King Annette: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7776. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 What are the real issues the daily issues that New Zealanders wake up to every morning and worry about when they go to sleep each night? What are the things that impact on the family at “No. 1 Struggle Street” New Zealand? What are the aspirations and the dreams that Kiwis have for themselves for their families for their communities and for their country? These are the real questions that need answers from the Key-led Government. These are the issues this Government should be devoting its time to. But what are we getting from this new Government? We are getting sideshows and show ponies and we have a shambles. We have a shambles from that Government opposite. 
I cannot remember a time when a Government fell apart so fast. One year and the wheels are falling off this Government. Its members might laugh and think that it is Opposition members who think that. I tell Government members to read the newspapers listen to the television read the blogs hear the talkback radio and hear the political commentators. A common theme is coming through. People are saying that this Government has no plans its approach is short term its approach is expedient and it is chaotic. It is held together by the charm of a very nice man with a lovely smile. As Bill English said John Key bounces from cloud to cloud; as Rodney Hide said in a rare moment of honesty he does not do any work either. Increasingly there is a call for this Government to make some decisions to take some action to give some leadership and to straighten out the shambles that we see in this House day after day. 
If one is looking for the most shambolic of the Government’s Ministers one has to say that it is the Minister for ACC the Minister for the Environment and the Minister who is responsible for the emissions trading scheme: one Nick Smith. He is afflicted by the opposite of the Midas touch. In his hands everything turns to custard to chaos and to shambles. There were 6000 motorcyclists out on the front lawn of Parliament yesterday protesting against the Minister’s rise in levies. What did they call it? Animal manure they said. That is what is wrong with his levies. He has created a crisis in order to scare New Zealanders into accepting his Government’s long-term desire to privatise the accident compensation scheme and no one believes a word he is saying. All his huffing and his puffing and his peering down the lens of the television camera are being laughed at by New Zealanders because Kiwis are not mugs. Kiwis know that the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) took $1 billion more in income than it spent last year and it has the largest reserves it has ever had—$11 billion in reserves. Kiwis know that the levy this Government is putting on motorcyclists is unfair. 
Of course the Minister for the Environment always has a problem with figures. He is always getting his figures wrong. It is not just with regard to accident compensation. What about the whole emissions trading scheme? It has just been shot to pieces by the latest figures from Treasury. There is a $50 billion mistake. It is unbelievable—$50 billion. Broken down that is $92000 for every man woman and child in New Zealand. They will pay that for Nick Smith’s folly. That is what it will cost. The cobbling together of a flimsy coalition will force through a disastrous cost on ordinary hard-working Kiwis so that Nick Smith can go to Copenhagen and strut on the international stage. It is such a shambles that his own leader the Prime Minister refuses to go to Copenhagen because he has said nothing will happen there anyway. Nothing will happen so what is the rush? I ask why Nick Smith is prepared to put at risk the economic future of all New Zealanders in order to go to a conference that will not achieve anything. In my view Nick Smith and John Key are prepared to reopen for purely political purposes wounds that have been healed by comprehensive settlements in this country.