Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:2923] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 If we had been sitting here waiting for a defence of the National Party leader by Bill English we would have been sorely disappointed by that speech. But given that it was Bill English who was stabbed in the back by Don Brash—several weeks after Dr Brash had affirmed his undying loyalty to Mr English—we could not really have expected that from him. 
I want to go on the record and correct the statements made by Bill English and Murray McCully that this matter is something to do with the relationship with America. It is about no such thing. This debate is about the deceit the dishonesty and the misleading behaviour of the National Party and its leader. Speaking of deceit I point out that it is nothing but a double standard for the former Minister of Health Bill English who refused year after year to give PlunketLine money to get up and condemn this Government which has every year funded a well health-line for children. 
I make reference to the United States by saying that in the United States when a condemned man walks from his cell to the execution chamber people call out: “Dead man walking!”. That refers to a man who is still alive but is facing the inevitability of imminent death. Don Brash politically is a dead man walking. On today’s  
Midday 
 news the TV reporters who had been going around Dr Brash’s colleagues in the National Party came to the conclusion of the inevitability of a leadership challenge. Is it any wonder? It was cruel of Bill English John Key and Gerry Brownlee—the three would-be assassins—to set up their leader Don Brash as they did yesterday. For them to send him to a press conference to explain an email that they had not even given him to read is nothing short of a cruel and cunning plan. I ask members to listen to what this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald  
wrote about this matter: “What kind of National Party leader calls a press conference to downplay the contents of a potentially embarrassing email—only to front without a copy of the document or any indication of having read it properly beforehand?”. It provides the answer: “A short-lived one.” We can see from the debate today that not one of those assassins will defend their leader. They will try to claim this as a red herring but secretly they know that Don Brash is a dead man walking. 
Dr Brash was dead long before this latest bungle. He was dead when a newspaper that is one of the most reliable supporters of the National Party offered the headline: “National offers little inspiration”. That paper made the point—quite clearly—that the National Party’s leader and its members were indecisive unconfident and lacking in inspiration and momentum. Those are not our words; it is what the media are saying about the National Party—the most unsuccessful National Party in the history of this country. Members should not just blame Don Brash—it is that group of hopeless incompetent disloyal people on the front bench who constantly undermine their leader. The people on the back bench of the National Party who will not be here after the next election—they are an aberration—will not stand for that. Those members do not want just Don Brash to go; they want that whole incompetent front and middle bench to go with him. The issue with Don Brash is one of a lack of credibility—he is the “gone by lunchtime” man who could not deny saying that but could not remember saying it either. 
Then Lockwood Smith and Don Brash improperly asked a group of American congressmen to support politically National’s pro-nuclear campaign. The American congressmen quite properly rejected that suggestion but it is an indictment on Dr Brash and Dr Smith that they even made it. 
Then we saw the plain common deceit that was shown by the National Party and Don Brash who denied that National was being funded by the Exclusive Brethren to the tune of $1.2 million. Don Brash even asked for the diary entry on his meeting with them to be removed so that the public would not know about it. The mainstream man who was seeking election on the basis of the funding of a small and extremist religious sect denied that he knew anything about it and 2 days later he had to admit he had deceived this country. It is no wonder that that hopeless party is in this situation.