Bennett David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2007. Volume:643;Page:12664. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 That speech was from Mark Gosche a member who has huge potential in his party but who will never actually be able to take it further. Let us imagine the situation if someone were a member of the Labour Party at the moment. I was sitting here thinking that if I were the Prime Minister I would be very very disappointed and very sad. She has some big problems in front of her. What does she do with her political party? The message the Prime Minister will be giving at the Labour Party conference will be: “Look I know we are in trouble; we are going to lose this one. But I have a plan. I’m going to change the rules so that those guys can’t fight on a level playing field. I’ll change the rules not fight on the basis of policy or people.” 
Why can the Prime Minister not fight on the basis of policy or on people? She has nobody to put up the front now. Her loyal lieutenant resigned last week. The person she had put her money on to take over and lead the party after her departure is going. That opens a huge hole in the Labour Party now. Who will be there and who will be coming up behind? We can imagine the list of people she can look to. 
You know a Prime Minister would normally think that his or her Ministers outside Cabinet were there for a reason: to learn to come into Cabinet. Would that not be expected? But who would a Prime Minister choose out of these Ministers: Minister Judith Tizard Minister Dover Samuels Minister Harry Duynhoven Minister Mita Ririnui Minister Winnie Laban and Minister Mahara Okeroa. Who would be chosen to go on to the front bench? None of those Ministers have the potential the desire or the ability to go on to the front bench. 
So the Prime Minister will have to go further back. Will she go back to Shane Jones the man who has made his name in this House for his gripping questions at question time? Will she choose that person? Will she go for Charles Chauvel somebody who has been doing his time just sitting there patiently waiting for the opportunities? Or will she go for Maryan Street the loyal dependable former Labour Party president? What would members do if they were Helen Clark? There are not many choices and that is her problem. That is what she is sitting there thinking now: how does she go into an election with a team that will not do it a team that is divided and corrosive? 
One person out there is licking his lips at this and that is Phil Goff. Phil Goff knows that with Clark in trouble and Maharey going he has a straight road to the job he wants: Leader of the Opposition leader of the Labour Party. 
Politics is all about timing and the timing of the Labour Party and its members is bad. They know they will be out at the next election and they know they will be out for 12 years because John Key will be one of the greatest Prime Ministers of this country. Those Labour members who have any brains will be getting out now. They know they will be sitting in Opposition if they do not get out now. The ones that cannot get out have nothing else they could go to anyway. They are sitting there because that is their only option; that is the best they can ever achieve. 
We have to feel sorry for some people. The new Labour members who come in will have come in at the wrong term in the electoral cycle. They will come in and be in Opposition for the next 12 years. Let us imagine those members coming in. They will not get promoted and they will be sitting there for 12 years in Opposition. Is that not a shame for them? Is that not a shame for Labour? 
Well it serves them right. A party cannot do what Labour has done year on year and ignore what the public of New Zealand want. The public of New Zealand have seen in Australia a country that is developing and giving tax cuts to its people. Australia is rewarding people for hard work and enterprise—the kind of things that the Labour Government should be doing for our people. 
But what has Cullen come up with this week in response to that issue? He has just come out and made four tests for any tax cut. These four tests he made on the hoof and in the middle of question time. He had no concept of what they were; he could hardly remember them today when he was again asked about them. So what are these tests? Well the fourth test is probably the most obscure of them all: “they must be fair; that is the benefits must not all go to those on higher incomes but must be spread more fairly across the entire population.” That is the test the Labour Party uses to make tax cuts.