Maharey Steve:  
Maharey Steve:  
[Volume:622;Page:17310] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 For those folks at home that was Mr Gerry Brownlee the Hardy of the Laurel and Hardy team that currently leads the National Party. Writing in that outstanding journal the  
New Zealand Herald  
John Armstrong recently said to the National Party: “Don’t panic yet—that is my advice.” I have some quite different advice for the National Party today and my advice is: panic now. My advice is to run screaming through the corridors. My advice is to start wearing a placard that states on both sides: “The end is nigh”. My advice is: panic now. What else is there for the National Party to do? 
Labour is now 50 percent in the polls and National is 30 percent in the polls. Helen Clark is 57 percent in the polls and Don Brash is 20 percent in the polls. Even if the party and Mr Brash are put together they still cannot add up to more than the Labour Party’s rating. Unemployment is 3.8 percent growth is over 4 percent we are in the top half of the OECD for the well-being of our people every single region is growing in this country and New Zealanders like living here. They like it. 
It is not just the achievements of New Zealanders that we ought to be proud of and note that they are the reason Labour is doing so well. The reason we are doing so well is that National is doing so little. Its leader especially is doing so little. He does little to lead but he does a lot of “er”. I have seen him do that part of the leadership role but he does not do much leading at all. The only bit of so-called leadership was the Orewa speech which was one of the most disgusting examples of trying to calculatedly divide New Zealanders over the race issue that this country has ever seen— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Why have you changed policy? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: —and I tell Nick Smith that New Zealanders have now rejected that thinking resoundingly. It did not pay off. People thought there was something going on but there were no policies to back it up and no arguments to follow through. Nothing happened after that calculated speech to divide New Zealanders against each other. 
So now what does he do? He goes to the provinces but no one is interested. He comes back here and no one is interested here either. So he disappears from one place to the other unable to foot it unseen and as a result he is plummeting in the polls. He himself said: “When my ratings drop I’ll go.” National members need to panic as they did when the once-great National Party put a person into leadership who had been in this House for only 16 months. They are now paying the price. They should panic over policy. 
We were promised policy and on this side of the House we kind of looked forward to it. People like Pete Hodgson eat policy for breakfast. We love policy. We want to have a debate. We like it. But what did we get? We got the promise of race economy welfare education tax and security but we do not have one single policy to argue with. In fact the National Party has become so desperate about policy that it has taken to announcing our policy. So now it has announced that its superannuation policy is our policy. What we can expect from now on from the National Party is that on the economy on welfare on security and on tax its members will just get up and resoundingly announce Labour policy. That will be the position they will take from now on. 
John Key 
: You’ll be waiting a long time. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Looking across the House I see John Key who is the great hope of the National Party. He is supposed to be delivering his tax package on how the National Party will have superannuation policies like ours and cut taxes. We cannot wait to hear what he has to say. 
National has become so desperate that Don Brash has shown how low he can go. Don Brash has demonstrated in relation to the Civil Union Bill that not only does he have no leadership and no policy but also that he has no principle. He had said that he wanted to vote for the Civil Union Bill on principle. The reason that he now will not vote for it is that he does not like the procedure by which the bill is being passed through the House. He is gone.