Hodgson Pete: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Hodgson Pete: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:623;Page:18386] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 “Dream on!” I say; “Dream on!” I say to that sour bitter member. He is a member who is given to anger a member who can display anger and can pretend anger but underneath it actually is anger as well. He said of the colleague sitting to my left Annette King that she had had the health portfolio taken off her. Can I just remind the House that no one has held the health portfolio for 6 years as Annette King will have done since Don McKay the member for Marsden in the 1960s a person who influenced my own childhood because I grew up in the electorate that he represented. Can I remind the member—the angry member—who has just resumed his seat that when his Government was last in power it got through five health Ministers in 9 years and that since then it has quickened the pace and gotten through five health spokespeople in the last 5 years. Who knows where that will lead because soon it will run out of caucus members to shift that portfolio to. 
While we are at it the member—the angry member—who resumed his seat also had a go at my colleague further along on the front bench Steve Maharey and said that that member had got the sack too. Well let us have a look at tertiary education spokespeople and former Ministers on the National Party side. The first one I can recall was Lockwood Smith the guy who broke his promise and who as the years went by jumped out of windows around universities to avoid students. But then Wyatt Creech took it on and he had a different approach altogether. He never went to universities. They were politician-free zones for years during the 1990s. Then we had Max Bradford who gave tertiary students a bit of “biffo” and that was one of the reasons though not the main one that he was removed from politics altogether. The concluding speaker for National is a sour bitter and angry man and so he should be. 
He also mentioned that there were troubles with the rescue helicopters and that National Party members worked their guts out. Well let us look at the facts. The facts are that they started a petition from their beach bach and while they were doing that the Government— 
Hon Annette King 
: Fixed it! 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: What did it do? The Government fixed it. Start a petition or fix the problem—take one’s choice. So let us not go there. 
A week is a long time in politics as they say and certainly last Monday morning National members were looking chipper. They had come back from their holiday. They were all rested up and all energetic. They were all finished with their annus horribilis of 2004. Members know the one—the one that began so splendidly with Orewa I when they bounced in the polls in a spectacular fashion. Then they thought they had better get a strategy to maintain themselves there but they did not. They thought they should put out some more statements to make sure that the people knew where they were coming from but they did not. So there was no policy development no focus and no consistent message. There was no anything really—no momentum. So that support evaporated inexorably and by December 2004 National was back to where it had begun. That concluded the annus horribilis of 2004. 
But 2005 was going to be different. They had an opportunity—it is an election year after all—and National said it was ready willing and able to go and that it was going to take the fight to the Government. Hours later Katherine Rich was gone. 
Before lunchtime she had gone. The caucus split was all over the media. Named members of the National caucus—named members—were openly expressing their regret or their distress or in one case sharp criticism. The unity had exploded. Then over the week the media ran endless analyses of how it had happened and what a graphic display of mismanagement by Dr Brash it was—and it is Dr Brash’s mismanagement that we have under scrutiny here. 
This is not something that happens with all National leaders. One would not expect it from Bill English. One would most certainly not have expected it from Jim Bolger who stayed on as Prime Minister of this land for 8 years. He got rid of his Minister of Finance after 3 years but it was not a bloodletting; it was just a mere by-election and there were no problems. Dr Brash cannot do that. Dr Brash has no ability to do that. This man actually has limited ability to do anything. He cannot for example win elections. He tried 20 years ago and he lost a blue-ribbon seat on the North Shore twice. Even his own election by his caucus which was done by a majority vote—thin as it was—was won by accident. How do we know? Because of the celebrations the night before by Bill English and company and because of the behaviour of Dr Nick Smith in the days that followed. That election was won by accident. We all know how that happened. It is now a matter of unwritten history. 
So winning elections is not exactly a forte of the current Leader of the Opposition. He does not have a strong history; actually he has no history. But it does not matter; maybe this guy’s skills lie elsewhere. Maybe he has certainty of policy. Maybe he is good at holding the line. Maybe he is good at staking out an agenda. Let us have a look. 
The most serious and systemic error of Dr Brash has been his failure to contest the middle ground. He does not know how to contest the middle ground. Middle New Zealand votes Labour which is why Labour remains ahead. Instead Dr Brash has not contested the middle ground. Instead he has looked to the right where he is himself most comfortable and in doing so he has taken his party from centre-right to right. He has managed to exclude one assumes ACT from Parliament altogether come the next election therefore losing his coalition partner—a careless thing to do—and he has taken his own party from the centre of politics out to the fringes. 
But wait there is more. Even if he has never won an election and even if he has taken his party out of the centre and off to the perimeter of politics might Dr Brash none the less be able to articulate a clear message and stick to it so as to provide the attraction of certainty—a man who knows what he wants even if one does not agree with what he wants? Well no. No he does not offer any assistance there either. This is the man who ran both for and against the so-called “Cullen fund”. He is for and against civil unions. He is for and against tax cuts for rich people. He is for and against 4 weeks’ leave. He is for and against a change in major nuclear policy. It is a case of “gone by lunchtime” stateside but never say a word back here. 
Then last Sunday in the latest instance of personal and political uncertainty Dr Brash a self-described agnostic came on the television and breathlessly advised the nation that it was time for him to come forward and confess the Treaty of Waitangi sins of the past. To whom this agnostic might confess is unclear but when he said it on the 6 p.m. news on Sunday night an apolitical friend of mine spluttered her disgust at his duplicity and left the room. So the alienation continues and so do the mixed messages. All last week Dr Brash was saying that Tame Iti is a bad guy but come the weekend he sits next to him. He cannot win elections he cannot position his policy he cannot give a firm direction he cannot stop flip-flopping he gives out mixed messages and he cannot get on with women. 
Losing one woman after Orewa was careless; losing two in 2 years is a pattern. Not only did he lose Katherine Rich; he dumped her. As the story started to break early last week I assumed—because one likes to think ahead—that he would swap the health and social welfare portfolios leave her in position and say openly that there had been some disagreement but that that was the best way to handle it. He did not do that. He dumped her. He changed her from the front bench to some other position. He set out to humiliate her and that is a fairly interesting thing to do. He could have used the risk minimisation strategy I just outlined but he did not follow it. He turned the spotlight on himself it stayed there all week and it will stay there for longer than that. 
Dr Brash will lose the next election and then aged 65 will leave Parliament to be forgotten except for his actions in the 1990s when he squeezed the life out of the New Zealand economy. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The time for this debate has concluded. The first question is that Mr Peter Brown’s amendment to the amendment be agreed to.