King Colin: General Debate 
King Colin: General Debate 
[Volume:644;Page:13526] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 We can certainly see that these are the last days of a very tired desperate Government when we start to see the arrogance and the out-of-touch nature that is being exhibited. We needed only to listen to the speaker who has just resumed his seat to realise that is the case as he rambled on with no direction. It is a very concerning situation when we see a Government that is as out of touch and as arrogant as this Government. We now have a serous situation whereby Labour members want so determinedly to hang on to their roles in Government that they have rendered parts of the country such as health education and law and order down to a low low level of priority. When we hear of patients cleaning toilets we start to realise that we now have a Government that is completely out of touch and full of paranoia about being sent to Coventry. 
The last speaker mentioned that workers were afraid. I would like to take this opportunity to relate a little story. The villains in it are Helen Clark and Annette King; the heroes are 240 enrolled nurses. Those enrolled nurses who were the best carers we had at the time followed the endorsement of Helen Clark and Annette King who publicly took the photo opportunities and verbally endorsed the 2004 enrolled nurses programme which specialised in long-term care and rehabilitation. The programme started at Whangarei and ended at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. When the last of those courses were run and the nurses received their qualifications as enrolled nurses the next day they had their title taken off them. All the words and rhetoric of that Labour Government did not count one ounce. That was abominable. 
The Labour members talk about workers but what did that do? It rendered those people who had earned the right to be called enrolled nurses down to a level below that of toilet cleaners. They could not get a job. They got the useless title “nurse assistant”. What on earth does that mean? There are 240 people who did that course and fewer than half of those people are in the sector today. Who is to blame for that? Annette King and Helen Clark are to blame. That is hugely serious. One of the members on that side Lianne Dalziel did to her credit say that those people went in for a BMW and came out with a Mini. I must correct Lianne Dalziel though she was quite right and noble. They did not even come out with a blasted Mini; they came out with something much worse than that. The enrolled nurses had to take a collective case to the District Court. They got together $15000 and they had their case heard. The judge did not have the capability within the law to award them costs. He told them that although they did have a case they would be better to go to the High Court. 
Now the heroes here are those 240 enrolled nurses. They did not roll over like everybody else who is afraid of this paranoid arrogant Labour Government. They got a hearing at the Regulations Review Committee and what was the outcome? The very learned chair of the Regulations Review Committee Richard Worth found in favour of those 240 enrolled nurses. What did the committee say? It said to the Government it was the committee’s view that the Government should invite the Nursing Council to reinstate the title of those enrolled nurses. The sad thing is that when we look we see that at this very moment a public email has been sent around to all and sundry and the Nursing Council is still trying to screw the scrum. 
So effectively we have here a Labour Government that sells its workers short. At a time when we need to have plenty of employees inside our health sector the Government has turned them away. The Government has completely crushed and ruined the people who did that intense year’s study. I ask the Government members not to be arrogant and not to assume that they have the high ground when it comes to looking after workers. That case is a classic case whereby they have rendered the very best of people within the caring fraternity down to a level below that of those who clean toilets and they should be ashamed of that. 
Where are we situated at the moment? When we count the cost of that situation we find that it cost $1.4 million in tertiary education fees. It cost one of those ladies $22000 to do the course. From that point of view those people have had to give up 12 months of employment. That is shameful.