English Bill: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: General Debate[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17052. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister):I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Over the weekend something went wrong with daylight saving because everyone else in New Zealand turned their clocks back 1 hour but in the Labour Party members turned their political clocks back 40 years. They spent yesterday arguing that National should clean up its mistakes from the 1975 election. I thought they were a bit just a bit backward-looking when they spent most of last year burnishing their economic credentials for the run-up to the 2008 election—their budgets their debts their deficits; all that stuff. Of course they still think that the 2008 election result was a big mistake and that one day the public will wake up and realise that. John Key will blow away like a flake in the wind Helen will be back and all will be well.But I ask myself why it is that they would spend a whole day yesterday 5 months out from an election talking about the 1975 election which occurred before some of the MPs in this House were born. I have figured out why they want to talk about the 1975 election.Dr Cam Calder: Why’s that?Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is because it means that they do not have to talk about David Cunliffe. That is why. He is a man sinking in a sea of his own self-importance shown by his classy intervention on the first day of the royal tour among a whole lot of other things. We look forward to next week’s edition of Campbell Live. It is at the doer-upper. He will be there in his paint-spattered overalls with his mate having been down to Bunnings to buy a second-hand hammer to show us how he is doing up his house.Hon Tony Ryall: In his shiny gumboots.Hon BILL ENGLISH: In his shiny gumboots. So that is why the Labour Party is still talking about the 1975 election and a decision at that time around national superannuation a time when today’s new recipients of national superannuation were 25 years old. I used to think that Labour was reading the books from the best Fabian thinking of the 1970s. I did not realise that they were reliving it in some kind of daylight saving time machine—not just reading about it but reliving it and reliving it when they get tired of that 2008 election.But of course if they could not bring themselves to talk about their leader—and why would they—they should be able to talk about their hard-working effective team. But they do not.Hon Member: Why not?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well that is because there is no hard-working effective team to talk about. I know that David Parker standing up yesterday would have liked to talk about the hard-working effective team having decided that he is getting dragged down by the leader as—is he the deputy leader or the—[Interruption] He is the finance spokesman or one of them. I do not know who the deputy leader is and that is saying something knowing how irrelevant deputy leaders are. You would think that I sympathise with them but I do not actually.The Labour Party is letting its own people down. It is letting down this Parliament—there is no doubt about that—but it is letting down its own people because the kind of forward-looking aspirational politics and leadership that Labour Party voters are looking for are coming from our Prime Minister. There is absolutely no doubt about that. That is why increasing numbers of them are turning away having stuck with Labour for 5 years. They now think that they cannot even make a decent Opposition and are turning away to look to the leadership that shows their path to a better future for their kids that shows a real interest in the safety of their communities and that ensures that they get the health services they need. But on top of that is a thriving economy that can deliver wage and income increases—Mr SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.