Volume 624 Week 85 - Wednesday 6 April 2005 
Volume 624 Week 85 - Wednesday 6 April 2005 
[Volume:624;Page:19625] 
Wednesday 6 April 2005 
Madam Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Speaker’s Rulings 
Speaker’s Ruling 47/1—Political Parties: Offensive Term 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Last week the Rt Hon Winston Peters asked me to reconsider my reliance on Speaker’s ruling 47/1: “It is just as unparliamentary to apply an offensive term to members of a party as to apply it to members individually.” Mr Peters argued that it was an old ruling—it was given in 1914—and it has been suspended by a Speaker’s ruling given at the time that the Alliance broke up in 2002. The ruling may be an old one but it has been consistently relied on in the House. I do not see any reason relating to its longevity to depart from it. In regard to the Alliance the Speaker was required to make a number of rulings relating to the status of that party. Two of those are recorded in Speaker’s rulings 5/6 and 5/7. These rulings were concerned with continued recognition of the party under Standing Order 34. They did not in any way undermine Speaker’s ruling 47/1. That ruling continues to have full force. 
Questions to Ministers 
John Tamihere— 
Investigate 
 Interview 
1. Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Has she had any meetings or discussions with Ministers maligned by John Tamihere in his  
Investigate 
 magazine interview? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 I meet and have discussions with my Ministers all the time. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is it not the case that John Tamihere is right when he says that the issues that motivate most of her Government members—union gay and Maori rights—are not the concerns of the majority of New Zealanders? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The issues that motivate this Government and that motivate most New Zealanders are getting unemployment down which we have been particularly successful in doing; making sure there is fair labour law which that member has never stood for; lifting minimum wages; increasing the statutory annual holidays to 4 weeks; and implementing paid parental leave so parents can spend some time with their new babies; and also Working for Families which only this week is paying most families with family support another $25 a week for the first child and $15 for each other child. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is not the real reason that the Government is so upset at John Tamihere stating that her Government “champions values mainstream New Zealanders do not relate to” the fact that the truth hurts? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The member knows that the truth hurts every time he sees an opinion poll in the papers. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Has her Government gone too far in pushing minority interests to the detriment of more pressing concerns of mainstream New Zealanders? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The Government wants to go even further in lowering unemployment improving incomes for families making sure that the health system works even better that children get an even better education—all things that would go down the drain because Mr Key has promised to cut public spending teachers and nurses. 
Public Service—Staff Numbers 
2.  
DIANNE YATES (Labour—Hamilton East) 
 to the  
Minister of State Services 
: What reports if any has he seen on changes to the number of staff employed in the public service? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of State Services) 
: 
 I have seen a report arguing that many of the people employed in the public service are “surplus to requirements” and should be sacked in order to fund tax cuts for the rich. Some people want to turn back the clock to when Government departments were so short of resources that business people who wanted tax returns were left on the phone for hours when students were left begging for food at food banks because their loan and allowance applications had not been processed and when Government policy decisions were made on the whim of Tory Ministers rather than on any sound policy advice. I agree with Judith Collins when she said that Gerry Brownlee is as useless as tits on a bull. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is there an objection? 
Gerry Brownlee 
: We just want to know the rules. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It was a quote as I understand it that was made. 
Judith Collins 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. It is not a quote; it is not accurate. The only person who has said that in this House is the Prime Minister. She speaks like that; the rest of us do not. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: My understanding was that it was in response to a quote that was made. Many quotes have been made in this House and in the context of this debate to stop one we would have to stop them all. 
Dianne Yates 
: In what key areas has the number of Government employees increased since 1999? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: We have employed 2700 extra teachers over and above those needed for roll growth 950 extra medical doctors 3300 extra nurses over 800 extra prison officers and well over 1000 extra police staff. I want to know from John Key which one of those he is going to cut. 
John Key 
: How does the Minister interpret the advice he recently received from Treasury which stated that increases in State sector output do not appear to have been achieved as a result of any increases in costs and is this one of the reasons why his finance Minister Dr Cullen is now embarking on a programme of cutting at least $400 million per annum from future baselines with or without his help? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I am not going to leak Budget secrets but I assure the member that next year’s baselines are higher than this. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Interjections are permitted but not barracking. Would the Minister please continue with his answer. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Having looked at the Minister of Finance I think it is possible to share with the House the fact that next year’s baselines will be higher than this year’s—not a $400 million cut as said by that member. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: Has the Minister had any Wellington representations on John Key’s promise to cut the number of public servants to pay for tax increases? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: It is my understanding that Mr Blumsky supports Mr English and that is why John Key is attacking Wellington. 
Peter Brown 
: Will the Minister clarify the situation by stating how many people were employed in the public service when the Government came into power how many are employed now and how the Government justifies the significant percentage increase? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I could go into all the details but it is fair to say the overall growth is running at about the same rate of growth as the rate of growth in jobs generally. 
Sue Kedgley 
: Will he be supporting the Greens’ flexible working-hours member’s bill to allow employees with young or disabled children the right to request to work flexibly given his Government’s stated commitment to help State servants—indeed all New Zealanders—achieve a better work-life balance which he announced yesterday in his  
Work-Life Balance: a resource for State Services 
? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The Government will certainly support the bill to the select committee. In fact a flexible work approach is quite common amongst many members across the Chamber. 
Tariana Turia 
: What explanation does the Minister offer for the fact that the median salary of Maori staff in the public service is only 92 percent of non-Maori staff a gap that is particularly significant within the manager occupation category? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Maori staff in the public service tend to have lower qualifications and less experience and there are not as many of them in senior management as a result of that. As a result of all of that salaries on average are lower. 
John Tamihere— 
Investigate 
 Interview 
3.  
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she stand by her reported statement that she considered many of the comments about her Government by John Tamihere in his  
Investigate 
 magazine interview untrue; if so why? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes because I do. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Has she then reconsidered her previously stated position that she wants politicians to “say what they mean and mean what they say” or does that premise only hold true for persons other than John Tamihere? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: In a democracy people are free to say what they mean and mean what they say. They also have to recognise that that may have implications for the way their team regards them. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Will she require Mr Tamihere to say that what he stated about her Government in his interview with Ian Wishart was incorrect as part of her requirement for an acceptable apology from him? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I have no ministerial responsibility for Mr Tamihere. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. That has to be just the biggest hiding from a question that we could possibly hear and an obfuscation of the worst kind. This is a situation where a member has stated publicly that he may resign over this issue. The Prime Minister has laid down for the information of the nation the conditions under which Mr Tamihere may come back. If he cannot accept those conditions quite clearly the Government’s thin majority means it is in trouble. For the Prime Minister to say that she has no responsibility in a ministerial sense is a complete nonsense. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Prime Minister should have raised the matter as a point of order—as opposed to an answer to a question—that she had no ministerial authority. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 131/6 which makes it quite clear that a “Prime Minister is not answerable for actions taken in a non-ministerial capacity whether as Leader of the Opposition or as leader of a political party.” 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Might you explain to the House the inconsistency in your determination about ministerial responsibility whereby previously the Minister of State Services was able to make all sorts of comments about Tories and about what MPs on the Opposition side of the House said or might have said and that was OK but when it comes to the Prime Minister you take a very narrow definition of what ministerial responsibility requires. I simply ask for some consistency from the Chair as to the responsibilities of a Minister. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: That big issue is actually a relatively simple one. Of course the question in this latter case was whether a question was in order. The member is now raising somewhat late the issue of whether an answer was in order. A question has to be about a matter relating to ministerial responsibility. If a Minister adds certain matters in an answer members may object if they wish to but they have to be quick to catch it. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: When it comes to a Government holding a majority in the House surely that is the ultimate responsibility of the Prime Minister. Therefore as a Minister she should have responsibility for circumstances she can control—which this question goes to the heart of—when it comes to the ability to maintain that majority. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Madam Speaker the ruling you have given is of course correct but I draw your attention to the peculiar facts of this case. In this case we have someone who is an ex-Minister and who is out on—I do not know what they call it—a sort of study leave. 
Hon Member 
: Psychiatric leave. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Psychiatric leave! That is my fault Madam Speaker; I should not have asked for assistance. The question of whether the member can come back in relation to that question put forward by Mr Brownlee obviously includes his returning to Cabinet. The idea that the Prime Minister does not have any role in her Cabinet—well it is a novel one but it is not one that has ever been argued by the Prime Minister before. I suggest to you therefore that the comments made by Mr Tamihere and the conditions that the Prime Minister will set before she will have him back—even though the Labour caucus may vote members up the Prime Minister has a say in those matters—are perfectly reasonable matters to put to her. She may not like answering the question but I think it is reasonable certainly that that question should be allowed and that that answer should not be allowed to stand. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: That is a very interesting point but of course the question did not raise the issue of Mr Tamihere re-entering Cabinet. Had that issue been raised of course it would have raised a further interesting question because in the Labour caucus the Prime Minister does not appoint Ministers to Cabinet but merely allocates their portfolios. So perhaps to help the member if he tries to ask such a question I tell him that he will need to phrase it in terms of extending the size of Cabinet thereby creating a vacancy on which the Labour caucus will then vote. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have had enough comment and I thank members for their contributions. The fact still remains however that the Prime Minister was not responsible for the matter that was asked about in the question. In respect of the subsidiary point that a member—I think it was Dr Smith—raised relating to the Minister of State Services I say that in his answer to the question the Minister did address it. In the course of doing so he made a comment but no formal objection was taken to that comment. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Can you tell us then when the Prime Minister is not responsible as the Prime Minister for the statements she makes? The statement that this question was based on—remembering that we cannot ask questions without having a fair basis for asking them—was from the Prime Minister’s own comments at a press conference. If the Prime Minister is speaking at a press conference about a matter that goes to the heart of her ability to command a majority in this House then where is the point where she is no longer responsible as a Minister for her answers? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Prime Minister would have been responsible if the matter had related to a member of Cabinet. But it did not so the question has to go back to ministerial responsibility. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is this a new point of order? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It is a point of order in response to the ruling you have given with respect to the— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is the member challenging the ruling? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: No I am not; I wish to identify the Standing Order that you are required to enforce as Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I am sorry—would the member say that again? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I want to draw your attention to the Standing Order you are required to enforce. Until you have heard my point of order I think you should hear me out. Madam Speaker you have often raised complaints about the Opposition repeatedly raising points of order during question time. Yet you are now saying to us that if we do not raise a point of order you will let Ministers stray well outside the Standing Orders. It is your responsibility as Speaker to enforce the Standing Orders. We have had several answers from Ministers that directly contradict Standing Order 370. So I require your clarification of whether you see it as your responsibility to enforce Standing Order 370 which states that members in answering questions must be concise must be confined to the subject matter and must not include any discriminatory references to any member or any offensive or unparliamentary expression. Clearly Trevor Mallard’s response earlier did breach that Standing Order. Am I to take it that unless we jump to our feet every single time to take a point of order you will simply let Ministers get away with breaching Standing Order 370? 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: The member raises an interesting and a fair question in terms of Standing Order 370. In that context I will also refer you Madam Speaker to Standing Order 364 in relation to the content of questions which must not contain “… arguments inferences imputations epithets ironical expressions or expressions of opinion”. If Speakers off their own bat enforced both those Standing Orders very strictly we might well find ourselves reverting to the situation we once famously had under Speaker Wall when only one supplementary question was allowed in the entire question time. Some reasonable degree of free flow is required on that. But if the member wishes to take a very strict approach I will be happy to police the questions and he can police the answers. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank members for their contributions. It is true that I have not chosen to strictly enforce every Standing Order on the grounds that I thought it was important that members exercise considerable freedom in the House in relation to the questions that they ask and the answers that are given. However if it is the wish of the House that I do strictly enforce them I am happy to do so. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is this a new point of order? 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Yes it is. Yesterday when Mr Dunne asked what you determined was a hypothetical question to the Prime Minister and challenged that decision you allowed him the opportunity to reword his hypothetical question in such a way that the Prime Minister could answer it. I ask for the same courtesy today. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have no difficulty with that at all. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: How would the Prime Minister react should the Labour caucus choose to re-elect Mr Tamihere to a Cabinet position if Mr Tamihere in his apology has not stated that all the comments he made in the Ian Wishart article were incorrect? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As Prime Minister I accept the decisions my caucus makes on electing members to Cabinet. I am happy to hear the member confidently predict the return of a Labour-led Government. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: In what way is John Tamihere’s statement in the  
Investigate 
 article that unions have increased their power after the announcement of the Labour list untrue? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Labour has selected a very talented and diverse team of candidates. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that for that last question to have any truth at all Labour would have to increase its percentage of the vote above what it received at the last election and is she grateful of that indication from the National Party about its confidence in that matter? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I heartily agree with that. I can say— 
Simon Power 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The point of order will be that that question was addressed in her capacity as the party leader. Is that right? 
Simon Power 
: It’s not bad. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Thank you very much. I am pleased I have the confidence of the member. That was not a legitimate question. 
Brian Connell 
: Why does the Prime Minister think that the letters to the editor in today’s  
New Zealand Herald  
and  
Dominion Post 
 which are representative of mainstream opinion are so resoundingly positive about Mr Tamihere’s comments in the  
Investigate 
 magazine article? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am sure that the National Party research unit has been in overdrive on the letters page. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The question will be heard in silence. 
