Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:649;Page:17777] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 National members put on a show now but they were not clapping Bill English in caucus this week. One has to be in the House to see the body language and the faces of the Opposition this week. They were very arrogant and cocky last week but now that has changed with this simple headline on the front page of the  
New Zealand Herald 
—there it is a picture of Bill English and the words “Caught out”. That is the truth; Mr English was caught out. He talks about plans and not having plans—we now know what the plans are because Bill English for the first time put it on record that National intends to sell Kiwibank. 
Bill English talks about dirty tricks secret recordings and stolen emails. What is he complaining about? He is complaining about the fact that he was caught out saying one thing to his National Party supporters when his party was saying something quite different to the public—telling the truth to the party but not telling the truth to the New Zealand public I say to Mr English. Kiwibank has 600000 customers. They made the decision to put their money into a bank that was New Zealand - owned and controlled and they will be appalled at the admission that Bill English made. 
I am not condemning Bill English because he was telling the truth. The people I am condemning are the people on the National Party benches who time and again go out in public and do not tell the truth about what they intend to do. There is Dr Lockwood Smith. He said he would swallow the dead rat of accepting popular Labour policies before the election but that after the election the National members would change that and do what they really want to do. We know Dr Smith is telling the truth because Dr Smith stood on an election platform beside me in 1990 and said he would abolish student fees. He then signed a pledge at Lincoln University saying he would resign if he did not. Do members know what that dishonest member did? National doubled the fees yet he did not resign. That is a lesson in terms of what we can expect from the National Party—saying one thing in Opposition before an election and doing exactly the opposite afterwards. 
We know now from those tapes where National MPs went off the Crosby/Textor script that those National members admitted to what they really want to do. We know that the National Party intends to sell Kiwibank. It does not have the courage of its convictions to tell the public that before the election but now the public knows that. 
Then there is John Key who says there will be no changes to Working for Families. But what did Bill English say? He said National cannot say anything now but it will have “a bit of a sort out” after the election—it will do it then. There are 370000 New Zealanders who benefit from Working for Families and who know that their payments will be put at risk because Bill English calls the shots not John Key. There was the derogatory comment made by Bill English that John Key was simply the nice face the man who bounced from cloud to cloud while Bill English did the real work. Well we know it is Bill English who calls the shots and we know that Bill English was the man who cut national superannuation in 1998. We know that Bill English is also the man who in the last couple of years has said superannuitants are being treated too generously and so too are schools in low-income communities. That is what Bill English said; it is on record. The member knows that is what he said and the member knows that a Tory party in Opposition will pretend to be something that a Tory Government has never been after it has been elected to power. 
New Zealanders know they cannot trust the National Party which says something to its own supporters in private but says something different in public in order to give a public spin that the party is what it is not. So we have the paranoia that the National Party conference has been infiltrated and that its emails have been stolen. What we do not have from National is the honesty to admit that what National members say to each other about what they are going to do is quite different from what they tell the public. The public will not put their situation at risk.