English Bill: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
English Bill: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1090] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 At least Helen Clark’s speech was the right one for Valentine’s Day; it was full of sweet nothings and delivered in that deeply affectionate tone that she has. 
John Key 
: The loving tone. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Yes the loving tone. I felt loved by the end of it. Is not another police investigation involving the Prime Minister boring? This is not the GST on the electoral return filled out by the party; this is the Prime Minister’s own budget. If it had not been she would have said that it was an issue for the party or that some Minister did it and will have to stand down. Instead she said “The law is unclear” which ranks alongside “I wasn’t there” “I didn’t read the papers” and “I didn’t notice it was 150 kilometres an hour”. That is what the New Zealand public are tiring of. Do they care deeply about the $400000? I suppose that some do; many do not. Many expect that that is what politicians get up to anyway if they can get away with it. What is particularly galling for them though is the continuing record of a Prime Minister who regards herself as essentially above the law. Every time these investigations occur the same thing happens. I bet for instance that she will not answer questions from the police about this matter. She did not in “paintergate” she did not in the speeding case and she will not here. 
 It is absolutely unprecedented. Prime Ministers have never been involved in police investigations. Now we have come to regard it as a matter of course. It is now completely normal for the Prime Minister of this country to be investigated by the police. It is now completely normal for her to be evasive and not answer questions put to her by the New Zealand police. No one really takes much notice of it any more. That is how bad it has become. These are the new standards of public conduct of affairs that the Prime Minister promised when she was first elected. 
The speech was an evasion as well. Helen Clark has figured out that New Zealanders do not believe in Labour’s values so she is now trying to attach herself to the values that New Zealanders do respect. Labour members have used the words “ambition” “aspiration” “transformation” and “dynamic”. Who believes that Labour ever stood for ambition and aspiration? No one. That is what is so distasteful about that speech. The Prime Minister has worn out the welcome of a Labour Government and is trying to turn herself into something else. I want to use just one example to show how much credibility there is in the statements made today about aspiration and ambition. One of the striking things about that speech was the almost complete absence of a reference to education. The Labour Party regards itself as being at the peak of public popularity and at the peak of its political prowess but on the one issue that it has always regarded as theirs it had nothing to say. And of course that was wise as there has been a transformation in education. Labour has transformed tertiary education into a laughing stock. It has transformed secondary school assessment for 150000 young New Zealanders into a complex and confusing set of measures that even the teachers do not understand. 
So the Prime Minister had nothing to say about education. It has been a graveyard of ministerial careers. In Steve Maharey’s own words: “If you’re not going up you’re going down.” We know where Steve is going and it is not up. If he has not been told that yet then he has found out today alongside “Dr” Benson-Pope and Trevor Mallard who have been pushed sideways. [ 
Interruption 
] Oh he is not a doctor. 
John Key 
: Tennis professional. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He is a tennis professional that is right. Let us take one example in education. New Zealanders do have aspirations concerning the education of their children. Parents spend endless time discussing how their children should be educated where the best school is that they can attend where they can get the right teachers what kinds of activities their children should be involved in and what the principal is like. Those issues are talked about endlessly. The Government collects a lot of information about schools. It collects it on a website called School Smart. The website has 16 indicators for primary schools and 20 indicators for secondary schools. Those indicators reflect the complexity of the school’s operation. There is health and safety roll decline roll change differential leadership and management—there is some measure of that—financial operating deficits working capital teacher turnover principal turnover suspensions and stand-downs. There is a whole range of information that tells people something about the school. If one looks at all that information one will find that for most schools the information is fairly similar. For some schools though the data makes it clear that the school is off track. This information is secret. It is not available to parents and I suggest that it should be. Last weekend we heard about an Auckland school that is making real-time information about students available to parents. 
 I suggested that the information from School Smart should be made available to parents. I thought it would be an interesting test of whether Labour believes in the aspirations that so many Kiwis have. It turns out that Labour does not. Steve Maharey said that he does not want it to be a “tool for market” analysis. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: In other words parents being informed. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He does not want parents comparing schools. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Or even knowing what goes on. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Or even knowing what goes on in the schools. He simply does not want it known. That is what I mean about the chasm in values between Labour and aspiration as Kiwis see it. For Labour dangerous parents are informed parents. They are the ones who are a real risk as summed up by Labour’s colleague the UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott who said: “The trouble with good schools is that people want to go to them.” 
On the one hand Labour says it is the party of aspiration and on the other hand when it comes to a simple administrative decision such as making information about schools available to parents that allows them to compare this school with a similar school Labour will not do it because the ideology matters more. The real Labour value at the bottom of education is interest-group power—for unions bureaucrats and Ministers. That is why the speech made by the Prime Minister has no credibility. Every time she says “ambition” and “transformation” those New Zealanders who are not spewing just do not believe it. They do not. They have heard these words now for 6 years and they have not seen any of the energy and dynamism that a Government truly committed to the national good would show if it believed that New Zealanders were capable of this. 
New Zealanders are capable of high aspirations and great ambitions but the Labour Party has a way of governing that strangles those aspirations and ambitions. That is from the tiny detail of what information that parents can have right through to the total lack of a microeconomic reform programme. It is strangling the ambition and aspiration. That is why we are voting “no confidence” on the motion because we do not believe that even the Prime Minister believes what she said. She looked tired because she is tired. Her Ministers are tired. They are out of ideas and that is why there were no ideas in that speech. The best they could come up with was “new broadband” which has been kicking around for 2 or 3 years. What is the name of the surfer? 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Cunliffe. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Minister Cunliffe apparently is the new star of the Labour show. Well that is as good as it gets.