Moroney Sue: General Debate 
Moroney Sue: General Debate 
[Volume:634;Page:6098] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 October early November springtime is my favourite time of the year. Why is that? There are a couple of reasons. First of all is spring racing. The spring racing carnival is about to descend on us in the shape of the Melbourne Cup. It is one of my favourite times of the year. But the other key reason why spring is one of my favourite times of the year is that it denotes the Labour Party conference which comes along every spring. The Labour Party conference is a wonderful occasion. I have been going to it for many many years and it never fails to amaze me how it gets bigger and better every single year as the Labour Party builds and builds in this country. Not only does the Labour Party conference get bigger and better but there is always greater and greater diversity. In fact the diversity of the Labour Party conference will rival that of any political party’s conference in this country. No other political party in New Zealand can deliver a conference of the diversity that the New Zealand Labour Party can. That is the reason why a Labour-led Government is the best Government to lead this country. 
The Labour Party has the policies that fit the real New Zealand—not the whitewashed or the mainstreamed type of New Zealand that the National Party would like to see. The real New Zealanders on the ground come to the Labour Party conference and help form the policies that lead to the development of this Government. That is why this is the Government that leads this country and does it in such fine style. It is not just by accident that it has policies that work in this country. It is by great design great party membership and great involvement in our conference. We need only to look at the venue for the Labour Party conference this year. We are going to provincial New Zealand Rotorua. We are not sticking to the main centres. Rotorua—provincial heartland New Zealand—is where we are heading for the Labour Party conference so that people in provincial New Zealand can come along and have their views heard and can participate in an inclusive process of policy decision-making. 
But inclusiveness and leadership are nothing new for this Government. I want to talk about the leadership that has been demonstrated by the Labour Government particularly at the Pacific Islands Forum. There were issues that threatened the success of the Pacific Islands Forum. Who was it who came to the rescue? Who was it who showed real leadership in that area? It was Helen Clark Prime Minister of New Zealand. Trouble in the Pacific Islands is of fundamental importance to New Zealand. These are the issues in which we need very good strong leadership. I listened to Helen Clark Prime Minister this morning when she talked about her role in finding the common ground. We moved through this period of potential problems for the Pacific Islands Forum because we had a leader who could find the common ground. That is a real strength of Helen Clark. How fortunate it is that New Zealand voters were savvy enough to elect a Labour-led Government so that Helen Clark could bring about peace to the threatened Pacific Islands Forum. 
Imagine if Dr Don Brash had turned up to the Pacific Islands Forum to represent New Zealand. Dr Brash cannot even get peace within his own caucus let alone in the Pacific Islands! He cannot even find common ground in his own caucus nor amongst his allies. I watched yesterday in this House as Rodney Hide from the ACT party used one of the very few supplementary questions that the ACT party has to slam National to have a go at National. This is Dr Brash and his colleagues in the National Party finding common ground! They cannot even do it with their own allies in this House let alone go to the Pacific Islands Forum and find the common ground there. 
So it is just as well we have a Prime Minister of the calibre of Helen Clark. Dr Brash clearly is contending with a lot of problems at the moment. Just 6 percent behind him in recent polls on the preferred leadership of the country is John Key.