Brash Don: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Brash Don: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1063] 
Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That this House has no confidence in the Government led by the Rt Hon Helen Clark because she leads a political party that has shamelessly ransacked the public purse to fund its election campaigns and has absolutely no coherent programme to lift the living standards of all New Zealanders.  
This is a Government that has hauled down the flag of political integrity and instead run up the Jolly Roger of political piracy. It has done so without any sense of shame without pausing to consider the damage it has done to the cause— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but as members know in this particular debate the party leaders will be heard if not in silence with respect. Interjections are permitted but not barracking. We wish to hear the statements from the party leaders. 
Dr DON BRASH 
: The Government has done so without any sense of shame without pausing to consider the damage it has done to our democracy and without any restraining sense of decency moderating its quest for power. 
We have just heard a speech bereft of ideas bereft of vision and bereft of any policies that might give us some cause for optimism for the future. Here we are at the start of a new parliamentary year wondering whether despite the evidence of the last 6 years we might get from the Prime Minister some policies that might manage to give us some workable vision for the future some policies to meet the challenges we face. Did we hear a programme to lift the standard of living in New Zealand to that in Australia? No we did not. Did we hear any programme to lift New Zealand to the top half of the OECD? No we did not. 
The Prime Minister’s speech made a lunge at relevance by talking about some of the things that matter such as productivity but without supplying any policies to give substance to that issue. She is talking some of the talk but walking none of the walk. Sure she talks of economic transformation and she talks of the need to improve productivity—my how she talks about economic transformation and productivity—and if she really meant it we would have some grounds for optimism but the words are empty and the rhetoric hollow because Labour’s policies turn back productivity growth at every turn. There was nothing in the speech that told this country or this Parliament how the Labour - New Zealand First Government will deliver economic transformation and economic productivity. 
The Minister of Finance—the one with the history degree the one who is the lucky beneficiary of the best export prices in a generation—has no answers for her and has already dismissed as an ideological burp the best advice that his Treasury advisers can give him. Perhaps it is not surprising that the speech was so bereft of vision and bereft of ideas. In its seventh year of office this Government is very very tired. The Government is made up of the same tired people as the last Government: Helen Clark Michael Cullen Steve Maharey and Trevor Mallard. 
We in the National Party understand that New Zealand succeeds or fails not through edict of the Prime Minister and Cabinet but on the efforts of individuals and businesses. We understand that for New Zealand to succeed New Zealand individuals and businesses must have the incentive to succeed through hard work through initiative and through investment of capital. Helen Clark on the other hand thinks it is all about her. She thinks that by making a speech instructing New Zealanders to succeed they will loyally obey her prime ministerial command. When survey after survey of business and employer sentiment spells out the dawning truth that those who hold New Zealand’s future prosperity in their hands are feeling more and more miserable Helen Clark’s only message to those people today is simply “You’re wrong.” 
When we consider this Government’s history over the last 6 years why on earth should we believe that what Helen Clark outlines today as her programme will do anything useful to help New Zealanders get the health care they deserve the education they want for their children or the standard of living they want and deserve? Indeed why should we believe anything she says? On this side of the House and increasingly throughout New Zealand we know that there is a fundamental lack of integrity at the core of this Labour-led Government. 
If that needed any confirmation the announcement by the Electoral Commission just last week of Labour’s massive overspending and cynical willingness to use the public purse as an extension of the party campaign fund surely does the job. So desperate was Labour’s desire to hang on to office that it took almost half a million dollars of taxpayers’ money and used it for party political purposes. That money belonged to taxpayers up and down New Zealand. I say to the Prime Minister “Pay it back. Do not hide behind the coat-tails of your party president.” Members should remember Helen Clark’s words at the party congress in 1999 about the pledge card for that year: “My signature is on it. I’m accountable for it.” Well nothing has changed. Her signature is still on it and she is still accountable for it. It was her pledge card it was her face on the card it was her name on the card it was her commitments on the card and it was her parliamentary budget that paid for that card in clear breach of the Electoral Act. Prime Minister: “Do the right thing. Pay the money back and apologise.” 
Unfortunately that was not an isolated incident. Mike Williams the Labour Party president admitted in yesterday’s  
New Zealand Herald 
 that taxpayers’ funds had been used to pay for the pledge card in each of the last three elections despite the fact that those cards also bore the signature of the Labour Party secretary which suggests that he knew they were election campaign material. It is very clear I tell Trevor Mallard who is interjecting that Helen Clark regards taxpayers’ funds as being available for Labour Party political propaganda—pledge cards calendars bragging about the Labour Party’s accomplishments and the grossly extravagant Working for Families propaganda. 
Perhaps we should not be surprised. We all know about “paintergate” and “corngate” and “Doone-gate” and Helen Clark’s remarkable ability to speed through small country towns at 160 kilometres an hour and somehow not notice. We all know that she publicly deplores the sale of Government assets but was the Deputy Prime Minister when the biggest sale of a Government asset in New Zealand history took place. We all know that she defended the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the New Zealand economy only to have to admit that the ratification would actually cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. We all know that in August last year she flatly denied that she had asked Treasury for an estimate of the cost of the student loan bribe because she said it was a Labour Party policy not a Government one but finally her Government had to admit under pressure from the Ombudsman that Treasury had done a costing and that that costing showed a fiscal cost that was substantially greater than the one she had initially claimed. 
And of course there is David Benson-Pope—he who opposes violence towards children but is unable to recall he claims an incident of flagrant abuse of a pupil in his care. We also know about Taito Phillip Field’s use of his ministerial position to obtain work visas for a substantial number of immigrants who might not otherwise have made it into New Zealand. The whole Labour Government looks more rotten with every month that passes. 
