Ryall Tony: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10426] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 We want the Minister of State Services Annette King to explain why she has humiliated the Labour Party in Government with her inability to get the trans-Tasman therapeutic products legislation passed through this House despite her repeated assurances that she had the numbers. I have to tell members that the people of New Zealand are pleased that this House will not be passing the costly bureaucratic and restrictive piece of legislation that Annette King wanted to foist on this country. We were not prepared to allow her to do that. 
What an extraordinary day! Annette King is personally responsible through her own arrogance for failing to get the numbers to pass the bill—but whose fault is it? It is my fault. Whose fault was it at question time? It was Bill English’s fault. It was everybody else’s fault except Annette King’s. Let us go through the history of what has happened here. In 2003 the National Party made it absolutely clear that our position on that legislation was represented in a view that was contained in a select committee report. In 2005 the Parliament changed but Annette King kept going despite the fact that the numbers she had for her bill had disappeared. She kept going and she kept spending public money and it was not until the National Party wrote to her that she even thought she might have to talk to the New Zealand National Party in Opposition about trying to build some support for changes to the trans-Tasman therapeutic products legislation. 
So a series of discussions was under way. We asked the Minister to address a number of concerns. She told us stuff that was not true. She told us stuff that could not have been true. We knew it was not true. How could we have reliance when the Minister was not even telling us the full story about what was going on? We had some months of correspondence. We told the Government that what it was proposing was not enough to address the concerns that we had set out clearly 3 or 4 years earlier and in many many letters to New Zealanders all around this country. Yet without assured support in the House Annette King and the Labour Party introduced the legislation last year relying on the support of New Zealand First and United Future. 
Then the bill went to the select committee where opinion was split fifty-fifty and it came back to the House. The Government under the Minister of State Services proceeded with a number of discussions to try to build more support and it was looking at a deal with the parties that usually support it. It is not National that props up this failed arrogant administration; it is United Future and New Zealand First. Then the Government entered into negotiations with ACT. If the New Zealand First position was so good why did Annette King not bring it to the National Party? She never said a word to us. If the New Zealand First deal was so good why did not Labour ACT New Zealand First and United Future support it? That would have given the Government the numbers. 
It is because the Government could not get its own people to support it that it finds itself in this position. The Government which is propped up by the Greens could not look to the Greens for support. Where is the Government’s haranguing of the Greens for not supporting this? It is all a smokescreen. It is all about blaming the National Party when it is Annette King and the Labour Government that arrogantly thought they could push this regime on to New Zealanders. We said no; so has the country. 
Instead of accepting responsibility for the huge embarrassment and humiliation that has befallen this tired and arrogant Government Annette King wants to blame the people with whom she never shared New Zealand First’s arrangement. She wants to blame the people who have made it clear for the last 4 years what would be required. She wants to blame John Key who said for months and months that if she took natural health products out of the legislation National would support it. But Annette King says it is all the National Party’s fault. Well actually it is Annette King’s fault Helen Clark’s fault and Pete Hodgson’s fault. It is the Labour Party’s fault. They do not realise that as a dying Government they can no longer rule this House with the arrogance they had previously. 
If the parties that normally support this Government agreed with that trans-Tasman legislation it would have been passed. But the Government could not even convince the parties it was in negotiation with. If the New Zealand First deal was that good we would have seen the legislation passed.