Ryall Tony: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Ryall Tony: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:636;Page:7232] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 It is an indication of the state of this ageing and dying Labour Government that it can put up only two speakers today. One is the cornered dog Dr Michael Cullen a man who has missed many opportunities in his life and has failed in his ultimate goal to lead the Labour Party. Then we heard from Mr Paul Swain who is leaving this Parliament in fewer than 2 years. They are the only Labour members we have heard from. I say this to Dr Cullen: if the Labour Party had obeyed the law of this country he would be the Deputy Prime Minister in this adjournment debate today. If the police had enforced the law those people would not be sitting there today. If this Labour Party had taken the warnings of the Chief Electoral Officer and obeyed the law it would not be the Government of New Zealand today and New Zealand would have a much better Government that provides the leadership that the country needs. 
This has been an awful year for the Labour Party in office. Let us remember the pledge card scandal. Do members recall how it started? 
Chris Auchinvole 
: No. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: The Prime Minister said the pledge card was not an issue and that because Labour had been issuing it for two elections previously it was not a problem. Then the argument was that everybody else was doing things like that and then that Labour had not known it was an election expense. The fact of the matter is that David Henry deserves to be one of the New Zealanders of the year because the Chief Electoral Officer wrote to that dishonest Labour Party saying that its pledge card was election spending and had to be declared. What did the Labour Party do? It wrote back to him and said yes it would be declared. That is what the Government said before the election. 
Within days of the election—a knife-edge election—the Labour Party then wrote to David Henry and said it had changed its mind and the spending on the pledge card was not going to be declared at all. That is dishonest and as has been said by others it is darn right corrupt. It is darn right corrupt to say one thing to the Chief Electoral Officer before the election and another thing afterwards. Because it was a knife-edge election every dollar every doorknock every pamphlet and every phone call mattered. Labour stole the election with half a million dollars of taxpayers’ money and the Labour members have no legitimacy whatsoever to lecture anybody in this House. If they had obeyed the law they would not be in Government today and that silly little boy with the red hair would be delivering newspapers in Levin yet again which is where he should be today. 
Hon Bill English 
: He would get a milk run. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Oh he would get a milk run. 
I think the real measure of Helen Clark is how she has dealt with Taito Phillip Field. I will recite what Lockwood Smith has shown so effectively in this Parliament this year. Taito Phillip Field is a man who sold immigration permits to people for money and work. There is no doubt that Taito Phillip Field said to Sunan Siriwan that if he went and did the tiling he would get Siriwan into New Zealand. That is what happened. Here is the other rub: who else knew? Phil Goff was at the house where Sunan Siriwan was doing the work! The Minister of Foreign Affairs was at the house where he was doing the work. Has Phil Goff ever said while sitting in his caravan in Mt Roskill waiting waiting waiting what he said to Sunan Siriwan? No! Who else was there? The retiring Paul Swain was there. He was the Minister of Immigration. He was the guy in whose authority those decisions were being made. He was there at the house in Samoa with Sunan Siriwan. He spoke to him. What did he say? He has never said. Has he ever volunteered to go to the police to say what he said? No. 
Hon Bill English 
: He wants the grouting done. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: My colleague on this side of the House say he wants the grouting to be done. 
But I think Helen Clark stands indicted for her appalling lack of standards on the performance of Taito Phillip Field. Let us remember what happened to Dover Samuels. Even a mere allegation meant that he was chopped off at the knees within 24 hours by Helen Clark. He was found to be completely beyond reproach yet he was frozen out of the Government. 
But I think one of the most noticeable and real achievements of this year is that Labour has lost the faith of the public when it comes to managing the health portfolio. New Zealanders now know that Labour cannot be trusted to give them value for money for what they are putting into the health service. We have seen the screaming skull in this House in question time after question time completely losing it because he cannot justify the performance of himself or his predecessor Annette King. So at every question time out comes the screaming skull trying to deflect attention from the appalling performance of Labour and denying the fact that 25000 New Zealanders who needed an operation were culled off hospital waiting lists for no other reason than that they had been waiting for more than 6 months. There was not a thought from Labour for those people. Those 25000 New Zealanders whom doctors said needed operations were culled from hospital waiting lists for no other reason than that they had been waiting more than 6 months. Those people have been sent back to their doctors and they have to start life again. 
The real privilege of being the health spokesperson is that I have met and talked to a lot of the people at the cold edge of Labour’s health policy. I have been talking to people with skin cancer whose specialists have told them that the cancer has to eat more of their faces before they will get an operation I say to Jill Pettis. I ask that member what she would say to those people. If she blames Liam Ashley’s mother for his death would she blame a mother for her daughter’s cancer? I have been talking to people whose kids are in desperate need of neurosurgery. I have been talking to a mother whose kid could die at any moment if he cannot get desperately needed neurosurgery. She has been mucked around by the Auckland District Health Board. And what does the Minister of Health do in Parliament? He blames the mother again. Is that not appalling? I have been talking to the old people who have been suffering because they are in desperate need of a hip replacement yet Pete Hodgson says that does not matter and they can go off the waiting list because they have been waiting more than 6 months. They are culled from the hospital waiting lists. 
And what about the biggest lie of all? The biggest lie of all is that we are doing more surgery in New Zealand than we were 6 years ago. That is the test of this Government. An extra $4 billion has been put into elective surgery and fewer people are receiving elective surgery than previously. Even fewer people will get elective surgery this year. We have seen an unprecedented level of industrial action in our country’s hospitals. Today I can tell the House that there are people in the MidCentral District Health Board’s area who have been told that they will wait 19 weeks in order to get radiotherapy to deal with their cancer. Let us imagine someone being told today that he or she will not start his or her treatment to cure cancer until the end of April. Someone has cancer but that person will not be treated until the end of April. A member’s constituent could be told today that he or she will not get cancer treatment until this time in April. That is appalling. That is what this Government—[ 
Interruption 
] 
I will give members the best policy for fixing the health system in this country and it is a change of Government. National will give New Zealand the leadership that will assure people they will get value for every dollar. We will not waste all the money on endless bureaucracy. Members should mark this down: since the Labour Party came to office in the year 2000 there are now over 2000 more managers and administrators in the health system. For every two nurses who have been employed in the health system Labour has employed a new hospital manager. Our entire health system is being bogged down in bureaucracy and decline. We even revealed in Parliament in the last week that the Minister of Health knows that his role is being wasted.