Woodhouse Michael: General Debate 
Woodhouse Michael: General Debate 
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MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 The 2010 barbecue season appears to have started early perhaps as early as 28 July. Recent revelations about our friends on the other side remind me of the ditty from that great Gilbert and Sullivan opera  
The Mikado 
. Instead of the Lord High Executioner we have the “Lord High Executed” and instead of Ko-Ko of Titipu we have “Carter of Te Atatu” and he has a little list. After Catherine Delahunty’s maiden speech I vowed I would never sing in this House but if I did the song could go something like this: “As some day it may happen that a leader must be downed; he’s got a little list. Seventeen offenders who really must be found; he’s got a little list.” I certainly agree that none of them would be missed but I am sure Mr Goff would certainly love to get his hands on it. 
When Mr Carter finally does leave this place and I do not think it will be long he might want to consider a new career as a game show host. Remember Jason Gunn’s  
The Rich List 
? Well Mr Carter could front a new show called “The Ditch List”. Labour MPs could appear and attempt to name as many of their colleagues as they can who are ready to roll their leader. That would be one show where getting a good score might be a bit career limiting. What is most astounding about this whole affair is that Mr Carter has been very indiscreet; in fact he was so clumsy in his attempt to undermine his leader that I suspect that that was his intention all along. He is probably very upset that his 17 colleagues did not follow him into the coup d’état after he led them out of the trenches. 
The most astounding point about this is that Mr Carter’s main criticism is absolutely accurate in respect of the extraordinary flip-flop on GST. Mr Carter rightly points out how inconsistent the Labour leader Phil Goff is being when he dusts off the big red bus paints the words “Axe the Tax” on the side of it and crusades around the country telling people how badly off they will be. 
But when it comes to the crunch he cannot commit to axing the tax—quite the opposite. He now commits to keeping the rate of GST but tinkers around the edges of it with fruit and vegetables. After 25 years of Labour defending the efficiency of GST—25 years including Dr Cullen deriding any suggestion of differential rates of GST—in a desperate move he proposes to tinker with the policy. If Mr Goff really has a problem with the tax switch and if Labour genuinely believes New Zealanders would be better off by returning GST to 12.5 percent and handing back the $4 billion of tax cuts they just received then he should take that policy to the electorate at the next election. 
Labour members repeatedly state that those changes do not favour the many but favour the few so they should have the courage to go to the electorate and wind back those changes. They should tell a family on the average income who has just got $25 a week more in its pay packet despite the GST switch that Labour wants to take that back off them. Labour members should tell the married superannuitants who receive a minimum of $12 more a week and whose income under this Government has gone up by over $100 a fortnight that they want to return this country to the tax-and-spend policies that led New Zealand into the brittle economic state this Government found itself in. Those members should have the courage to go back to the electorate and turn the policy into action. I suspect that that was what upset Mr Carter and the 17 members sitting on the other side of the House the most—talking big but not following through. 
Who might be on the list of 17? Well one could probably discount the most recent arrivals to Parliament so that takes down the suspect list to about 28. If we take away the leader and the deputy leader we are left with 26. If we take away those who have retired or announced that they are not standing at the next election because they are bound to be ambivalent about the leadership that is another four or five so we are now down to about 21 possible Labour members. That is 21 Labour members who did not come in at the last election who still plan to be around after the next election and who are not the leadership pair. Seventeen of them are very possibly on Mr Carter’s list. So 17 of the 21 more experienced members who want to stick around next year could be exposed by Mr Carter as wanting to roll their leader. The aspirants to leadership know that timing is everything. They would probably be happy to let Mr Goff fall on his sword after the next election but they might be thinking about moving sooner now on the basis that if they do not someone else might. On the other hand what will it mean to be exposed by Mr Carter as a member of the list of 17? Well it probably augurs pretty well for their plans. That will be of comfort to the aspirants as the barbecue season approaches.