Peter Brown 
: Will the Prime Minister clarify the situation? If it is true that John Tamihere was not telling the truth as the Prime Minister said a few moments ago then he must have been telling lies. If he has been telling lies and the Labour caucus wants him back in Cabinet will the Prime Minister tell us whether that is an acceptable standard for a Government of New Zealand? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As I have told the House many times before the Labour Party elects Ministers to its Cabinet. It elects people who are team players and who have ability. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Does the Prime Minister remember her statement that her Government would bring in new standards of behaviour—[ 
Interruption 
] Should I start again? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If the member’s own side will permit him to do so and will hear his question in silence yes. The member will please start again. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Does the Prime Minister remember her statement that her Government would bring in new standards of behaviour and does that preclude people who she says are telling lies from being in her Cabinet? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: That is not a phrase I would use but I would cheerfully compare the record of this Government with that of the Government the member served any day. 
Work and Income—Industry Partnerships 
4.  
NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Tainui) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: What reports has he received about Work and Income’s industry partnerships programme? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I have received advice that in their first 9 months of operation these partnerships with industries as diverse as hospitality roading track maintenance bus and coach retail plumbing national road carrier and meat have now helped 500 people to get off benefits and into skilled jobs in those areas. Initial projections for the industry partnerships programme set a goal of getting 45 percent of participants off a benefit within 9 months. That goal has been surpassed; after 9 months 60 percent of participants are now exiting the benefit system. 
Nanaia Mahuta 
: Can the Minister confirm what else is being done to meet the demand for labour that has been identified by employers? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: We are now seeking to gear our work towards meeting the demand set by employers through initiatives such as the regional work that Work and Income is undertaking in conjunction with the Mayors Task Force for Jobs seasonal initiatives to better manage the demand for labour in seasonal industries the Mobile Employment Service in rural areas mature focus case management the Modern Apprenticeships scheme the huge increases in industry training and the very successful Gateway programme in schools. Around industry partnerships I intend to announce two further partnerships in the immediate future. 
John Tamihere— 
Investigate 
 Interview 
5.  
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she stand by her statement that John Tamihere defamed the Hon Dr Michael Cullen when he said: “You’ve got Cullen—we wouldn’t survive without Cullen—he can cut a deal on a piece of legislation he can change a single word in a piece of legislation without those other … [parties] knowing about it and it melts down everything they wanted but they still think they got their clause in.”; if so why? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes because I believe that it does. 
Rodney Hide 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm then that Michael Cullen told the Maori Labour MPs that the foreshore and seabed legislation confirmed kaitiakitanga over the foreshore and seabed and provided proper process when in fact the legislation provides only for waka launching and collecting shellfish and buckets of sand; if that is not duplicitous what is? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am advised by the Deputy Prime Minister that that reference was to the ancestral connection orders which of course at a later point were taken out of the bill at the request of the Maori members. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Supplementary question Dr Don Brash. [ 
Interruption 
] Dr Don Brash’s question will be heard in silence. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Can the Prime Minister assure the House that Dr Cullen has never amended a piece of legislation to water down or change the effect of provisions that support parties thought they had agreed to; if not why not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I know that Dr Cullen deals with support parties openly honestly fairly and respectfully and I have no better support than to quote the leader of United Future who dismissed allegations of duplicitous dealings as absurd and also the co-leader of the Green Party who said that the passage being quoted certainly did not match that party’s experience. 
Heather Roy 
: Was it Michael Cullen double-crossing United Future that saw it voting for the definition of “family”— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. We are in trouble in terms of the Standing Orders. Standing Order 364 states that one should not make any “discreditable references to the House or any member of Parliament”. To accuse a member of Parliament of double-crossing is certainly discreditable. This is where we run into trouble when we demand strict interpretations of questions and answers. 
Rodney Hide 
: We have an interesting situation now because that is precisely what the primary question says; John Tamihere says precisely that Michael Cullen double-crosses the other parties and we will get ourselves into a great deal of trouble if we cannot actually refer to that article as I did in the primary question. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If a member objects to a personal reference then it is the practice that it must be withdrawn. There has been an objection. The member will please withdraw the reference and rephrase the question. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have ruled on that. Is this a new point of order? 
Rodney Hide 
: No I am asking for your guidance. As we cannot say “double-crossing” could we say “cheating” or “duplicitous”? What word would you prefer? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If a member objects on a strict interpretation of the rules the reference must be withdrawn. The member will please withdraw it and rephrase the question. 
Heather Roy 
: I withdraw and I ask the Prime Minister whether it was Michael Cullen tricking the United Future party that saw it voting for the definition of “family” in the Families Commission Bill; if not why else would a Christian party vote for that definition? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The answer to the first part of the question is “obviously not”. The answer to the second part is that United Future is responsible for how it votes and on what. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Does the Prime Minister recall with regard to the last question that what in fact happened was that negotiation took place between the Government and United Future on those phrases in the bill as originally presented that the bill was amended when it came back to the House to get a mutually agreeable position on that clause and that most of the phrases that were suggested came from this side rather than from her side? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I can absolutely confirm what the leader of United Future has said. Further his party’s willingness—as in so many cases the Green Party’s willingness—to work with this Government has made it a successful long-lived stable Government for New Zealand. 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. In the interests of protecting Dr Cullen’s reputation— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is this a point of order? 
Ron Mark 
: Yes it is. It is to do with people who might impugn the reputation of a right honourable member in this House which you are responsible for ensuring does not happen. Now that we have heard a direct admission from the leader of United Future that indeed it was he who tricked his own caucus surely the member should be required to withdraw that remark and apologise to Dr Cullen. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Does the Prime Minister sympathise with the Progressive Coalition members feeling short-changed when Dr Cullen fought tooth and nail in Cabinet to block 4 weeks’ annual leave but now claims all the credit? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I can say that Dr Cullen never took any such stance. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that my behaviour in terms of the undertakings I give not merely to coalition parties but Opposition parties in the House contrasts very substantially with promising not to sell any State assets before an election and then leading the sale of them afterwards as Mr Prebble did in 1987? 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. All questions require to be authenticated and that assurance was not given by me— 
Hon Member 
: Wasn’t it? 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: No it most certainly was not. The person who is doing the double-crossing is the person who is asking the question. But the second point is that I realise that Helen Clark from your ruling is not responsible for Mr Tamihere but how come she is now responsible for me? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I can confirm that I want no responsibility whatsoever for the member. 
Stephen Franks 
: How can Mr Dail Jones have been persuaded that the Maori Land Court has no jurisdiction to hear the Whakatohea claim to control 50 kilometres of Whakatane beach when John Tamihere who sold the deal to Maori thinks that Judge Joe Williams is dead right to take the claim unless this law too is another of Dr Cullen’s clever dupings of a gullible temporary ally? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I would say that there are two people in this House who know the foreshore and seabed legislation inside out; one is Dr Michael Cullen and other is Dail Jones who is very conversant with it. 
Kenneth Wang 
: Were not changes made to the amendments to the Resource Management Act after Jeanette Fitzsimons had chaired the committee and made recommendations exactly the sort of duplicitous behaviour John Tamihere has bragged about; if not why not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The member has not been here very long but chairs of select committees report bills back to the House. It is quite common after that for Supplementary Order Papers to come in and for the Government to look for support to pass them. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: If New Zealand First was not duped over the foreshore and seabed legislation why has the Government not been more vigorous in challenging Judge Joe Williams’ decision to hear the Whakatohea claim? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am advised by the Attorney-General that the Government certainly is contesting issues in the court. 
Dail Jones 
: Is it not the usual practice for any court whether it is a District Court a High Court a disputes tribunal or the Maori Land Court to accept any documents that are filed by it and for that court subsequently to make a decision as to whether the application is right or wrong because that is the basic principle of English justice the rule of law and matters that New Zealand First stands for but which neither the National Party nor ACT seem to understand? 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Point of order Gerry Brownlee. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: No I have been called. [ 
Interruption 
] No there are new rules around here. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the members sit down. The member’s question seemed very wide of the original question. Could he please rephrase it very succinctly. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Before you get the member Dail Jones to withdraw the inappropriate remarks he made at the end of his question I think you should take issue with Dr Cullen. The fact is that you called me and he stood on his feet and absolutely barracked in the most uncontrolled manner bringing disorder to the House. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: The member sat in his chair and tried to raise a point of order without rising and seeking the call. Whether you called him is irrelevant Madam Speaker. He cannot raise a point of order that way. Of course we have no trouble if question time takes a long time today. 
Rodney Hide 
: It may well have been that Mr Brownlee called inappropriately. The fact of the matter remains that you called Gerry Brownlee. He had started his point of order. I can understand Michael Cullen losing his temper these days. However he stood up on a point of order and barracked howled screamed and yelled at Mr Brownlee through the point of order and indeed at you Madam Speaker. The reality is that Michael Cullen should be the one you are censuring. Because certainly you cannot have two members on their feet speaking during a called point of order. The intent of Michael Cullen was not just to intimidate Gerry Brownlee which will never work it was actually to intimidate the Speaker; I take very very grave offence at Dr Michael Cullen’s behaviour during that point of order and you should hold him to account. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member. The Hon Dr Michael Cullen was right. I should not have called the member because he was seated. I did call the member however so would the member please give the House the benefit of his point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is it a new one? 
Rodney Hide 
: It is absolutely new. Are you now saying Madam Speaker that if a member disagrees with a point of order it is OK to take to his or her feet and shout and scream like a schoolboy throwing a tantrum and not getting his way and you stand up after that and say that Michael Cullen was quite right. That cannot be in order. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I certainly apologise to you. I have no intention of intimidating you but I would be very happy to raise further points of order when attempts are made to intimidate you and that particular member is by far the worst offender in that respect. 
Phil Heatley 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No I do not think that we need any more. We have lost track of what the original point of order was. I have ruled on that. I have invited Mr Brownlee— 
Phil Heatley 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No I am sorry. There is another point of order ahead of the member. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Madam Speaker as it happens you have probably sorted out the matter. As I understand it you did ask Mr Jones to withdraw the remarks he made at the end of his question. We thank you for that. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Precisely and I asked him whether he would please— 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I think that it is actually an important matter. All Speakers have said that if a member is raising a point of order the one thing that is completely out of order—and for which the censure is normally being sent out of the House—is to rise from one’s seat and to barrack the person making the point of order. It may well be that perhaps Dr Cullen is right that perhaps you should not have called Mr Brownlee but that is not the point. You did call him. Dr Cullen was absolutely out of order and he cannot get out of it by saying that he apologises to you. In fact he has to apologise to the House and at a minimum I think that you should ask Dr Cullen to withdraw and apologise. You might consider whether some other further sanction should be required but for you to decide to pass on well I just say to you that if that situation arises later and it is an Opposition member we will have complete disorder. I really think you should think hard about your deciding that Dr Cullen has the right and the sole right to rise in his place and object to what is actually a ruling of yours. You called Gerry Brownlee so his abuse that he hurtled at Mr Brownlee was abuse at you. Of course apologies are not made just to the Speaker; they are made to the whole House and the proper way to do it is to say: “I withdraw and apologise.”—not to add further abuse against an ACT member who was in no way involved in this incident. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. During that point of order Mr Prebble did exactly what Mr Hide has done on a number of occasions: he said that if you did not do certain things and if you did other things there would be disorder. That in itself is out of order. Members cannot rise on a point of order and threaten to create disorder if they do not get the ruling they like. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Hon Michael Cullen did apologise. I heard him withdraw and apologise even if others did not. I accepted that apology and we were moving forward. I suggest that is what we do now. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: A new point of order? 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Absolutely. I am raising a point of order against the statements made by Dr Cullen under a point of order. He suggested that I was threatening the Chair and I most certainly refute that. In fact I was rising to support the Chair and to give you the advice that if we were to create an unfortunate precedent in the future it would be used. That is not threatening the Chair; that is just my giving the advice that I have. If Dr Cullen had been here for a little longer he would have known that that was excellent advice. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Apart from the obvious point that I actually outrank the member in terms of continuous service in this House could I point out to him that as so often with Mr Prebble he has quietly forgotten half of what he said. He actually said that if members did certain things then disorder would follow. There was a clear intention to indicate that disorder would follow from certain members of which he was one. That is a threat we have heard rather too often in this House over recent weeks—that unless certain rulings are obtained then certain action will flow—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would Judith Collins—sorry Sandra Goudie—please leave the House for talking during a point of order. 
Sandra Goudie withdrew from the Chamber. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: It is a matter I do feel quite strongly about because we have seen on a number of occasions recently members effectively state that unless you give the ruling they want trouble will follow in some form or another. Mr Prebble actually said that. He might have forgotten he said it but that is actually what he implied in his original point of order. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I will rule on it— 
Stephen Franks 
: I raise a point of order— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Mr Franks I am on my feet. I have heard enough discussion on this particular point of order. Once the Speaker has decided she has heard enough argument on a point of order that is the end of the matter. I will now rule on the point of order. I want to assure the House that the Speaker does not feel intimidated by the comments that have been made but I also wish to assure the House that in future the rules will be applied much more rigidly. I ask all members who have an objection to anything to please raise it by standing in their seats and calling for a point of order. Could we now please move on. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am obliged to you for your ruling and if you are now going to rule more strictly it is absolutely out of order for Dr Cullen to get up on a point of order and suggest that I was intimidating the Chair. I take very grave exception to that and I believe he should be asked to withdraw those remarks and apologise for having made them. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Mr Prebble if you did not intend to threaten the Chair then your word is accepted and I have accepted it. Let us now move on. 
