Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
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Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 The Prime Minister opened the parliamentary session with one of the more uplifting speeches that I have heard in some time. I well remember the contribution made by the leader of New Zealand First Winston Peters when he said of the National Party that it now has three factions. I went back home and sought to put the names and addresses of each member of the National caucus into one of those three factions and I could not. I took Winston Peters’ speech seriously and tried to fit the National members into one of three factions but I could not. The reason is that I have six factions. Normally one does not get six factions in a political party; normally there are just two. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: What about ACT? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: ACT has four factions. It had four people running for the leadership and therefore the ACT members split themselves four ways. For example New Zealand First had just two factions: those who went off with the Government of the day and those who did not. Certainly the Labour Party has had its splits and divisions in its history. I am sorry to say that we had a fair bit to do with the starting of the ACT party and of United Future. I guess we got ourselves up to three but not to six factions. 
National’s factions are not firm factions; they move daily. But they do have a certain pattern to them and they are often determined around behaviour gender or geography. It is worth taking a look at how those factions come to be. The first faction is the group of National MPs who will speak freely about what is going on in the National Party caucus as compared with those who do not. So it may be an issue of discipline it may be an issue of disaffection with the leader or it may be a little bit of each. When we look at the members who speak out and have something to say about the good Dr Brash generally speaking we find that they are people whom one expects will not vote for the good Dr Brash when he comes up for re-election after his failure at the next general election. Lynda Scott is an obvious example of that and Brian Connell is another. We can see—and I will be careful not to mention some names—that a number of National Party caucus members are quite happy to speak out including off the record but they find themselves reported as: “National MP says …”. We have a list of their names. As I said they include some unfortunate examples and I will not read that list out. However there is certainly a faction that will speak out versus those members who will not. 
The second faction of course is based on gender. The leader of the National Party has six women members in his caucus but none of them are on the front bench. One of them has decided to retire one of them got the biff earlier this year and one of them got the biff earlier last year. That is three out of six women who are disaffected and of course they are supported by the other three. So there is certainly a gender faction within the National Party; there is no doubt about that. 
The other group of MPs who are offside with Dr Don Brash are South Islanders. I do not know why but it just so happens that his predecessor Bill English is from the South Island. The aforementioned Katherine Rich is from the South Island as is the woman who is retiring Lynda Scott and also Nick Smith who was to be the deputy and then he was not and of course the member for Rakaia Brian Connell a member of the National caucus who publicly said about his own leader: “I am very disappointed. I think it’s a stupid decision.” He comes from the South Island. There are only two MPs from the South Island who are not on that list. One of them is Gerry Brownlee and I will come to him in a minute and the other one is who? Who have I missed out? Which South Island MP have I missed out? That is right; nobody can remember. David Carter is from the South Island. He sits there as the one South Island MP who is probably still onside with the leader. 
Then there is the brat pack. One of them is retiring one of them was the leader one of them was going to be the deputy leader and one of them is Tony Ryall. The members of the brat pack are not the friends of Dr Brash because one of the brat pack is Dr Brash’s predecessor and that faction sits there. 
Then there are the young and the restless. At the moment the young and the restless really have only three true paid-up members. They are Katherine Rich John Key and “Simon Says”. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Who? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I am sorry; Simon Power. Let me tell the House something about the young and the restless. They had a to-do just last week when Simon Power had to tell Katherine Rich not to resign from politics.