Sowry Roger: General Debates 
Sowry Roger: General Debates 
[Volume:610;Page:7653] 
Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. What a mess this Government is in. What an absolute shambles! [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I will start the member’s speech again. I do not want to have that sort of noise from interjections and I urge members to control themselves. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: What a mess this Government is in. What an absolute shambles! This Government is spinning out of control as it tries to combat the mess that it is making in a wide range of portfolios and tries to cover that up. Let me just run through a few of the issues today. 
I will start with the issue of the Maori claims before the Maori Land Court for ownership of the seabed and foreshore. The Prime Minister on day one came out and promised New Zealanders that she would be a leader of action and that Labour would legislate to ensure that ownership remained with the Crown. What has happened is that every hour of every day since the Prime Minister made that announcement there has been a little shuffle backwards. Every hour the Government has taken another little step backwards and New Zealanders do not trust this Government on the seabed and foreshore issue. That is why in the last 10 days over 63000 New Zealanders—63000—have signed National’s petition that opposes this Government giving away the ownership rights to the seabed. Sixty-three thousand New Zealanders have gone online and signed that petition because they can see this Government shuffling backwards on that particular issue. 
We have seen the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues in the House today. What a shambles she has created up in Auckland! There she is—she is the person who the Government said would fix Auckland’s problems and there she is today saying that because she made a call to the citizens advice bureau in Auckland and it reported that it had had no complaints about Auckland’s rates issue that issue was therefore not a problem. Does she not read the  
New Zealand Herald 
? This is reminiscent of the leaky homes issue which the Government said was a  
New Zealand Herald 
beat-up. Now we have the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues claiming that the Auckland rates issue is just another  
New Zealand Herald  
beat-up. 
And then there is the Minister of Immigration—well we have gone from a collective decision to lie in unison to a bit of collective amnesia in the Immigration Service with the Minister involved in that same programme. That Minister said one day in the House that for there to have been an agreement to “lie in unison” she would have had to be a party to it and then said we should not worry because she had organised an investigation into it by the very same officials who would have been involved in it if it had occurred. That just does not stack up. This Government will have to come clean and get the State Services Commissioner in to look at that issue. 
What was the best that the Government could come up with to try to distract attention from those issues? It wheeled out the Minister for Social Development and Employment who on Friday announced a new scheme: no deposit on home purchases of $100000 and under for people on low incomes. Beneficiaries can buy a house with no deposit so long as the house does not cost more than $100000. He made that announcement on Friday and all over the country unemployed people beneficiaries and people on low incomes were searching for houses under $100000 in the far-flung rural reaches of the country. Then on Monday he came out with a scheme that means that if people go and live in an out-of-the-way area in rural New Zealand where there are no jobs the Government will say that they cannot receive a benefit and they have to get back to the cities. 
So if people take up the Minister’s offer and buy a house for under $100000 in somewhere like Shannon—there are no jobs in Shannon; there is no bus service and no other public transport out of there—he will then trundle into those people and say that they cannot receive a benefit if they live there so they had better hightail it back to the city. How duplicitous is that sort of nonsense?