Stephen Franks 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The rules—many many pages of these rules—turn on conduct that tends to disorder. It is perfectly appropriate without raising the slightest imputation of threat—or even appearing to give credence to it by suggesting that you are willing because of the rules to accept Mr Prebble’s denial—for any member of this House to urge you to a certain course of action because doing otherwise might tend to disorder. We watched disorder in the House from this end. We took no part in it. In the course of one member’s further point of order reference was made to us as though we were responsible. You have now just made a comment to Mr Prebble that in the conventions of speech in this House implies that you are making some concession by allowing him to refute an imputation that he did not make. I wanted to take a point of order to urge that no ruling be made that even intimated that one could not raise the prospect of disorder in a point to the Speaker. It is disorder that most of those rules around inferences and imputations or criticisms of others are oriented round and we must not be constrained by someone taking a point to say we cannot even raise it. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member but he is relitigating the point that has been decided.  
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I just want to draw to your attention the issue of the apology from Dr Cullen. Yesterday the Prime Minister was required to withdraw and apologise. She used the wrong words you made her go back and do it again—quite appropriately—and that was accepted by the House. I think if you look at  
Hansard 
 you will find that Dr Cullen has not stood and withdrawn and apologised to the House. What he did do was to get up and apologise to you and he made that quite specific. Whether he wants to apologise to you is his business; it is nothing to do with the order of the House. The requirement for an apology is that a member stand withdraw and apologise without qualification. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I am afraid the member is wrong. I said: “I withdraw and apologise.” and then I raised a point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I ask you to reflect on two points. The first is that Mr Prebble quite rightly took grave offence at the comments that Dr Michael Cullen made and I believe that you actually sided with Richard Prebble in that. But the remedy is simple: Michael Cullen has to withdraw and apologise for what he said in his point of order. He has failed to do that. I shall make a second observation which I ask you to reflect on. Gerry Brownlee was giving a point of order; Michael Cullen stood up and barracked him from his seat. Michael Cullen was asked to withdraw and apologise to the House which I believe he did. Sandra Goudie during a point of order just made a comment. She did not get an opportunity to withdraw and apologise; you sent her out. I think you made the right choice in respect of Sandra Goudie but how come Michael Cullen is not out of here? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member is just relitigating the point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is it a new point of order? 
Rodney Hide 
: It is my first point of order. Why is Michael Cullen not being required to withdraw and apologise to Mr Prebble? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have ruled on that matter. The Minister did withdraw and apologise. I accepted that there was no intimidation intended. We will now move on to Dail Jones’ supplementary question. 
Dail Jones 
: Is it not normal practice for any court to accept any application that is lodged before it and to deal with it accordingly? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I accept the member’s word and defer to his knowledge of legal matters which is considerable. 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: Can she deny that the Hon Phil Goff arranged for a $900000 project for safer community councils to be knocked back by a Cabinet committee only to resurrect it at the full Cabinet where the funding was taken out of the $2 million closing the gaps project Tu Rangatira with Te Runanga o Raukawa and what is that if it is not duplicitous? 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I think we are still on question No. 5. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: We are on question No. 5 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Indeed question No. 5 is about Mr Tamihere’s comments about me and nobody else. To try to expand this question out to deal with other members of Cabinet is I suggest beyond the scope of the original question. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: We are aware that Dr Cullen in addition to his serious duties as Leader of the House is also the Minister of Finance. If there was a switching of financial matters from one vote to another it would have required the attention of the Minister of Finance and that is implicit within the question. This is definitely a reference to Mr Cullen and whether he is too clever. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Ruling on the point of order I say that that was ingenious but let me say at the margins. Would the Prime Minister please address the question. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I have no knowledge whatsoever of the matters the member has raised. If she wishes to explore them she should put down questions on notice to the relevant Ministers. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Reflecting on that answer and other answers that she has given does she accept the dilemma that the House is in? A former Cabinet Minister and an honourable member of this House has given a 4-page interview making many many allegations that I understand Mr Tamihere stands by and she just gets up in the House and says that they are not true and will not go through each allegation but yesterday she actually told us that one allegation in the article is true—that Dr Cullen is clever. Given the fact that she is not prepared to deal with each allegation how is the House to decide what is true and what is not and why does she not do what would be done in the British House of Commons in this situation: simply rise and make as she can a ministerial statement under Standing Order 341 and go through each allegation and tell us which one is true and which one is not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I would be very surprised if the member could draw the House’s attention to any ministerial statement in the House of Commons responding to some comments made by a back-bencher to a journalist over lunch with half a glass of wine. 
Rodney Hide 
: Has John Tamihere advised her that National’s Richard Worth has been in active discussion with him about joining the National Party as a Maori MP or is that something else that John Tamihere has not told her about? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That question does not relate to a ministerial responsibility. It deals with the role as party leader. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Having said that it might be handy to know because Mr Worth himself would like to know where that story came from. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: We all know that that was not a point of order but the point has been made. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. It is quite easy: Richard Worth can get up and make a personal explanation— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is also not a point of order. 
Judith Collins 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The Hon Trevor Mallard has made all sorts of cheap shots across the House today using my name and in fact you used my name when you meant another member of Parliament. I would like that Minister to be asked to withdraw and apologise for the imputation that I would have made such a comment. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I am sorry; I did not hear what that comment was and I am sitting quite close to him. 
Judith Collins 
: Well he is right beside you Madam Speaker— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Yes that is right and I genuinely did not hear it. 
Judith Collins 
: He said that the comment that John Tamihere had been asked by Richard Worth to join the National Party had come from Judith Collins and I would like him to withdraw and apologise. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Did the Minister say that? 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I did say “Judith Collins” and I am prepared to withdraw and apologise for— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Thank you that is all we need. [ 
Interruption 
] You have withdrawn and apologised unequivocally for what you said. 
John Carter 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. A member cannot qualify a withdrawal and apology. The member should just stand up and apologise. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: This is actually quite important because what Ms Collins claims the Minister said—and it is hard sometimes to hear across the House—he says he did not say. He said he simply said “Judith Collins”. One cannot be required to withdraw and apologise for something one did not say and that is why the Minister indicated what he did say before withdrawing and apologising for it. 
Judith Collins 
: I do not think the House should be fooled into thinking that Trevor Mallard just spontaneously says “Judith Collins” every time he looks over this side. Maybe he says it in his dreams but I do not think he says it in the House! [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Right settle down; I know it is members’ day and members have little else to do. Does the member want the Minister to withdraw and apologise? 
Judith Collins 
: Yes I do. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: He has done that I did not hear any equivocation of that but would the Minister do it again without further comment so we can please move on. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Pharmac—Subsidies 
6.  
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: Is she satisfied that Pharmac’s current approach to subsidising pharmaceuticals gives adequate weight to future savings in health and welfare expenditure; if so why? 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 Yes Pharmac is careful to ensure that any cost offsets in health are taken into consideration when it makes funding decisions. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: How does the Minister reconcile that answer with the fact that research shows that for every dollar spent on pharmaceuticals $3.85 is saved on other surgical and medical procedures and also with the comments made by the chief executive of Pharmac that: “Pharmac must remember that every dollar spent on pharmaceuticals is potentially a dollar that cannot be spent elsewhere in the health sector.”? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: There are and can be cost savings from pharmaceuticals. Health costs can include hospitalisation surgery or entry into nursing homes. However not all funding decisions result in savings elsewhere and sometimes those savings can take years before they take effect. For example we now fund quite a large number of New Zealanders with statins which reduce cholesterol. But at this point in time we continue to need a large number of heart operations. In the future we may well get those benefits; they are not captured at this point. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Is the Minister aware of any example of costs being offset in the health sector by Pharmac’s funding decisions? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Yes. Pharmac began funding Tiotropium for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from February 2005—an investment of $33 million over 5 years. About 40 percent of this cost will be offset by an expected reduction in people admitted to hospital with respiratory problems. We have not achieved that saving yet but it is expected. 
Barbara Stewart 
: Does she consider it satisfactory that Pharmac’s monopoly on drug purchasing results in doctors’ treatment decisions being dependent upon Pharmac approval—for example the use of TNF inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Doctors have the right to prescribe any medicine that has been approved by the regulator Medsafe. Usually they will try to prescribe a medicine that has a full subsidy or a partial subsidy but they are not restricted in what they can prescribe. 
Sue Kedgley 
: Why is it that despite high numbers of adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals this Government has not made it compulsory for consumer information on possible adverse reactions to be provided with all medicines nor has it followed Australia’s example and funded pharmacists to review medicines being taken by high users to check for possible adverse reactions and to recommend necessary changes? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: When prescribing doctors are very aware of adverse reactions and I would be very surprised if most doctors when prescribing do not advise their patient of those adverse reactions. In fact if there are adverse reactions we have a centre for adverse reactions to medicine which monitors the side effects of drugs reported not only by prescribers and pharmacists but also by patients. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Why does the Minister remain so satisfied with Pharmac’s performance when it is borne in mind that in the developed world only Portugal and Japan have less access to new medicines than New Zealand? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: We can always do better but I think the member would be most concerned if the cost of pharmaceuticals was to spiral out of control and we were unable to provide many of the other procedures and health services that New Zealanders want. I find it interesting that we now have countries like Belgium the United States and Canada looking very carefully at what New Zealand does in pharmaceuticals because they are finding it very difficult to be able to pay for them. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Would the establishment of a national medicines policy that seeks to ensure appropriate balances between pharmaceutical policy curative care and other surgical and medical procedures be one of the ways in which we could do better; if so why has she so far refused to do any work on implementing such a policy in New Zealand? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I agree with the member that there is a need to do work on the long-term sustainability of health funding which includes pharmaceuticals. Certainly the Prime Minister announced such work in December and she is supported very strongly by the Minister of Finance and the health Ministers. But it would be unfair to say that we do not have a pharmaceutical framework in New Zealand. It is made up of first of all Medsafe which regulates our pharmaceuticals then Pharmac which manages the funding through an evidence-based assessment the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring to best-practice advocacy advice and now a 3-year funding path. The only thing missing in what we do if it is compared with Australia is that we do not include direct Government funding to the pharmaceutical industry. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Does the Minister not recall her answers to questions for written answer Nos 12899 12910 12911 and 12912 last year—in September of last year in fact—in which she stated that she had not agreed to the development of a national medicines policy that she had received no advice on the desirability of a national medicines policy that she had not received any advice from her department and that she had set aside no funding for the development of a national medicines policy; and if she does not recall those answers how does she reconcile the answers she has given in the House today with those answers already on the public record? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I certainly recall those answers. The member talked about a national medicine policy; I talked about the Government looking at long-term sustainable funding for health. That could include medicines so it is not a matter of just the single issue that that member is pursuing but of the whole sector. 
Traffic Policing—Detectives 
7.  
RON MARK (NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Are detectives being reassigned from investigative duties to undertake traffic policing; if so why? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I am advised that detectives are not reassigned from their primary duties. They are police officers and they will deal with offences as they are detected which may include traffic policing. 
Ron Mark 
: Would it concern the Minister to know that senior members of the police force are becoming so fed up with the barrage of misinformation from his office that they are writing to me personally to alert me to the fact that investigators are being pulled off their normal duties to do traffic duties like manning checkpoints “at a time when a large amount of serious crime is not being investigated because there are not enough investigators to go around.”? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: There may be some police who will write to that member but I can tell him that the crime rate is dropping. It dropped 8.2 percent last year and the police are doing very well. 
Dr Richard Worth 
: Why with at least 2000 unassigned cases piling up in police stations around the country will the police not ease up on issuing minor traffic tickets and focus on responding to serious criminal activity? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I would like to remind that member that our road toll is very high and if the police think that that is the best way of getting it down then I fully support them—unlike the National Party which does not support the police. 
Paul Adams 
: Has the Minister seen United Future’s policy to evaluate the effectiveness of integrated police and traffic enforcement with a view to deciding whether traffic police should have a separate division; and does he agree that such an evaluation is urgently needed in light of growing concerns about police priorities and resources? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: No. 
Ron Mark 
: How can the Minister not be concerned when senior members of the police force are condemning the Government’s ring-fencing agenda as being so restrictive that area commanders are insisting that investigators do not obtain search warrants in relation to drug offences as the investigation of drug offences is not a priority area assigned to that district where quite interestingly enough traffic policing is? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: There might be some disgruntled police officers who may write to members but most police are happy in doing the job and in getting crime down. The rate of crime has dropped 8.2 percent over the last 12 months. Perhaps the member has not noticed that and perhaps he might change his attitude and start supporting the New Zealand Police. 
Ron Mark 
: Why does the Minister continue to crow about police statistics when senior investigators reject them as “being deliberately manipulated to show both an increased resolution level and a decrease in reported crime”; and is it not a fact that when dealing with dishonesty offences committed by juvenile offenders for example officers are being told to record such offences using youth incident codes rather than dishonesty offence codes—which removes the offending from the official crime statistics? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The way crime statistics are gathered has not changed for a number of years. 
Suicide—Reports 
8.  
