “When in hole stop digging.” The majority of New Zealanders only heard of Mr Ardern for the very first time when he broke the law—enough said. 
I want to comment on what Mr English said in the House this afternoon with regard to the health matters that were discussed and to remind the people on the Opposition side of the House—sanctimonious in their amnesia—that Mr McKeown who sadly has since passed away took Mrs Shipley to the Privacy Commissioner because she revealed too much information for his and his family’s liking. The Privacy Commissioner said that Mrs Shipley had gone too far but also acknowledged that when people give a member of Parliament the right to speak about them in Parliament they have to accept that they are waiving the right to keep everything else about their health matters private. Mr English would have known that. He is a former Minister of Health—a useless Minister of Health and an equally useless leader of the National Party. 
National Party members have an appalling lack of memory and they are a complete waste of space. They are such a waste of space that because their leader was out of the country yesterday they could not hold a caucus. They could not even get organised enough to hold a caucus. Even in Labour’s dark days politically it still managed to organise a caucus. When the leader of our party was out of the country we could still get ourselves organised as we can now. I suspect that National members were too busy plotting and scheming this morning to attend select committee meetings. There was a gaping hole on the other side of the table at a number of select committee meetings this morning. The National members were away plotting and scheming. There is a coup just sitting on the horizon and they all know it. It is not “bill and coo” but is “bye-bye Bill” because the coup is going after Bill English. 
I have to confess that I thought Mr English would be a threat to the Labour Party. I thought in the early days that he would be a bit of a threat to us but I was absolutely wrong. National is a boutique party. It has failed to recognise that the demographic group it is targeting is too small for National ever to become the Government. I say to Mr English that it is simple maths. The people he is targeting are too small a group. The closer National gets to ACT the more it scares ordinary middle New Zealanders. New Zealanders are not extremists. They want middle-of-the-road policies that reflect their desires and aspirations in life. The extreme policies of ACT scare the majority of New Zealanders witless. I say to National that the closer it gets to ACT the more it scares its core group of supporters. 
National is now so desperate that it is resurrecting failed ideas and is resorting to prejudice and bigotry. Every time the words “culture” and “spirituality” are mentioned in the House National members positively salivate. They lose control of themselves and resort to saying things they should be ashamed of. The average New Zealander is ashamed to hear such things from a once-proud National Party and even its own candidates have expressed that view in the past. Greg White who was ranked No. 30 on the party list said that the sorts of racist comments National members were making made him feel ashamed. 
National is a party that is going nowhere. It needs to lift its game. New Zealand needs a good Opposition but we are wasting our time looking over there at National for one. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.