English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:630;Page:2072] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 That member may be pleased with his efforts on behalf of Maori but he must have a sick feeling in his stomach when he sees the Cabinet of the Labour Government rotting around him. Dr Cullen told us about the 1 April lolly scramble and he is right—much money will be pumped into the pockets of middle New Zealand. It is unfortunate that they will not get what they could have had though which is 85 percent of New Zealanders on a tax rate of 19c in the dollar and an economy taking a step up instead of slowing to a crawl. 
In the last couple of days a number of people in the media and to some extent in the public have started to talk about the standards in politics dropping. I believe they are wrong. I believe that the standards of accountability and scrutiny in this House are as they have always been and that is tough but fair. 
The Labour Party members have done their best to explain away their own problems as being some kind of change in the National Party’s tactics as an Opposition but that is absolutely not the case. I say to this House that National members were not sitting in the front seat when Ruth Dyson was caught drink-driving. We were not at the table drinking wine when John Tamihere gave his famous interview and revealed what it is really like in the Labour caucus. No National Party MP posted the false returns that David Parker made to the Companies Office. No National MP was holding the painting when Helen Clark signed it. It was not a National MP who was sitting in the seat beside Helen Clark when she was speeding through the townships of the South Island. No National MP held the microphone while Lianne Dalziel lied to the media about her role as a Minister in the Government. 
We were here when David Benson-Pope misled Parliament and is it not a shame that a reasonably promising member of Parliament lost his job yesterday because of something he did that people will regard as being potentially against the law certainly ill-judged and that David Benson-Pope of all people gets to keep his job? The Labour Party members know that David Parker had to go because David Benson-Pope stayed. It would have been much better for the country if the opposite had happened. 
It is not a change in the Opposition that has brought about this avalanche of problems and this list of miscreant Ministers. What has brought it about are the low standards of the Labour Party. Really there is only one difference between the leader of the Labour Party and those Ministers who have all been dealt with with justification and that is that they are not as good at it as she is. She is the master of the half-truth. She has set the environment in which Ministers some of whom are otherwise competent and capable people take risks with the truth do not tell it avoid it and when they get caught always act as if it is not their responsibility—and who does that best of all and always gets away with it? It is Helen Clark. 
So those people in the media who are starting to feel morally superior about what is going on in politics in New Zealand ought to put that superiority aside. It is absolutely vital that a rotting Government is held to account and the National Party will continue to hold Labour members to account. It will mean scrutinising the decisions and the paperwork of Ministers it will mean questioning them when they do not tell the truth it will mean pulling them up when they mislead Parliament and it will mean making sure that they take personal responsibility for the things they do that break the law.