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
 to the  
Associate Minister of Health 
: What recent reports has he received relating to suicide and what do these indicate? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 I have received two reports which I have publicly released today. The first is the Ministry of Health’s report  
Suicide Facts—Provisional 2002 
All-ages 
Statistics 
. The second is a review  
Suicide and the Media: A study of the media response to Suicide and the Media: The reporting and portrayal of suicide in the media 
 which is another Ministry of Health publication. 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The first shows that the number of New Zealanders taking their own lives continues to fall which I am sure all members of the House will see as good news. The Ministry of Health’s report  
Suicide Facts 
 shows that a total of 460 people died by committing suicide in 2002 compared with 507 in 2001. Of course no complacency can be offered with regard to the number of deaths—they are all tragic. The suicide rate has declined by 25 percent since reaching a peak in 1998—from 14.3 to 10.7 deaths per 100000 people over the last 5 years—and is now at its lowest level since 1985. The second report recommends that the Government needs to work more closely with media organisations in relation to reporting suicide. Those reports can be found on the Ministry of Health’s new suicide prevention web page. 
Moana Mackey 
: What action is the Labour-Progressive Government taking to ensure that the downward trend in our suicide rates continues? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The youth suicide prevention strategy has now been in place for around 6 years and has had encouraging evaluations and results. The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Youth Development are currently leading the work on developing a new national strategy that will incorporate those results and that will address suicide and suicide attempts across all ages. It is not commonly recognised in New Zealand that although the youth suicide rate—that is from ages 18 to 24—has been very high 80 percent of all suicides happen outside that age range; in other words in older New Zealanders. So that is why the strategy has now been widened to cover all ages in the community. 
Hon Matt Robson 
: What further work has been done in the area of suicide and will there be public consultation on the new suicide strategy? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The answer is a considerable amount particularly with regard to the period post suicide attempts and regarding assistance for families where there has been a suicide. The strategy for all ages which I referred to earlier will be released for public consultation next month. 
Police Wellington—Staffing 
9. Dr RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
 on behalf of  
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Does Wellington have enough police; if so why? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 Last year crime in the Wellington area dropped by 11 percent. That is the sign of a well-led well-resourced police service and the public are well pleased with that. 
Dr Richard Worth 
: In the light of that answer how does he explain the fact that Wellington’s front-line police numbers are so depleted that public confidence is down as measured police are speaking out about chronic shortages and the mayor is pleading with Ministers for additional staff? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The police and leaders always want additional staff. However I can tell the member that Wellington residents when asked in a recent survey about their sense of freedom from crime in the home after dark felt the safest—94 percent thought that. 
Georgina Beyer 
: Has the Minister received any reports about policing in the Wellington area? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Yes. Just today the National Party candidate for Wellington Central said: “I have had a wonderful experience. I was burgled just the other day and the fingerprinting guys were awesome. They came within 2 hours.” That was on Linda Clark’s show this morning. 
Dr Richard Worth 
: Which other Wellington local authority leaders apart from the Mayor of Wellington have raised concerns with the Minister about staffing in their areas? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Mayors over the last 5 years have come with issues and I have always listened and that is why crime is down by 11 percent in the Wellington area. 
111 System—Lone Star Cafe Newmarket 
10.  
RON MARK (NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Was there an armed robbery at the Lone Star Café in Newmarket Auckland on Easter Monday night; if so what was the timing of events from the time of the robbery the first 111 call and the police arriving at the scene of the crime? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I am advised that the police received a call from the Lone Star Cafe regarding an armed robbery at 8.56 p.m. The robbery had occurred some 4 minutes earlier. Police staff arrived at 9.06 p.m. 
Ron Mark 
: Why is it that despite the police commenting in the  
New Zealand Herald  
that the incident happened at 10 p.m. three witnesses at the scene of the armed robbery state that the incident occurred at 8.40 p.m.; and can he explain why there has been a deliberate attempt to cover up the true response time that it took for the police to attend this very serious crime scene? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I cannot explain who gives that member information. It amazes me. 
Ron Mark 
: Is it not a fact that his answers yesterday and the information that has been published in the newspaper today from the police which indicates that the Lone Star Cafe was happy with the police response are a result of the Lone Star Cafe in Newmarket not wanting to make an issue of the delayed police response—[ 
Interruption 
] I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Are you going to throw Lianne Dalziel out of the House? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Can members please be heard in silence? 
Ron Mark 
: —and that the time that he has given us is not the time that he indicated yesterday; and can he therefore explain to the House what is more important to him: protecting the reputation of a business or getting to the bottom of what truly happened with this 111 call in order to ensure that the lives of patrons of restaurants who are caught in such a situation are not unduly and unnecessarily jeopardised? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: No I just answer with the facts. But I would say that the  
New Zealand Herald  
reported that a spokesman from the cafe said that there were no problems with the police getting there or with the handling of the robbery—they had done a very good job. 
International Energy Agency—Oil Conservation 
11.  
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Energy 
: Has he received an invitation from the International Energy Agency to comment on its draft report  
Saving Oil in a Hurry: Measures for Rapid Demand Restraint in Transport 
; if so how will he respond? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 No I have not. New Zealand officials attended an International Energy Agency workshop on saving oil in a hurry and demand restraint measures for transport on 7 and 8 March this year. I am advised that the key messages from that workshop will be incorporated into the International Energy Agency publication referred to in the question but not yet published. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Can the Minister confirm that New Zealand is a signatory to the Agreement on an International Energy Program of 1974 which requires signatories to develop a rapid demand response to oil shortages; if that is the case what are the measures in New Zealand’s plan and in what order will they be implemented? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I will take the member’s word on the timing of the convention. On the response measures in crude oil we have seen some publicity around that. As far as the details of the response plan go if the member would like that from me I am happy to arrange a briefing for her. 
Gordon Copeland 
: Is the Minister aware that the price of oil per barrel would have to reach US$104 to be in real terms where it was in 1979 and 1980; and does he therefore believe that it would be prudent for us to proceed on these matters with a degree of caution rather than a degree of panic as has sometimes come through in Jeanette Fitzsimons’ questions to him? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Again I will take the member’s word as to the cost of living. I think that the Greens are right to put these matters before us but I do not feel quite the same sense of urgency that they do. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: With reference to that last question is the Minister aware that Goldman Sachs is predicting a price of over US$100 per barrel shortly and that there has already been a futures trade for US$100 per barrel for June this year? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I am not aware of the Goldman Sachs predictions. I am aware of the futures trade and I have my bike out. 
Peter Brown 
: Is the Minister aware that Green members are going around this country talking about peak oil; and does the Minister share New Zealand First’s view that there is a difference between high-priced oil and peak oil and that it does a great disservice to New Zealand as a whole for party members to go scaremongering around the country as Greens members have been? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think there is agreement that at some stage peak oil will occur. There is no doubt—it is a question of when. We have seen estimates that have gone out to the 2060s on that. There is a consensus amongst some commentators that it will occur in the 2030s but I do not see any real sign of panic at the pumps at the moment. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Is the Minister concerned that the report  
Saving Oil in a Hurry: Measures for Rapid Demand Restraint in Transport 
 states that increased use of public transport can contribute little to saving oil quickly in New Zealand unlike other countries because we lack the buses trains and ferries that would be needed to expand services urgently; would it not be better to prepare now by building those systems rather than to suffer carless days and rationing which are the elements in the plan we are signed up to? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: There has been quite a lot of resource headed into the passenger transport area from this Government over the last couple of years and I thank the member for the work she has done to help that. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Is the Minister’s Government still committed to article 41 of the Agreement on an International Energy Program which promises national programmes to reduce dependence on imported oil over the longer term; if so what are the next steps in New Zealand’s programme to reduce that dependence given that our oil imports have risen by 53 percent since that agreement was signed? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I am not sure that the member will entirely like the answer but we are helping to drill quite a lot more. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Has the International Energy Agency given any reason for wanting to trigger emergency response actions when oil supply drops by as little as 1 to 2 million barrels per day rather than the 7 million barrels per day in the original agreement? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Not directly to me. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Did the Minister see the statements in  
The Economist 
 on Monday that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries can pump—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would members please leave the Chamber if they wish to speak. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Did the Minister see the statements in  
The Economist 
 on Monday that OPEC can pump only another 1½ million barrels a day “—before it smacks up against its production ceiling” and further that: “… supply and demand would seem to be heading for a showdown.”; if so does he agree that the International Energy Agency’s hair trigger proposals are driven less by the risk of short-term supply disruptions than by permanent oil depletion? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Not yet. 
Land Transport New Zealand—Licensing Fraud in the Asian Community 
12.  
PANSY WONG (National) 
 to the  
Minister for Transport Safety 
: When was Land Transport New Zealand first alerted to claims of licensing fraud in the Asian community and on what date did they begin formal investigation of these claims? 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Transport) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister for Transport Safety 
: I am advised that the relevant dates are 11 February 2005 and 11 February 2005. 
Pansy Wong 
: Can the Minister confirm that Land Transport New Zealand received various claims about licensing fraud as early as July 2003 as outlined in a letter from a group of registered driving instructors who raised concerns through letters and meetings about the ability of some communities to sell international licences and fix practical test results and about interpreters illegally assisting applicants; and can the Minister confirm that no serious and wide investigation was undertaken until 23 March 2005 as reported in the  
New Zealand Herald 
? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The answer to the latter part of the member’s question is no she is wrong. I gave the date in my answer to her main question not as 23 March but as 11 February. As to the first part of the member’s question Land Transport New Zealand advises that it evaluates all such claims and I imagine they investigate those that show the most promise. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: How was the alleged driver licensing fraud detected? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Land Transport New Zealand advises that it was alerted to the alleged fraud by a driver licensing applicant. As is standard practice all such claims are taken seriously and on this occasion an investigation was initiated immediately. 
Peter Brown 
: Will the Minister give the House an assurance that the Government will address the driver licensing fraud issue that all New Zealanders involved will be severely dealt with and that any Asians involved will be sent packing back where they came from? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The answers to the three assurances sought are as follows. I am very happy to assert not only that the Government will investigate promising complaints but also that it already has and that two arrests have been made. How complaints are dealt with is a matter for the police and the courts. As to the question of whether Asians should be sent back home I would like to make the comment that I do not believe for a minute either that this abuse is the strict preserve of Asians or that the majority of Asians have anything to do with it and I resent the member’s implications. 
Pansy Wong 
: Does the Minister still stand by his answer to my written question of 15 December 2004 that Land Transport New Zealand does not monitor ethnic newspapers for advertisements because the organisation does not have staff who have the ability to translate and monitor ethnic publications; and is that why advertisements offering learner drivers guaranteed fair passes on theory tests and their choice of preferred testing official continued to appear in newspapers as recently as Friday 31 March 2005 at the time when Land Transport New Zealand was supposed to be investigating these scams? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I can confirm the written answers given earlier. I would further comment that I doubt that Land Transport New Zealand buys and reads all English newspapers either frankly. Given public attention to such advertisements as might appear in a Chinese language newspaper I do not think there will be many more but I have no doubt that if there are there will be no shortage of people wanting to tell us all about it. 
Pansy Wong 
: I seek the leave of the House to table three documents. The first is a letter detailing complaints made since 2003 on matters including international students offering driving lessons the sale of international licences and related problems of the current licensing system. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Pansy Wong 
: The second is a driving instructor’s advertisement offering guaranteed passes on theory tests as well as a choice of one’s preferred testing officer dated 31 March 2005. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Pansy Wong 
: The third comprises three driving instructors’ advertisements offering guaranteed passes on theory tests passes on the first go a choice of one’s testing officer and testing route and weekend tests all dated 31 March 2005. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Points of Order 
Member's Withdrawal from Chamber—Sandra Goudie 
SIMON POWER (Senior Whip—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I have left the point of order until the conclusion of question time. It relates to your requiring Sandra Goudie to leave the Chamber. We do not of course dispute that decision; that would be contrary to the Standing Orders. I seek from you some guidance on interjections and your ruling on how members are to be treated if they interject during points of order. My records indicate that on 16 March this year—they are my records alone—Annette King interjected three times during points of order and no action was taken at that time. My understanding—and I stand to be corrected—is that Sandra Goudie interjected during a point of order for the first time. I would ask that a degree of consistency be applied between senior Government Ministers interjecting on points of order and Opposition back-benchers doing the same. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I take the member’s point. As has come from the debate during question time today there will be a much stricter application of all the rules in the future. 
General Debate 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. It is my very great pleasure as a member from the Wellington region to take the lead in this debate today. I want to say how interesting it is that when John Key sees a Bill English supporter as a possible candidate to run Marian Hobbs close at the election John Key does his best to undermine his campaign. That is what John Key has done. He knows that Blumsky is on Bill English’s side and that is why he has very deliberately undermined his campaign. That is what happens when Tories scrap; that is one of their approaches. But it is interesting that so far before the election—due in September—the various alternative leaders after Dr Brash ceases to be the leader are already jostling for position and sticking their knives into people who are not even in this House before they have a chance to get here. That is what John Key does. 
It is particularly interesting that that member has not named which schools the teachers will be going from. We have 2700 extra teachers over and above the roll growth and he will not say which schools the teachers will come from. He will not say which of the hospitals he will close as he gets rid of the 3300 extra nurses. That is the number of extra nurses. There is a new hospital in Helensville. Will he take the nurses out of that hospital? 
John Key 
: No. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Oh so he will not. He will pick on Mr Brownlee’s electorate. He has promised to slash the numbers in the State sector and that—[ 
Interruption 
] Maybe what John Key will do is to take out some of the 950 extra doctors who are now in the system and not use them. 
John Key 
: No. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: He will not take out any of the 900 doctors. Well what about the prison officers? Will he slash the number of prison officers? He will slash the prison officers and let the criminals roam free. That is the approach of John Key. 
