Guy Nathan: General Debate 
Guy Nathan: General Debate 
[Volume:643;Page:12869] 
NATHAN GUY (National) 
: 
 We have heard all the huff and puff. The Labour Party has had its reshuffle and it is a bit like the person who was employed on the  
Titanic 
 to shuffle the deckchairs. Unfortunately those people were not helped by that and Labour’s reshuffle will not help its tired sinking ship going down at the next election. This started 6 months ago and Helen Clark knows that. The new faces on Labour’s front bench second bench and third bench will not help the situation at all. We all know there is a lot of blood on the floor do we not colleagues? We know that Charles Chauvel spat the dummy; “hot and cold Charles” we are calling him now and then he put out a press release announcing— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Members must be referred to by their full name not by a nickname; Speaker’s ruling 26/5. 
NATHAN GUY 
: I did refer to Mr Charles Chauvel by his full name. Does he have another name? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member referred to him also as “hot and cold Charles”; before that he said Charles Chauvel. The member knows he cannot do that. 
NATHAN GUY 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. There are others as well. Today Mr Fairbrother was down to ask a primary question but he was so reluctant to ask it and he was exposed today. He reluctantly asked the question and did not look very happy about being here at all. Things are going to change I believe for Mr Fairbrother now that we have heard that the deputy leader Michael Cullen has signed the nomination of Mr Nash. So there is blood all over the floor from this reshuffle. Mr Burton has now announced he wants to spend more time in his electorate. We know that about 12 or 15 MPs are on their way out now. The main thing is that the National Party rejuvenated in 2005. 
I want to refer to my opposite Darren Hughes the new Minister of Statistics. He is trying to hold a marginal seat got rewarded for looking after Helen Clark’s handbag and now has a plum salary and a Crown limo car to drive around the most marginal seat of the whole country. It is interesting that according to talkback radio Mr Hughes had a wheelie bin outside his office the day before Labour had the caucus party. So he was clearing out his office. He knew he was going to get some so-called promotion as Minister of Statistics. It goes to show one does not even need to go to the Labour Party caucus to know what is happening. One just listens to talkback and one hears it all there. 
I ask Mr Hughes in terms of his new portfolio of statistics what he is going to do about a headline in this week’s  
Daily 
Chronicle 
 that talks about the shocking levels of poverty in the area I live in and which he represents occasionally. The headline states: “shocking levels of … poverty”. I quote the Levin school principal Mr Trevor Jeffries: “take home packet is pathetic”. We all know why take-home pay is pathetic. It is because Mr Cullen is hoarding all this tax and we know that hard-working families are getting shafted by this Government because Michael Cullen is there with a bulging piggy bank acting like a little schoolboy proud as punch ready for “lolly-nomics” next year to hand out the lollies while hard-working New Zealanders in Levin are suffering because of the poverty. 
What is the Minister of Statistics going to do about this? Food prices are on the way up. He will be getting weekly correspondence and will know from his ministry that food prices are on the way up. Mortgage rates are on the way up. Interest rates are on the way up. What will the Minister of Statistics do about all of the increases that this Labour Government could not control because it is sitting on this huge surplus of money—nearly $9 billion? Michael Cullen and the Labour Government are saying: “We know what’s best.” The Minister of Statistics is left trying to analyse all of these figures. 
There is only one thing that we know: that Minister opposite is going to drive around in his Crown car around the most marginal seat which is Otaki. But those hard-working Kiwis will absolutely hate that. While he will be over there on a high salary hard-working New Zealanders are suffering poverty. That was shown in this newspaper when our local paper rang around all of the schools and found so many hard-working families are in poverty in New Zealand. 
I want also to move to the crisis in health and we have seen that today where Mr Cunliffe the new Minister of Health who has been in the job 5 minutes said he is running the show.