Cunliffe David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12805. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]7.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) to thePrime Minister: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes about as much confidence as he had in his portrait artist.Hon David Cunliffe: Good start Prime Minister. Why does he have confidence in his Minister for Primary Industries who failed to consult either Cabinet or him before proposing snapper quota changes and what will be the consequences for that Minister for breaching theCabinet Manual?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Far be it from me to give advice but the last leader of the Labour Party who spoke about snapper was holding them up and he has gone as well so—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just address the question.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Oh OK no problems—just offering some free consultancy services to the interested parties.Mr SPEAKER: I am not interested in the free consultancy services though I thank the Prime Minister. Would he now address the question.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: TheCabinet Manual as Helen Clark once famously said is a guide.Hon David Cunliffe: Why does he have confidence in his Minister of Labour’s plans for unfair workplace laws which even Treasury warns would lead to lower wages when 44 percent of New Zealanders have not had a pay rise in the last year anyway?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Good question given the unions have such a big vote. Nice—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Now address the question.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Oh this is just too much fun. I have forgotten the question—something to do with labour. We do promote safe workplaces and that is why the Minister is actually guiding a new health and safety workplace bill through Parliament.Hon David Cunliffe: To continue the comedy feel why does the Prime Minister have confidence in his Minister of Justice Judith Collins when she said that the Henry inquiry was “chilling” and treated the privacy of Ministers in a contemptuous way directly contradicting his statement that anyone who objected to the inquiry’s “basic” intrusions “wouldn’t make it as a Minister”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: She was clearly offering a view and as I said at the time she is entitled to a view. But in the end I put out the terms of reference. Every Minister was able to object to those if they wanted to. None of them did.Hon David Cunliffe: Does he have confidence in any Minister who does not keep his word to the New Zealand public—for example that he would not raise GST before taking office and then raising it after or describing Working for Families as “communism by stealth” and then retaining it?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well having an effective marginal tax rate of 100 percent actually is communism by stealth and that is why this Government actually sold—Hon Annette King: What have you done about it?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well actually funnily enough—interestingly enough I am glad you asked that question; it is the most sensible question I have had all day. What this Government did was lower the effective marginal tax rates. In fact if you want to discourage people from being in the labour markets the very biggest thing you can do is keep raising taxes and raising those effective rates. When you lose 100 percent of every extra dollar you earn why on earth would people bother trying to earn more money?