Goff Phil: Address in Reply 
Goff Phil: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:326] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 I begin by congratulating the new member Chester Borrows who has just resumed his seat. I think we hear the best from our members when they deliver their maiden speeches and we have heard from Mr Borrows a very sincere presentation of his views and the things that have motivated him to come to the House. I congratulate you also Madam Assistant Speaker on your appointment and I congratulate your fellow office holders in the House. I also congratulate Shane Jones and Sue Moroney on the moving and seconding of the Address in Reply. Those also I think were inspirational speeches and give us confidence about the new blood that has found its way into the Labour caucus. 
I speak now on a somewhat sombre note and reflect on the House’s loss of Rod Donald whom I did not get a chance to speak about in the House. Rod and I go back a long long way. We both worked on the Residential Tenancies Bill in the early 1980s. We were at times allies and we were at times opponents but we were never enemies. He was a person of passionate conviction for causes and beliefs which drove him politically—his support for human rights his support for social justice—and that I think makes his passing from the House a sad loss for all of us. 
I remember also David Lange for his advocacy for the underdog. I worked closely with David from the late 1970s and he was I think a person without peer in terms of his superb communication and his quick wit in the House. He was at times an inspirational leader and I remember in particular through the first 3 years of the fourth Labour Government feeling that it was a huge privilege to work with him from my perspective as the youngest and most junior member of Cabinet. 
I would also like to remember Jack Luxton who was the Deputy Speaker when I came into this House and John Falloon. I think they were truly decent men in what I would regard as the old style of the National Party and I encourage the National Party today to go back to some of that gentlemanly perspective on life that I think created real respect. 
I have to say that after listening to the maiden speeches—those I have heard—it is hard to line up some of the speeches from the National Party with the appointment of a PC eradicator. I have heard a lot of “Kia oras” coming from the National Party side. I see my old friend Tau Henare across the House. Tau Henare once set up the Mauri Pacific party and I have here a quote from him. He said that Maori language would become a compulsory subject in all schools up until form 2 to ensure the language’s survival. That is pretty PC! But it gets better. His party said it would adopt a gender balancing twinning policy. Well that is more PC than I have ever dared to be from this side of the House. But then I look back at the maiden speech of the PC eradicator—whom I am searching for in the House at the moment. I have just been talking about how people spoke from the heart when they gave their maiden speeches. This is from Wayne Mapp back at the time he gave his maiden speech in the House. I listened closely because Wayne Mapp had contested an election against me not as a National Party candidate but for the Labour Party selection in 1981. When he finally got into this House in 1997 he said this: “The liberating experience of education led me to develop equity admission programmes at the University of Auckland for Maori and Polynesian students undertaking commerce degrees.” 
How do we line up the double standards of the National members who one by one claim to be the most PC members in this House then go out during an election and crusade against it? It is a little bit hard also I have to say to reconcile the National Party that tried to arouse race prejudice in this country by talking about the abolition of the Maori seats and the elimination of the Treaty of Waitangi from any legislation with a letter signed by Don Brash and the leader of the Maori Party to try to form a coalition Government in this country. That I think reflects badly on both parties in terms of the hypocrisy that that represents. The National Party said it wanted to abolish the seats that saw the Maori Party elected and the Maori Party was prepared to go into coalition with the National Party for whatever reason. I do not understand because that was never the mandate given by the Maori voters who might have used their electorate vote to vote for the Maori Party but used their party vote to support the Labour Party. 
 The 2005 election was the fourth MMP election in New Zealand. MMP does create a new political environment and it demands a different response from how traditionally we operated under first past the post. Those of us who remember that system feel a little nostalgic about it—the ability to form a clear-cut Government with a simple majority. But we have learnt something about MMP and we learnt it from the National Party. The National Party was the first Government elected under MMP. It formed a coalition arrangement with the New Zealand First Party. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: I remember that. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Doug Woolerton was a member and an official of the National Party at one stage but quickly abandoned that. He will remember how that coalition collapsed within 2 years. Tau Henare will remember it as well. What we saw with the collapse of that National – New Zealand First coalition were the so-called waka-jumpers who left their party including I have to say Alamein Kopu who was elected on a position totally at odds with the National Party who then swung her vote to support the Jenny Shipley Cabinet. That was the one that I heard Tau Henare in Te Atatu swearing he would never sit with around the Cabinet table. I say to Tau Henare that there has been an amazing flexibility in his politics over time but I welcome him back to the House anyway. The fact was that we learnt that that coalition broke down because of the inflexibility of the arrangements. 
I have been much quoted about mothers-in-law. I have to put on record that I was intensely fond of my mother-in-law. She died 2 years ago. She was a lovely person and I put that on record. She lived with us in our house for a while. It produced some strains. We built a granny flat and we each had our own space. That granny flat enabled us to coexist quite well and that is exactly what the arrangement is with New Zealand First. That party is bound to collective responsibility in the portfolio areas exercised by the Rt Hon Winston Peters and it has the room to move in the other areas where New Zealand First and the Labour Party are different and I say that quite emphatically. New Zealand First is different but it has its own space. We will make this work in the way that the National Party failed twice to make it work with Winston Peters. It threw him out of Cabinet twice. 
This time we will make it work. And we will make work what the electorate delivered up to us. The electorate delivered up to us a situation where we did not have a clear majority where this country needed the stability and the consistency that the last National Government failed to provide. We will deliver that to this country and this country will be the better for it. I say with great pride that for 6 years a Labour-led Government has made the MMP system work and a Labour-led Government has without exception delivered on every promise it made at the election. For 6 years after the National Party had let down the superannuitants—it had promised to abolish the surtax “no ifs no buts no maybes”—that promise was broken. [ 
Interruption 
] Lockwood Smith draws my attention. Lockwood Smith stood on the platform with me at universities around the country saying National would abolish student fees. Of course National did not abolish them it doubled them. This Labour-led Government has been true to its word. This Labour-led Government has produced the greatest increase in people’s incomes the best improvements in social services and the best foreign policy that this country has ever seen. 
In the very short period of time that I have left I want to acknowledge the tremendous work done on New Zealand’s behalf by the Special Air Services. I was at Whenuapai Airport at 4 o’clock this morning to welcome them back to this country. They are a body of men and women who have provided truly competent courageous and professional service to our country. I am proud as Minister of Defence to represent and to have those people represent New Zealand in the work they have done both to constrain the influence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban remnants in Afghanistan and to provide for the people of that country who have suffered for more than two decades the effects of war and civil war the prospect of a better future—stability development and hopefully prosperity. I refer to not only the SAS but also the men and women who serve in our provincial reconstruction team in Bamian. We ought as New Zealanders to be proud of the work they have done. We ought to be proud of the fact that we acted within the multilateral context under a UN mandate to send our people to that country to provide security for the people of that country and provide security for the international community. 
Finally I pay tribute to those people and what they have done on our behalf and I as Minister of Defence will be working hard to provide them with the resources to continue the good work that they are doing in places around the world.