Hughes Darren: Address in Reply 
Hughes Darren: Address in Reply 
[Volume:652;Page:1163] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 As this is the Address in Reply debate I pay my respects to the Governor-General and Mrs Satyanand. I congratulate the Speaker the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith; you Sir the Deputy Speaker; and the two Assistant Speakers on taking up their roles in this Chamber. I also congratulate the mover and the seconder of the Address in Reply debate Sam Lotu-Iiga and Melissa Lee and all the new members of Parliament who gave their maiden speeches at the end of last year. It was great to hear why people had come to Parliament and what they hope to achieve while they are here. I am particularly proud of the 13 new Labour MPs who are making a really positive impact on our caucus and who I think you will see a lot of in their political futures. 
I would also like at the beginning of this parliamentary year to thank the people of the Otaki electorate whom I had the privilege of representing as their electorate member of Parliament for the last 6 years. A lot of good things were able to happen in our community under a Labour Government. I think of things like the Horowhenua Health Centre funding for the Western Link Road in Kapiti and the pensioner housing that we opened just a couple of weeks ago. That is a good example of social housing where local government and central government work together. This is why there is some sort of irony in the announcement today that there will be only 69 new State houses under a National Government. The Leader of the Opposition said it was one per electorate but he was wrong because one electorate will miss out and that will be John Key’s electorate—we all know how he feels about State housing. He opposed the development at Hobsonville and we can guarantee that if there are only 69 State houses to go around this country in the next 3 years Helensville will be the electorate that will miss out at the insistence of the Prime Minister. 
There were initiatives that Labour took like the Buy Kiwi Made campaign—which this Government has jettisoned—that would have been enormously beneficial at this time in order to make sure there could be jobs in the manufacturing sector and also some confidence across locally made products and services. I acknowledge Sue Bradford for that as well because every single item of clothing that our Kiwi Olympians wore at Beijing last year was made in the Otaki electorate. But one of the very first things the National Government did on taking office was to cancel the Buy Kiwi Made campaign. People can take whatever lesson they like from that in terms of an economic stimulus when they see that a Government does not want to back manufacturing in its own economy. It seems a little odd to me. 
I am in support of the motion of the Hon Phil Goff the Leader of the Opposition because he sets out in that motion exactly what expectations the National Party has allowed to be built up in its Government. There is not a single thing in the motion of the Leader of the Opposition that the Government can oppose because they are all things the Government has allowed people in this country to believe would be possible if it were just time for a change. Well National members have got their time for a change and now they will be accountable for the things they said across the previous term of Parliament laid out on the Order Paper on the motion of the Hon Phil Goff. 
It has been fantastic to watch the new Government take shape. It is very clear to me that it had only one principle—to win the general election. I admit that it was quite tight in its discipline quite focused in its message and quite organised in its approach towards that one principle that one focus—to win the general election. But ever since then has it not been a mess a rolling maul of disasters—absolute disasters—as National has shimmied from one little issue to another with no plan of what it actually wanted to do once it became the Government? 
There is a great example of that—the Ministers themselves. The Ministers are full of bravado and false confidence. We just heard from one actually who will fix all the problems so effortlessly because he is so brilliant. That is quite optimistic for the Minister of Broadcasting—however lots of great things could happen in lots of portfolios. We have seen some Ministers at question time who huff and puff to blow the House down. I think it is a style that will come back to bite them quite badly. Then there are those with their “chicken in the headlights” kind of approach to their ministerial career. They cannot believe they have been saddled with the job. I think the Minister of Labour has demonstrated at all three question times we have had so far that she fits into that category. Then there is the third lot of Ministers who sum up this Government’s approach to office so far—those who are totally depressed by it all. 
When the Deputy Prime Minister Bill English spoke today he sounded like a man in therapy not a man on the joys and the highs of being in the first 100 days of Government. He was a man who was not happy because he had gone around painting an image of what the country could be—marked out by Phil Goff’s amendment to the motion before the House—an image of all these things that were going to happen if we just changed the Government. Life would continue ordinarily as it had under Labour. While John Key bounced from cloud to cloud as he said Bill English would be there in the engine room organising an effortless approach to running New Zealand. But he has got there and discovered that it is actually quite hard. You see members can stand around over on the Opposition benches giving those kinds of evening speeches that “Dr the Hon Sir Richard Worth” used to give as if everything were simple and easy to do but once a Minister is in charge of a department and tries to go through budgets line by line or tries to work out what staff to sack that Minister finds that it is actually quite hard to do. That is why Bill English is finding it so difficult to come to terms with. 
