Parker David: General Debate 
Parker David: General Debate 
[Volume:625;Page:20490] 
DAVID PARKER (Labour—Otago) 
: 
 In the general debate we often talk about the relative merits of the leadership of different political parties. Today we have seen again the lamentable performance of Dr Brash who is now resorting to dirty tactics: misquoting documents to try to discredit the Prime Minister. But let us look at the truth in terms of leadership. The Labour Party leadership generally gets it right and the National Party leadership generally gets it wrong. Let us look at a few recent instances. We have just had Anzac Day. Anzac Day reinforces that amongst the most serious decisions that we make in this Parliament is the decision on whether our country ever goes to war. The most recent time a decision like that was taken in New Zealand was in respect of Iraq. What did the National Party propose? The National Party said that we should have gone to war without a UN mandate. There was no UN mandate because there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Despite that the National Party got it wrong. National members said that we should have reversed that most serious Government decision. They said that we should have gone to war but Helen Clark and this Government got it right. Don Brash even after his premature elevation to the role of party leader still said that if he had been leading a National Government New Zealand would have gone to war. That is wrong. 
Let us look at what National members do on other important issues like women’s representation. There are no women on the National Opposition front bench. There is not one woman on the front bench of the National Party and there are very few women in that party. Three out of four of the women who had roles of significance have been dumped. Firstly we saw Georgina te Heuheu dumped then we saw Lynda Scott dumped from health and then we saw Katherine Rich dumped from the front bench to the second bench—another mistake made by Dr Brash. Let us look at one of the other most significant decisions taken in this country in recent years. It deals with the Superannuation Fund or putting away a bit of money out of today’s taxpayers’ earnings so that we can afford superannuation in the future. On that issue the Labour Party and to his credit Winston Peters got the issue right. What did the National Party do? Those members got it wrong. They are consistently wrong on the big issues. The National Party has since flip-flopped on that issue of course and its members now say that they support it. Let us look at the next decision—4 weeks’ annual leave. The National Party members opposed it. They have now flip-flopped taken the Labour Government’s position and agree with it. 
What is the most recent example of lamentable leadership on the part of the National Party? It is those members’ response to the terrible issue that we have had to deal with in the last day relating to foot-and-mouth. The Government’s response was to go through the legal process and to learn from the lesson of the United Kingdom which had a foot-and-mouth outbreak and did not respond quickly enough leading to the disease’s spread and to a worse incident than that country would otherwise have had to deal with. We have been openly dealing with the issue as if it is real until it is proven to be a hoax. Everyone overseas agrees that that is the appropriate way to handle the issue and what did Dr Brash say? He said: “I am surprised they made a public statement about it to be frank. If it’s only a hoax they have done a lot of damage to our reputation.” Of course as Federated Farmers and former National Party members have pointed out we actually do not know whether it is a hoax until it is too late to stop the disease’s spread. It is wrong to ignore the issue as a potential hoax and not to treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. 
Let us look at what Dr Brash is doing. He is avoiding all the big issues and attacking the Prime Minister’s integrity. We have Mr Doone who had been stopped in a car with the person who is now his wife because the car had no lights on. The policeman walked away to get a breath-testing device. The then Commissioner of Police Mr Doone intervened. The then Deputy Commissioner of Police inquired and found that action to be inappropriate. The Police Complaints Authority said that Mr Doone’s actions were unwise. Now 5 years later the Opposition is trying to besmirch the reputation of the Prime Minister alleging that the mistakes were hers and not Mr Doone’s. What a load of tripe! What a load of rubbish! The only thing that we can conclude is that there must be an election getting close. 
Let us remember the dirty tactics at the last election concerning the allegations surrounding the corn incident that were laid at the door of the Prime Minister. It was alleged that she was involved in illegality and a cover-up. Those issues were subsequently investigated by a select committee of this Parliament which took over a year to hold its inquiry and what did that select committee conclude unanimously? Members from the Opposition from the Greens and from this Government found that the allegations besmirching the Prime Minister in that situation were unfounded and that there had been no illegality on her part. We cleared her of wrongdoing. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes “we”—the members of the select committee. I was one of the members but it was a cross-party finding to that effect which included Mr Hide’s own party. 
Generally the big election issue is the economy. Why is there not much mainstream criticism of the Government’s handling of the economy now? The criticism has slowed to a dribble.