Brownlee Gerry: Adjournment 
Brownlee Gerry: Adjournment 
[Volume:627;Page:22379] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Listening to the speeches tonight from the ACT party the Progressive Party and United Future I suddenly became aware of why the Nigerian scam men send so many emails to this Parliament. It is because there are literally tens of MPs here who believe that their electoral chances are so good that they will be back. It is interesting to note that those who will not be back are those who have seriously failed their constituencies. I want to say to Deborah Coddington who had hard words for the National Party that she should go back to the mirror and look at the ACT party. She should go back to see what drove the ACT party into Parliament in 1996 and the member will be able to see what that party lost forgot and is now being cast on the scrap heap because of. 
I want to discuss in the rest of my speech some of the issues raised by Michael Cullen. Michael Cullen claims that the Government will be re-elected because of its extraordinary economic success. It must be one of the only Governments in the history of this Parliament to go through the revolving door of economic success on someone else’s shove because during its 6 years in office it has done all it possibly can to prevent people from taking the best advantage of what this economy has to offer. A National Party in Government will have a clear plan for how this country can grow at an even greater rate than is currently the case. 
I say to the Government that the one thing it cannot get past is that the wealth gap between this country and Australia has widened during the term of its government. That is why 600 young people cross the Tasman each week for a better life and why so many people here decide that this is not a country that they want to do business in. That issue is perhaps crystallised to the greatest extent when we look at the Maori constituency which has been so loyal to Labour for so long. Labour will lose the Maori seats in this election. Those seven seats will go to the Maori Party. I have no doubt about that at all—not only because of the seabed and foreshore issue which I think was the issue that perhaps galvanised Maori into looking at Labour but because when they looked they started to see what Labour’s activities in relation to them were. They saw the patronising paternalistic approach that Labour has to most New Zealanders. 
Maori in this country today are a group of people who earn on average $7000 less in income than non-Maori. Labour has done nothing but sit and watch that gap grow wider throughout the last 6 years—6 years of not addressing the issues that New Zealanders Maori included want addressed and 6 years of dividing us racially through its very paternalistic programmes. 
I am delighted that the Prime Minister has gone out and said that this campaign will see candidates fight the election on the issues of trust experience and integrity. Well Dr Brash outlined some of those but when it comes to trust it is simple and easy for us to point out that New Zealanders trusted Labour in education and got the National Certificate of Educational Achievement debacle. They trusted Labour in education and got the wananga blowout. They trusted Labour in education and got universities absolutely screwed for funds. They trusted Labour in health care and got longer waiting lists. They trusted Labour to deal with the issues around social welfare and as the insider Judy Turner told the House tonight it is a seriously dysfunctional department. That is the sort of trust one gets from Labour. 
New Zealanders trusted Labour on defence and got Project Protector. We got the light armoured vehicles. What about those light armoured vehicles? We have all those light armoured vehicles and do members know that only 18 of the 105 are operational? They do not have the personnel. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: Don’t be stupid. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I tell the Minister over there who thinks that he has been a marvellous Minister of Defence that I ran into a private from the New Zealand Army while I was out canvassing the other day. 
Simon Power 
: What did he say? 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: He said: “Mr Brownlee are you going to do anything about the wages and salaries for the military?”. I said: “Tell me what the situation is.” He said: “Well I’ve got three guys that I’m at work with in the Army all coming to the end of their sign-on term all about to leave. They are going to Australia to join the Australian Army—young men about 25.” Interestingly the salary increase for those young men will be about $27000 a year. That is why they are going. So even in our military—in our armed forces—we are losing young capable people to Australia day by day. 
So let us talk about the experience that the Labour Government wants to tout. Well as I said the other day in the general debate—[ 
Interruption 
] That is David Benson-Pope yelling over there—the Billie Jean King of the Labour Party—bouncing up and down in his seat as usual. I want to talk about experience. As I said in the general debate the other day one sums up the experience of this Government generally in a series of two words: “George Hawkins”. That is what one gets for experience a Minister of Police who had a 111 call answered by a cab; a Minister of Police who hides day by day from Parliament’s scrutiny by saying: “That’s an operational matter.” and a police commissioner who is such a blatant lackey for the Prime Minister that it is surely embarrassing. He is a man who has a very short career ahead of him. When one talks about experience one could also use the words “Trevor Mallard” because there are tens of thousands of young New Zealanders who do not know whether their secondary qualification has any great validity. That is what Mr Mallard has done for the education system. That is what experience does for one. 
Then there is the issue of integrity and we come straight to the Prime Minister on that one: “paintergate” “Bathgate-gate” the Yelash allegations the allegations against the Auckland surgeon—so many things. And then this week to cap it off a Prime Minister who said: “We were travelling at 170-plus k’s in a car. I had no idea. I was so engrossed in conversation with Jim Sutton that I didn’t notice that they were travelling at such an excessive speed. And when at the other end of the journey I got out of the car and said to the police officer: ‘That was a courageous trip.’ I didn’t know why I said it.” So we have five policemen and one civilian in the court because Helen Clark has not got enough integrity to take responsibility for her own actions. So on trust experience and integrity the campaign is going to be a lot of fun from our point of view. 
I tell members something else. One generally knows whether one is in the political frame. Politicians have a nose for it. And I tell members that National is very much in the frame. National will win the next election and National will form the next Government. Ask Clayton Cosgrove. He will not even put the word “Labour” on his hoardings in his electorate. Ask Darren Hughes who has been getting the door slammed in his face in his own electorate. Mind he has been out only half a day and he will not take any more of that! Ask so many of that Labour backbench what sort of reaction that they are getting. 
Here is a name for the nation—it will be one people have not heard before—“Martin Gallagher”. He is a dead duck in his seat. Even Tim Barnett has to work his feet off trying to gather some votes in his own electorate. One knows when it is on and when it is off and it is on for National. So I to say to the Labour Party: bring out the lies bring out the mistruths bring out the red herrings dry them on the table; they will not count. At the end of the day New Zealanders are not silly. They know that they are overtaxed. They know they are over-controlled. They are sick of it and there will be a change of Government.