Jones Shane: General Debate 
Jones Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9280] 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. This afternoon we have heard a lot of nonsense from the Opposition in terms of us being afraid to speak about the Budget. Well one of the great things about power is that we have the authority we have the credentials and tomorrow we will lay our programme out. Tomorrow we will campaign we will defend and we will stand very strongly and meet all comers on the basis of the underlying principles that uphold our Budget. 
Firstly this economy has for a long time suffered a problem with savings. What did we do in the time of economic buoyancy? Dr Cullen had the presence of mind and the support of this side of the House to invest in the Cullen fund thus laying down a very deep foundation plank. And what do we hear? Not only has Bill English decided to let the looser version of the National Party leadership John Key take the fall but he has also mimicked the policy. He hopes to ape his way to victory. He hopes not to put in original thought and not to have to go out there and defend exactly what remedies National members bring but to borrow the garb of this side of the House and try to confuse the voters. 
Secondly what did the Budgets of earlier times than this do after we inherited a problem that is reflective of a decade-long deficit of infrastructure development? Those Budgets injected ongoing investment and promoted capital infrastructure—the very things that National chose not to do and that we have continued to do—whilst at the same time they achieved something that is the envy of all the OECD countries. That is net debt has gone. There is no debt. If we add the debt that exists against the assets on the balance sheet we see there is no debt yet we have ongoing investment in infrastructure. These are the things that voters whether or not they care to see it fully now will make decisions on. They will not make decisions on wild flippant colourful promises that Opposition members do not have to cost or go out and explain. Those members are simply trying the politics of borrowing—in fact if they were university students they would be up for plagiarism. That is what we have seen from them. 
I will talk about some of the speakers from the other side of the House. I think it is very rich that Mr Power should be making disparaging remarks about our sartorial styles over here. He is the guy who in the midst of a speech doffed his own suit and immediately donned some military garb. He announced while he was still relatively high in the pecking order that he would ensure that if National was in Government those members would go wherever their allies took them. Several things happened there. What he did was to demonstrate—despite all the media hype that he was the face of the future—that he was unable to represent solidly or authoritatively what the soldiers of our country would want to hear and believe in. They do not want someone who is far too young inexperienced and who has never had a jot of life experience in terms of being able to lead people to sign over their lives to some open-ended cheque as to where our army and our country would have gone. 
What happened after that? He had the opportunity to stand as 2IC with the late departed Don Brash. He fell. He lacked either the courage or the experience. He is slightly different from Bill English. Bill English has an absence of experience but he does have however the ability to wear at the same time a perpetual sense of sulkiness and a deep wound. But what Mr Power had was the ability to see that he was not really up to the task—despite the fact that he had lobbied every journalist who was disinterested in writing what the facts were to talk him up in the media when the opportunity arose. When the chalice—the cup of opportunity—was served up to him he turned and walked away. So it is very vacuous and weak that he should have a crack at Government members over these things. 
 We also heard from Tim Groser who was apparently brought into the National Party to ensure that its trade credentials would grow exponentially. He was billed—presumably by himself—as superman but he has found that he represents a type of kryptonite to his own friends. He got here and we have heard nothing from him. Mr Blumsky my occasional fellow member of the golden oldie rugby team we understand is retiring to play for the dustman’s team in Wellington. This former Mayor of Wellington came in and threw it away. Who knows? The Opposition has no ideas and therefore no remedies.