Labour’s deal with New Zealand First surely takes the cake—offering the important position of Minister of Foreign Affairs to the man who has regularly insulted the citizens of most of our neighbours who swore he would never accept the baubles of office and who when asked to name the Asian statesmen he knew could name only Lee Kuan Yew yet allowing him to remain outside Cabinet and to insist he actually is not part of the Government. It is no wonder that Doug Woolerton resigned as president of New Zealand First in protest and most of Mr Peters’ colleagues were utterly embarrassed. 
Not content with this absurdity Helen Clark promised funding to the Greens to enable them to hire more staff—funding from the Ministerial Services budget—despite the fact that the Greens are clearly not part of the Government at all and that no authorisation for such use of taxpayers’ funds was received from the State Services Commission. This Government is totally devoid of principle and is driven only by the unbridled desire to hang on to power no matter what the cost. 
How seriously can we take Helen Clark’s new plans to deliver better education better health-care and better roads? We know that in the past the Government presided over hugely wasteful Government spending programmes. We know that Te Wananga o Aotearoa for example received vast bucket-loads of taxpayers’ money—more than half a billion dollars in the last 4 years. Some of it was used to good effect to be sure but much of that enormous sum was squandered on projects that in any other circumstances would be called nepotistic and corrupt. Of course there have been plenty of other examples: hip-hop tours twilight golf courses radio sing-along courses and all the rest. Why should we expect Helen Clark’s new plans for the education sector to be any more effective? 
We know that the Labour Government has tipped a vast amount of additional money into the health-care sector but to little effect. We still have hugely long waiting lists with people dying while waiting for operations. We still have aged-care facilities and hospices under desperate financial pressure. [ 
Interruption 
] Members of the Government may find that amusing but I certainly do not. Why should we think Helen Clark’s new plans for the health-care sector will be any more effective than her last? 
What about infrastructure? Helen Clark has made some bold commitments about building better roads but her Government has made plenty of bold commitments to build better roads in the past and we are still waiting. Let us take the State Highway 20 Mount Roskill extension as an example. In 2000 Transit said it would start construction in 2001. In October 2001 it issued a document that said it would start in September 2002. In August 2004 Transit put out a glossy brochure that said it would start later that year. Of course as we all know construction actually started 3 weeks before the election last year. In December 2003 with great fanfare the Labour Government announced a plan to speed up the building of roads in Auckland. Eighteen months later the head of the chamber of commerce in Auckland wrote to the Minister of Finance that there was no evidence at all of any acceleration in the building of roads in Auckland. Why should we expect Helen Clark’s new plans to improve New Zealand’s infrastructure to be any more effective? 
All the evidence of the election campaign is that this Labour Government has total contempt for taxpayers and has no hesitation in using the resources that have fallen into its lap because of good export prices to buy its way to re-election. [ 
Interruption 
] I say to Trevor Mallard that letting people keep more of their own money is fundamentally different from taking money off them and dishing it out for political gain. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Dr DON BRASH 
: [ 
Interruption 
] Madam Speaker I thought your ruling was that this speech would be heard in silence. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Yes I have asked for order please. The member is right. 
Dr DON BRASH 
: There was alas not the slightest sign of urgency in the Prime Minister’s speech—no sense that we face a serious crisis. No I do not mean the prospect of a slow-down in the economy although that will be very hard on the thousands of people directly involved. Rather I make this point: when Labour came to power in 1999 the gap between the average after-tax wage in New Zealand and the average after-tax wage in Australia was 20 percent—roughly the same as it was in 1984. Less than 6 years later the gap is not 20 percent but 33 percent. All the projections suggest that with tax cuts in Australia and slow growth in New Zealand within 3 years that gap could well be not 33 percent but 40 percent. That is the serious issue that faces our country. That gap runs the serious risk of enticing more and more of our bright energetic innovative Kiwis to cross the Tasman. The risk is that we reach a tipping point beyond which it will be very difficult indeed to recover as more and more of the brightest New Zealanders leave and the closing of that gap becomes much more difficult. 
Over the next year the National Party will hold the Labour - New Zealand First Government to account and expose arrogance incompetence and corruption at every turn. We expect that that will keep us very busy. But we also commit to supporting the Government when it is willing to adopt sensible policies that are in line with our own values and principles. We did not see much evidence of sensible policies in Helen Clark’s speech today but we live in hope. 
Following the election last September the National Party now has the largest Opposition caucus in terms of numbers experience and ability in New Zealand history. We have the people needed to develop and implement our policies. We also have a clear vision of the kind of country we want New Zealand to be and of the kind of policies that will get us to that vision. We want New Zealand to be a country where people are encouraged to take responsibility for themselves. But when people fall on hard times we want a country that is able to help those people get back on their feet and become self-reliant again. We want a country where every child has access to the kind of education that his or her parents want for the child and that provides backstops and options when the child is at risk. We want a country where everybody has access to first-class education and health-care and where we get value for money for money spent on health care. We want a country where people respect the rights of others and are kept safe when those rights are abused. And we want a country where everybody is equal under the law regardless of race. We must be a country where in spite of the diversity of our community we share sufficient common values to bind us together as a nation. That would be a country that our children and grandchildren would want to return to. That is the kind of country the National Party will be fighting for. 
We will also be fighting for a country led by Ministers with some integrity and some decency so that we will not continue to see the squalid and shameful spectacle of a Government repeatedly pillaging the public purse for party political purposes. 
I seek leave to table a chart. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member seeks leave to table his chart. Is there any objection? There is objection.