English Bill: Adjournment 
English Bill: Adjournment 
[Volume:650;Page:19302] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 At about this time 3 years ago after the 2005 election Dr Cullen and Helen Clark were plotting how to break the tax cut promise they had made in the 2005 election. About 2 months after that election they started the slow slippery process that they know so well of backing out of a promise to give New Zealanders back some of the massive surpluses the Government had accumulated. The reason why they set out to break that promise was the officials had told them that their spending promises were so large that they had to abandon their tax cuts in order to finance them. 
We wind ahead to 2008. Like an alcoholic who cannot go into a bar without getting off his face Dr Cullen has had to legislate against himself. He has had to pass legislation for tax cuts on 1 October just in case he breaks that promise. Well he still can actually. The next round of Labour’s tax cuts is not due until 2010. I ask this question: if Labour broke its promise to deliver on tax cuts in 2006 when it had record surpluses what will the self-styled fiscal conservative Dr Cullen do after the 2008 election if he is re-elected when he faces record deficits? He has started the slippery process already. If this election is about trust then Labour cannot be trusted on tax cuts. In fact one reason that New Zealanders have learnt they cannot trust Labour on tax cuts is that they have found out that they cannot trust Labour on anything. 
I want to reflect on the forty-eighth Parliament which is coming at last and with great relief to its bitter end. As my colleague John Key said it started with the pledge card scandal. It started with Helen Clark telling the public that Labour had the right to steal $800000 of public money for its own election campaign. It started with the Labour Party promising one of our public bodies that it would count that money as election expenses but the day after the election Labour officials said that no they withdraw that undertaking. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: They’ll do it again. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well they have made undertakings now. Who believes them? Labour of course is going to break the law over this election because it was the first party caught breaking its own electoral law the Electoral Finance Act. As we know all the parties that voted for that law have broken it and three of them are under police investigation for breaking that law. But that is not unusual. No Prime Minister in New Zealand’s history has been interviewed by the police as often as Helen Elizabeth Clark has. But the pledge card— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Personal attack! Personal attack! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well that is a fact—that is a fact. 
We are talking about people who are meant to be the world’s most competent political managers. Let us read out the roll call of scandal mismanagement prevarication obfuscation and bullying. There was the pledge card scandal and the Phillip Field scandal. Where has he ended up? He is in court on criminal charges. There was the Madeleine Setchell scandal. A chief executive and a Minister lost their jobs as well as two well-intentioned civil servants because the Prime Minister’s office had tried to take over the Ministry for the Environment and turn it into a propaganda arm of the Labour Party. 
Then there was the whole scandal around the Electoral Finance Act to which I have already referred. It was a blatant partisan attempt to screw the scrum. It breached every convention of decency that this Parliament has followed including the convention that the rules around elections should have broad support in Parliament. Labour sacrificed that convention for a highly partisan attempt to silence its critics and legalise its own illegal acts. 
Then there was the Owen Glenn saga. We know the reason that Helen Clark did not sack Winston Peters over the donation from Owen Glenn: because the Labour Party had helped to arrange the donation as part of its coalition negotiations. Helen Clark could not sack him for taking the money because she had sanctioned his taking it. She could not sack him for keeping that secret because she had known about it and she had kept it secret. And she could not sack him for misleading the public because she had misled the public. It has become quite clear that Labour does have a plan to win the election: Winston Peters. The plan is Winston Peters. Of course the public are absolutely puzzled as to why Helen Clark cannot deal with Winston Peters when John Key has made a principled and brave decision to say that the standards of his Government will not be so low that he can negotiate with someone who is under investigation by the police who is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and who has been censured by Parliament. 
Of course as members go through that roll call of scandals they should think about the common factor: Helen Clark misleading the public with her finely crafted calculated mistruths in every single case. And if Labour thinks it has such fantastic political managers why did the pledge card scandal the Phillip Field scandal the Madeleine Setchell scandal the Owen Glenn scandal and the Electoral Finance Act scandal go on for months and months? 
It is time to sweep the dry rot out of the Beehive. Why do I say “dry rot”? I have learnt something in the forty-eighth Parliament: one of the things that have kept up standards of decency and probity in New Zealand Government is a pretty basic instinct of every human being—that is shame. Most of us if we get caught not telling the full facts if we make a mistake have enough integrity to feel some regret. We have enough integrity to feel some regret. The Labour Party and Helen Clark do not. There is now nothing that this Government will not do to stay in power. There is no standard too low no lie too bold and no bullying too shameful that its members will not engage in in order to stay in power. That is the ugly truth that the public now know—the ugly truth that they now know. The Labour Party has a dangerous—[ 
Interruption 
] Labour members should listen to this; this is what they will hear on the doorsteps. The Labour Party has a dangerous and ferocious sense of entitlement to power and public money. Well the public money is running out; there will not be much in the next 3 or 4 years largely because of Dr Cullen’s mismanagement. And the power is running out because New Zealanders think this country is bigger greater and more important than Helen Clark and the Labour Party. 
We have things we want this country to be able to do and so do 4 million New Zealanders. We do not get out of bed in the morning to make the Labour Party members feel as though they are in charge and that is why the country will sweep the dry rot out of the Beehive.