Mackey Moana: General Debate 
Mackey Moana: General Debate 
[Volume:645;Page:14626] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I want to remind the member who has just taken his seat what his party did in the 1990s to the New Zealand health system. That party charged people for going to public hospitals. It put cash registers at the doors of our public hospitals and thought there was nothing wrong with that. This party—a slippery party—has tried not to tell the New Zealand public that in fact it is going to lift the cap on the general practitioners’ fees this Government has put in place. If it had not been caught out it would not have told the New Zealand public that under a National-led Government general practitioners’ fees would go up—and prescription fees would go up as well unless of course we see another slippery flip-flop from the National Party desperate to gain control of the Treasury benches at any cost regardless of the fact that its members are prepared to say anything to anyone to get there. 
Is not 24 hours a long time in politics? Once again the happy “me too-ism” mask of John Key slipped and we saw once again the cold face of the free market that lay behind it. Here is a man who is happy to sell off New Zealand to overseas interests. He is a man who has backed up what he said last year when he said that asset sales are once again on the National Government’s agenda. What happened in the last 24 hours—once we got an answer out of Mr Key once he had stopped umming and ahing and saying “I’m not sure.” We’ll have to look at it.” and “We’re not sure.” What he really meant was that he had not focus-grouped it and he had not yet decided what the rest of the country thought so he did not want to tell people what he thought because it might have been out of step. I say that the contradiction between that Opposition and this Government is stark. This Government is planning for the future of all New Zealanders and getting on with governing. 
I want to talk just a little about John Key’s slip of the tongue once again when that mask dropped once again and when he said that National would love to see wages drop. He thinks that wage increases in New Zealand are driven by inflation not by productivity so he would love to see them drop. He then said what he had said was a joke. That is a really funny joke! Then he said he was misunderstood. Then he said he did not say it. These statements all came from the one man who apparently said them so it is entirely hard to believe that in the space of a few days he had three different recollections of what he had said. He then rang up and tried to get the journalist who reported what he said fired. That is what New Zealanders can expect from this man—a slippery politician who will say anything to anyone in order to get a vote. His opinion is based on the last person he talked to and we are seeing that as clear as day. When National suddenly has to release policy or when John Key is suddenly put on the spot and asked what his policy is what his philosophy is or what National will do he has nothing. 
He is now trying to say that he was referring to Australian wages when he said National would see wages drop. But what would a National Government have to do to make wages drop? This is very interesting. First National could cut benefits or not adjust them for inflation which it did last time it was in Government. It could hold the minimum wage steady and not increase it at all which it did last time it was in Government. It could hold down public sector wages by cutting funding which it did last time it was in Government—and has said it will do next time if it ever gets back into Government. This is an important one—it could weaken labour law. It could reduce workers’ ability to bargain for pay rises collectively and get pay rises which it did last time it was in Government. Or it could introduce a 90-day period where any employee could be fired for any reason at all. And National has said that that is its policy—it has said that that is its policy. Then through all these public spending cuts and through all the flow-on effects wages would drop in real terms just as they did last time National was in Government. John Key’s comment was not a mistake it was not a joke he was not being misunderstood. This is core National Party philosophy this is what it did last time and we have every reason to believe that it is what it will do next time if it ever gets back into Government. The difference is that National members do not want to tell people that that is what they want to do because they know that people suffered in the 1990s. 
John Key has become somewhat of a 1990s denier; he likes to say that things did not happen—that things were not National Party policy. Let us look at Iraq. John Key now says that he never supported going into Iraq but in 2003 he said that we were missing in action. He said in the media that New Zealand was missing in action from the war in Iraq. People should make no mistake; if Labour had not won that last election we would have young New Zealanders fighting in Iraq now as we speak. What John Key does not want New Zealanders to know he will not say.