Lees-Galloway Iain: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: General Debate[Sitting date: 13 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14636. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Can I say at the beginning of my contribution that I acknowledge Sam Lotu-Iiga and acknowledge the passing of his father. I say to him that he has the sympathies and condolences of members on this side of the House. I lost my mother 3 years ago. It seems incredibly unfair does it not to lose someone so close to you at such a young age and it can be challenging to come back into the House and engage in the cut and thrust of politics.Although I listened closely to what the member said and what he had to say about his Government’s record over the last 5 years I have to say that we do have a different point of view on this side of the House because we are actually out there in the streets listening to what New Zealanders have to say listening to what people think about this Government and listening to the litany of dodgy deals that this Government has engaged in. The National Party is the party of dirty deals done dirt cheap. It will do a deal with anybody especially if it is a deal that gives preference to its corporate mates and especially if it is a deal that will get it back into Government.Let us look back at the long list of dodgy deals from National over the 5 long years it has been in Government. It started off with Warner Bros the American corporation that came to New Zealand and created a phoney crisis. It created a phoney crisis and New Zealand’s Government turned round and changed its laws. National prevented workers from having the right to bargain collectively in the film industry because Warner Bros an American corporation came along and demanded it. That was a deal that John Key was ready to do.Shell another foreign corporation came to John Key and said: “We want you to get rid of protesting at sea.” National has never liked protesting at sea. Those members did not want to get rid of the nuclear submarines and they took the first opportunity they could to ban protesting at sea—a New Zealand tradition. And they did it because a foreign corporation wanted to do a deal.Then there was Skycity. National is prepared to increase the harm caused by gambling to increase the social costs that New Zealand taxpayers and consumers will have to face in order to do a deal that benefits its mates in the Australian corporation at Skycity.It was ready to pay $30 million to Rio Tinto. It was not just a deal for its mates in that foreign corporation; that was a deal to prop up its failed asset sale programme. Let us think about some of these policies that this Government is promoting: selling off our assets—assets that are profitable assets that every single New Zealander benefits from—so that just the privileged 1 percent get the benefits from those profit-making assets. And there is NZ Power a good solid Labour policy which this Government is dead against. Why? Because it would benefit the consumers the taxpayers and the workers of New Zealand and it would not benefit National’s mates—the people who have bought up those assets and bought up those electricity companies.Every deal this National Government does is in the interests of the few the interests of the 1 percent and the interests of its mates. That is what those deals are all about. But now it is about political deals and it is about political deals to build the “coalition of the crazy”. National wants to do a deal with Colin Craig the man who thinks that climate change is all down to astrology. I do not know whether it is because Mercury was in Venus or what the story was but something is changing our climate and Colin Craig does not want to face up to the fact that it is man-made climate change. It has got nothing to do with sunspots; it has got nothing to do with the alignment of the planets.Then of course there is John Banks. The Prime Minister is always ready to do a deal with John Banks. It does not matter how long he is before the courts and it does not matter how many donations he received that he did not declare the Prime Minister is ready to do a deal with John Banks. The Prime Minister is ready to do a deal with Peter Dunne the man he cannot even trust to be up front about whom he did or did not leak documents to.This is a “coalition of the crazy” and New Zealanders have a real choice. They can go for a solid Labour-led Government which is working in the interests of taxpayers and consumers and hard-working New Zealanders or they can stick with the “coalition of the crazy” which is working for John Key’s crony capitalist mates. Those members are not working for New Zealand; they are working for somebody else.