English Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
English Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:632;Page:3699] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 It is becoming just a little bit clearer every day that along with waste instability is becoming part of the way this Government does business. We have only to see the charade that has been played out in the last few weeks by Trevor Mallard over his aspirations to the role of Minister of Finance to understand what is happening in the Labour Government. Helen Clark has now essentially left Wellington and she sees herself as campaigning full time for a fourth term. We know that her mind is on the big picture when her office instructs organisations that organise events to which she goes to make sure of two things: firstly that the National Party has no official role in the public function and secondly that the Labour candidate for that electorate must be on the platform. She did this in Lawrence in my electorate. I found out because the organisers rang me to find out who the failed Labour candidate was and none of us could remember. I do not yet know whether that person found his or her way to the platform. 
That is the petty level to which the Prime Minister of New Zealand is now descending. She is going around the country and handing out large cheques with $1 million written on them and is making sure that the local National MP who in most cases worked very hard for the project is not allowed on the platform and the failed Labour candidate is. Helen Clark does not want to be in Wellington because what is going on here is much more important to the country and it has now slipped out of her control—the battle for succession of the Minister of Finance’s job. Helen Clark has effectively given Phil Goff and Trevor Mallard permission to go into battle. She has done that by doing what she does with such masterly effect—nothing. When Dr Cullen’s Budget fell flat and the public decided that he was getting far too much of the surplus and they were not getting enough Helen Clark did not lift one finger to defend him. In fact if one was not a New Zealand voter one would not have known after the Budget that Helen Clark was the Prime Minister of New Zealand. One would have thought it was Michael Cullen. She had nothing to say. She has taken no position on whether there should have been tax cuts. She left Dr Cullen to it and that gave permission to Trevor Mallard and Phil Goff. Well what a battle that will be. Trevor Mallard will be much better at fighting his way to get the job than he ever will be at doing the job. Phil Goff as my colleague Tony Ryall has said is sitting in his caravan in Mount Roskill and waiting waiting waiting. 
When the members on the Government front bench are starting to talk openly about their ambitions and when the Prime Minister has lost control of those headstrong individuals we then know that the Government is headed for a period of trouble. In its third term that period will extend to the election it will lose. The signs are all there. It does not matter how much Dr Cullen protests about journalists or about his colleagues as I am sure he did when Trevor Mallard lost his grip on the difference between assets and liabilities. Trevor Mallard is the man who wants to be in charge of—what is the size of the New Zealand Government’s balance sheet? He does not know which side anything should be on. Actually that does not surprise me in Trevor Mallard’s case. I do not know why everyone else is surprised—we have always known that. 
The problem with Dr Cullen is that the public has stopped believing him. He has kept shifting the fiscal goalposts. He started out with the operating balance as his fiscal target and that got too big so he changed it to the operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting changes which is a variation of the operating balance and that got too big to justify not giving tax cuts. So he reverted to the 1950s and started talking about cash flow. Then that got too big to justify not giving tax cuts. Worst of all for him the public has simply stopped believing what he says. There is a wisdom in the crowd because they know that a cash flow measure is simply the wrong measure. It is not a measure of the financial state of the Government or its ability to give tax cuts; it is a measure of how much capital spending Dr Cullen has been able to finance out of current revenue—of how many houses he has been able to buy with his annual income. Actually because his annual income has been growing pretty fast he has been able to buy quite a few houses. So the public has just simply stopped believing him and that is a good thing. 
We have had 6 or 7 years when Dr Cullen has spent most of his effort trying to prove that he is more fiscally conservative than Arnold Nordmeyer and Walter Nash. That might be his little personal problem but this country does not have a problem with debt—it has a problem with growth. It is the prospect for getting our growth up that is the worry—and that he is doing nothing about—not the problem of getting our debt down which has been substantially dealt with. 
So Mr Goff and Mr Mallard are on the go and we have heard the code for it. Who heard Clayton Cosgrove talk about what would happen if Dr Cullen was hit by a bus? Any caucus knows that that is the tripwire. If someone was hit by a bus who would the caucus support? If someone was hit by a bus who would look better on TV? If someone was hit by a bus who would the public warm to? So the bus conversations have started. In Labour leadership conversations are barbeque conversations led by Phil Goff but this is a bus that Phil Goff thinks he is already on. 
Anne Tolley 
: He’s sitting in it. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He is sitting in the bus. If Michael Cullen is hit by Phil Goff’s bus I can tell members who will get the job and it will not be Mr Mallard—nor should it be because he simply lacks the credibility. 
Hon David Carter 
: He can’t read a balance sheet. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He cannot read a balance sheet but more seriously than that he just lacks the credibility. A person cannot go round in politics for a decade making the kinds of wild allegations that this man makes and making a fool of himself and his party and be regarded as a prospect for the Minister of Finance which is a job whereby credibility is everything. It is not just one of the important things—it is everything. So count Trevor Mallard out and Phil Goff in. Then there are the ones racing for the Associate Minister jobs—all the rising stars! Is that not a disease in the Labour Party. [ 
Interruption 
] Fortunately the member for Otaki almost lost his seat so he has lost his “rising star” tag. I say to him that that is a good thing because we forget that one rising star was David Benson-Pope. Look what happened to him. The next one was David Parker. Look what happened to him. 
Anne Tolley 
: Russell Fairbrother. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Look what happened to him. The next one was David Cunliffe who rings up companies—Crown Law actually—in the middle of question time to ask a company to do him a political favour when he is making a multimillion dollar decision about that company. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: That is absolutely not true and that member knows it. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It is true. It is in the answers to the parliamentary questions. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: He knows that’s absolutely untrue. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: No no. It is in the answers to the parliamentary questions and that is why that man cannot be Minister of Finance. The answers to the parliamentary questions from David Cunliffe say that he rang Crown Law in the middle of question time to get the letter. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No not that “he” did. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well that is what it says. The problem now for Labour is that it increasingly has to live with the consequences of its own decisions. 
The doctors’ strike is the consequence of a period when Annette King gave everyone in health everything they wanted. Everyone in health knows that they made an agreement with the junior doctors last time that was ridiculous because the Minister said they should do it. Now someone has to unwind it. What is happening? Thousands of New Zealanders are being inconvenienced and there is no solution in sight. 
The same sort of thing is happening in education where the Government has spent and spent. As Mr Mallard has said himself spending on schools has gone up 50 percent since 1998 yet schools feel under more pressure than ever. Steve Maharey is giving them an operations grant review to try to string it out for a couple of years to try to make a promise before the election. The Government is now living with the consequences of its own mistakes not ours and will pay for it.