Maybe John Key will take out some of the 400 new Child Youth and Family Services social workers who have come in during the time of this Government. There has been more than a 50 percent increase in the number of social workers. They are public servants. John Key is quiet now. I tell members that he will not deny the cuts for the social workers—that is John Key. What about the police? There are 1080 extra police staff. Will he knock them out of Wellington Central? Is that not an interesting approach? We have Tony Ryall on the one hand saying Wellington needs to have more police and John Key on the other saying National will cut their numbers. What an approach! But we know of course that Tony Ryall is on Bill English’s side and that is why John Key says that—and it is confirmed with a nod and a wink from Gerry Brownlee on this occasion. 
There are some interesting facts that need to be said. National says that we have a bloated public service. But after the cuts of the “mother of all Budgets” of 1994 when Ruth Richardson had done her worst—[ 
Interruption 
] John Key knows when he is in trouble does he not? He gets noisier and noisier. In 1994 we had a lot more public servants than we have now after Ruth Richardson had done her worst. What has happened in recent years? The public service has grown at about the same rate as the growth in jobs in the rest of the economy. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: About the same. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well at about the same rate. People are getting more and more jobs. Actually more people are paying tax so we do need to have some more people at the Inland Revenue Department. We have more students and therefore we have more student loans so we need to have some more people at Work and Income in order to do the processing for that. 
Is National’s leader to be John Key or is it Bill English? That is the question. 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 Let me start by making this point very plain: I make no personal allegations against the Prime Minister Helen Clark. I have read and re-read like most members in this House John Tamihere’s interview and I do not think that he actually makes allegations against Helen Clark. But what he says is something that is very serious and it is something that New Zealanders need to know. It is this: that Helen Clark has surrounded herself with homosexuals with a homosexual agenda. That is what John Tamihere has said. He has said that Helen Clark’s advisers and key people are not representative of New Zealand. In fact John Tamihere goes on to say that they would not know what being a father was like. They would not know what it was like to go to sports. That is the point that John Tamihere has made. I do not think that John Tamihere has a problem with diversity; I think the issue is the uni-dimensional approach that Helen Clark her advisers and her Cabinet have taken. 
It is all very well for Helen Clark to stand up and say the interview is drivel. It is all very well for Helen Clark to stand up and say that John Tamihere had had too much to drink. It is all very well for Helen Clark to stand up and say that he was stressed. I notice that the gallery and the media say that they go with John Tamihere’s motivations. But what needs to be dealt with here are the facts of what John Tamihere is telling us about this Government. That is what is interesting about the article—not John Tamihere’s motivations and not Helen Clark’s spin but what John Tamihere was saying. I note that the  
New Zealand Herald 
 states that John Tamihere has been honest. I think that is the problem that Helen Clark and this Government are dealing with. John Tamihere has been honest about the fact that there is a very narrow lesbian cabal advising the Prime Minister that there is an overwhelming dominance of the union movement in this Government and that if one steps out of line one gets punished with close to fisticuffs. That is what John Tamihere said. We can see that because even the great brave John Tamihere is going to be brought back here whipped like a dog to give a “girlie-man” apology. That is what we are going to see from John Tamihere. 
But the issue is this: this is supposed to be a House of Representatives. It is important that we represent all New Zealanders. Whether they are lesbians gays brown black or yellow that is important. But it is wrong for a Government to represent just a very narrow segment of society and to run that agenda. That is the claim that John Tamihere is making against Helen Clark and this Government and that claim is not being responded to. That is the problem that the Government fronts. I ask this: when did Helen Clark last take a child to sports—to practice or to a game? 
Hon Annette King 
: When did you last take your wife? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well I did that last Saturday and the Saturday before then. I tell Annette King that that is what I did and that John Tamihere makes a point because this Government does not know what it is to be a hard-working family with other concerns. What is the phrase that John Tamihere used? I tell Annette King that the Government has nothing to do but to plot plan trick and cheat the United Future party on my left. The United Future members are good Christian people who do not even realise that they are being cheated and tricked. But we know that Michael Cullen brags about it. He brags about it to John Tamihere and when John Tamihere raises it we have to accept his word do we not? He is an honourable member. 
No one from the Government has stood up and given a personal explanation that what John Tamihere said was false. No Minister has made a ministerial statement and the Prime Minister has not made a statement to this House that it was false. We have seen deep into the dark side of Helen Clark and this Government from the one person who would know: John Tamihere who has been in Government for 5 years and sitting around the Cabinet table for 2 years. He knows he had told us and the  
New Zealand Herald  
is right. It is an honest account. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 Tempted as I am to deal with the diversions that we have seen for most of the afternoon I want to talk in the time available to me about an issue that affects the lives of a large number of New Zealanders—that is the way in which Pharmac administers pharmaceutical policy in this country. 
As I speak in the House this afternoon 100000 New Zealand diabetics are suffering from their illness yet under Pharmac’s policy only 3000 of those 100000 have access to the medications they need. The New Zealanders who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease get no assistance in the way of Pharmac funding for medications that deal with their condition nor do those with Parkinson’s disease receive some of the new medicines being developed. The dopamine agonists are not funded nor is the latest catechol-0-methyl transferase inhibitor Contan. Adult patients with rheumatoid arthritis are not being funded for their medication. In fact some of them are paying $500 a week privately at a time when Treasury tells us that the average wage is $554 a week. Only 210 out of 3500 relapsing and remitting multiple sclerosis sufferers have subsidised access to Betaferon. The rest either suffer in agony or pay privately. The Government and others have made a huge—and proper—cry about the need for better detection of breast cancer and better treatment for breast cancer sufferers. In fact at the moment only those with advanced breast cancer get subsidised medicines out of Pharmac. 
This is a crisis. The reality we have in this country is that New Zealanders have less access to new medicines than people living in every other country apart from either Portugal or Japan. We are a small market economy of just 4 million people and we are not an attractive market anyway for pharmaceutical investment. Yet we see the absence of a coherent medicines policy which is leaving New Zealanders exposed and suffering. 
In this House a few weeks ago a lot of concern was expressed about the failure of the flu vaccine supply policy this year but in actual fact we now discover that that is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Last year alone sole supply problems occurred with Allohexal Ativan Ferrograd Folic and Ponstan. The year before there were a whole series of other conditions. Going back even further we find that other conditions have not been funded. 
Now Pharmac has the gall to say that last year it funded 15 new medicines. On investigation it can be discovered that 10 of them were medicines and five of them were actually special foods. But New Zealanders after New Zealanders are suffering because of the way in which successive Governments have applied that policy. I know of small groups of people in this country who suffer unusual conditions and who need assistance often at a costly price that they cannot get from Pharmac. 
When the issue of a national medicines policy has been raised the Minister as she acknowledged in the House this afternoon has ruled it out. Allegedly according to the Ministry of Health it would cost around $60 million to implement. There is now a position where there is no confidence in our drug-buying agency—a position where most New Zealanders feel that Pharmac’s primary function rather than negotiating the best price for pharmaceuticals is now making clinical judgments about what pharmaceuticals are appropriate for particular conditions. 
Every member will know of the cases that come before them on a frequent basis of individuals who say: “I have been told I need this for my particular condition but all I can get a prescription for is some generic set of alternatives.” It has gone too far. We face a situation where we need a coherent strategy that brings the pharmaceutical equation into our overall approach to medicine. What we have had for too long has been an approach that has seen pharmaceuticals as somehow either an attractive added extra that we cannot afford or the product of some vast set of multinational conglomerates with agendas that are other than beneficial to the people of New Zealand. 
The net consequence of that attitude and of a chronic underfunding of Pharmac to do its work is the crisis situation we now face. So we can talk about other diversions in this House if we like but those realities will remain. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Anyone observing the House this afternoon would have been struck by the absolute mess that the House had got itself into for the simple reason that the Prime Minister does not want to acknowledge that what John Tamihere said in the  
Investigate 
 article is true. The Prime Minister wants to pretend that somehow Mr Tamihere is the one who is different not her close cabal of advisers. 
For years National MPs have been saying things about Labour Ministers the inside workings of the Labour Party and the advice stream on the ninth floor along the lines of what Mr Tamihere said in  
Investigate 
 magazine. Those things have not been picked up on because we are in Opposition and they are what anybody would expect to hear from an Opposition. But that man is on the inside. That man has said that it looks rosy on the outside but it is not rosy on the inside. Because he is saying what is actually happening and because he has exposed the truth of how the Labour Party reaches its decisions and of how the Prime Minister decides what she will or will not support it has a greater resonance. 
Not one member of the Labour Government should be comforted by the way in which the editorials the talkbacks the smoko rooms and the households of this country have embraced with some relief the fact that someone has finally told them what is really going on inside the Labour Party. As for the great support that the Prime Minister claims for her party the editorials are right too—it is a thin veneer of support because the Government likes to tell people what they should think. New Zealanders are good people. They are prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt but they will not be happy to finally learn what drives this current Government what motivates Helen Clark and what sort of disciplined structure operates inside the environment of the caucus and Cabinet. 
Mr Dunne who has just resumed his seat must be one of the duped whom Mr Tamihere talked about when he spoke of the deception that Michael Cullen puts across minor parties in this House. Mr Dunne stood here today and said that the Government does not fund some 97000 diabetics appropriately but at the same time he chooses to support the Government when it chooses to fund sex-change operations in our public hospitals instead. The United Future Party might want to say that the John Tamihere issue is of no great moment. But it of course was the sensible party that wanted New Zealanders to hear things the way that they really are. 
I ask just how safe Helen Clark is today as leader of the Labour Government—and Labour members will be up now one after the other to endorse her. Mr Tamihere has told her that he has solid support from 10 members and support from 15 others on any given day. Half of the Labour caucus has the jury out on the Prime Minister. She has seized upon this opportunity to try to put in the wedge to cement her position. But no matter what sort of an apology Mr Tamihere might like to put out there we know that he will not deny the truth of what he has told  
Investigate 
 magazine. He will not deny that the Prime Minister has a problem with the support systems in her office he will not deny that Mr Cullen regularly puts it across supporting parties and he will not deny that the Labour Party is overly dominated by union influences and the gay lobby—and that they are all pandering to Maori interests in this country. 
That is not where mainstream New Zealanders are. I make one response to Mr Hide’s speech: he is right. Helen Clark has no idea of what it is like to work out whether the mortgage can be paid at the end of the month whether school uniforms can be afforded or whether new shoes can be bought for the kids when they go into their winter sport—or what it is like to stand on the sideline on a cold Saturday morning at sports. But Mr Hide should mark my words; there will be photographs of the Prime Minister doing exactly that. They will be put out there from the ninth floor spin machine within a week. That is the way Labour members operate—duplicitously. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise to speak after Gerry Brownlee—for those who are listening to their radio at home he was the previous speaker. He is one of the four or five people who obviously are about to contest the leadership of the National Party given how badly Mr Don Brash has been doing. 
Members on this side of the House have just come back from their congress which occurs prior to each election campaign. It was a fantastic occasion. People turned up in large numbers enjoyed 2 days together worked through and prepared for another win by a Labour-led Government in the election later this year. 
I know that on the other side of the Chamber disappointed people like Maurice Williamson who has been on the back bench for so long that he does not know what it is like to be on the front bench any more reduced from the once-great man he was are just barracking from the back benches—the nine-penny seats. I know that he would love to be back there but he knows that he has another 3 years to go. 
I shall tell members why. One of the major divides between the Government and the National Party and its supporters is the issue of public services. We have seen over the years a divide from the National Party which has routinely cut public services whenever it has had the chance. I know that from my own experience of becoming the Minister in charge of child youth and family issues and finding that the National Party had paid for social workers only up until the time of a change of Government. The day I became the Minister people from Child Youth and Family Services said that I had a choice that day because the money had just run out of firing 61 social workers because the National Party had not provided any money for them. That is the nature of the National Party when it comes to public services. We on this side of the House have reversed those cuts increased public services and ensured that we are in a position whereby we are able to provide good quality public services for New Zealanders. 
John Key the other pretender to the throne who is waiting to move on the leadership issue has today let out from his Pandora’s box the return of the National Party’s same old “cut public services” agenda. John Key tells us that he will get the money for his tax cuts by cutting the numbers of public servants. He has not told us that the money for tax cuts will come from Child Youth and Family Services social workers; he has not told us it will come from teachers doctors or nurses. He tries to pretend that he will get the money from the core public service—the “bloated public service” he said. 
I will take one example of what he means. He said that he wants to take money from an organisation like the Tertiary Education Commission because it has spent about $200 million since it was set up. I tell Maurice Williamson and other National members what that actually means. That money pays for Modern Apprenticeships. The National Party has already said that it will cut Modern Apprenticeships—it does not like that programme. The money will come from the Gateway programme. The Gateway programme is hugely successful in all schools that are decile 6 and lower. We know that the National Party will cut it because it repealed the apprenticeship legislation in 1992. The Tertiary Education Commission provides for major programmes like training opportunities and youth training. It employs all the coordinators for the Modern Apprenticeships programme out of that money. In other words it employs people who are doing concrete jobs that we now know the National Party will cut from its programme. John Key is saying that the National Party will have to get that money by cutting it from organisations that deliver core programmes like Modern Apprenticeships. That is where the money will come from. 
