Ryall Tony: General Debate 
Ryall Tony: General Debate 
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Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 I thought Mike Moore used to write his own rambling incoherent speeches but it is absolutely clear that the “beagle boy from Waimak” was right behind writing his speeches. We have just heard an absolute nonsense of a diatribe from Clayton Cosgrove that made no contribution to the sum total of human knowledge. 
What he could have spent time talking about in this House is the Succession (Homicide) Bill. This bill is on the Order Paper to protect the Labour backbench because Helen Clark is cruising the backbenches looking for the unsuspecting in order to give them the chop out of this House by this time next year. Who is next? We saw Mr Swain go; we have seen Dover Samuels go. Moana Mackey will not survive the cruising of the Prime Minister through the backbenches. Martin Gallagher will not be able to survive in Hamilton West; nor will Sue Moroney stay in her position in the Labour Party. All the ineffectual inconsequential hopeless Labour backbenchers are part of the Succession (Homicide) Bill because Helen Clark is completely fixated on succession and the homicide will be that of the Labour backbench. 
Let us remember that this Prime Minister is on wind-down. Two months ago the pollsters from her polling company were asking New Zealanders what Helen Clark’s legacy would be. Well what will Helen Clark’s legacy be? Her legacy will be the missed opportunity to lift this country way beyond where we could have ever expected it to be. She simply squandered the best of times and she is making it even harder for this country to compete with the Australians. That is her legacy. We have the highest interest rates in the world and the highest taxes. She is strangling this economy and this country from going forward with Australia and she is ignoring the very big issues confronting this country today. 
The most important issue is the huge pressure put on New Zealand families by the highest interest rates in the Western World. The wasteful spending of billions and billions of dollars by this Labour Government is driving up interest rates and really squeezing New Zealanders. In the next few months a huge proportion of New Zealanders will come off fixed mortgage interest rates. They will find themselves going from interest rates of 6.5 percent to 9.5 percent. This Government offers them no hope and no chance of getting anywhere. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: The mortgage levy! 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: That is the mortgage levy. Because of Michael Cullen’s incompetence and the hopelessness of the Prime Minister ordinary New Zealanders will pay the highest interest rates in the Western World. 
I can also tell members that although New Zealanders are paying huge taxes they are not getting the quality public services they deserve. People in New Zealand emergency departments are lined up in trolley after trolley after trolley in the corridors waiting to get into our public hospitals. People in the Waikato and in Waitakere are waiting 24 hours to get into a hospital ward. We know that the length of time it takes to get one’s care has a direct impact on the ability to survive whatever illness one might have but this Government does not care. There is $5 billion of extra funding but not one extra operation for New Zealanders. In fact under this Government fewer New Zealanders are getting elective surgery than at any other time and fewer New Zealanders are able to get a specialist appointment to enable them to even try to get into the system. 
What is more real problems are happening in district health boards throughout New Zealand. In question time today we asked the Government to explain a series of emails from the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Did they explain? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: They did not explain what is going on here. We asked just a simple question: is it right that 2½ months before a tender was released publicly the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was asking one of the likely tenderers to comment on the tender documents? Is it right that 2½ months before anyone else got a copy the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board asked for a copy of the documents to be sent to a contractor likely to bid—a contractor whom Annette King was fast tracking for appointment to the very same district health board? What is going on?