Mackey Moana: General Debate 
Mackey Moana: General Debate 
[Volume:669;Page:15936] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I wonder whether Jonathan Coleman wrote Melissa Lee’s speech as well. I suggest to her that she might want to cut the ties with the political maestro Jonathan Coleman because it is certainly not doing her any favours. Basically she outlined all the great policies that Labour has already announced—policies that the New Zealand public like such as paid parental leave—and said that National opposes every single one of them. 
I want to clear up something before I get into my speech and that is Labour’s record in Government. I can tell Miss Lee that under Labour we had the lowest unemployment in the OECD. We were asset-positive for the first time. When the National Opposition was telling us to squander our surpluses on tax cuts we paid off debt. The debt problems New Zealand has are largely with the private sector because the Labour Government did such a good job paying off Government debt. In fact it did such a good job that the IMF—which is not a left-wing wonky kind of organisation—said that New Zealand was one of the best-placed countries in the world to weather the global financial crisis because of the position that Michael Cullen and the last Labour Government left us in. Let us get those facts straight before National spins itself out and gets so dizzy that it cannot stand up any more with all its Crosby/Textor lines. 
The legacy of this National Government after 2 years is broken promises. John Key promised higher standards for Ministers and higher standards for MPs. What have we had in 2 years? We have had Bill English Richard Worth Phil Heatley Rodney Hide David Garrett Chris Finlayson and Pansy Wong all falling short of those standards with many of them having to step down from ministerial positions or resign from Parliament. Also Paula Bennett breached the Privacy Act when she viciously and cold-heartedly released the details of welfare beneficiaries who dared to stand up in public and question the cuts she was putting in place and the untruths she was telling about those women. There was also the Pacific Economic Development Agency—an agency closely linked to the National Party—which was going to get a whole whack of money in the Budget that was not going out for tender to anyone else until members on this side of the House raised enough questions about the shonkiness of that arrangement that the Government had to back down and put that proposal out to tender. 
I will talk about another issue that has not been raised much and that is the issue of MPs’ spouses being appointed to political positions. Under the Labour Government we were quite clear that this would not happen—that it was not appropriate for MPs’ spouses to be put into top political jobs. So far we have seen a number of such appointments by the National Government. I congratulate Hekia Parata who is being sworn in as a Minister today— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Right now. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —right now and I wish her all the very best. Of course her husband has been appointed to a major political position as the head of the Tertiary Education Commission. 
The reason I raise this matter is that a number of people at home have raised concerns with me about the regional panels for the Government’s Community Response Fund. This fund has been set up for money to go to social service agencies to help them deal with the recession. I cannot find anywhere in the public domain the names of the people who have been appointed to the panels that hand out this money. It is not on the website. It is nowhere to be found. We have put in questions; we have not had answers to those questions. I had a query from a member of the public who asked me whether it was true that the husband of our local MP Anne Tolley had been appointed to the regional panel of the Community Response Fund for the Gisborne area. Is that true? I do not know. I sincerely hope that it is not true. I think that would be horribly inappropriate. 
A number of social service agencies in Tai Rawhiti have been heavily criticising this Government and Anne Tolley for the decisions they have been making. What happens now if an organisation criticises our local MP then she goes home and complains to her husband about it and suddenly that organisation is on a blacklist for the Community Response Fund and any funding that comes from it? I would like clarification from the next National member to speak in this debate to guarantee that our local MP’s husband has not been appointed to a board that is handing out money locally because I think all New Zealanders would deem that to be inappropriate. I look forward to that matter being clarified. As I said I do not know whether it is true but I have had it from a very reliable source. In fact I have heard it from a number of sources who say they got it straight from the Ministry of Social Development from people who also thought that it was very inappropriate.  
Hon Darren Hughes 
: It should be public information. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It should be public information and we should not have to troll through the Ministry of Social Development website finding every reference to regional panels where it is vaguely stated that there will be some community representation. That is not good enough. We deserve to know who is on these panels. 
We have had 2 years of broken promises from this Government. It promised that it would not increase GST. The Prime Minister stared down the barrel of a TV camera when he was asked whether he would increase GST after the election and he said that he would not. He is now saying that he said he would not do it to fund a deficit Budget. Well guess what! He did. We have a deficit Budget and a GST increase to help fund it. It is another broken promise. The Government promised that it would not borrow to fund tax cuts—another broken promise. We have had broken promise after broken promise.