O'Connor Simon: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: General Debate[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10476. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I was surprised the other day when I was back in my electorate that someone actually came up to me and asked the question: “Simon do you actually believe the poll about how bad Labour and the Opposition are performing?”.I say that I was surprised because being the bluest strongest seat in the country by and large the Tāmaki electorate does not really care about Labour.Basically they do not care about poor performance because by and large the good people of Tāmaki are there because they have worked jolly hard paid all their taxes and a lot more acted philanthropically and so forth. But this person did ask me whether I believed that Labour polled at 28 percent. Well to that particular constituent and anyone else who is listening you only need to have engaged with the general debate today to see how out of touch how odd and how silly the Opposition is. There are a whole lot of other adjectives waiting to be used but I try to be a man who is polite.Just to illustrate we have just had the usual rant from Labour. Basically its members have been told by the doyens in their research office—the bean counters and the like who will not actually even know what a counter or a bean is but that is what they call themselves—“Oh just use the words ‘arrogant’ and ‘out of touch’ many many times because eventually the New Zealand public”—Kris Faafoi: You just did it.SIMON O’CONNOR: —“will fall for it. They’ll just fall for it.” The irony is of course—now they are saying: “Oh my God you’ve used the word.” Yes I am allowed to use the words occasionally but they just repeat them over and over again.And then the real humdinger is this: “Oh our Leader of the Opposition ‘Angry Andrew’ Little who—Mr SPEAKER: Order!SIMON O’CONNOR: Sorry very good point. He yelled and screamed for about 5 minutes. They are saying: “Oh he released his tax return.” Well no actually. To those listening and certainly to the Opposition he did not release it. He said he did but of course he did not actually. What he released is something called the personal tax statement. To those of us on this side of the House who actually understand the Inland Revenue Department who actually put in tax returns and the like that is not the same thing. I am not going to bore you with all of the tax details but this is classic Labour. It has made all these assertions about what it and its leader have done but they are actually false. Not just false—demonstrably false. And not demonstrably false by this side but by its own self.Then from New Zealand First we have basically an array of fiction which is pretty classic Winston Peters. I think it was illustrated perfectly by him quoting John Grisham’s book The Firm—we did not quite understand why. But then he moved on pretty quickly to talking about The Perfect Storm and a film—I was wondering what sort of operatic philharmonic and ballet things he was going to get on to—all again falsities to try to illustrate nothing absolutely nothing.So ladies and gentlemen—Fletcher Tabuteau: You have a wonderful turn of phrase.SIMON O’CONNOR: —the reason ultimately that the Opposition is faltering so badly—falsely faltering flat-footedly; we can just keep going; we are just going to keep the alliteration all for Fletcher—the reason is ultimately that it is just so totally and utterly irrelevant.The opposite is true when I think back to my own electorate at the moment in particular in the area of small business. They are happy with where the Government is at and are already thrilled judging from the texts and emails that are coming through. Tāmaki is an aspirational hard-working electorate. It is an area with a lot of small businesses. You go around and you see actually that in the most recent weeks we have had new businesses set up—if you have not already The Good Grocer down in Kohi Mission Bay is a fantastic new development. We have got a new fruiterer up in Sunhill and I am looking forward to visiting there. One of our local coffee shops Tim and the team at Cigana another small business has moved recently but is redeveloping around the Tāmaki to Glen Innes cycleway—a $40 million project.Todd Muller: How much?SIMON O’CONNOR: Forty million dollars pumped into the Tāmaki electorate. We have got a new butcher and a whole lot of new business is often advertised through the Neighbourlywebsite which incidentally was actually developed by a Tāmaki local.The long and the short of it is that there are lots of small businesses doing well and lots of small businesses that will be absolutely thrilled today about the announcements made by the Prime Minister and other Ministers that will make life easier primarily around provisional tax. And that is where I want to finish here actually where there is the contrast of the “do” attitude of a local constituent who will welcome a Government doing something versus absolute rubbish coming from the other side which is in itself irrelevant—which means that 28 percent is probably a high-tide mark for this Opposition at the moment.