Brownlee Gerry: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrownlee Gerry: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17832. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery): When the Hon Winston Peters stood up to speak this afternoon momentarily my faith in miracles was restored because everyone knows that if you have got a bad flu it can take you days to get over it but somehow he appears to have shaken that flu overnight. But then as his speech progressed he told us all by his actions and by his words that he was in a delirium which must mean that the flu still has a great grip upon him. And what was it that sent him off the rails of looking like he was a miraculously cured victim of the flu? It was the mention of a racehorse—the mention of which of course is not in the Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament. I would put it there because it is—Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You went to great lengths yesterday to stop me from making a statement just like that excepting that the difference is that you are not required to declare a horse in a pecuniary interest declaration. He knows that. He has seen enough to know that so tell him to stop making vile accusations.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just take this opportunity to remind all members that if they feel there is an issue with any member’s pecuniary interests it should not be raised on the floor of this House; it should be raised directly with the Registrar of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well I will have to apologise. I will have to apologise for mentioning that particular piece of sporting equipment that was not put in the pecuniary interests register. He is probably right.Mr SPEAKER: Can we just proceed with the debate.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member is probably right but I would note that that horse has earned a lot of money and none of that was declared either. That of course is not unusual for Mr Peters.Hon Trevor Mallard: One thing we do know is that Gerry wasn’t the jockey.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Before the member starts I will just wait for a bit of silence so I can hear the point of order.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. He made a further statement which is demonstrably untrue that the horse made a lot of money and that that was not declared either. Can I just say that I bought the horse in a charitable auction did not seek a tax rebate and lost a packet on it. It is a total lie.Mr SPEAKER: And I sympathise with the member. This is a general debate. It is a robust debate but I again remind members including the Hon Gerry Brownlee that it is unhelpful to refer to issues around the register of pecuniary interests. There is a proper way to do that established by the review of the Standing Orders of 2010 now incorporated in the Standing Orders.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well that is an interesting interpretation. I might say that he is not the only victim in the House—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Is the member now raising a point of order or continuing the debate?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: No I am just saying that Mr Peters is not the only victim in the House of some misrepresentation. I never actually tried to be a jockey as it happens recognising my own shortcomings. I was far too disappointed by the fact that the Royal New Zealand Ballet would not consider me either.Tomorrow Bill English will deliver his sixth Budget. He does so at a time when we have had about a couple of weeks—3 4 5 6 weeks—in this House where Opposition parties have tried to attack the Government on a number of issues that relate very little to the daily lives of New Zealanders. What New Zealanders respond to are things like the insulation programme the rheumatic fever programme the immunisation programme the achievement-focused education system that we are working towards the fact that more young people now gain qualifications beyond secondary school the lowest crime statistics in decades in New Zealand at the moment the 84000 new jobs created in the last few years and a Budget likely to return to surplus. Those are the sorts of things that New Zealanders look towards. They look towards the fact that the Government has stood in difficult times with the people of Christchurch to effect a recovery there. They look to the fact that there are 15000 people off welfare now and in work. These are the reasons why New Zealanders are responding so well to the current Government.We have only to look at question time today and the questions that were asked of Ministers by our opponents to understand that that is a party over there that is nowhere near ready to be in Government—nowhere near ready to be in Government. It was interesting that Labour members were asking the Hon Bill English about Labour’s own policy which of course in most cases has been disastrously presented to the people of New Zealand. Mr English talked about the debacle over the policy that Ms Ardern had something to do with.There is of course Labour’s cornerstone policy which is getting on top of interest rates for homeowners. We still do not know how much David Parker would take out of the pockets of working New Zealanders to effect an interest rate change or a reduced official cash rate. We know that 1 percent of KiwiSaver brings in about $400 million. We know that to drop the official cash rate it is necessary to save about $2.5 billion. So that would imply that the Labour Party should it be in Government and should it effect this policy would take a further 6 percent out of the pockets of New Zealanders at a time when they are at the peak of their working years. The Labour Party members sit over there shaking their heads saying “No no that can’t be right.” It is the same as when David Parker stands up and says that a Labour Government will return surpluses and will reduce unemployment to 4 percent but it is not going to support anything that will help it achieve that. That is why Labour is in terrible trouble in the polls. And tomorrow it will only get worse.