Collins Judith: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Collins Judith: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1157] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 Would someone please get that man a happy pill. He really does need a bit of anger management or certainly some sort of pill and I am sure that there are members in the Government who could help him out. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I point out that following repeated requests on behalf of Nick Smith that comment has been repeatedly ruled out of order. I ask that the member withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The Minister is correct. That comment is not considered to be parliamentary. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Is the Hon Trevor Mallard taking personal offence at that comment? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: No the Minister was referring to the way in which the member referred to another member. I think the Minister was quite clear about that. Comments about taking medication have been ruled out of order on several occasions. I think the member should withdraw and apologise. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I notice that you Madam Assistant Speaker did not pull up the previous speaker when he referred to Dr Don Brash with words other than his name. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Will the member be seated. That is a separate point of order. I have ruled on the point of order and I have ruled on it as it is being heard now and that is the correct one. If the member wanted to raise a point of order at another time it should have been raised then. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I withdraw and do I also apologise to Mr Mallard? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: No the member will apologise to the House. It is very simple. The member has been asked to withdraw and apologise to the House. That is all that is necessary. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I withdraw and apologise. [ 
Interruption 
] 
It was very good for Mr Hughes to come down here mincing along carrying Helen Clark’s handbag. He has gone all bright pink now. Poor Mr Hughes. He should just come out and be straight. He needs to learn a bit from his colleague on the bench Mr Tim Barnett who has always been very straight about himself. I think poor Mr Hughes should just come forth and be honest. 
 Who said this: “My signature is on it. I am accountable for it.”? Who said that? 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Who was it? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I thank the member for asking. It was of course the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark. When did she say that? She said it in May 1999 in her speech to the Labour Party conference. What was she referring to? She was referring to the little red card that was paid for by the New Zealand taxpayer. The problem was that New Zealand taxpayers did not know they were paying for it. It was just one of those little things. Now we are told that not only has $450000 come from the taxpayer purse but the budget was overspent by that. The Labour Party spent 20 percent more than it was allowed to. It stole the election. 
Then we heard from Mr Cullen—he is a history professor of course so he would know this—who said that the Government has done that before. It has done it not just once but twice. That is about $1.2 million of taxpayers’ money. I wonder whether that was in addition to the amount that it overspent. I think the answer is yes. It is taxpayers’ money. The Labour Party has now confessed that in three separate elections taxpayers have unwittingly paid for that card and for everything else—the other pamphlets that came out in the week of the election—as the Hon Tony Ryall showed us today. What did Helen Clark know? Well she signed the card. There is a photo that looks remarkably like she did about 30 or 40 years ago. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: No! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Mr Brownlee says “No!”. It was paid for from her office budget of over $400000 which she does not seem to know much about. I think it is so amazing that Mr Williams— 
Katherine Rich 
: That’s just the make-up cost. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I say to Mrs Rich that that is very unkind; I think that is terribly unkind but probably true. It is sort of like the Hon Pete Hodgson’s Kyoto Protocol promise. The protocol was going to make us half a billion dollars. It was going to bring that money into New Zealand because Pete Hodgson had the deal for us. But what happened to “Mr Numbers Man”? I ask Mr Brownlee what Mr Hodgson is in charge of now. Can Mr Brownlee remember? It is something. He was in charge of the election spending. He was on the radio this morning saying that it was all unclear. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: “Mr Fix-it”. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: “Mr Fix-it”—he is a strategist apparently. I thank Mr Auchinvole. I was having difficulty remembering which story he was talking about because it is always half a billion dollars or something like that. 
Colin King 
: Either way. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Half a billion either way as has been correctly pointed out. It is like that smear campaign undertaken by David Benson-Pope and Labour when it sent out fake eviction notices to State tenants a few days before the election telling them that if they voted National they would be kicked out of their houses. What disgusting foul behaviour! A lot of those people do not speak English very well are frightened of the law are old-age pensioners or are without anything. That is what David Benson-Pope and this Government did to them. They did that deliberately. 
The other question as raised today by the Hon Tony Ryall is how the Minister knew where those tenants all lived and how he knew their names. Were the Housing New Zealand Corporation’s records and database seized and gone through by the Minister’s people? Did they do that? Did they get that information from the Housing New Zealand Corporation? It does not seem as though anyone who is not a Housing New Zealand Corporation tenant got that notice. That is what happened. 
Jill Pettis 
: Most of us know how to use the phone book. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: What did the former member for Whanganui say? She said that they went through the phone book. Well the phone book apparently states according to Jill Pettis whether a person is a State tenant. That is one of the new rings. We in Manukau City do not have that in our phone book. What happened there? There are some very good questions to be answered. 
How about Trevor Mallard’s American bagman? Do members remember that? It was a great story; we are still waiting for it. That was the bagman. Now apparently it is a crime to be a member of a religious minority or an American—worse if one is both. It was great to hear Phil Goff talking today about this Government’s great multiculturalism and religious tolerance. We heard that did we not? We heard that in full scream. Did Mr Goff once mention the trade unions? Trade union pamphlets went up and down the country to household after household paid for by the trade unions and authorised by Darien Fenton who just happened to be a Labour Party list candidate and who now sits in this House because of the work of that Service and Food Workers Union. How about that? Is that being taken into account? I bet it is not. [ 
Interruption 
] If Mrs Pettis wants copies she need not worry—I have copies. 
How about the $15 million Working for Families advertising campaign to tell four out of five working families with children that they do not earn enough money to keep their own children without extra money from the taxpayers? That is a disgrace. Government members have started that campaign again because they have so much taxpayers’ money. 
I say to my colleagues in Parliament that the culture of any organisation starts at the top. One does not go to an organisation and say that the person who cleans up sets the culture. The culture starts at the top and the culture of this Government and the Labour Party starts with Helen Clark. She sets the culture; she said before she came into power that she would set the culture. It is a new culture. Let us listen to what she said about Lianne Dalziel: “I advised Lianne that in my view a clear line had been crossed between a statement which was misleading and a statement which was untrue.” Most people would think it was a fib one way or the other. I have been thinking about it and what it means is that if a member gets caught and it is too embarrassing and the Prime Minister cannot get the member out of it she will put the member in purgatory for a little while then bring him or her back. 
This time Helen Clark has been caught like a rat in a trap. That is what has happened to her just like it did to David Benson-Pope and Lianne Dalziel. This is the only woman who is so enthralled by Jim Sutton that sitting in the back seat of a limousine she could not tell they were travelling at 150 kilometres per hour. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Poor Jim Sutton! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: “Poor Jim Sutton!” says Lockwood Smith. What happened? The police copped it. Jim Sutton is a nice enough chap but I cannot imagine any woman being as enthralled as that by the very slow ramblings of Jim Sutton in the back seat of a car going at 150 kilometres per hour. She was just lost in a dream. Guess who copped it? The poor old police and the driver. 
Helen Clark said about standards in Government: “I want Labour in Government to usher in a new era of political accountability and responsibility.” 
Chris Auchinvole 
: She certainly did that. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: She certainly did do that like New Zealand has never seen before. It is a culture and standard of none. That is what that is about. There are lots of things that this Government is basically dishonest about in the way it presents information. Helen Clark is the leader of this Government. She is the leader of the Labour Party. She set the culture of dishonesty. She set a culture that said that Ministers can go through a revolving door whereby if they get caught they can come back again after a little time and everything is all right. Well it just will not be all right any more.