Key John: General Debate 
Key John: General Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3144] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. It is very very easy to see when a Government is in trouble. There are lots of tell-tale signs when a Government is in trouble. The first thing is that Ministers cannot coherently answer questions. They just speak more loudly with more rabble and less coherency through all their statements and if we want an example of that we need look no further than Pete Hodgson. He is a man so out of his depth in the health portfolio that nobody listens to him not even the former Minister of Health Annette King—and let us look at Annette King today. She was embarrassed by my colleague Simon Power who has made her look like a blithering fool. She does not know a decoy cop from an ordinary cop. Those are signs of a Government in trouble. 
But there is another way that a Government shows it is in trouble. The heads go down when questions are being asked. That is what we saw in the House this afternoon. When David Cunliffe was on his feet Helen Clark did not look up. She did not look up from her papers. It was the famous “David Benson-Pope look”—she looked at those papers; not a good sign. Anything would be better. She was filling in her Christmas cards for 2006. That was more important than looking up when David Cunliffe was on his feet. 
Another way we can tell the Government is in trouble is that Government members run when they see the first sign of trouble. This afternoon we saw the miraculous statement from this Government that it is now exempting Guinness Peat Group shareholders for 5 years from the “grey list”. Because the Government cannot stand the heat from Tony Gibbs’ advertising in the newspapers it is running for the hills. I say to Guinness Peat Group shareholders: “Good on you! Good on you for standing up for your rights and good on you Tony Gibbs for taking it to this Government.” But I say this—it shows what a crazy policy this is. We now have a “grey list” that includes 2 percent of the world’s markets. We have a “grey list” that includes only Australia and New Zealand—unless one is a Guinness Peat Group shareholder and one is in England. What is so special about Guinness Peat Group that does not apply everywhere else around the country? 
This is a Government in serious trouble because its Budget which comes out tomorrow is a botch-up from start to finish. Frankly I am not quite sure whether I should expect a Budget speech or a valedictory speech from Michael Cullen although I am pretty sure that one will lead to the other. Michael Cullen is like David Cunliffe. This is what they have in common: they are both dead men walking. That is the situation for different reasons. Helen Clark has cut Michael Cullen loose. He was the disaster that was Budget 2005 and I will tell members that privately Labour members never talk to me about Budget 2005. They never talk to me about the “chewing gum Budget”. When those Labour members walk around they call it “Michael’s Budget” because that is the way Helen talks about it—“Michael’s Budget” the Budget that delivered them within a whisker of losing the potentially unloseable election. What a shocking disgrace of a Budget it was! 
So Michael Cullen is a dead man walking. He is not allowed input into this Budget. That has been delegated to Heather Simpson. He is not allowed to write the policy for the Budget and this week he is not even allowed to characterise his own Budget. His own Budget is boring. He knows it but it is not his Budget any more. It is either David Cunliffe’s before he was a dead man walking or it is Heather Simpson’s. 
There was one interesting piece of the Budget. Well—at least it was meant to come out before it was leaked as we heard so eloquently this afternoon. That was the “shock and awe” piece of this Budget—the local loop unbundling. Well it has been shock and awe and it will turn into “shock and awe-ful” for David Cunliffe because this is a fiasco of monumental proportions. It has wiped off $2.6 billion of shareholders’ value—even bigger than David Cunliffe’s ego— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Oh I don’t know! 
JOHN KEY 
: Well it is a pretty close call. 
Simon Power 
: The most popular member in the Labour Party. 
JOHN KEY 
: Yes. David Cunliffe is so popular I have already had emails from members of the Labour caucus leaking me things about David to use in next week’s question time. But this is the interesting thing. When $2.6 billion was being wiped off Telecom’s share price each and every one of us suffered at the hands of the clumsy David Cunliffe. We all own shares in Telecom through the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and yesterday afternoon we all shared in the $200 million loss that David Cunliffe delivered.