Mackey Moana: General Debate 
Mackey Moana: General Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3564] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 We have to pity the National Party’s dilemma. What does a party do when its most basic philosophy most basic beliefs and all its policies are not only completely discredited but are so unpalatable to the voting public that they would result in the party surely not getting elected? The answer is quite simple: it does not release any policy detail whatsoever. We in the Government are often asked in this House why we refer all the time to the National Government of the 1990s. It is not simply because Labour inherited such a huge social economic and infrastructural deficit that New Zealand is still paying for it today; it is because that was the last time we received any policy detail whatsoever from the National Party. That was the last time we had any idea of what a National Party would do in Government. So we have to refer back to those times. 
I know that the National Party does not like going back there—to do so would prove in practice that everything National stands for today would be a complete failure in the future because it was a complete failure back then as well. We know that the National Party has only one policy at the moment and that relates to tax. Even on that we do not have any detail because National has acknowledged that its policy at the last election might not now be affordable despite the fact that the entire way through the election campaign Labour members were telling National that it would not be affordable. 
I wonder what would have happened if National had been elected and forced to implement its extreme promises during the election campaign. Well I will tell members. In Budget 2006 we would have been facing cuts in spending in health education and infrastructure that once again would have destroyed the fabric of this country particularly in provincial New Zealand. I have often said and I will say again that at the last election I was absolutely astounded that a party vying to be the major party in Government was allowed to get away with having absolutely no policy detail in the major area of Government spending which is health. 
I was also amazed that National members were allowed to get away with going around the country and promising to double treble or quadruple Government spending in every single area of Government expenditure and that not one person in the media said: “Hang on the emperor has no clothes. National cannot possibly afford to cut revenue in the way it is suggesting.” Let me take David Bennett as an example. I see him over there. He thinks we should buy up all private land that has a camping ground on it and is being sold. Who will pay for that? David Bennett thinks that is Labour policy. Our policy was to do up Department of Conservation land so that it could be used for camping grounds. In any case if the Government was looking to purchase land the stupidest thing to do would be to come out and say that it thought it would buy some land. The stupidest thing to do would be to indicate that it might be interested so that landowners then rack up the price. But of course the National Party does not care about that. National members care about getting their names in the paper rather than getting outcomes. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I just want to help the member who is on her feet. She should read the Landcorp annual report and realise just how stupid her own Government is. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: That is not a point of order. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That was yet another “not a point of order” from Mr Brownlee. 
The National Party does not tell us what it stands for because it is an extremist party led by a man with an extreme right-wing agenda. He is a man who does not care who runs and owns our public schools and he has said that publicly. He is a man who said our nuclear-free policy would be gone by lunchtime. He is a man who would have had us participating in the Iraq war. National has never talked about how much money it would have cost if that policy had been implemented. He is a man whose policies are so extreme that the Exclusive Brethren feel comfortable with him. 
National can set up its liberal caucus and decide that it needs to get more “touchy-feely” to re-engage with certain sectors of our community but it will take more than wearing New Zealand designer clothing to reconnect with the communities that National members have lost touch with. I thought it was very interesting that National members have decided they need to get back in touch with the arts culture and heritage community and with women voters at the same time that they are describing women members of Parliament as being like Lady Macbeth because we have given up our femininity. I say that the National Party probably does not need to look very deep to see why it has an issue with women voters. As my colleague Marian Hobbs pointed out Dr Brash said that to talk of the horrors of the 1990s is to talk cattle manure. I suspect that is easy to say when one is on a Reserve Bank Governor’s salary.