Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak today—a day when it's clear that we are seeing across the House the early separation and divorce proceedings of this unholy marriage of inconvenience: the Labour - New Zealand First - Greens coalition Government. While we still can before it completely dissolves I want to reflect back on how this unholy alliance came to be.Let's start with the marriage proposal—the engagement if you will: the coalition negotiations. Let's look at what each party brought to the table. What was their dowry? What did they bring? What did they give up? Well let's start with the Greens—what did they bring to this unholy marriage? Well what did they give up? The Greens gave up their principles; that's what they gave up—both of them Kennedy Graham and David Clendon given up sacrificed on the altar of a marriage proposal for this unholy alliance.Let's go to New Zealand First. What was their dowry? What did they bring to the table? New Zealand First had a problem. The problem for them was they had nothing that was valuable to New Zealanders. They had nothing that New Zealanders wanted that they could bring to the negotiations so they rustled around and they eventually found a couple of old bags—a couple of old bags that they tried to polish up and make shiny but at the end of the day everyone could still see they were a couple of old bags and they had a lot of baggage. But they thought Look we'll bring them along. That will be our dowry."Labour thought they'd do something different: "Let's do something traditional: something old something new something borrowed something blue." So what did Labour bring to the table? What did they bring to the marriage proposal? Something old—a capital gains tax; something new—a capital gains tax; something borrowed—still a capital gains tax borrowed from Australia and then they damaged that relationship so badly we can't give it back; and something blue—National Party surpluses to pay for a capital gains tax. That's what Labour brought to the marriage.So we had the engagement: the coalition negotiations deciding the marriage. I don't even want to consider the marriage night—that's an image I don't want to have in my head—but let's look maybe to the morning after the morning after the marriage. I can imagine the leader of New Zealand First waking up: to his right he sees Ron Mark to his left he sees Labour and through blurry eyes he sees Ron and he says to him "Ron Mark Ron Mark what happened? Where are we?"—because you see things had changed. Initially at the beginning of the night there were three parties in the marriage bed but during the night the Greens had been rolled. They'd been rolled right out of the bed on to the floor but that was OK because on the floor was a mat—a hemp mat—from which they had received great comfort.Anyway left in the bed is the leader of New Zealand First and he turns to Ron and says "Ron Ron"—blurry-eyed waking up in the morning—"Ron Ron is that you?" He says "Yes yes boss; it's me." He says "Ron why are you wearing that ridiculous cowboy hat? Take it off. Does this look like Bonanza?" He says "No no boss. That's what I wear all the time." "Ron I need to know what happened. What happened last night?" He said "You don't remember?" He said "No I don't." He said "Well we actually formed a marriage a coalition with Greens and New Zealand First." The leader of New Zealand First: "Oh no that's terrible my worst nightmare—I'm in a marriage with people I can't stand." He said "Ron this is terrible."And then vaguely through the shifting mists the shifting fogs the leader of New Zealand First starts to recall some of the episodes of the night before. He starts to recall and he recalls the last words he heard before the lights went out. He vaguely recalls the words the mist starts to shift and what were the last words he heard in the marriage bed before the lights went out? "Mmm let's do this." Thank you Mr Speaker."