Robson Matt: Adjournment 
Robson Matt: Adjournment 
[Volume:627;Page:22377] 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 Madam Speaker I hope you do not take umbrage if I do not make effusive statements about the job you have done. You have done it well but we expected when we elected you that you would make improvements on those who had gone before you. Besides when people receive effusive statements from their colleagues they know that the axe may soon be falling on them—as I am sure Bill English would attest to in his time and as the ghosts of leaders past would also attest. 
The general election is an opportunity for everybody to have an equal say on the type of society we want to live in and on the type of society we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren. Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party’s campaign launch is on Sunday week on 14 August. All are welcome. It will be in the Tamaki electorate in which I am campaigning for party votes. 
I am proud to have worked alongside Jim Anderton since the day he led the establishment of an independent progressive-left party in Parliament back in 1989. When Progressive MPs are returned in the next Parliament then the independent progressive left will have been represented in this House of Representatives for 19 years which is a full generation in biblical terms. Progressive is left of Labour on the issues of most importance to working families—that is access to universal education and health services and building an active role for democratically elected Governments to help in the transformation of our productive capacity as an economy so that by working intelligently together with industry and agriculture we are able to create the number of jobs we need to become a full-employment society in New Zealand. That is the most progressive and social democratic goal that any political party could have and it is one that of course is Progressive’s top goal: full employment and making poverty history. 
Our party stands for putting the common and public good ahead of vested and financial and sectarian interests. That is why Progressive puts young people and vulnerable people first and why we are not afraid to upset the liquor advertising and liquor marketing sectarian groups if we have to in order to give the coalition Government a real spine in the campaign to reduce the harm caused by alcohol consumption within our communities. Progressive is campaigning for party votes so that my bill on our youth binge-drinking problem is not buried by a reactionary Government that does not care enough about the people the family and the communities that are being hurt daily by our biggest drug problem: alcohol. 
Progressive is campaigning for an investment to cut the company tax rate to be in line with Australia because we want more private sector investment in research and development and in jobs. We want to ensure that New Zealand prospers in the global market so that we can afford First World social democratic type education and health services for all. The Progressive Party is campaigning on a much more ambitious first home policy to do more for low-income families to get over the deposit gap hurdle between them and their first home. 
Progressive is delighted that Labour our colleagues in Government recognised in 2005 the damage of the higher and higher fee-paying tertiary policy that was introduced in late 1989. Progressive is campaigning on a platform to cut the debt monkey off our graduates’ back in return for them working in New Zealand and using their skills to build up the regions of New Zealand. 
Progressive looks forward to helping Labour deliver the common left position now which is to move away from the policies of the last user-pays Government of 1984-90. Labour has governed in coalition with Progressive over the past 3 years and in coalition with the Alliance of five left parties between 1999 and 2002. Over the next 6 weeks 50 Progressive candidates and I will be campaigning for a historic third-term left-wing coalition Government. We will be campaigning for a further expansion and deepening of the industry and regional development programmes and the spectacular regional initiatives around the country none of which existed until the independent left party in this Parliament won over doubters and sceptics and built up the majorities we have always needed to deliver genuinely progressive policies for the benefit of all. 
I am looking forward to having the opportunity to explain the next steps that the Progressive party would like to see delivered by our next coalition Government. The only way that a strategic asset-selling pro-war National-led Government could be established under MMP is if New Zealand First emerges from an election in the position to deliver a National-led Government. That is why we are campaigning for no party on this side of the House to go into coalition with a Government that New Zealand First takes part in. 
The low point of this Parliament has been the attack on the Muslim communities and on other communities in New Zealand by the leader of New Zealand First who yesterday in this Parliament would not meet the two men whom he had grievously slandered as New Zealand citizens saying that they had been complicit in crimes against humanity committed by the Government of Saddam Hussein. He skulked in this Parliament he skulked in the building and he would not meet the two men about whom for 2 months he has refused to put any evidence forward as to why he has so grievously slandered them and their communities. That is the lowest point for this Parliament and that party has gone below a moral line that I think no other parties in this Parliament—no matter how much I disagree with them—would ever go below. 
I should like to say briefly that the progressive left has lost a good solid member in Ian Ewen-Street. He has many qualities—amongst them of course his being Australian-born. He is a man who has always kept his head down and worked hard and I have very much appreciated his vote in favour of Progressive’s Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill proceeding to a select committee. I thank Ian Ewen-Street and I wish him all the best. 
Finally I extend my best wishes and those of the Progressive Party to those who have given their valedictory speeches and I wish them all the best as they are rehabilitated back with their families and communities and into a new environment.