Wagner Nicky: General Debate 
Wagner Nicky: General Debate 
[Volume:644;Page:13529] 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 New Zealanders beware the nanny State and this very very arrogant Labour Government. Be very afraid. Helen Clark and Labour are surreptitiously sucking out the lifeblood of New Zealanders. They are taking away our independence our confidence our freedoms and the very essence of the Kiwi lifestyle of getting out there and making it happen. Helen Clark and Labour just do not trust Kiwis. They do not trust us to spend our own money they do not trust us to look after our families and they do not trust us to eat the right food. This week as a final insult we are losing our right to the freedom of speech without Government control one year in three because they do not trust us to vote for them. Do the latest polls have anything to do with this desperate defence of this indefensible bill? 
History is going to describe the Clark Government as the most aggressively domineering and the most arrogant control-freak regime that New Zealand has ever seen. Labour does not trust any of us. It does not trust us to spend our own money because it is absolutely focused on taking it away from us. Despite Treasury advice back in 2003 that we are overtaxed Treasury said that Labour has the scope to cut taxes and still increase expenditure and build up financial assets. But it would not do it. No way. Labour is waiting to buy the 2008 election and it is using our money to build an enormous bureaucracy an empire to control us. 
Back in 1999 there were 30700 civil servants but by 2006 there were 42200—a 41 percent increase. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but the rules permitting interjections are predicated on the assumption that the person being interjected on has the call. Now I noticed an instance on both sides of the House where we had members interjecting on each other who do not have the call. 
NICKY WAGNER 
: To house all those workers the cost of office space leased by Government departments has grown by more than 70 percent. Labour will not even leave the army of civil servants alone to get on with the job. It arrogantly micro-manages them because civil servants cannot be trusted. They cannot be trusted to deliver Government services without Labour’s prescribed political spin. Madeleine Setchell was a threat. She was too professional and too impartial. Erin Leigh was painted as incompetent erroneously as we have now discovered because she was too principled to kowtow to their airbrushed spin doctor view of the world as was her boss Neal Cave. Instead the Labour Government promoted Labour-lovey party faithful Clare Curran. How impartial do members think her public relations will be? 
Labour has thrown huge lumps of money at every possible Government service but it is to deliver propaganda and political spin not any real benefits to the people who are paying for it. An extra $5 billion has gone to health yet the patients are cleaning the toilets! Millions more dollars have gone into education but it is not to teachers interacting with students in classrooms it is to ministry bureaucracy. More millions have been put into nanny State spending on social engineering and more billions spent on regulations on just about everything. It is regulation that so often impedes and frustrates ordinary New Zealanders for no real tangible benefits. Ask any small-business owner ask anyone trying to build a house or fix a leaky home ask any ratepayer or the local councils that have to administer these rules and regulations—the direct and indirect costs of excessive regulation are stifling this country. And here we hit the nub of the whole issue.