I guess we have to applaud John Key for his honesty because we do not hear much from anybody else in the National Party about the kinds of cuts that would have to take place to get money for the tax cuts. John Key is doing exactly that for the reason raised earlier by my colleague—that John Key is in the other camp from the National Party candidate who is running in the Wellington Central electorate. He wants to make sure that he does not make his move into Cabinet in the way that is planned by Mr Blumsky. 
So we know what John Key’s plan is but overall what we now have going into this election year with a National Party that is desperately trying to find issues is a clear divide. The National Party will cut public services to pay for its tax cuts. The Labour-led Government will commit itself to quality public services for all New Zealanders so that they can get good education and good health. We know that the public want it because 52 percent have already said they want exactly that. 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It was very kind of Minister Maharey to prove once and for all for anyone listening that John Tamihere was right. I must say it is awfully nice when he hands us a freebie like that and admits that we will be the ones forming Cabinet after the next election not his lot. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: A motley crew! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Yes an absolute motley crew. 
On a more serious note what we heard from Mr Maharey—we know it is all smarmy and of no substance—is in fact what this Government is doing to the people of New Zealand. John Tamihere was right on a lot of points. One of the points he made that was absolutely right was that this Labour Government spends so much time pandering to a couple of its special interest groups—the unions gays and Maori rights people—that it completely ignores the very people who pay for all the services that the Government gets to hand out. Those people are the taxpayers of this country—the middle New Zealanders. For the benefit of those members over there who would not know an ordinary middle New Zealand person if they fell over him or her I point out that those middle New Zealanders are the people who pay their taxes go to work raise their own children look after their kids and put their kids first. 
John Tamihere said that Helen Clark and her very very staunchly feminist cabal would not know about taking the kids to sport on Saturday. We need look no further than the Families Commission which was of course brought about by United Future’s deal with Labour. United Future was duped into signing up to it—and to a definition of family that meant whatever one happens to think it might be. It could be a gang one’s mates or whatever. The Family Commission is having a big opening in Auckland for one of its big projects and it is having it on Saturday morning when ordinary New Zealanders take their kids to sport. That is what families do. 
What did Mr Tamihere say about this Government? He said: “I tell you what if I was on the other side mate I’d have cut the”—and he used a bad word—“Labour Party to pieces over moral issues. There’s a huge pendulum swing against what my leadership stands for.” That is what he said about Helen Clark and that is what he said about the Labour Party. The reason he said that is because as Mr John Carter said—and he is absolutely right—it is true. The Labour Party despises the very people who vote for it. If we need any confirmation of that let us hear some of the words of the honourable Minister Ruth Dyson. She talked in the House back in September 2002 about women going out to work and doing jobs like cleaning or what she called “degrading low-paid work” and “low-end dead jobs”. I said then and I will say it again to that Minister to that party and to the people who have never done a 3 o’clock shift in the morning with little babies who cannot sleep that the people who do that sort of work are not low-grade people and they do not do low-grade work. They are people who earn their right to vote in this country and they earn their right to be taken seriously. 
The Labour Government has Ministers like David Benson-Pope who would not know a hard day’s work if he fell over it. If Labour members actually took these ordinary people seriously they would stop pandering to the little special-interest groups that they think they have to win over. That is all Labour thinks about. It does not care about the people working in the factories. It does not care about the people who actually do the work. The only thing the Government cares about is sucking people into the unions and sucking them into thinking they have to vote Labour. Well they do not have to vote for Labour. Help is on the way and it is in the form of the National Party and they should be really pleased. The reason for that is that we value work and we value the people who actually do it. 
Darren Hughes 
: We want this woman on the television right through the campaign! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: We do not value people like Mr Hughes who spent all of yesterday looking like Santa would not come this year and looking like he had been crying all day into his little teacup. That is what we do not value. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 The member who has just resumed her seat is the only person in this House who can fake sincerity with such conviction and at such top decibels. “Congratulations!” is what I say to that member. I have always enjoyed the writings of Karl du Fresne. He is a highly respected and long-time commentator here in Wellington. I read something he wrote recently. He stated: “Ever since the Muldoon era with its disastrous ad hockery National has followed a policy of pure naked expediency.” I could not agree more with him. 
I have to tell the House about the latest piece of pure naked expediency: the announcement of the new Opposition spokesperson on finance Mr John Key that a National Government would reduce the size of the civil service. John Key thinks that if he reduces the size of the civil service he will be able to fund the tax cuts for his mates. He thinks that is a winner. He thinks that New Zealanders do not like civil servants. John Key thinks that if he mounts an attack on civil servants he will be able to get the old talkback lines going as people all whinge and moan about the fatted bloated bureaucracy around New Zealand. He thinks he may even gain a percentage point in the polls if he attacks civil servants. John Key is even prepared to sacrifice Mark Blumsky who lives in the city of civil servants if he thinks he can get another vote. Of course National Party members often sacrifice their candidate in Wellington Central. Every time there is an election they say that it is time to sacrifice their Wellington Central candidate and he or she is gone. So Mark should look out because he will be gone. 
However the mistake that John Key has made is that he would not know a civil servant if he fell over one. A civil servant in New Zealand is also a doctor or a nurse but John Key will not tell New Zealanders which doctors and nurses he will sack. I want to know today from the next speaker from the National Party which doctors and nurses are for the chop. We want to know which ones are to be sent down the road which ones will be cut out of the system and which ones will be stitched up by the National Party. I believe National will stitch up a lot of them. If we look back at how many doctors and nurses we had when we came into Government and then look to see how many we have today then I have to own up. I put my hand up because there has been a huge increase in civil servants in the health system. There has been a 22.6 percent increase in the number of doctors in the health system. I am sorry; I own up. There has been an increase of almost 20 percent in the number of nurses. I am sorry; I am responsible. I take the blame for that. We now have more doctors and nurses in the health system. That for people in the National Party is terrible. Of course if there are more doctors and nurses then they can probably help more people. But when one wants to give one’s mates tax cuts so that they can have another few bob in their pockets then the number of doctors and nurses has to be cut. But then those mates cannot get the health services they need. 
I want to know which doctors and nurses will go. Will it be Plunket nurses? Will they be the first to go? We have increased the funding to Plunket dramatically over the last 5 years but I think that mums and babies will feel the effects if the number of civil servants is cut. Plunket nurses will be cut. They will go—that is true. Now let us look at the district health nurses who do their nursing in people’s homes. They keep people in their homes rather than their being in hospital. The numbers of those nurses will have to be cut if the civil service is to be cut. What about the public health nurses? They are the ones who give children their immunisations against preventable diseases and keep them out of hospital. Well they will go; they will be chopped. If the civil service is cut those people will go. Let us look at the doctors. Which doctors are for the chop? Which specialists will we not have? Will it be the ophthalmologists? Do they have to go? They are the ones who do cataract operations. I suppose if one is to reduce the bloated civil service by making cuts in the health system then ophthalmologists are for the chop. What about the orthopaedic surgeons who do hip replacements? They will have to go. 
Let us have it put on the table what will be cut under National. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I know of at least one doctor and one nurse who will be cut after the next election: Dr Cullen and nurse Annette King. But I want to start today with a quote. The quote goes like this: “Like Theodore Roosevelt’s Gladiator in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly to spend themselves in a worthy cause and who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievements and who at worst if they fail at least fail while daring greatly so that their place shall never be with the more cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” 
I wonder why I would start a speech with a quote like that. Who said that? 
John Carter 
: Who did? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: It was said by John Tamihere to the Waitakere Rotary Club on 19 January this year. So the  
Investigate 
 magazine interview can have come as no surprise to the Labour Party because John Tamihere signalled his intention to go on the attack rather than to be with the cold and lifeless souls he was amongst. I think the man Teddy Roosevelt was speaking about is the kind of guy John Tamihere absolutely sees himself as being: a gladiator in the arena of life the risk taker the warrior the one willing to go all out and put it all on the line in pursuit of his dream. That is what John Tamihere said the man who takes control of his destiny antes up and puts it all on the table—well actually all into the tape deck on the table—knowing that it is better to dare greatly and fail than to play it safe. 
I want to go into a few things that John Tamihere said. One could get into some of the personal abuse of some of the Government members but I am not sure that that is actually very productive. My kids now think that “smarmy Maharey” is a character out of a Hairy McClary book and they did not know what “smarmy Maharey” meant when I tried to explain it. So we got out the dictionary and found out what “smarmy” means. Members should listen to this: it means sycophantic oily slimy grovelling creepy and unctuous—and those are probably just Mr Maharey’s good points. That is what a member of the same caucus as Mr Maharey said about him. As for John Tamihere calling Chris Carter a “queer tosser” again my kids could not work that out. My boy thought a tosser was a Scotsman who chucked big cabers. So he thought a queer tosser would be a Scotsman who tossed the caber behind himself. They could not work out what a queer tosser was. 
John Tamihere said that Mark Gosche was sent here to Parliament by the union movement but was a total disappointment—well we agree with that—so now Labour was bringing in the big guns in the form of Maryan Street. I have to say that she actually gets the trifecta when it comes to John Tamihere’s score card: she is a woman she is a lesbian and she was the Labour Party president. But I tell John Tamihere that Maryan Street also gets a bonus ball. She gets an extra ball because she was the head of the trade union study centre at Auckland University—she gets more than the trifecta. John Tamihere takes David Cunliffe to pieces. He says David Cunliffe screwed up the mods. I do not know who the rockers are. I know some of the Labour members are off their rocker but I do not know who the rockers are. But John Tamihere said David Cunliffe screwed up the mods through his naked ambition. That is what John Tamihere said about a member of the same caucus as himself. Then he said Dr Cullen can deal with a piece of legislation as we all know and he can dupe other members by changing a word. I want the people in this House to start to identify themselves. Are they “dupor” or “dupee”? They should get into lines one to the left and one to the right—“dupors” to the right and “dupees” to the left. “Dupees” in case United Future does not know this are those who were done over. 
When it comes to one of John Tamihere’s key targets I admit to this House that even I am too timid to use her name. It is that other “H” person in charge on the ninth floor. I find it hard to say this: I will not use her name because she puts shivers up my spine. I will call her “H2”—a very good reference point for the cold and timid souls that John Tamihere was talking about. He said that “H2”—that is all I will call her—is dangerous. She is a very dangerous woman and I want New Zealanders to know she is running the country. 
So the issue comes down to this. Let us listen to what the  
New Zealand Herald  
states about John Tamihere: “But he has been honest too…. If his observations did not ring true his colleagues would be laughing them off.”—and they are doing anything but laughing them off. Here are the options we now need to face. If what John Tamihere has been saying is the truth then he simply cannot stay with that lot. Again the  
New Zealand Herald  
editorial states: “… Mr Tamihere ought to leave Labour now with his pride intact and go to the election as the individual he is.” If Mr Tamihere is telling the truth that is the one option—he should go. If he is not then the Labour Party should throw him out. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 I want to begin today by talking about one of the many reasons that the young people in our school sector succeed as well as they do. A key element of that success is the fact that once again in this country behind New Zealand schools we have a strong professional and competent public service. 
We have that because we need it to support the 765000 students whom we are educating and educating successfully every day. Those students are diverse in their backgrounds and in their needs: they range in age from 5 to 18 years; 60 percent of them are Pakeha; 20 percent are Maori; 4 percent are Samoan; 2.5 percent are Chinese; and there are similar proportions of those of Indian descent—to name just some of the larger groups. In addition the education professionals within the ministry safeguard the interests of some 2700 students attending State special schools and 28500 students studying at a distance through the Correspondence School. It is this group of educationalists who provide ongoing professional development to the 44000 teachers who are committed to the learning needs of our young people. Of course all of this does not take place in a vacuum and I do not mean the vacuum that Dr Brash uses on his garage floor. Those people in 2650 schools from Te Hapua in the north to Half Moon Bay on Stewart Island are doing a fantastic job for the future of our young people. 
Now is the time for the members on the National benches and John Key in particular to front up and tell us which of those schools National is planning to close. How many of those teachers will John Key cut adrift? Which students in this country will miss out on the world-class opportunities our schools deliver because National wants to take the great leap back to the bad old days when the only answer was to slash and burn the State sector? It has taken 5½ years under a Labour-Progressive Government to build up the schooling sector and the strong public services this country needs after a decade of neglect. It was a decade in which National’s free-market “cut the bureaucracy” mantra ruled. The ultimate price was of course the price paid by the generation of Kiwis who were told under the National Party’s voodoo economics that the State and that party’s philosophy and looking after its mates were more important than the learning outcomes of our students. Well I think that was shameful. It is more shameful that National wants to repeat that folly all over again. We knew that it was a party without an emperor but even the new suit of clothes is turning out to be just well-worn flannel pyjamas. The policy is not just threadbare; it is full of holes. 
In the school sector there is a strong and competent public service that now delivers professional development to teachers and principals after National left that to the free market. The result of that lo and behold is that schools are reprioritising funding meant for that purpose towards educational purposes. We now know how little professional development ever took place under National. Contributing to the professional development of staff across the education sector is a key focus for this Government. We will spend over $67 million this year alone on helping teachers and principals further improve their skills and knowledge. That is a 125 percent increase in funding since 1999. We are not so near-sighted as to disregard the need to invest in the teaching professionals who are the key people in our classrooms. 
