Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:628;Page:623] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. This is the first Wednesday debate of a new Parliament and the first Wednesday debate since the National Party in September historically lost its third election in a row. In doing so the National Party has established itself in the record books as the least successful and the least effective Opposition in two generations and have we not seen examples of that in its performance today? Sadly for the National Party members it does not look like things are getting much better for them. A couple of weeks ago the  
New Zealand Herald  
much mentioned in the House today ran this headline: “National inflicts more self-abuse”. Well it does not come as a surprise to anyone in this House that the National Party is a party of self-abusers—but they are still at it. Members need only look at what they have done so far this week. 
Yesterday the Electoral Commission laid complaints with the police against the National Party and the charges are serious charges surrounding electoral abuses which the National Party president has now been forced to own up to. National breached the law of the land by spending $112000 more on broadcasting advertisements than it was legally entitled to. The question is whether that is a case of the National Party deliberately cheating to defraud the electorate by breaching the electoral law and the Broadcasting Act. Well the party president again jumped to its defence. She said it was not deliberate—that it was because they were incompetent. The National Party which would have the country believe that it could competently manage the finances of this country apparently cannot even manage to run competently its own financial affairs even on a relatively straightforward matter. 
The other instance of abuse this week was even more serious and on a personal level and that was the statement made by its new up-and-coming education spokesman Allan Peachey who modestly describes himself as “a pop star” and “the best of the best”. I ask Mr Peachey to take a call in this debate in the House today to explain what was in his mind when he wrote to the woman principal of one of the schools in his electorate threatening: “Yes I do have a knife in your back so be careful!”. The president of the Post Primary Teachers Association Debbie Te Whaiti I think accurately described that attack as: “unprovoked malicious unethical and inexcusable.” It was all of those things. Clearly here is a true future leader of the National Party whose judgment rationality and behaviour we can all have faith and confidence in! 
Speaking of leadership and knives in the back I note that the National Party leadership clearly has cause for concern about its longevity and the stability of its party. I am not going to waste the time of the House with what Mr Brian Connell has said about that. But when somebody like Murray McCully attacks Simon Power whom he describes as—Mr Power should stay and wait for this—the “pinstriped jailer from Manawatu”—I do not know what that means and obviously Mr Power is not going to stop and tell us—and when Gerry Brownlee launches an unprecedented attack on the Governor-General and when there are leaks from the National caucus saying that Gerry Brownlee’s buffoonery means he does not deserve to stay on as deputy leader of the party one can see the problems the National Party has. 
On the back benches is an ambitious and frustrated group of National members and those members are coming to the House for the first time and seeing the inadequacy and the poor performance of the National Party front bench and middle benches. Those new members see that those failed men on the front bench of the National Party and the bench behind are the cause of that once-great party’s 9 years in the political wilderness. The  
Sunday Star-Times 
 described the National shadow Cabinet as “the return of the living dead” and then went on to say that Don Brash was being measured up for a body bag. Well it cannot come soon enough.