English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9839] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Today I asked Dr Cullen the Acting Prime Minister a simple question: “Why did Helen Clark not go to Liam Ashley’s funeral?”. He could not answer it. He could not answer because everyone knows now that Helen Clark does not weigh up these events in terms of human tragedy or accountability but purely in terms of political utility. That is why Damien O’Connor keeps his job as Minister of Corrections. It is not because he should but because for now it seems to suit Helen Clark. All that shows to the public is that she has lost her moral and political compass. 
At the core of the Liam Ashley tragedy is the notion of accountability. If someone is in the care of the State the State has a fundamental duty to keep that person alive. The duty is not to give those people underfloor heating or comfortable squabs—maybe they should have that—or whether the handcuffs are just basic ones. The duty of human care is to keep them alive. I would have thought that Liam Ashley’s funeral was a funeral the Prime Minister might have gone to because the State failed in its duty. The simple basic fact is that no single person anywhere has borne any accountability for the tragic death of a mixed-up young New Zealander in the horrifying claustrophobic environment of the back of an inadequate prison van. Nothing that the Ombudsmen’s report brings forth has changed that. 
Helen Clark still has not got the message. One would think that the polls would be sending the message to her but no she has not got it. She cannot tell the difference any longer between a failure of accountability the duty to protect human life and to use that delightful phrase of hers moving on. The reality is she has not yet calculated that it is in her political interest to sack Damien O’Connor. The day she thinks it is she will. 
Then there is another tragedy she has got mixed up in where a Government agency was said to be responsible. We questioned the Inland Revenue Department this morning about whether it knew whether the Muliaga family were getting all their Working for Families entitlements which we estimate could have been as much as $400 a week. The Prime Minister has spent a week saying that these cases should be referred to welfare. Well the Muliagas were not on welfare. They were a working family. They should have been the target of any family assistance package but they might not have known that because when they see the ads on TV it is not families like the Muliaga family they see is it? It is the people whom Helen Clark is politically worried about who are in that ad. They are a well-paid comfortable Pakeha family who can afford to text across the lounge. It is not the Muliaga family and that is why the voters of Mangere know that the Government led by Helen Clark and Phil Goff has lost its direction. 
The ads on TV are telling Labour’s core supporters who it is that Helen Clark really cares about—a family on $80000 with one child who get assistance from the Working for Families package. They are not really the Muliagas and that is why she had to turn up to the funeral—she was trying to make up the gap. She is playing catch-up politics and she got it wrong but then she has got most major political decisions wrong since she got re-elected. She got the pledge card wrong Taito Phillip Field wrong and the smacking bill wrong. She was wrong to back it and then she was wrong to compromise with John Key to get it through. She got that wrong. She got the Department of Corrections and Damien O’Connor wrong the Kuchenbecker case wrong and the Ashley case wrong. Can Mr Goff get up and tell us one political decision Helen Clark has made of any difference since the 2005 election that she got right? The next one she will get wrong is rejuvenating the Labour Party—as if that were possible.