But I am delighted and New Zealanders should be delighted that National members have finally let the cat out of the bag. They have finally let their dirty little secret out for the public to see. The National Party wants to take New Zealand back to those dark divisive days in which it chose to run our schools our hospitals and our other important public services into the ground. I am glad to know that average New Zealanders will not have a bar of that. We saw that in the  
New Zealand Herald  
poll yesterday. New Zealanders do not want to go back there. They came through that nonsense last time and they know there is a better way. That way is about valuing people. It is about building strong and competent public services that benefit all New Zealanders not just the National Party and its elite mates. 
We have addressed the teacher supply crisis in our schools left by National from the last time it thought it had a good idea. Since 2000 more than 2700 extra full-time teaching positions have been created over and above those needed for roll growth. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 I must admit that New Zealand First members have taken a great deal of joy from looking at recent events as they have unfolded between the National Party and the Labour Party. In fact we have been laughing so much that it has held up our policy releases. So we will have to ask the Labour Party when it intends to call the next election. 
One thing that concerned me as I read through the John Tamihere exposé was the words he applied to some of his colleagues. The particular word that I could not get my head around was “tosser”. I am intrigued by my National colleague and previous speaker Maurice Williamson because I thought that coming from the National Party he would know what a tosser is. Evidently he does not. He had to go to the dictionary. For my part I had to go to our researchers. I asked them: “What is this word that John Tamihere is applying to his colleague Chris Carter?”. 
Simon Power 
: What did they say? 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: They told me what a tosser is. They had some other words for it which I do not want to repeat. Quite frankly I was shocked and I said: “This cannot be.” I cannot imagine for one minute a person who has been a Cabinet Minister in Her Majesty’s Government saying these sorts of things about his colleague. Yet evidently that is what he did. 
Rodney Hide 
: But is it true? 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: It could well be true. I do not know whether it is true but that is what he did. He went on to describe other members of the organisation as “butch”. He talked about the Labour Party through the 1993 election which was a wee while ago—I want to know when the next election will be rather than what happened back in 1993—and cast aspersions on most of his colleagues which after we got over the laughter we decided was very very sad. 
What we are seeing now as we lead up to the election is a battle between National and Labour. It is not a battle of wits or of ideology; it is a battle for power. This is purely and simply a fight for power—one to hold on to it and one to gain it. I am sad that this is what the forthcoming election is turning into. I hope that the people of New Zealand are watching this battle very very carefully because there are alternatives. New Zealand First is the alternative that people need to look to as we go through this battle. 
Serious things are happening in this economy and this country—things that New Zealand First has predicted for many years would happen. They are coming to fruition now. It saddens us that we are seeing these two old parties bereft of ideas and just slagging each other. In fact they are not even just slagging each other they are slagging themselves and fighting amongst themselves. One party is riven from within. It has at least three leaders whom we know of. The other party is riven between the boys and the girls as we see it. We do not think that is what an election should be about. 
New Zealand First puts out a challenge to both the Labour Party and the National Party to give us some ideas. What are they going to do about the $9 billion deficit? What are they going to do about immigration? What are they going to do to get the productive sector of this country going? What are they going to do about these things? Mr Hide who is trying to interject would not know. We do not have to ask these people what is happening for our sake; we are asking on behalf of New Zealand. New Zealand First will be out there not only highlighting the problems but also providing the solutions that we hope to take to this country. We are very very confident that New Zealanders will say: “Yes New Zealand First is the party we want to take us into the future.” 
LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 This Labour-led Government has a proven track record for promoting opportunity not privilege; for inclusion not marginalisation; and for long-term and sustained progress and security not fear in old age and in times of adversity. The Opposition offers nothing more than a return to the failed policies of the past—deregulation privatisation and cutting back on Government and public services. 
How can people forget the impact of the 1990s on this country? I have heard members opposite talk about the need to support families. Ruth Richardson called National’s flagship Budget the “mother of all Budgets”. What an insult to every mother in the country that Budget was! It was the Budget let me remind people that slashed benefits and saw the minimum wage frozen year after year. It was the Budget that allowed for the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act which destroyed minimum conditions of employment from one end of the country to the other. It was the Budget that saw the apprenticeship system handed over to industry because industry could “do it oh so much better than Government.” and it was the Budget that allowed the competitive market model to come into the health and education systems. 
Do members remember Crown health enterprises competing with each other for diminishing health dollars? The creeping privatisation in both health and education was the legacy of the 1990s. Accident compensation was turned into a “pay as you go” scheme a matter of a few short years before it would have been fully funded. Lump-sum compensation was ripped out of the scheme in 1992 and then the employers account was privatised paving the way for the full privatisation of a scheme that is the envy of the world. Market rents for State houses were imposed on people who could not earn a market income. National sold 13000 State houses. The floor below which superannuation could not fall was knocked back under a National Government. That was an effective cut to the pension of several dollars a week; and it was growing every year. 
Not one Auckland road opened under a National Government. It cut spending on public transport. It sold rail and allowed the infrastructure of this country to be run down. Look what National did to the electricity system for goodness’ sake! It left it in an absolute mess. That was Max Bradford’s legacy to New Zealand. National amalgamated traffic with police to deliver the extra police that John Banks had promised. Smoke and mirrors was National’s way of dealing with those promises. More cuts were on the way before we took office. 
Why would anyone want to turn to a party that in April of an election year has not produced a single policy other than to promise tax cuts? That means reduced expenditure without saying where it will come from other than the public sector. We should make it clear and put it on the record that this means that National is promising fewer doctors fewer nurses fewer teachers and fewer police. National is promising fewer social workers for Child Youth and Family Services; fewer Department of Corrections staff despite an increasing prison population; and fewer probation officers and Customs Service officers. If nurses think they would be able to hold on to their multi-employer collative agreement after a National Government takes office I say: “Dream on!” because it will not happen. Those Opposition members have been sitting on select committees saying they wished they had destroyed the multi-employer collective agreement of the teachers. The nurses’ agreement will be gone as well. The only way those public servants will be able to maintain increases in their wages and conditions of employment is through their multi-employer collective agreements. This Government supports those agreements. National is opposed to them. 
If National is saying it will cut back on public servants what else does that mean? It means it will sell more assets. There will be more asset sales under National. What will it mean? It will mean: New Zealand Post—gone; electricity and the rest of it—gone; Accident Compensation Corporation—gone; Land Corporation—gone; Solid Energy Kiwibank and TVNZ—all of them gone. That is what would happen if National got the chance and of course we already know that National has its eye on the roading network. This Government took office in 1999 and inherited the legacy of a run-down public sector and all National is promising is to do it all over again. 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 Tomorrow’s Schools is a disaster because bulk funding is keeping our schools in debt neglecting and destroying the basis of our education system. Years of neglect have left a budget deficit that schools have had to catch up on as new money has been made available. Although increases in operational grants on a per-student basis may have outpaced inflation the actual increase in levels of expenditure has far exceeded those increases in grants and funds raised locally—by parents and communities—have had to almost treble in the last 10 years. That has almost trebled the work parents are doing. Parents are paying more and working harder for their schools than they ever have while this Government sits on a surplus that could relieve parents and schools of at least the most acute underfunding through operational grants and special-needs funding. 
The Greens are entirely opposed to bulk funding like operational grants because it frees the Government from its responsibility to fund schools properly. Whatever the problem—information and communications technology development health and safety special needs G3 equivalence even the provision of support staff—the answer from the Government remains the same: “Reprioritise it and fund it yourself out of your existing operations grant.” But there simply is not enough money for our schools. Small schools face even more problems in not being able to make the economies of larger schools and that is especially true of kohanga kaupapa Maori schools and rural schools which are critical to the development and maintenance of our rural communities. The problem is that too much of the school’s income is based on roll numbers and the base-funding component is far too small. The special-education grant is a classic example where children with moderate special needs do not receive the education they require the education they deserve because the bulk-funding model completely screws their school’s ability to provide adequate services. 
The bulk-funding model is a complete and dismal failure. But this Government’s response is to create small pools of contestable funding so that schools are left to fight over the scraps of funding like hungry dogs around a well-worn bone. There are as many as 35 separate contestable pools of funding in the education system. Contestable funds cost schools money and time and the competition is fierce. Therefore many schools and many students are missing out. Schools that are desperate to gather funds to run a quality education system are having to resort to the commercialisation of their schools—offering advertising space in their playgrounds installing vending machines that spit out obesity tooth rot and diabetes–inducing foods spending precious dollars on marketing education services overseas to attract fee-paying students and even we see now this week threatening parents with legal action when they do not pay their apparently “voluntary” donations. 
The Greens are appalled at these desperate measures that schools are having to undertake. They are all means to the destruction of our free public education system. No schools should have to resort to such measures but they are because this Government and previous ones have choked them and in part it is because the increased commercialisation of schools and the increased number of fee-paying students are making our Government money. Is that what this Government considers the education system is for? Is it a revenue-generating activity? 
Communities teachers and parents are not complacent about these issues. The New Zealand School Trustees Association has a campaign across the country to increase the operations grant by at least 10 percent. The Post Primary Teachers Association report talks about the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and recommends an increase in the operations grant to help deal with this Government’s failure to implement NCEA properly. The New Zealand Educational Institute report of a support staff funding grant clearly demonstrates that support staff are losing out on money; that there is an increasing casualisation of that workforce because their funding is coming out of the operations grant. Any increases in wage levels for these critical support staff positions are resulting not in more pay in the pockets of the administrators and the office workers but in a reduction in their hours as their positions are being increasingly casualised. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
Maiden Statement 
LESLEY SOPER (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. Warm greetings to all my parliamentary colleagues and to my family and friends here today. I stand here as a proud southern woman a feminist a socialist and a trade unionist committed to Labour principles and values to Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a covenant between two peoples to the causes I believe in and to a New Zealand that is strong fair-minded inclusive and proud of itself and its place in the world. 
I give a warm acknowledgment to Margaret Wilson. Her appointment was an inspired one. She is doing an outstanding job and Labour women are proud of her. With reference to her maiden speech I support the need for a more appropriate gender-neutral term for this occasion and suggest that “inaugural speech” would better suit the privilege of introduction to office. 
I would also like to acknowledge the previous Speaker the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt whom I am replacing as a Labour list MP. He was a Speaker who exercised order judgment and fairness. It was good to hear Jonathan Hunt include in his valedictory speech themes close to my own heart: a commitment to the importance of education the increased representation of women the success that MMP has made of delivering diversity into the House and turning the Chamber into a closer representation of New Zealand society and the important need for participation in democracy—at least to the extent of every voter needing to uplift a ballot paper so that our hard-won democratic freedoms do not become a political chimera. 
I stand here today as the 87th woman MP of this Parliament since the election of Elizabeth McCombs in 1933 and the 40th of those women to be sworn in for Labour. I pay special tribute to all my current Labour women colleagues. Our teamwork commitment and involvement at every level of decision making is vital. We are not in competition with men but we need to ensure that the diversity of women’s experience is represented authentically and taken full account of. 
I make particular mention of my early role model mentor and friend—like me a proud Labour women’s vice-president—the inimitable Sonja Davies; of Margaret Shields who helped found the Society for Research on Women and who spoke in her inaugural speech of weaving more social strands into the fabric of Parliament; of Ann Hercus the Minister who set up the Ministry of Women’s Affairs; of the current Minister of Women’s Affairs Ruth Dyson who is driving the ground-breaking action plan for New Zealand women; and of course of Helen Clark our first elected woman Prime Minister whose record of hard work vision wisdom and sheer sangfroid was as evident in her first days as a back-bencher as it is now that she is the outstanding Prime Minister who delivers. 
I also pay tribute to those women colleagues and friends who formed the Labour Women’s Council during my 10 years and with whom I have worked on such issues as pay equity paid parental leave childcare provision and women’s health and employment. They are too numerous to mention with one notable and special exception in Carol Gosche who was council chair almost up to the time of her stroke. She is a woman of principle integrity sheer grit and determination and a valued friend leader and fellow planner. Kia kaha Carol for your inspiration. 
Although there have been major advances for women and New Zealand has led many of those if we look beyond the few top positions we see that the picture is not yet one of equality. We are 51 percent of the population but still do not have even 40 percent of the representation and voice. We earn only 84 percent of men’s average wage and that percentage is worse for Maori and Pacific women. We are still concentrated in the low-paid “pink ghettos” of employment and we are still the main carers; the solo parents vulnerable to vicious labelling and witch hunts by the Opposition and we are the main victims of domestic violence and users of refuges. Fortunately the Labour Government has made significant progress to address these issues—to advance pay equity to offer more choices in employment and better work-life balance prospects and to advance the New Zealand Family Violence Prevention Strategy. The Action Plan for New Zealand Women has goals milestones and checking mechanisms in the areas of economic sustainability work-life balance and well-being. It is my hope and commitment as an MP to advance work in these areas. 
Two of my other passions are education and housing. Although I have never been a teacher I come into Parliament with very current flaxroot knowledge of the education sector at all levels through my prior profession as a tertiary librarian and researcher and also through my work for NZEI Te Riu Roa in representing teachers and support staff. Quality teaching is vital but without the support of teacher-aides librarians technicians and administrative staff educational institutions would grind to a halt. I therefore have a particular commitment as an MP to work on issues for those often-overlooked workers. Equally I have a deep commitment to the early childhood sector. This Government has a long-term early childhood education plan that sets out to lift quality standards and to provide better home-based childcare and after-school care. I have worked from the start with that plan and as an MP want to see it completely delivered on. 
