Bennett Paula: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett Paula: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9804. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): Buildings has been called; the hammers and the nails are out as the building experts now move into Labour MPs’ offices to remove the photos of Michael Joseph Savage and put up large photos of Robert Muldoon. That is actually what we have seen in the last 24 hours as far as policies are concerned. For the Labour Party and its policy ideas it is most certainly back to the 1970s. The Labour Party as Rob Hosking said “is positioning itself less like an alternative government and more like a protest movement.” which is hardly surprising—and this is my own bit—when it is of course run by the unions. Banking experts are saying that Andrew Little has a “lack of understanding of how banks and the system works” and this is the man who wants to tell us that he should actually be the one who is in control of this stuff.Hon David Parker: Why did the bubble get so big Paula?Hon PAULA BENNETT: Even the Greens think it is silly David Parker even the Greens.As the Greens—I think it quite interesting—try to be taken a bit more seriously and try to become a bit more mainstream so that they can move into that kind of centre vote area it seems that Labour is actually heading in the opposite direction. It is trying to jump on the “take any issue and come up with something nutty to go alongside it”—and I guess it does think this is what New Zealand wants: its own version of Jeremy Corbyn. But it sounds more like Jerry Springer with the nutty stuff that is currently coming out of a party that had and was underpinned by values that it held true to.Those members should be actually pretty shocked with themselves and what they have been coming out with more recently. They stand on one side of it and say that they want us to support dairy and farmers more—and I heard a point of order yesterday from David Clark telling us that they are pro - free trade—when actually their actions are the complete opposite. They will not constructively work with one of the biggest agreements that will make the biggest difference to our economy and real people in real jobs and how they can actually make a bit more money and take on some extra people and see those actual workers get higher wages due to businesses being more profitable. Those members speak out of one side of their mouths but in their hearts and actually even in their heads they know it is not true. They are going for the Jerry Springer shock jock to try to get a bit of publicity and I say to them in this debate that they are making utter fools of themselves in how they are doing it.Shall we move to the latest: that they should be now legislating for the banks to pass on interest rates? Like we hear all the time it will of course be “We want to legislate for when they are going down and make sure that they are.” but they will be the first to cry wolf when actually they reverse and rates are going up. They will not then want banks to be passing those costs on to good businesses and to see that level of competitiveness that gives us a banking system that stood up in the world’s biggest global financial crisis for decades. Our banking system actually stood up to that because of the robustness and because of its independence from politicians sticking their noses in and threatening to legislate. There has never been a clearer message to businesses to dairy farmers and to others that that—Mr Opposition over there—is not ready for Government or anywhere close to it.At the end of the day it is the values that underpin us and how we stick by them that dictate what our policies should be and there is a real mismatch amongst the Labour caucus and its leadership at the moment—and may it forever reign as far as I am concerned on this side of the House. We do not for one moment underestimate some of the effects that we are seeing of prices on our dairy farmers at the moment. We are putting more into supporting them. You are seeing $500000 going to supporting the trusts and the counselling that needs to go on trying to make sure that we see the things that are happening there. We also understand what it means to stand beside those dairy farmers and make sure that we have the right policies in place. If we have seen anything this year it is the truth about what underpins the Labour Party and when you dig deep it is nothing.