Collins Judith: General Debate 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Volume:642;Page:12014] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I am particularly proud to represent the National Party which is the party that gave us New Zealand’s first woman Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jenny Shipley. The fact that Jenny Shipley was and is such a strong and dynamic force in politics is something that really upsets the Labour Party and its women. They cannot even acknowledge today without bitterness and shrill shouting that Jenny Shipley came into this Parliament stood there took control and said: “I am the first woman Prime Minister of New Zealand.” She gave us legislation like the Domestic Violence Act which that party over there did not. 
That party over there has said today that it is 114 years since women were first allowed to vote in this country for this Parliament. They have not however acknowledged the fact that not only were there trailblazing strong women but there were trailblazing strong men in this Parliament who voted for women to have the vote. That is one of the differences between the women in the National Party and the women in the Labour Party—who have to scream. The big difference is that we do not see men as the enemy. Men are not the enemy. Women in the Labour Party should understand that. People are better when we work together because that is how it is. We do not have to stand up and consistently congratulate ourselves on being women and attack men because they are not women. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: When have I attacked any man? I’m married to a perfectly good one. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I understand from Lianne Dalziel that she is married to a man so she does not hate them. That is wonderful. I am thrilled. I have actually heard that argument from a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. I am sorry but I tell Ms Dalziel that it just does not wash. 
What we do know however is how in disarray the Labour Party is. All we have to do is look at the fact that it put Lianne Dalziel in charge of cleaning up the finance industry. This is the same woman who as a Minister of the Crown said on national TV—Television One in fact—that she did not know how that envelope got down there and that she did not know what had happened. A week later she had to turn up— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Liar! 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member knows she cannot use that word. The member will stand withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: That member had to resign on the Friday when the evidence was there. She is now in charge of the finance industry. She is in charge of cleaning up an industry in which thousands of people have lost millions of dollars. Frankly that is as good as the Labour Party has got. 
When we look at the Labour Party we know how much in disarray it is because the Labour members are bagging each other. There is not a select committee that National members are on where we do not hear Labour members saying something. Clayton Cosgrove apparently has a terrible ego. That is what his colleagues are saying. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: No. That’s not true. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: The members are saying today that that is not true. That is not what they are saying at the select committees. They are bagging each other. All we have to do is look at what is in the newspapers. We know all about what is in the newspapers. We hear that it is a “Dangerous time for Govt”. That is from Tracy Watkins. We have John Armstrong writing “Changing the beds in Labour’s retirement village”. We have Bill Ralston writing—this is the best one I think—“Half-witted ministers a curse”. That is what they are saying about the Labour Party. 
If we ever needed utter and total proof all we have to see is “The prime of Helen Clark” which is the political obituary of Helen Clark. This is a woman who has been a disgrace to this country—first by the way she trawled through somebody’s emails. The next thing she did was let some driver take the blame for her when she was speeding through the Canterbury Plains. This is a woman who got Peter Doone out of his job and who told stories to the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 to try to destroy somebody to destroy his credibility because she did not want him in the job. That is what she did. She destroyed good people like Kit Richards. She tried to destroy a good woman like Roseanne Meo. She went after people because they were not her sort. We have seen that time and time again with Helen Clark. All we have to do is look at what Mike Moore wrote about Helen Clark. I have to say he was pretty right really in most of it. There was a bit of a tongue in cheek but at the end of the day he was pretty right in what he said about Helen Clark. The fact that she would not let him go to the 90th anniversary of the Labour Party says it all.