Jones Shane: Supplementary Estimates2006/07Appropriation (2006/07 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — Imprest Supply DebateImprest Supply (First for 2007/08) Bill 
Jones Shane: Supplementary Estimates2006/07Appropriation (2006/07 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — Imprest Supply DebateImprest Supply (First for 2007/08) Bill 
[Volume:640;Page:10196] 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
Tena koe. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is calling? I call the honourable member Shane Jones. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I thought it was a rule in this House that to get the call a member had to call. The member did not make—[ 
Interruption 
]—and I also thought that points of order are supposed to be heard in silence but then again I could be wrong. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is right. 
Hon Tau Henare 
:The member did not call straight away. He did not call until I had called and you prompted him Mr Assistant Speaker not with words but with a bit of a look. That member has been here for some 18 months now and still does not know that members are supposed to call to get the call. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. I do not need any help. I just advise the member that once the call is given Speaker’s ruling 25/4 stands. However it is not a race as to who gets up first for that person to be called. I have chosen to call the honourable member Shane Jones and he is called but the member’s point is well made and I thank him. 
SHANE JONES 
: The enthusiasm with which my Ngati Hine whanaunga seeks the call could be related I think to the new diet he is on. I salute him for that as he is the only member on the Opposition benches who is prepared to run from all accounts to secure victory because his leaders have left New Zealand with the impression that they can sleepwalk to victory. There were some long faces today. There were some very dreary disappointed disillusioned countenances in the House today from Opposition members. They thought that just because one rogue poll showed an unacceptably high level of enthusiasm for the political boy scout John Key the prize lies lazily waiting for their hands. Nothing could be further from the truth because this Labour Government has put before the nation a veritable sumptuous feast of policies and programmes. 
It took a bit of time before the value and the strength of this Government’s Budget became recognisable on the streets of Auckland and was capable of being understood by biased media commentators. Consequently the  
New Zealand Herald  
has picked up on the fact that more New Zealanders are not only flocking to this Budget but also finally realising that the Budget is part of a long-term plan and 1 July is when Labour will be giving dividend day back to the people. The people have been told that our country according to National is headed in the wrong direction. But despite the best efforts of Paula Bennett in telling all sorts of hackneyed stories and confusion about what will happen to the young families of New Zealand and to preschools the signing ceremonies up and down the country with early childhood education just beggar belief. They are there in enormous numbers. Come 1 2 and 3 July members will see that that policy is not only a valuable investment but also highly sought after. 
Of course one bleak aspect continually intrudes on our attempts to reach into the more vulnerable elements of our society and in particular to Te Ao Maori. It comes from the misguided contributions of the Maori Party which are admittedly encouraged distorted and confused by more wily players such as Tau Henare. We had Dr Pita Sharples lament the fact that we are not doing enough. Well this is one case where Pita Sharples should recognise that Tau Henare is his senior. Tau Henare is Pita Sharples’ senior when it comes to political guile and confusion and when it comes to showing great flexibility. 
I say to Mr Woolerton that Pita Sharples stood in this House and said that not enough was being done about gangs. I would ask Mr Sharples to go back to his own party and tell his co-leader to stop cuddling the gangs of Wanganui. He should not come to this House complaining that the gangs are getting a free load from members on this side of House when he is trying to give a message in South Auckland about gangs. Admittedly it was a vague and confusing message that he gave. If we open the front page of the newspaper if we turn on—blighting our hearing capacity—a radio or a TV we see or hear Tariana Turia trotting out excuse after excuse for the criminality and the general riotousness associated with the gangs of Wanganui. I would tell Pita Sharples to clean up that little mess in his own backyard. 
However several other things of great usefulness to the nation took place last week. Not the least of them was when my senior colleague Lianne Dalziel showed New Zealanders that they should no longer entertain fears about how well managed their investments through KiwiSaver might be in respect of the equity markets. That was good because the problem we have in New Zealand—and National is no longer interested in it—is that as we prepare to encourage more people to save we have to provide and encourage more opportunities for firms to grow and to bring enterprises to market so that there is a greater array of destinations for people’s savings capital. 
A key contribution to that came from my colleague Lianne Dalziel. She warned us that malevolent menacing forces were trying to obstruct the Securities Commission. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Who were they? 
SHANE JONES 
: The member will hear more about that very shortly but those forces were out there. Through people relying on that ancient privilege called parliamentary privilege which goes to the very root of Westminster democracy I have no doubt that the country will be suitably informed as to who they were. 
However we have a great story to tell not only in relation to early childhood education but also in relation to doctors’ visits. In fact I had the good fortune to travel around with some of my colleagues recently and not just in the Whanganui - Taranaki area; some went to the east others went to the north. I say to Mr Hughes that everywhere people were celebrating the fact that they can see a doctor and they can have access to a pharmacy. It costs the smallest amount of money and in some cases it does not cost anything at all. 
That is why I say to Maori Party members that they cannot tolerate dancing with John Key and his offbeat siren song for them to join forces because they cannot sustain that type of subsidised level of access and at the same time put dough back into the rich pockets of the Fay Richwhites of the world. People either invest broadly in the most vulnerable elements of society or squander the dough in relation to unnecessary high levels of tax repatriation to those who quite frankly do not need it. If those people are overseas and they are not contributing to Aotearoa then they should stay overseas. That is what I would say to those members. 
Another thing that young people are very happy about lies with the fact that the primary health organisations represent a great step forward. Young people are able to see their aunts uncles grannies and tupunas receive medical care at a point in their lives when the malady is not so serious as to see them needing to be raced into hospital. That has happened only because health delivery is taken back into a level of the community where people feel a lot more comfortable interacting with health professionals. That has happened under this Labour Government. It needed high-quality strategic thinking; something that is conspicuously absent despite the clamour of my whanaunga Tau Henare on the other side of the House. Such thinking is conspicuously absent from members on the Opposition front bench or from anyone else on that side. They have yet to lay out what they propose to do. 
This Government has a signatory event and a signature document called the Budget and it is enjoying support from firms from young people from families and from the parents of young children. In Auckland people are clamouring for more of these devices such as the ability to raise capital through petrol tax to address their infrastructure needs; also people’s ears are turning away from the Opposition because it has put not a single coherent idea before the nation. National members cannot expect to sleepwalk to victory. That will not happen and we will be continuing to offer many more Budgets with a great deal of glee. Thank you very much.