English Bill: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
English Bill: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:637;Page:7340] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow our leader John Key who has had such a fantastic start to the year and my front-bench colleagues in this debate. National is pulling together a team that will be a very successful Cabinet and a successful Government. 
I might contrast that with the new Government on the other side. Talk about the coalition of the unwilling! Let us go through some of its brief history. United Future and New Zealand First are in a Government with Labour because the Greens were not there. That is why they went in with Labour. They said: “We won’t go in if the Greens are in it.” Peter Dunne is on the record as calling them Luddites “loony tunes” and all sorts of bizarre things and saying that a Government that is dependent on the Greens would be tugged to the left. Now the bad sibling who has been locked out for two elections is back home and it is not going to be easy. The Labour leadership is going to roll out of bed every morning and have to deal with the toxic trio of New Zealand First United Future and the Greens. Is it likely to go well? Michael Cullen and Helen Clark are driving this Government like a pair of crash dummies and it is all going in slow motion. 
Let us look at what is likely to happen if the Greens come in. The first thing is that what happened yesterday is going to happen right through to the end of this Government’s life. The sustainability agenda now belongs to Jeanette Fitzsimons and the Green Party not Helen Clark. At the next election the choice for the country will be between National’s practical sensible climate change policy and the Green’s climate change policy. Labour will be able to do nothing on climate change without Jeanette Fitzsimons’ say-so. It effectively has no climate change policy now. 
As it is turning out Labour is to have no tax policy either because Peter Dunne is now running the tax policy. He is the man setting out to get all the credit—maybe Trevor Mallard is helping him—for any tax cuts. I ask members to guess which party is totally opposed to tax cuts even more than Michael Cullen is. 
Hon Members 
: The Greens! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Greens are totally opposed to Peter Dunne’s tax cuts. So that is what the two crash dummies will have to deal with every day: a squabbling family whose members have made it absolutely clear they do not like each other whose agendas are quite diverse but who in an unexpected turn are crowding out Labour’s agenda. What will Helen Clark be on about if it is not tax or sustainability? I can tell members that she will be strutting the world stage as New Zealand’s most expensive job seeker. She will be out there touting sustainability as her ticket to the United Nations. 
A Government that has no direction gets in trouble and how much trouble! Let us look at just the last week at the slow motion crash of the Labour Government. Dr Cullen—unintentionally apparently—floats his tax on fixed-interest mortgages then he defends it then he says it is low priority then Helen Clark says it is a dead duck then Dr Cullen back-pedals. 
Hon Member 
: All in slow motion. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: All in slow motion. What Helen Clark did then was undermine the credibility of the Minister of Finance at a critical stage of the Budget process. He is now a lame duck who will be replaced by a lame duck. 
That was last week then yesterday the Government lost its majority. What a chapter of cynicism with Helen Clark talking about Labour’s patience with Phillip Field. She thought she would get away with it. We heard her day after day in here say that the Ingram report cleared Phillip Field. Now she says she always knew he was dodgy. That was just yesterday. 
Let us go back another couple of weeks. There is no underclass there are no hungry children there is no poverty and there is no problem. If Labour gives a dollar to someone that is—to use Dr Cullen’s gloriously religious term—the “redemptive power of the State”. That was in his speech last week. But if National encourages people to give a dollar to someone that is Tory charity—and Labour people say it like they think it is filthy. I can tell the Government members that they would be surprised how many of their supporters are now queuing up at National’s door. People in the community sector for instance are coming to us and saying they do not think it is Tory charity. They are sick of bullying Ministers and smothering smarm and they want to talk to the next Government about how to get out from under that kind of arrogance and do a better job for so many people in New Zealand who need more done for them. 
Hon Member 
: The corridors are so busy. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The corridors are getting busy. That was just 2 weeks ago. Let us look at the 2 weeks before that. We saw the disgrace that is at the heart of the Labour Government’s moral rot: there is no sense of accountability or responsibility. Karl Kuchenbecker was shot dead by someone who was in the custody of the State. He was an innocent young father. What has happened? Nothing. We heard more excuses today from Damien O’Connor. If Phillip Field gets investigated for corruption why not Damien O’Connor? Phillip Field only asked for the visas; Damien O’Connor gave them out by the hundred to all sorts of people who would never get one now under any other Minister. There was no apology from that Minister no responsibility no accountability because he follows the model of his leader Helen Clark. 
Have members noticed over the years how she has developed a habit of being very sincere about apologising to people she has never met about things she never did—such as the persecution of the Chinese earlier in New Zealand’s history and discrimination against gays? But when a young New Zealand father dies after being shot by a man in the custody of the Government she will not apologise. That followed on from the previous debacle with no apology under that Minister: the death of Liam Ashley. Damien O’Connor told us in this House it was the parents’ fault. That is Labour’s idea of responsibility. The Department of Corrections feeds a mixed-up young man to the monster in the back of a State-funded State-run and State-supervised prison van he is kicked and strangled to death and Labour takes no responsibility. Those members regard those incidents as minor political irritants. 
We found out today at the Finance and Expenditure Committee that Dr Cullen takes no responsibility for the target of getting the country back into the top half of the OECD. He actually said he takes that as seriously as he takes the carbon neutral target that the Government has set. Well so do we. We take it as seriously as that. Helen Clark has no genuine sincere intention. This Government has become entirely focused on the maintenance of the Helen Clark prime ministership. Dr Cullen is a spent force. Maybe he did a good job—history will judge—but he is on his way out. Steve Maharey is about to mess up early childhood education just like he wrecked Television New Zealand and the tertiary education sector. Trevor Mallard is still trying to work out whether to take a sun deckchair along to the Rugby World Cup like the rest of us will have to. 
They do not matter any more. It is all about Helen Clark. It is about the deals she will have to do with the Green Party to stay Prime Minister of New Zealand. I have to give her this: she is the only one left with the energy for it. She is the only one left who seems to be that bothered but she is bothered about only her own position. As for irritants like a few casual dead bodies—well who cares? We saw it all summed up with Phillip Field. No one apologises or is responsible for deaths. Incompetence corruption and misleading the public are all excusable but if anyone is disloyal to Helen Clark that person will get shot.