I want to defend very strongly today the record of the Clark Labour Government. We are proud of what that Government achieved for 9 years in New Zealand. It is disingenuous to an absolute “t”—or “d” as it happens—for the former Opposition the new Government now to be trying to pretend that Labour was not anything other than a successful Government. There is one thing that Chris Finlayson knew: his party could not get elected until it adopted over half the policies of the Helen Clark Labour Government. It was when National campaigned in opposition to Helen Clark and her policies that we saw it returned to the Opposition benches three times in a row. But when National adopted most of the programme of Labour it was able to achieve Government. So let us not hear the rhetoric and the empty words of National MPs trying to write off the last 9 years. They are only in Government because they adopted the policies of Working for Families and interest-free student loans. They are only there because they adopted Labour’s health policies. Actually Jonathan Coleman said we were mis-focused in the area of health care. He should tell that to the families who pay significantly less to go to see a doctor now. He should tell that to the families and the old people who have to pay only $3 for a prescription item. It will be interesting to see whether they pay $3 at the end of this term. At the end of this term I think they will be paying a lot more. 
Paul Quinn 
: Tell that to the 3000 in Huntly who don’t have a doctor. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I say to Paul Quinn who is interjecting that at $3 a prescription he should pop along now to Bennets Pharmacy and get some pharmaceuticals. He is clearly in need of quite a few of them given the way he is yelling and screaming over there. He is going to have a wonderful 3 years achieving nothing in Parliament in my view. 
Then of course there were the policies we were setting up for the future. There is no better policy than KiwiSaver to try to turn our economy and to turn our households from being net dissavers—that is from spending more money than they earn every year—into being households and families with assets they have built up over their working lives. What National did was to come into Parliament at the end of last year rip open those KiwiSaver accounts and haul out the money of hard-working Kiwis which will not be available to them when they get to the age of 65. You know every National MP sitting over there now will say privately that what Muldoon did in 1975 in getting rid of the Norm Kirk superannuation scheme was a mistake—and I understand that another member who is present in the Chamber had something to do with that at the time. Government members will say “What a mistake he made!” but they voted with their feet and went out of the lobby doors to do it once again in 2008. Once again they did it because these people never learn from their mistakes. They never pick up the lessons of political history. 
Where else have we seen that? National members said that Labour never cut taxes but National was the party that voted against business tax cuts when the Labour-led Government voted for them. National was the party that voted against tax cuts for working families every year from 2004 while every year from 2004 the Labour-led Government voted for them. If we are going to have a debate about politics let us make sure it is on the facts not on the myths that those members are trying to peddle. For example National members have talked about policies that were unfunded. Those projects were all earmarked in the Government accounts. They were all there. So Government members cannot get up at question time every day and say that those policies were not funded by the Government because they are there in black and white for all to see. 
Here we are on the 100 days of action most of which has been spent on a beach. That is fine; people should take a holiday. But if a Government has been elected with a sense of urgency because it thinks the country has so many problems that it should change I ask whether that Government could at least turn up for work a little earlier. That is all we ask. Soon the Government will be at its 90-day mark. I am reluctant to say this but I am pretty dissatisfied with its performance so I think we will have to sack it. It is good enough for this to happen to everyone else. It is good enough for every other worker in the economy to be sacked if he or she does not perform after 90 days. I tell the Government that it has about 10 days to get better because we are not happy and we think it should be sacked. 
I turn to the area of transport because our new Minister of Transport has been busy today announcing projects. One big bold project to kick-start the economy is to bring forward one project by 3 months at the cost of—nothing. This is going to be how we have a stimulus for the economy. The bright architect of the National Party’s campaign has been given a ministerial warrant. He had no work to do before the election but now he has the flash car and his big project has been to fast-forward something by 3 months put no money into it and say that will kick-start the economy! Everyone would think that National members had invented the Kopu Bridge but they have brought the project forward by only 12 months. That is a good thing and we support it but those members should not try to pretend that that is going to rescue the economy and that Secretary Geithner is waiting over at the Treasury in the United States to say “Thank God for the New Zealand Government. Not only has it agreed to investigate climate change for us because the rest of the world ain’t sure about it; it has also decided to build a bridge in the Coromandel—and we should be investing in its ideas!” 
I say to Government members that when it comes to projects like Waterview and Transmission Gully we will debate how Government members fund them for as long as they like. But they should tell us the truth when they are quoting the figures. Maurice Williamson is a right-winger—he is mad on a lot of these things—but I like him because he can be debated with on the facts. That is one thing about Maurice Williamson that cannot be argued about. But this guy Mr Joyce has inflated the cost of Waterview by $750 million. He is not comparing like with like and we cannot have a rational debate like that. 
We are going to have a great 3 years. We are into it; we cannot wait to go. We are going to hold this Government to account and I think that it is going to be a failed one-term Tory Government. I cannot wait to see that.