Cunliffe David: General Debate 
Cunliffe David: General Debate 
[Volume:655;Page:5026] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 That was yet another National member who is so bereft of ideas to make our country better that he has had to survey his constituents to tell him what the answer is because he has no idea. Nathan Guy is from a party that is so worried about superannuation that John Key has had to write to every superannuitant in the country to tell them that he will find pixies at the bottom of his garden to pay for their superannuation. 
But wait! It gets better. The lightning flashes in the National Party boardroom the thunder crashes and darkness falls the tomb shudders and out comes “Dracula Don”. “Dracula Don” rises from the crypt the garlic of the lost emails wears off the crucifix of  
The Hollow Men 
 loses its power the stake of the 2005 election is thrust from his heart he crawls out of the crypt and he says the immortal word “privatisation”. It is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood transfusion service. That is what bringing Don Brash back from the political crypt is like. 
Let us consider this joke a bit more seriously. What is the politics of National’s being so desperate that it had to reach to “Dracula Don” to give it some forward motion on something even if it is back to the future? Putting Don in charge of the 2025 Taskforce is very appropriate because that is his centenary. Why not give him a century gong and call it the productivity agenda? I think it is beautiful. But of course it is part of a wider pattern. John Whitehead is the skirts for his boss the Minister of Finance saying everything that is brave and that he thinks might need doing but that Bill English is too afraid to say; an old ACT Party acolyte like Graham Scott is being paid 2000 bucks a day to sit at home and pore through the Government’s accounts because the Minister does not have the nous; and now Don Brash is rising from the grave to resurrect the 1990s which—in his words of course—were wrong because they “did not go far enough.” Now “everything is on the table”. National needs momentum and we can guess where it will find it. 
This Government was elected on a centrist ticket that many called “Labour-lite”. We found that pretty insulting but John Key at least is lite. Those members were going to be kinder gentler Tories who would not harm our benefit system— 
Brendon Burns 
: Yeah right! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —yeah right—but they are bringing Don Brash back the man who thought that education should be privatised and that there was no reason for the State to own the welfare system the hospitals or the schools. He would let the private sector do it and then tell people to sell their own houses and live in rentals because that is tax-efficient. That is the kind of out-of-touch bloke he is. 
Why has National done this? Let us look at last week. On Tuesday morning the “Mood of the Boardroom” feature had Bill English confronted by the feedback of a hundred chief executive officers. My favourite quote from one of them was in reference to the Job Summit: “Eighty per cent of the country’s GDP was represented and the best you can come up with is a cycleway.” Joke! John Key told them not to worry about that; he had a major speech on productivity coming up. On Wednesday he gave it and on Thursday Fitch Ratings downgraded us. Is that not fantastic? It was so inspiring that Matthew Hooton said on Radio New Zealand National—he is no friend of ours by the way—that there was absolutely nothing new in that speech and that it was bereft of ideas. He made Laila Harré look tame which is not an easy job. 
On the weekend the word went out from the National Party boardroom that it was time to open the crypt and bring back “Dracula”. “Dracula” has risen from the crypt and said: “Privatise it all! Enough! Doom! Doom! The Government has failed. Just turn it all over to them!”. John Key is saying that that is an idea; he can probably weave that in. But the big debate that the country is having with itself and the essence of the politics of this is that New Zealanders have not made up their minds whether John Key is shallow or deceitful. They do not know whether he really is “Labour-lite” and really is as clueless as he looks.