Tolley Anne: AdjournmentText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTolley Anne: Adjournment[Sitting date: 31 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19820. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police):I am pleased to stand and take a call here as this 50th Parliament comes to its end. Before I go any further can I acknowledge here in the House a great achievement today by our New Zealand athletes at the Commonwealth Games and our world champion who is dear to the hearts of all New Zealanders Valerie Adams. She gained a gold medal which then achieved for New Zealand our 600th medal at the Commonwealth Games.Can I start by paying tribute to all the valedictorians in the House who are leaving us and going on to lives outside Parliament. It has been amazing to sit and listen to the valedictory speeches from all around the House and I want to acknowledge all the work that MPs do. In particular I want to pay tribute to the Speaker’s team and thank them for their guidance and their assistance. Can I pay tribute to the retiring members Deputy Speaker Roy and Assistant Speaker Robertson and thank them for their help over the years. I want to acknowledge my colleague Tony Ryall who was the previous member of Parliament for parts of my electorate at various times. It has changed. I think that when he was first elected into Parliament Te Puia Springs formed part of his electorate. He has been a great mentor a great colleague and a great Minister of Health for this country. He will be sadly missed. I also want to acknowledge my two millennium-class colleagues who are leaving Dr Hutchison and Phil Heatley. We are now down to two out of eight. Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch you and I are left. I have to say that the whisky will last a bit longer. I wish my colleagues all the best.Can I thank the staff here at Parliament from the messengers to the cleaners to the security people to the people who look after our offices. We have a great staff here at Parliament who make this place work. Also can I thank Ministerial Services. I particularly want to thank the people who work in my offices both here in Parliament—who do a great job; it is a thankless job at times but they do a fantastic job—and also in my two offices in Gisborne and in Whakatāne. Where would we be without our office staff who maintain our presence in our electorates when we have to spend so much time here in Wellington?I also want to pay tribute to the Leader of the House the Hon Gerry Brownlee. He has done a fantastic job of guiding this House through the legislative programme over the last 3 years. He has an amazing way of combining humour with absolute efficiency. I think we would all agree that he has done an outstanding job and we thank you Gerry Brownlee for that.This term has been a term of considerable contrast. I want to touch on just a couple of issues. If we look first at leadership the leadership here on this side of the House from John Key is strong it is consistent it is transparent and it is open. Any of us who have been with him as he has travelled around the country know that he is genuinely interested in people. It shows and people respond to that and they want to be with him. They want to have their photos taken with him they want to talk to him and they respond to him because as the Deputy Prime Minister said earlier he actually believes in them. He believes they can do whatever it is they want to do. He genuinely wants to help them do that and it shows. So on this side we have that sort of leadership.You compare it with what we see around the House and actually “shambolic” is the word I would use to describe that—it is shambolic. We have seen a number of leaders. We have seen some shifty behaviour.Hon Member: Tricky.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: We have seen “Tricky” yes. You have to read the bottom lines. You have to read the small print. We have seen no clear leadership from the Opposition—no clear leadership to match anything that John Key has produced. So I think that that is a sharp contrast for New Zealanders. When they think about whom it is that they would like to have lead this country then without a doubt it has to be John Key from the National Party.The second issue that I think is a clear contrast is that this side of the House has a very clear direction. We know exactly where this country is going and we are helping it get there. We have four priorities. First of all getting the finances back into some sort of shape and getting back into surplus has been incredibly difficult. As we know there was a whole string of surpluses from the other side of the House under the Labour Government and it spent like a drunken sailor at the very best of times. They were the very best of times and what did this country have to show for it? Not a lot—not a lot.Andrew Williams: No debt.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes we did have no debt and that was one thing it did really well but it left a whole lot of unfunded promises to people. Anyone who asked for it it sprayed money around. This Government at the height of a recession had to come in and clean up that mess.We have also had to grow the economy because we knew that this country was going backwards. We were spending more than we were earning so we have had to reshape the economy and New Zealanders have risen to the challenge. Again we have heard in this House today how New Zealanders have turned our economy round. We have focused on better public services because the taxpayers have a right to expect that their Public Service performs for them. We are achieving that with our Better Public Services targets which show that very clearly. We are very focused on that.Finally we have been focused on rebuilding our second-largest city which was so dramatically demolished by those tragic earthquakes. We have seen enormous progress made and this Government has been determined to be alongside Cantabrians as they rebuild their large city.What have we seen from the Opposition? Well actually it has been all over the place. Again you would describe it as pretty shambolic. It has manufactured a whole series of crises all of which have turned out to be false—all of which have turned out to be false. In fact on this side we are actually asking for another crisis so that we can get another boost in the economy. It has consistently put down the enormous work that has been done.I want to mention a couple of particular areas. First of all I think of the outstanding increase in educational achievement that we have seen under this Government.Hon Trevor Mallard: Dropping standards.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: All we have heard from the Labour Opposition which sat back for 9 years and watched as kids’ achievement levels dropped—and it did nothing because it was too scared of the unions. Under this Government we have got good achievement data and we have seen an enormous change in what is happening in our schools. All the Opposition can do is say that we have lowered the standards. All it wants to do is undermine the hard work that thousands of teachers around our country have done.Then we come to the reduction in crime. We have backed the police. They have turned themselves inside out. They are one of the most modern effective police services in the world and we have seen crime reduced to a 29-year low. What did the Opposition do? It undermined all that good work that the police have done by focusing on five staff members who miscoded 697 recorded crimes out of 1.25 million crimes recorded in a year. So all they have done is use less than the margin of error to try to undermine our hard-working police force who are out there every day protecting our citizens.That is the difference. That is the stark difference that is presented to the country this year. This is a Government that knows that New Zealanders can achieve and that we just need to get in behind them and clear the way for them against Opposition members who nit-pick who fight amongst themselves and who have shown no strong leadership. There is a very very clear choice for people as we go into this election in September. They can choose a Government that knows where this country is going and that is united. Government members like one another they have fun together and they are refreshing. They are able to bring in new members and salute those who leave us.I have just turned and seen my colleague Chris Tremain. As an old Napier girl I think Napier is going to be poorer for not having you as its local MP. I know you have got a great candidate there who is going to fight and win a magnificent battle there in Napier but I want to pay tribute to Chris Tremain because he has done a great job for that city of Napier. We know that the Opposition is focused on inputs; it always has been. It is time for another National Government.