Mackey Moana: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: General Debate[Sitting date: 10 October 2007. Volume:642;Page:12236. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I am very pleased to take a call in this general debate. Has it not been interesting that all the contributions from National members have not been about how proud they are of the policies they espoused over the adjournment or about how proud they are of their vision for this country? No not at all. In fact John Key’s speech was incredibly flat. This was a man who suddenly realised that not everyone loves him and that as soon as he starts saying what he really thinks he is going to get himself into significant trouble particularly when he disagrees with his deputy leader Bill English on everything.Maurice Williamson is a man with an extensive knowledge of the transport sector and road-building. Unfortunately his knowledge is only theoretical because not a single new road was built during his time as Minister of Transport. He showed us a graph which apparently was about all the extra money he claimed to have got when Minister. Yet he is probably the only man in this House who is able to stand up and be proud of getting so much extra money without doing a single thing with it or having a single thing to show for it.But has it not been interesting over the adjournment? The “me too” mask of John Key has slipped and we have seen the cold face of the free market that lies behind it. When the rubber hits the road John Key does not have what it takes to be a leader of this country unless we want a Prime Minister who builds his policy on the last person he talked to especially when that person probably is Murray McCully.We have heard National members trying to claim that Labour is out of touch then they go ahead and copy all our policies. They have tried to say that this Government has no new ideas. This is a Government that has done more to prepare this country for the future than any other Government in recent history. We have KiwiSaver. We have the superannuation fund which means that New Zealand is now one of the most preparedcountries in the world for the baby-boom generation to go into superannuation. We have Working for Families which puts tax credits back into the pockets of families that need it most. We have increased industry training and Modern Apprenticeships and we have introduced a rates rebate scheme and paid parental leave. We have fairer industrial relations legislation. We now have every cent of money—and more—that comes into the Government coffers for transport spending going to transport. We have an independent foreign policy we are proud of our nuclear-free status and we did not go into the war in Iraq as the National Party would have.What does the National Party have—the new revitalised John Key National Party? It has the failed policies of the 1990s. Not one new policy has come out of the National Party that was not a resoundingly abysmal failure in the 1990s. National members have said they are going to sell our assets. They say they are only going to “partially” sell them but who really believes that National will only partially privatise assets? As Chris Trotter has said it is a little bit like being a “little bit pregnant”. But National is telling mums and dads that it is going to do this so that they can have an ownership stake in assets they already own. Well that is Tory generosity for us.Perhaps the most chilling thing about the announcements over the adjournment was the resurgence of the invisible hand of the market—the market will deliver for all of us. Well it worked great in the electricity sector. That has been a resounding success has it not? No one in New Zealand will say that the market has worked incredibly well for average consumers of electricity. But I say that when National pulls out of the public funding of health and when National pulls out of the public funding of schools the private sector will not flood into places like Wairoa GisborneŌpōtiki andWhakatāne to fill those gaps.The invisible hand of the market nearly destroyed our provincial communities in the 1990s. It was only because of the election of a Labour-led Government in 1999 that that process was halted and we have seen an absolute resurgence in the economies and the social cultural and economic well-being of our provincial communities. What happened in the 1990s under the privatisation agenda—which we are seeing being reborn here today—was that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The National Party delivered for its mates for its voters but everyone else was welcome to go to hell in a handbasket because they had not voted for the National Party.New Zealand deserves better than that—that should not be acceptable in this country in the 21st century. The Labour Party is here to govern for all New Zealanders. We are here to govern to ensure that the poorest the sickest and the most—well Chris Auchinvole thinks that this is boring. Chris Auchinvole thinks that this is a joke. He will never win that seat on the West Coast because of his Tory arrogance about the most vulnerable people. His party this week voted to say that rural and the poorest communities did not have the right to the same levels of safe drinking-water—that same certainty that Mr Auchinvole has at his house—or the right to expect that their drinking water was safe. Those members opposite are fine; Mr Auchinvole can afford a system that ensures that his drinking water is fine but a number of people in our communities cannot. Those are the people whom the National Party has never represented. Those are the people the National Party nearly destroyed in the 1990s so I urge people not to give them another chance.