Bennett Paula: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett Paula: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8987. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Climate Change Issues): Here we are at the end of another frightening question time from the Opposition members who quite frankly tried their scattergun approach again and got absolutely nowhere. I am going to take some of my time today doing something that I think is rather controversial. I am going to disagree with the Prime Minister.Hon Simon Bridges: Oh!Hon PAULA BENNETT: I am going to disagree with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister says that Labour is the “TPP Party” or the “Two-position Party”. I think he is wrong. I think it is the “Multi-position Party”. I think we could take it well and truly a few steps further and say that Labour really is the “Multi-position Party.” In fact it has got more positions than a yoga master. It may interest members of the House to know—and those who might be unfortunate enough to be listening—that we all know how disunited those members are. There is no real unity and Andrew Little’s stance last year was to try to get them all to be team players and work together. So what they decided they would do—and of course this is all the talk around the Beehive and all the talk around Parliament—is to have team-building exercises. They have been having team-building exercises with yoga classes.Hon Anne Tolley: Really?Hon PAULA BENNETT: They have—they really really have. They all get together and they do team building. Everyone is involved. There is a smorgasbord of arms and legs flying around and I do not just mean because they are ripping each other apart. It is a bit weird but it is true. So let us go through some of the positions they have been doing in their yoga classes.First of all team there is the triangle pose—I am not going to do any of these you will be pleased to know—and that is arms pointed above your head except that you do it Labour style. So the way you do the triangle pose Labour style is of course you have at least three positions. So those three positions for example might be the flag. Labour’s website says that Labour is for a change of flag. But publicly it is against the flag. But then privately it is for the flag. So that is the triangle pose when you are actually trying it Labour style.Then Andrew Little is leading the—and these are all actually true yoga poses I am quite proud to say—eight-angle pose.Hon Anne Tolley: Eight angle?Hon PAULA BENNETT: The eight-angle pose. I am not going to go into how you angle your arms or legs to get yourself into an eight-angle pose—except on how you do it Labour style. Labour style is of course the eight positions on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It has at least eight positions on the TPP. So it is for trade but against the TPP. But it might vote for some of the legislation but not for other parts. Labour has got different members with different stances. Some are allowed to say they have got that stance and some are not allowed to publicly say they do and if they do then they are bullied and told that they have to apologise. So then those members are not united. They do not think they would repeal the legislation if it does get voted through and if you are confused—and so are they—that is up to eight positions.Actually the party is very good at the yoga pose of the standing split.Hon Members: What?Hon PAULA BENNETT: The standing split. I am just going to leave that one to your own imaginations. It is painful particularly if you are David Shearer. It is really painful because you have got the stance—this thing you actually believe in. You have put it forward you go out there and say what your stance is and then of course you are a standing split so you then have got to apologise for it. Let us be fair David Shearer is spending a lot of time doing the downward-facing dog which is a popular yoga pose. He is definitely doing the yoga.Then we have Phil Goff and this is the shoulder-pressing pose which is a bit nicer to describe than some of the others I have been trying to describe. That is when you do not have to be united with your team so you can actually be on the side of the public because you know that is more popular because you desperately want to be voted in as mayor. So instead of actually taking the stance of your party you are going to take the stance of the overwhelming view of the public who are in support of the TPP and you are allowed to say so because your team is so bloody happy to get rid of you if you get voted in. So you are then allowed to go out and do the shoulder-pressing pose and stand for mayor.Then of course there is a favourite which is the peacock pose—the peacock pose of course being often led in the caucus by Phil Twyford. Phil Twyford leads the peacock pose which is where of course it is all feathers and bluster. You go out there and say you are against community housing providers getting money from the Government to support social housing but then you say you are for it in a speech. Then you stand up in the House and bluster and then go out—really it is all over the place. I see Jacinda Ardern is not happy with my speech but then that is because she would rather do bikram yoga because she thinks she is hot you know. You have got to have that kind of hot and then the heat comes in and that kind of helps as well.We have got changing positions. That is something that Labour is very good at because when you are in your yoga class you have got to go for your changing positions all the time. It is stop take hold and change positions. There are good examples of that. Remember when we had the plan to dock beneficiaries’ payments unless they voted?Hon Members: Oh yeah.Hon PAULA BENNETT: Yes you might have forgotten that one. This is now called the “high lunge fire your party secretary if you open your mouth” pose. We have got David Cunliffe—a couple of quick ones. He is the corpse pose so it is kind of unfortunate there. Kelvin Davis is doing the lotus pose which is pretty much sort of scatter and spread lots around and hope that something sticks even though you have not got your facts right and you are actually not getting there.I am going to end here with a new pose that those members have invented which is the Chicken Little pose. Grant Robertson is good at this one. Grant Robertson likes the Chicken Little pose. It is the doom and gloom—you actually sit there and do nothing to be fair. You just sort of sit there with your grumpy look on your face and just say “Actually New Zealand’s rubbish. Nothing’s going well. Everything’s going really badly. Everything’s really really really bad.” and hope that someone believes you because then that will mean they will want a change of Government and you do not actually have to stand for anything yourself. That is the “talk everything down going nowhere the sky is falling” pose that we see from the Labour Party.Let us contrast that with the actual balanced poses of this Government. Yes? Let us challenge that with where we are at at the moment on the ideas of—I do not know—a 5.3 percent unemployment rate. There are more New Zealanders working. The average wage has gone up by $10000 under this Government. There are 175000 jobs that have been introduced and we are on track for another over 170000 jobs in 2020 with the way that it is going. Let us actually look at—and let us be clear on what we stand for.We stand for free trade. We stand for New Zealanders getting more money in their businesses so that they can employ more people and so that they can actually pay them more. We can see that happening. The Prime Minister says it often and it is true: we will not get rich by selling to ourselves. We will become rich by providing smart services and products that the rest of the world needs which we can then take the tariffs off which means more money in the pockets of businesses. That means that businesses will develop more technology and research which means more jobs which means higher-paid wages. That means a progressive New Zealand and that is really where we stand as far as New Zealand standing for what it means.Let us think about some of the things that we are going to see introduced in this year alone. Increasing paid parental leave—that increase is going to 18 weeks on 1 April. We have already extended those free GP visits. Talking about the welfare changes that are going through this year—the difference that will make in people’s actual pockets when they look at it. Some of the big things that we are seeing tackled by this Government are more targeted services. You are seeing that across welfare health education and across the justice services.Economic growth—I want to really commend the regional economic growth products that we are seeing. The difference that that is going to make in Northland—it is not just talk. It is actually real actions and real money which leads to real jobs and makes that big major difference. Areas throughout New Zealand that have so much potential are tapping into that tourism dollar—which quite frankly is reaching well up past 6 percent of GDP and making a real difference. The backing up of those policies that are going through led by Steven Joyce and his team—that economic development is the stuff that will most certainly make the difference.Let us just compare the two parties in 2 seconds flat. One is aspirational believes in this country is getting out there and is doing the hard work. The other does not know where it stands what it stands for and quite frankly cannot even stand united on a position. It is a pleasure to support the Prime Minister in his statement to the House.