Maharey Steve: Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Maharey Steve: Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:610;Page:7689] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I was going to say as the beginning of my comments on the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill that that speech was like listening to someone on Mogadon and that it was “Kath without the Kim” but the problem is that I quite like Katherine Rich. On this side of the House we regard Katherine Rich as being one of the better members of the National Party and it is easy to see why because that was 10 minutes of inspiring insightful stuff that really went to the heart of this debate. Katherine Rich is someone whom I regard as being in the wrong party. She is intelligent and she does not believe the stuff she is required to say as a member of the National Party which largely consists of warmed-over policies from the 1990s. I do not think Katherine Rich was born then—I am not really sure whether she was—as she is such a young person. 
Mr Carter remembers all those horrendous policies of the 1990s which even he did not believe in finally. Even he cracked under the pressure of the kinds of policies that the National Party tried to introduce. Even he knew that they were wrong and that they were on the wrong track. But Katherine Rich comes from an intelligent legal background and from the very very forward-looking town of Dunedin in the Otago region. She has come to Parliament and been given the job as spokesperson on social security. The National Party has asked her to do all sorts of things—to beat up on beneficiaries; to carry on with that 1990s way of doing things—and one can tell when one sees her here tonight talking quietly into the microphone to herself that she does not have her heart in it. She does not believe it and therefore it leaves us on this side of the House once again to map out what will be happening around these issues. Sue Bradford I am sure will either viciously attack me later in the debate or has already done so. I am not sure whether she has got to it yet. 
Budgets are normally a time when members get up in the House and talk about what they would like to do. At present there is a real litmus test going on in the House of potential Governments because the only two parties in the House that have really presented a Budget are the Labour Party and the Progressive Coalition. When the Labour Party was in Opposition with people like Mike Moore who went off to the World Trade Organization—we have so much talent in the Labour Party we can afford to send people off to run the World Trade Organization—followed by Helen Clark what did we do when the Budget came around? We put out vision statements and policies— 
Darren Hughes 
: Alternative Budgets. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: —we wrote alternative Budgets we came to the House and talked about them and we went around the country and held meetings about them. What people got was a strong impression that there was an alternative Government. 
 But when we come into the House and have this kind of debate what do we get? We get all the Opposition parties coming down and whingeing and whining about what the Government is doing. They never once put the discipline on themselves and rather than talking about all those little wild schemes they have say that if they had this amount of money how they would bring it down to hit between the pages of a Budget. That is what people vote for at election time. They may enjoy Rodney Hide getting up and going on about some little issue. They may really like the fact that Mr Carter gets up and talks about some case in Northland. They may like to hear criticisms of various people in this House but in the end what will they vote for? They want somebody to get up and actually run the country. They want somebody who can run the country. [ 
Interruption 
] I can hear Mr McNair saying that people vote for New Zealand First. Well a few of them do. The New Zealand First Party has only three policies so it gets about only three votes. That is the problem. People do not want the New Zealand First Party in Government because it does not have a plan for the country. It has only three constant whingers who go on and on about what we are doing about immigration crime and whatever else they are worried about which is on New Zealand First’s big posters. But New Zealand First cannot run the country. 
That is why the only party that is polling well—the only big party in this Parliament any more—is the Labour Party. We are the only group that actually looks like a Government. I have said before that what has happened in this party is that what one might call the Scandinavian approach to life is starting to emerge in New Zealand. From now on there will be one big party which will be called the Labour Party— 
Darren Hughes 
: Very good name. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I think it is a very good name as my neighbour from Horowhenua says. It is such a good name and it will be the Government’s name before long. It will be a little like the way in which a fridge became known as a Kelvinator. People forgot about the notion of fridges and just started to call them Kelvinators. In the future we will find that people will say “the Labour”; they will not even bother with “the Government”. They will say “the Labour” because our party will be synonymous with the Government. 
I say to people that this is no criticism of Helen Clark but if members cast their eyes around the House tonight they are probably looking at a future Prime Minister. He is in this House now. I am talking about the young man back there. We are grooming him for 25 or so years’ time when he will come into his prime and “the Labour”—in other words the Government–will move smoothly to its fourth or fifth Prime Minister while in office. That is what we are looking at simply because the small parties on the other side of the House along with the shrinking National Party are held together by the fact that they won some votes last time. If there were an election today National members would fit even further down the other part of the Opposition benches to squeeze into a little bit of foreshore over on the side there which would give them customary access only as part of that. We would not give them any title or right to it because of course they are being squeezed off but they could get a bit of Queen’s chain access to it. Then we might give them a little bit of customary use of the seats because of their long history since 1936 in opposing Labour. So they would have a customary right to those few seats over on the side there. 
So that is what it is coming to. We are the only people who bother to put up a Budget. We are the only people who actually say how to run the country. We are the only people who have policies on everything. Everybody else now is going into his or her wee niche and as time goes on we will find that Labour members will move further and further around the Chamber. The Opposition parties will then fit into nice little niches on the other side as they pick out their little issues to argue with us about—but they will never be the Government because they do not bother to write Budgets. 
Mr Hide over there who pretends he is an economist could at least spend some time on what is supposed to be his core discipline instead of chasing ambulances all the time. He looks a bit like one of those people off the old shroud-waving kinds of American crime shows chasing one little ambulance after another. Why does he not do some serious work on saying exactly how the ACT party would run a full Budget to give people some choice? Well I do not think that party will and therefore we are looking tonight at the only game in town. 
I was proud to sit in the Chamber and listen to the fourth Budget presented by Dr Michael Cullen who I think personally—and this is not just because he is close to me in the Chamber and all the rest of it—has now presented four Budgets that have given him total credibility in this area. That has reflected extraordinarily well on the Government so that people know as the old saying used to go that the chequebook is safe with the Labour Party. The chequebook is safe with this Government because we have a person in Dr Cullen who has earned the respect of all parts of our community. Whether one is a welfare beneficiary a business person or somebody who teaches in a school wherever one may be one is able to look at Dr Cullen and say: “That person knows what he is doing with the chequebook. He will spend it responsibly. We ought to keep him there Budget after Budget to make sure that what he is doing is spending the money wisely.” 
I was proud to be part of that and I say that as a person who is trying to spend more and more in the social area because there are so many things to do in this country. I have to go along with Dr Cullen I have to fit in with the kind of plan that he is putting forward for this country and I am able to understand what he is doing. I am able to see how welfare budgets education budgets and housing budgets are fitting together into the broad plan that he is putting forward. As someone who wants to spend this amount of money on people in this country I have been able to work with Dr Cullen knowing that our budgets are in the safe hands of someone like him with his expertise. I have been proud of that. I know that I am surrounded in the Chamber because I can feel the warm glow by comrades amongst the Labour Party who feel exactly the same about Dr Cullen. They have that warm suffused beam of pride that comes from knowing that the country’s Budget is very well managed. 
I want to finish on that note. It is hard to debate in the Chamber this evening with a series of parties that are not really serious about running the country. This is just a little whinge session for them on their own little issues that they want to get on with. The country knows that. People hear them chipping away at their little issues but they know that however entertaining that might be or however that might scratch a little itch it does not constitute a sound visionary policy and Budget which means they can get up each day and know that their lives are taking place in the context of a Government that knows how to run this country. That is what Labour can do.