English Bill: Reinstatement of Business 
English Bill: Reinstatement of Business 
[Volume:628;Page:32] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 The co-leader of the Greens does raise an issue that is right in some respects. There are members’ bills listed in the motion that National supports. So we will be moving a further amendment to the motion to the effect that we will exclude all bills except a number of members’ bills that we do support because we believe that Parliament and the public should have the opportunity to make submissions and discuss those bills. I would have to say that list does not include Georgina Beyer’s bill. I am very surprised that the discipline of the Labour Government has broken down to the extent that a back-bench member has risen in this Parliament on its first day to defy the Prime Minister. 
Hon Member 
: An exit with dignity’s coming. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It will be another exit with dignity in a transit lounge to Niue—it will end up doubling the population. 
Georgina Beyer 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I would like to correct the member. He should not rely on the newspapers of this country to print the story correctly. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The member may not be aware that over the last couple of weeks the Prime Minister has cultivated among the media the idea that Labour is now a centrist Government that has given up its dreams of more social revolution and that the way it is demonstrating that is to drop that member’s bill. [ 
Interruption 
] Actually the Prime Minister tried to drop the member but decided to wait a bit longer because the queue was becoming rather long. The Prime Minister then made a show of publicly disciplining that member but now she sees fit to get up today. 
We thought that Winston Peters would be the problem. Well he is—and I will come back to that—but it is clear now that the Prime Minister’s political strategy is creating real tension in the back bench of the Labour Government. [ 
Interruption 
] Marian Hobbs says that she is innocent. She has moved a long way down to the back bench and apparently not because she wanted to—that is for sure. She is another one of the reluctant or maybe the incompetent; I am not quite sure. 
My colleague Gerry Brownlee put his finger on a key issue today: this Parliament needs to have explained to it just what Winston Peters’ position is. We have talked over the last couple of days about Mr Peters’ having gone for the baubles of office. We found out today that there is only one bauble; he got it and his colleagues did not. I feel particularly sorry for some of those members. I think Brian Donnelly is respected in the education sector as one of the senior influential figures in New Zealand education. He has been reasonable non-partisan knowledgable and respected. He had an opportunity to play a ministerial role in the new Government that even I as the Opposition spokesperson on education would have been happy to see him play but he does not have that ministerial role. The question is why he does not have one. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Because they’ve run out of baubles. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Because they have run out of baubles already—exactly! I think Winston Peters is confused. He was going for a bauble but he has ended up being the ballboy—carting the ball around in foreign affairs for Phil Goff and Helen Clark. Members will miss him will they not? The attack dog of Parliament has become the lapdog—that is what it is. 
But seriously he owes it to this House to be here today to explain to this Parliament just what this Government arrangement actually is because I do not think that he knows. Just a small sign that the public might not have noticed but Parliament should have noticed was that he has tried to reverse the normal seniority of seating on the cross bench. What normally happens is the leader sits closest to the Prime Minister and his or her deputy would sit in the middle seat. But no Winston Peters was trying to do what he did in the photo taken at Government House which was to take the limo take the cash and take the trips but not show up to the meetings—so as to try to look like he is not part of the Government. He has said that he is in Opposition and in Government. Well there is no seat in the middle of the aisle I say to Mr Peters. So what is his position? This is the day for him to come here—where there are more MPs than there will ever be during the next 3 years—and tell the House just what his relationship with the Government is. When we look at what he has said about it we wonder why he is voting for every piece of legislation listed in the motion. 
 We can look at what Winston Peters says and we can look at what he does. What he does is give total support to the Government. On every matter on which he could have dissented from the Government in its formation he has gone with the Government. He has agreed to the Labour Party Speaker. He has agreed to the distribution of select committees. He has agreed not to let any of his colleagues into Cabinet. Everything Helen Clark wanted he gave her. Not once did he stand firm for anything—except on a couple of policy decisions; we have to give him that. He has gained some policy concessions but that is all. In respect of Parliament he has done nothing. 
This is the person who ranted for years about how Parliament had to change. He ranted for years about how it should not be winner-takes-all. Then when he had the one chance in his career to really change the way Parliament works he gave it up. That is why the people of Tauranga gave up on him. They stopped believing him. They stopped believing what he said. We saw again today his deep respect for my colleague and friend Clem Simich. It is just that the respect was not so deep that he could be bothered making him Speaker of the House when he had the opportunity. He was the one person who could have done so. There was no one else. He was the one person who could have made his friend and esteemed colleague Speaker of the House and he refused to do it. What does Winston Peters do? He insults this Parliament by saying that it is only media misrepresentation that would leave anyone confused or would lead his supporters to think that he had broken an election promise. Well I think it is parliamentary misrepresentation and that is a much more serious issue. 
So I say to Mr Peters that before he votes holus-bolus for the Government’s programme—I was going to say that it is a do-nothing Parliament but when one looks at the programme one sees that it is a done-nothing Parliament—he should explain to the House whether he is with it or against it. It is really that simple. He should explain why he picks up a whole Cabinet salary when he says that he will deal with only one-twentieth of its issues and why he picks up all the baubles of office when he takes almost none of the responsibility. That is what this Parliament respects. We know that under MMP a small party does the deals to make power and to be in Government but we respect the parties that take the responsibility that goes with those deals. Small parties have made and broken their careers on those deals. They have lost colleagues. Some of them have disappeared completely like the Alliance. But they all took responsibility except for Winston Peters. So I ask him today to come to the House and show us that he will take the responsibilities of Government if he is so keen to take its rewards and privileges. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member. I would just like to remind members at the outset of the debate although I did not interrupt the honourable member when he was speaking that the reference is to Madam Speaker not Mr Speaker.