Collins Judith: General Debate 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Volume:656;Page:5678] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 Anyone watching question time today would wonder why the Opposition asks questions about things that people are not concerned about. What they are concerned about is a Government that is actually delivering on things that matter to people. For instance the other day my colleague Gerry Brownlee announced the huge uptake in the number of people opting for the home insulation package. For 9 years we heard from the previous Labour Government that it purported to represent the people of New Zealand who needed a fair deal. Did it deliver that deal in terms of home insulation? No it did not. This Government in working with the Green Party has delivered on time and more than we ever thought we would in terms of the number of people adopting the home insulation measures. 
With my colleague Paula Bennett we have been able to do something about creating job and youth opportunities for the people who are most at risk in the very tough economic times we inherited. We have also seen jobs created by the increased infrastructure spending on roading and State houses. After years of talking about roads and public transport the previous Labour Government never quite worked out that buses run on roads and that we just cannot have a public transport system without roads because they go together. 
Here we see an Opposition that is so worried about leadership. I think it is just amazing that David Shearer who has been in Parliament for a matter of weeks already has a poll rating that is at least the same as Phil Goff’s who has been in Parliament “since Adam was a cowboy” to quote the Prime Minister. That tells us that even those people who will always vote Labour because their parents and grandparents did and they have not worked out that they do not need to want to see some fresh faces in Labour. Of course we like to see Phil Goff and Annette King over there in the Opposition benches. They are very nice people and they should be given a fair go. They have been in Parliament for only about 30 years so it is really too soon to tell! 
We find that the Labour Party is all at sixes and sevens. Its members are running around trying to find out who will be the next leader when they should be backing Phil Goff who we heard from Claire Curran is “a real man” whatever that means in the Labour Party. I thought that was quite an interesting comment. We also heard from Clayton Cosgrove that there is no factional infighting in the Labour Party. I have another suggestion to add to my colleague Mr Brownlee’s comments: maybe Clayton Cosgrove is not part of any faction and no one has told him yet. Perhaps he has not been put in touch with the barbecue— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Me too! I’m on the outside as well! 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: Mr Mallard says that he is not part of any faction too; we can understand that he would not want to be part of any faction because no faction would want him. We heard from Phil Twyford Labour’s Auckland spokesperson that Labour was punished in Auckland because “The city wasn’t working properly with traffic problems crappy infrastructure”—“crappy” is not a word we would normally use in the National Party—“and a downtown that looks like a bomb site.” He concludes: “I think our Government was very late in coming to the party and doing something about it.” Well I say to Mr Twyford that never a truer word has been spoken. 
Labour wasted 9 years of some of the best overseas economic conditions we have seen. One of the awful things about being in the National Opposition was watching the previous Labour Government spend money hand over fist. We watched it pay out money buy off groups and get people happy for a few dollars and for that entire time the economy was tanking. Labour knew it but refused to do anything about it. All we heard time and time again was “No no we’ll just pay out more money. Let’s tax the rich.” Labour said all those sorts of things. Yet under the previous Labour Government any ordinary Kiwi earning $60000 per year was considered to be rich. That shows the extent of its meanness and its absolute politics of envy that it wanted to promote. Many ordinary Kiwis the working people ended up having to take the Working for Families package because the tax system was so rorted against them. Unfortunately the Labour Government never quite understood that people—the very people Labour wanted to keep dependent on the Government—would eventually realise what was going on because they simply could not get ahead. 
Under this National Government despite the tough economic times we are seeing action. That is what people like. They voted National in to do things and boy we really are doing things. We have a Prime Minister who is relentlessly positive and is the best we have ever seen.