Key John: Address in Reply 
Key John: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:145] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 It is no wonder the good people of Whanganui had the sense to fling Jill Pettis out on her ear—and I welcome Chester Borrows to the House. I hear the Prime Minister has dispatched Jill Pettis from the chief whip’s position so she can win Whanganui back. Well God help the poor people of Whanganui if they have to put up with “Paint Stripper” there for 3 years knocking on their doors. I can firmly confirm that Chester Borrows will have the largest majority in Parliament come the election in 2008. As for her comments on provincial New Zealand I am not sure whether she has caught up with the news but National took 10 seats off Labour in the election. They came from provincial New Zealand and they are not going back. It is no wonder that the only thing going back is Russell Fairbrother. He is going back to Napier because he did the almost impossible: he lost the seat that Labour had held since 1951. Even Pania did not believe that he would lose the seat of Napier. Even Pania had Russell Fairbrother winning that one but away he went. 
Madam Assistant Speaker I congratulate you on your reappointment along with Margaret Wilson Clem Simich and Ross Robinson. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Robertson. 
JOHN KEY 
: Oh “Spot”. Last week when we were in Parliament Bill English made the comment that the Clark-Peters Government was a sad combination of the untalented and the unwilling. He was spot on and that is exactly why it will produce the unremarkable. We have had 6 years of the golden weather under Labour and it has squandered the lot. It has nothing to show for it. That is why it is in an electoral quagmire. It will be an absolutely do-nothing Government. Helen Clark and Winston Peters will be arm in arm in the quagmire—the more they try to do the faster they will sink together. The tragedy of that “heads they lose tails they lose” scenario is that the country will be on hold for the next 3 years until National regains the Treasury benches and takes this country forward. 
Here is a prediction: the only remarkable thing that will come out of this Government is that Labour actually managed to form one with New Zealand First. That is the only remarkable thing that it has done. New Zealand First has done something quite incredible in this Parliament. It has managed to do something unique for a party. It has a leader who is firmly and proudly in the Government while it has an entire caucus that is firmly and proudly in the Opposition. It has done that all in one Parliament. Sadly for Mr Peters not only is his dwindling caucus in opposition to the Government but also it is in opposition to Mr Peters—that is the sad news while he is off overseas. [ 
Interruption 
] I say to Pita Paraone that I went up and down the country looking at the New Zealand First billboards and I could not work out what Winston Peters was looking at over his shoulder. The rumour was that he was looking at his backside. Actually he was looking at where the knives were coming from. I have a message for New Zealand First members to take back to Winston Peters in Korea: one bauble does not a happy caucus make. 
We on this side of the House had very very low expectations indeed of this Government and very low expectations of the Speech from the Throne. But even we were disappointed; it was subterranean. We have a country that faces some real challenges. We have a country that is sailing into very poor economic conditions. We have a current account deficit of 8 percent of GDP. Almost every economist in the country now says it will go to 9 percent of GDP; several economists are saying it will be 10 percent of GDP. They are under the numbers that Paul Keating said described a banana republic. That is what our country faces: a current account deficit that is in crisis. We have business confidence in free fall. Every single business confidence survey now says that the country is heading in the wrong direction by a significant margin—including the Bank of New Zealand today with minus 65 percent. We have interest rates that have gone up eight times—they went up just last week—and we have net migration that is virtually collapsing. Those are the economic conditions that this country is facing and they should not have been met with the kind of Speech from the Throne that we heard. 
What will happen when they write the history books about this Clark-Cullen-Peters Government? They will say that for the first 6 years in Government Labour rode an economic wave that it inherited and did absolutely nothing to create and when it crashed on the beach the Government was found to be hopelessly wanting. It will be seen as a “Dad’s army” sort of Government. It will be seen as a fair-weather Government. Why? Because everyone has lost faith in the Minister of Finance. The Prime Minister has lost faith in him the tea lady has lost faith in him everyone has lost faith in him. He was persona non grata with his own caucus. He is the man whose next most significant speech will be his valedictory and we will hear it in this Parliament. That is his message. Heather Simpson is actually upstairs now jotting a few notes down that she would like to hear him say. 
Michael Cullen is the man who single-handedly nearly lost the unlosable election for Labour with Budget 2005. That was a document that cost Labour 10 seats in this Parliament—he knows it—and that cost him the faith and confidence of the Prime Minister. She now has had to turn on her own caucus; members like Jill Pettis have been dispatched into the holding queue. Even someone like Jim “Am I really going 170 kilometres an hour?” Sutton has gone; he is in the waiting queue. There is a whole number of them who are very very unhappy indeed. They are in the holding pen waiting to be dispatched to the dole queue all because Michael Cullen delivered Budget 2005 the equivalent of a  
Titanic  
sort of Budget for Labour. 
Well the only thing that saved Labour was not the Minister of Finance I can tell the House. 
Jill Pettis 
: National saved Labour. 
JOHN KEY 
: No it was not National that saved Labour; it was Helen Clark hitting the panic button and being prepared to write buy say and do anything. It did not matter what it took it did not matter what she had said and it certainly did not matter what it cost to get things going. Does anyone seriously believe that Michael Cullen believes in Labour’s student loan policy? I ask the member whether he believes in Labour’s reckless student loan policy. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Yes I do. 
JOHN KEY 
: I do not think so. You see I have a pretty simple question about this; I am a pretty simple fellow. Why does anybody think that Michael Cullen asked Treasury to go and do the numbers on the student loan policy document? It was not because he could not work it out—he has a masters degree in maths. I worked it out in my office in about 15 minutes; it did not take a long time. Michael Cullen asked Treasury to put together the numbers because he wanted to stop Helen Clark. He knew the policy was bad policy and he knew it was taking the country in the wrong direction. He knew it was going to feed the young New Zealanders of this country a diet of debt. But Helen Clark who for years had banged on about student loans and the problems they were causing threw all that out the window just to get into power. We on this side of the House say that that is wrong—that is totally wrong. 
But we found out this week what Michael Cullen does believe in because he has re-emerged as the new left’s Rob Muldoon. He is a man who stands up for intervention. He is not prepared to control his own Government spending. He does not mind the fact that he is driving up interest rates. There have been eight interest rate— 
Jill Pettis 
: What does the old man say about this? 
JOHN KEY 
: Well I tell Jill Pettis that she should not believe me; she should believe the OECD. Its officials said that the reason interest rates were going up was that this Government was spending too much and this week Michael Cullen went out and said that he is not prepared to get his own House in order he is not prepared to cope with his own Government’s spending he is not prepared to look in the mirror but he wants to decimate the price of every other New Zealander’s house—and that is wrong as well. He has Alan Bollard out there working on a plan that Alan Bollard does not believe in—[ 
Interruption 
] Oh no he does not. The member should go and look at his 2004 speech to the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and he will see that it is completely diametrically opposite to the speech Mr Bollard gave on Thursday. 
This country deserves a lot more. This country deserves a bright future; this country deserves opportunity. Most of all this country deserves a chance for New Zealanders to get ahead not a Government that believes solely in itself and is prepared to do and say whatever it takes. The people of New Zealand were robbed of a great Government in 2005 but their chance will come at the next election mark my words.