Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
[Volume:646;Page:15504] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 I have found it fascinating this afternoon listening to the priorities for the Government and for the Opposition. Never could two parties be more poles apart than Labour and National. For the Government the priority is the signing of a historic free-trade agreement with China amongst a wide range of initiatives that have taken effect in the last week. 
I find it a bit rich that Gerry Brownlee could mention electricity without mentioning Max Bradford and the wonderful contribution he made to this country. The priority for National members today has been to vent in their aggrieved state that their mates are not able to spend $1.2 million surreptitiously to discredit other parties in an election year and to hide their true identities behind fake addresses which is what happened during the last election campaign. 
National told the public last year that free speech would be denied by the Electoral Finance Act but that has been proved to be absolutely completely and utterly untrue. It is paid speech electoral advertising that is now subject to the spending limits that have been put in place by this Parliament. The spending limits were completely ignored by the previous Government. Now we have financial limits of $120000 in place for third parties and a ban on anonymity—a ban on hiding behind fake addresses as happened last time. 
The National Party could be accused of treating the public with contempt. The bottom line is that National wants to buy its way into Government essentially by spending beyond the limits that are set by Parliament. National tried to do so last time and it wants to do so this time which is why it is so upset that it cannot. Money cannot buy votes. I think we will have to rewrite the lyrics of “Can’t Buy me Love” from “money can’t buy me love” to “money can’t buy me votes”. 
We know that certain National MPs are in the caucus today because they were guaranteed Cabinet posts after the last election. I can name the names. They were told that National was going to win the last election; it was stage-managed down to the last non-attributable dollar. That is what those members were promised. But the National Party made promises it could not keep. It made promises to its secret funders. It intends to deliver on those promises this time. 
I have a message for the hollow men on the other side of the House: it is a slippery slope a slippery slope indeed when one plays fast and loose with the New Zealand voting public. That is essentially what National is doing. Members on that side of the House can play “Mr Angry” all they like; they are not focusing on the real issues that concern New Zealanders today. The real issues are that this Labour-led Government is working apace delivering on commitments we made. We said what we were going to do before the election and we delivered on what we promised. And we are developing new policies to build on what we have delivered because we believe in New Zealand and we believe in taking New Zealand forward. 
But what about National? Has National got a policy on anything? Actually National’s strongest supporters are running around saying that National has not got a policy. One of National’s strongest mouthpieces said that National is showing precious little evidence of having any agenda hidden or otherwise. I actually believe that National has a hidden agenda. It has a lot of promises it must deliver on. There are more promises than the one to the insurance industry on privatising accident compensation. National has made a lot of promises to a lot of people and asset sales and privatisation of accident compensation are only a small part of them. 
I think National is just pretending it does not have any policy at the moment. It is just downplaying its intentions ahead of an election so that it can say “Surprise!” like it did last time with the Employment Contracts Act which nobody had anticipated. Would anyone have thought that the promise of the freedom to negotiate directly with one’s employer and the promise not to remove penal rates would not be kept? Does National think that people would have expected that from an Employment Contracts Bill? No that bill was written well before the 1990 election. The people of New Zealand were misled by a National Party that would say anything and do anything to take the Government benches. 
The Employment Contracts Act was one of the main reasons for the large differential in wage rates between Australia and New Zealand. National was responsible for that situation but Gerry Brownlee stood up in this Chamber earlier and argued the opposite. My goodness!