Carter David: General Debate 
Carter David: General Debate 
[Volume:641;Page:11139] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 That contribution was from Damien O’Connor. With Benson-Pope gone the media are now running a sweepstake on who will be next to go. My bet is it will be Damien O’Connor and he will not only lose his job as a Minister but at the next election lose his seat of West Coast - Tasman which will be taken by Chris Auchinvole of the National Party. It has been a tremendously bad couple of weeks for Labour: the sacking of Benson-Pope; Mark Prebble under suspicion; the electoral reform legislation unravelling; and then today we heard that Air New Zealand has now become a military carrier for the Aussie troops. 
But I want to talk about something that I saw leading the news last night on Television One. It was of course the revelation that the number of New Zealanders leaving permanently for Australia has now reached 106 a day on average. I went back and had a look at some comments that the Prime Minister made when she was the Leader of the Opposition. She said this about the number of people crossing the ditch: “We can no longer stand back and watch our best and brightest leave and take their ideas and now even their business with them. … That means it is time to act.” That is what Helen Clark said in 1999. Then I recalled that remarkable night of the 1999 election. The then soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton came on TV and almost in a Martin Luther King model talked about those young New Zealanders overseas with talent and skill: “Come home and rebuild the nation.” 
Have we heard Mr Anderton utter much since then as the number of people who leave this country permanently and go to Australia has continued to increase? They go for a number of reasons. Some of them probably go to dodge the Minister of Foreign Affairs “Bauble” Winston Peters. But a good number go because they earn substantially more money over there and because the tax rates here are too high. For seven Budgets in a row Michael Cullen has effectively increased tax rates in all of them. Compare that with what Peter Costello has managed to do in Australia. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: You were told all that. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: In one of Winston Peters’ numerous trips overseas he should find out what is happening. Peter Costello has driven taxes down for the last five Budgets so New Zealanders who choose to go on a flight of 3 hours to settle in Australia can earn 50 percent more than they do here. It is now getting to a crisis point. 
The other topic I want to cover briefly is of course the way the Labour Government is gerrymandering into this Parliament electoral reform legislation expressly designed so that it can have access to taxpayers’ money to spread its message but more specifically to make sure that the National Party has trouble getting its messages out to the voters. It is hitting not only the National Party but also organisations like Federated Farmers which have already had to campaign against the “fart tax” the microchipping of farm dogs and Helen Clark’s plan to open up private land to public access. Every time Labour has embarked on those campaigns it has had to spend considerably more than the $60000 that Labour is now trying to impose on any organisation sending its message out to New Zealanders in an election year. 
The electoral reform legislation is about gerrymandering the system. It is a desperate effort by a Labour Government that knows it is in the death throes. Its stench of decay is something that is measurable right around the country so its last effort is to wheel in this legislation. When the editorials in the country start noting how bad it is Helen Clark says: “Well it might need some changing; it obviously needs a few changes.” Then when we asked her in the House during this parliamentary week what those changes were she suddenly seemed to have amnesia as she is inclined to do on a very regular basis and we do not know now what job the select committee has to do with that legislation. We had Mr Maharey in Parliament today saying: “Leave it to the select committee process; that’s where these things need to be ironed out.” Yet I recall many pieces of legislation the Employment Relations Act probably being the primary one where there were thousands of submissions saying the legislation was wrong and Labour rammed it through ignoring the select committee process. We had the quote from Michael Cullen: “We won. You lost. Eat that!”. That is what Labour thinks of the select committee process.