Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Volume:654;Page:2930] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Yesterday amidst all of the important things Labour members could have been doing they took an enormous amount of time to explain to the nation what their reshuffle meant and what life was going to be like for the Labour Party beyond Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. The general result from any analysis is pretty darn dismal. 
Here we are today and on coming into the House what do we see? First of all we see some sort of crazy double act between Darren Hughes the nominal shadow Leader of the House and the Hon Trevor Mallard who tried to present himself in some sort of kaumatua-esque fashion offering his opinions to the House on how the Standing Orders and the Speakers’ rulings should be interpreted. We also saw quite an amazing double act between the candidate for future leadership David Cunliffe and the Hon David Parker from Dunedin. It is quite interesting that it appears that the Labour members are so impressed by Bill English’s stewardship of the economy at a difficult time that they have decided to put two people into that particular spokesperson’s role. 
But one of the most interesting things to come out in recent days on a quick perusal of the Labour Party website—it is something that I do not do but this has been brought to my attention—is a thing called “Phil Goff’s diary of regional visits”. We hear all the time about the great success of these regional visits. There was the two-person tickets bought cancelled dinner in Rotorua. There have been cars roaming around provincial cities looking for phone boxes in order to hold meetings with local people. But most telling in the diary of Phil Goff’s regional visits is a little snippet that says “Coming Up”. These are events that the populace can look forward to where Phil is out in the regions and meeting the people. Do members know what it says under “Coming Up”? It says “Phil will be spending some time in Auckland.” What that tells us is that in the Mt Albert by-election—after failing to put Phil Twyford in there pushing him off to one side and doing all the manipulating possible to get Phil Goff’s mate the chap from the UN put into place—the actual candidate for Labour in this by-election will be Mr Goff. “Phil will be spending some time in Auckland.”! 
I think that one of the things we can look forward to is Mr Goff’s actually taking some responsibility for the work that he was part of for the last 9 years. In question time today we heard Mr Goff expressing outrage—outrage—that after only 6 months in office the National-led Government has not moved on cigarette point-of-sale issues for example. Well Labour members had 9 years to do that sort of thing and what is worse than that is that far from trying to highlight some of the good things they did during their time in Government Mr Goff wants to pick on something totally obscure totally off the radar screen and totally irrelevant to the good fortunes of a great number of New Zealanders. That I think typifies the leadership that is currently coming out of the Labour Party. It is irrelevant off the screen and out of touch with most New Zealanders. When New Zealanders go to the website in the expectation that the Leader of the Opposition might grace their region only to be greeted with the news: “Phil will be spending some time in Auckland.” then I think that they know exactly what the Labour Party thinks of them and what it has to offer to New Zealanders. 
I cannot remember a single visit to the West Coast being reported by as many different members as often as was the Labour members’ visit. We know that the reality is that people on the West Coast were barely tolerant of Labour members being on the Coast during that time. The classic was that when those members were having a meeting at some hall there and the lights went out all Phil Goff could do was to come out and ask: “Where is Gerry Brownlee when you need him?”. Well I say to Mr Goff that I would love to help him through the next couple of years but I do not think that even I with my considerable political talents and skills could be of any great use to him whatsoever.