Mackey Moana: General Debates 
Mackey Moana: General Debates 
[Volume:619;Page:14625] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 Anyone who cares about New Zealand’s natural environment or the industries that rely on the health of New Zealand’s natural environment or in fact New Zealanders’ quality of life should be very concerned at the prospect of a National-ACT Government. Why? Because those members are short-term thinkers with short-term policies. Let us look at some of their policies. 
I start with superannuation. In the short term we might be OK under the National Party if we believe what it says—and history tells us to be very wary of the National Party fulfilling its election promises. Those members say that in the short term we might be OK but if we are under 50 we should not count on a National Government giving us any support. Well that could be another dismal attempt by the National Party to grab the youth vote—we have seen it before. But if we trust those members’ promises the bottom line is that if we are under 50 the National Party says not to count on any Government superannuation when we retire. 
Let us look at law and order. The National Party says: “Lock them up and build more prisons.” Under the National Party there might be a prison on every corner but those members know that they will not be around to face up to the consequences of their policies. They will not be around to accept the blame for them. They do not want to have policies that stop there being more victims of crime. No they just want to lock criminals up and to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and not the fence at the top. What will those members do? They will abolish parole despite the fact that evidence shows parole reduces the incidence of reoffending. No they will ignore that evidence because it is not politically expedient to admit that when people released from prison go straight back into the community they are not likely to rehabilitate very well. But those members will add a period of supervision before prisoners go back to their communities—they will add parole. So those members will get rid of parole because it does not work and replace it with parole. Well that is brilliant and it shows how short term the National Party is in its thinking towards law and order policies. The public of New Zealand should be very concerned that the best thing that a major party that potentially could lead a Government can say on law and order is: “We will build more prisons.” That is not a long-term vision for New Zealand and New Zealanders should be very concerned. 
On race relations what is those members’ long-term vision? Well they do not have one. They stir up the pot on race relations. Dr Brash comes out all guns blazing and has the audacity to quote Dr Martin Luther King in his speech in opposition to affirmative action. Six months on where are the solutions? Well those members do not have any because their short-term vision was just to create a divisive society which they would benefit from. They do not have any solutions and they do not care. I think probably the only thing that they are regretting in terms of their short-term vision is that they did not do it a little bit closer to the election. 
Regarding our nuclear-free status in the short term those members hope—despite all evidence to the contrary—that their policy might win them favour with the Americans. When the Hon Bill English was leader of the National Party he went over to the United States and when he came back he said that what he had foundin terms of a free-trade agreement was that what matters most was what benefits the Americans—not the foreign policy of small sovereign nations. But no those members ignored that. In the short term they do not care about the impacts on New Zealand. They do not care that New Zealand is a sovereign nation. All they care about is that hopefully in the short term they might get a few kind words thrown their way by the Americans. 
What will those members do in terms of welfare? Well they will just beat up on beneficiaries again. We have seen it before and we will see it again. It is a short-term vision. They hope to starve beneficiaries out of benefits and that by doing that they might end up with fewer beneficiaries. Those members do not care about the long-term impacts that their policies had in the 1990s and would have again if they became the Government. 
We heard today that in terms of health when those members were in Government they ignored a call to train more radiation therapists—and we are paying for it now. We are paying for the short-term vision of the short-term thinkers in the National Party. One might ask why they are short-term thinkers. The answer is quite simple: they do not care about outcomes. There is only one thing National Party members are concerned about and that is power. It is all they care about. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.