As the only one of eight siblings to have a degree and as one who worked for many years to put myself through university I am a passionate believer in the public-good aspect of our tertiary education system and in the opportunity for quality education to be accessible to all. I am particularly pleased that this Government kept its promise to write off interest during study stabilise fees and increase access to allowances and that recent reports have shown that student debt and loan-repayment times are down. But there is still a way to go and during my tenure as MP I hope to work with colleagues on further positive action on tertiary education issues. 
Housing the people has been a core Labour commitment from the earliest years. Labour Governments have always been the house builders of this nation because we believe that every New Zealander has the right to a decent quality home. Many earlier inaugural speeches have mentioned housing as being a key part of Labour and social justice principles. I am enormously proud that this Government restored income-related State house rentals stopped State house sales and has started to build again and that we have introduced pilots to halt falling rates of homeownership and are working to encourage savings towards future homeownership. If we are judged on what we leave behind decent housing will be a fine legacy. 
I now turn to my family. To my husband David Melmoth: your love and support has been a treasure in my life. I fought one election without you; we married during the next—having chosen the date first—and you have been a rock particularly through difficult times since. Thank you from my heart. I acknowledge my parents Janet McMeeking and Walter Athol Soper neither of whom are here but who are proud of their daughter in spirit. Indeed if Wattie were here he would be 105 years old—a bit much to ask even of him. I thank them for the values that have made me Labour and union all my life. It was not hard with a solid working-class background and an early introduction to political action to accept that principles like social justice equity fairness opportunity and security were not just words but realities to be passionate about and to work a lifetime to achieve. There is an obligation to support each other and to ensure just distribution and the sharing of benefits. As Bill Fraser former Labour Minister St Kilda MP and good friend said in his inaugural speech “… true interdependence has much more to offer.”—certainly more than any individualistic dog-eat-dog far-right philosophy either of Bill’s era or of today. 
Janet a mother of the 1950s and 1960s would have described herself as “not working after marriage”. All women work. Like so many my mother did most of hers in the home plus essential volunteer work. That work was not particularly valued then and we are trying to get the balance right now. Like so many women today my mother would have liked the opportunity of choice about her life. Sadly her heart attack at 42 stroke at 50 and 8 years of disability closed down her life. It also led to my early interest and commitment in the health and disability sector. The services and rehabilitation that were not available to my mother in the 1970s would be available today as would family support and counselling. She would not now be placed in an open geriatric ward that her children hated to visit. The change in health philosophy that concentrates on a wellness rather than a sickness model health promotion and preventive measures primary health organisations able to offer reduced fees and better public health programmes and an increasing awareness that the disabled have rights and needs and can contribute were all necessary advances that came too late for my mother. I took an elected health board role to work for people like her and I am dedicated as an MP to continue working for the best possible public health services for all. 
Wattie was born in 1900 worked prior to the Great War with Chinese gold miners in the Nevis valley and was a truck driver and union president. He was one of the few Westerners invited to China in 1957; a man of integrity purpose and pride. He introduced me as a child not only to a world wider than the borders of Invercargill where other respected cultures existed but also to a world where committed people like himself Pat Welsh Mick and June Sullivan a young Bill Anderson and a younger Ken Douglas fought hard but fair for workers’ rights and voices for decent employment conditions and for fair wages. My earliest recollections are of waiting for his plane to taxi in from yet another Drivers Federation meeting. I joined my first union in 1972 and have been actively involved ever since. 
Like me Wattie would have been disgusted by the vicious employment contracts era. He would have rejoiced at Labour’s Employment Relations Act returning fair bargaining and at the changes delivered since to ensure better conditions for workers overall. He would have been proud of a Labour Government that has delivered unemployment as low as 3.6 percent the Working for Families package and the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. He would also be proud to see that New Zealand is a respected international citizen—still nuclear-free and with a trade relationship with the powerhouse of Asia which he always predicted. 
For the last 10½ years of Wattie’s life I was his caregiver while also working in a full-time paid job. That is the source of my special interest in carer issues. I particularly recognise the special strains of the work the decent pay and conditions required and the part that families play in caregiving. It is also a source of my particular interest in the superannuation debate including my pride that it was a Labour Government that restored the superannuation floor that set up the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and that will progressively remove the pernicious asset-testing regime. 
I also mention two of my brothers in particular: Owen the eldest—now gone but with some of his family here today—and Dougal the youngest who but for his opposition to the Springbok tour would have been Labour MP for Invercargill in 1981. Both are strong principled Southland men and both are contributors to me standing here today. I thank them both. I will do them proud. 
I am a list MP with no geographical boundaries and a nationwide constituency but I am obviously a proud Mainlander. Invercargill is the city of my birth upbringing and domicile. Along with the wider provinces of Clutha-Southland where I have stood for Parliament it has done exceptionally well under 5½ years of a Labour Government and will continue to do so under the next. It is a province full of Sopers and their whanau and is a producer of other good things like the Bluff oysters I have ordered for tonight timber dairy products meat wool aluminium and excellent rugby players including Ack Soper All Black. 
Any members particularly those who live north of the Bombay Hills who have not visited the region should do so. We have good but much-maligned weather—like Wellington really. We have an economy that has led New Zealand in growth statistics. We have a business incubator a zero-fees tertiary institution Stewart Island Fiordland the Catlins and the Hump Ridge track. We have the John Money art collection in Gore Riverton—the Riviera of the south—a unique marae expanding tourism and exciting opportunities in the creative industries. We have the Southern Sting and the world-class Stadium Southland. The mono-cultural province that I grew up in now has over 70 ethnic groups. I know that every MP thinks that his or her place is special but I think the deep south is one of the best-kept secrets in New Zealand. 
Lastly I want to mention some very special people: the old miners of Ohai and Nightcaps who in 1993 went seemingly way beyond their comfort zone by asking a young woman with feminist ideals who was a supporter of homosexual law reform to stand for them in the seat of Wallace. They are true stalwarts of the Labour Party. Jimmy Cal Jack Harry Barry and all the others asked me to stand because we shared the same values the same ideals and the same belief in fairness social justice and equity and in Labour’s ability to deliver. I carry those values still. They believed in me and I am here now. I will not let them down. 
I received this apt Maori proverb with a parting gift from fellow workers. 
Whaia e koe 
Te iti kahurangi 
Ki te tuohu koe 
Me he maunga teitei. 
“Seek the treasure you value most dearly. If you bow your head let it be to a lofty mountain.” Kia ora tatou katoa. 
New Zealand Day Bill 
First Reading 
Debate resumed from 16 March. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: It is my understanding that the honourable member Katherine Rich will use the remaining time from the speech commenced by John Carter on the first reading of the New Zealand Day Bill. I allow that under Standing Order 117(2). 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 It is a privilege to stand here in place of the honourable John Carter who I am sure gave a very interesting and inspired speech for the first 5 minutes of this call. We are here to talk about the New Zealand Day Bill. I think this is a great idea. I remember the only two times that we had New Zealand Day celebrations. As many people will remember it was Prime Minister Norman Kirk who wanted to have a New Zealand Day—a day that brought all New Zealanders together rather than divided us. For 2 years we had a New Zealand Day. 
I think it is good that Peter Dunne has brought this matter to the House for discussion again because I think it is timely. For many Kiwis Waitangi Day is not a day of celebration for all. It is a day when they turn on their television and see signs of protest and all sorts of bad behaviour up at Waitangi. I think those sorts of visions spoil the day for many many people—that is of course if they celebrate Waitangi Day at all. As a developed nation it is important that we have a day when we can celebrate as one country when we can celebrate the things that bring us together not divide us and when we can have an annual holiday when all Kiwis can enjoy and think about the things that make us special as New Zealanders. 
But I think it is important that we understand that changing the label of our national day to New Zealand Day will not solve all the problems that many of us see on Waitangi Day each year. If we are truly to have a future for this nation then I think we have to sort out some of the issues to do with the Treaty of Waitangi and the debate that surrounds that. We have to form a new vision for this country that we can all buy into so that it becomes a day when we are not divided but is a day when we celebrate what makes us special as New Zealanders and ensures that we work together for a common goal. If I have any reservations about what this bill is designed to do—it is designed to change a name—it is that often as we see with a lot of legislation in this House changing a name is only a small step towards making a real difference. 
I think it is important that we have this debate and I congratulate Peter Dunne on bringing this bill to the House because although it is probably the shortest bill that I have ever stood to debate I think it is one that will create a lot of interest. Hopefully we will make sure that many Kiwis take part in the debate through making submissions to the select committee so that their views can be known. 
I think it is important to have a day that we can all celebrate—a day we can all buy into a day like those that many other nations have a day we can point to as our special day the day when we celebrate our country. From there we can hopefully develop a vision for the day that all Kiwis regardless of their creed colour or race can enjoy so that we all can point to it as our own day. 
Despite the bill being very short I think it raises huge issues for our country. What is the role of the treaty what is the role for us as New Zealand citizens what rights do we have that come with that citizenship and what are the special things about our culture that we should take time out in a given year to make sure we celebrate? 
I think New Zealand Day is something that Labour members should support. One of their iconic Labour leaders introduced it as a concept in the 1970s so it will be interesting to see whether they support this bill. [ 
Interruption 
] It was raised first by a gentleman whom I know that Darren Hughes of the Labour Party would certainly respect. In terms of the debate created by this bill I expect that the select committee will be inundated with submissions from proponents of both sides of the argument. From that we can hopefully come to some agreement about what Waitangi Day and what New Zealand Day should this bill have some success should mean to us as a country. 
DAVID PARKER (Labour—Otago) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of Labour to support this bill going to the Justice and Electoral Committee. I agree with some of the comments made by the previous speaker that changing the name of the day is less important than some of the underlying debates so Labour will not necessarily support the legislation once it has been considered by the select committee. 
We are forced to consider this bill as part of the wider debate going on in New Zealand now concerning the place of the Treaty of Waitangi. One way the Government is addressing that debate is through the Constitutional Arrangements Committee which is currently sitting and cataloguing present constitutional arrangements. It will make recommendations to Parliament not about how the constitution ought to change—if it ought to change at all—but if change were to be contemplated about what processes have been followed in overseas countries. 
Changing the name of the day will not fix the underlying treaty issues this country needs to address and is addressing. I like to quote Dr Michael Cullen who earlier this year commented that the treaty is a document that: “… provides an orderly framework for the settlement of historical grievances and the resolution of ongoing debates about the rights of the original inhabitants and owners of the land.” We ought not to forget that and we ought also to take some solace and pride from the fact that many of those historical grievances have already been settled in a way that I think reflects well on both Maori and non-Maori. 
If I take my own part of the world the South Island I can say that the Ngai Tahu settlement some years ago settled forever the historic grievances behind that dispute between Ngai Tahu and the Crown in a way that has already stood the test of a reasonable period of time. Following that settlement we have seen considerable success on the part of Ngai Tahu in improving their own institutions financial position and the position of their people particularly as they direct so much money towards the education of their young people and the care and welfare of their older people. 
Although Labour is prepared to support this bill going to the select committee we make the point that changing the name of Waitangi Day to New Zealand Day will not resolve underlying treaty issues and ought not to be a way to brush over them. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First shares the view of the previous speaker to a very large extent. We will support this New Zealand Day Bill going to the select committee but—and it is a significant but—we hope that the bill has not been proposed because of prior protests on Waitangi Day. I suspect that may well be the reason underlying the proposed change of name from Waitangi Day to New Zealand Day. I hope the Hon Peter Dunne in taking up his right of reply will clarify that and will tell this House whether he would be proposing this bill if there had not been so many protests on Waitangi Day in the past. 
I say also that the name “Waitangi” probably means a good deal more to the average Maori person than to a non-Maori person. I can understand that some Maori will feel somewhat slighted to lose the name of their day—the day that they regard as their own. I hope that is not the case. I am a little bit worried when I read the explanatory note. It states: “It is vital that as a modern multicultural nation New Zealand recognise its diversity through a designated national day to which all sectors of our society feel able to contribute.” That seems to me to say that we are now multicultural that we do not want to designate an extra holiday that will be a real New Zealand Day that everybody can embrace so we will take a day—namely Waitangi Day—and call it New Zealand Day. I can understand some people feeling slighted at that. 
The explanatory note also seems to say to me that this country is changing somewhat out of control. I think of the country I came from where now in many parts of it—I am talking about Britain or England in particular—it is illegal to show the Christmas scene at Christmas time. The multiculturalists have overtaken the country and they have said that the Christmas scene cannot be on display. The member over there is frowning but I tell her that it is true. 
Jill Pettis 
: Where? 
PETER BROWN 
: In the UK. Also in the UK not so long ago there was a demand from the multicultural segment of society to change the cap badge of the Metropolitan Police. It very nearly achieved that. The reason for the demand was that Britain is a multicultural society and the badge should reflect that. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: Go back and sort them out! 
PETER BROWN 
: I was almost tempted to do that but the Commissioner of Police a chap called Stevens— 
Darren Hughes 
: We’ll pay half the fare. 
PETER BROWN 
: You will pay to get me back I know. If I pay to go there you will pay to get me back. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I will not do anything. 
PETER BROWN 
: Mr Assistant Speaker will not? I apologise to you. I am just saying to members that that is the way multiculturalism is going in the UK. I hope this bill is not the start of that trend here. Indeed only a few weeks ago I heard that people wanted to change the name of a pub in the UK because it offended people who believe in multiculturalism. That pub had had that name for 300 years. 
Frankly to my mind—and I know that this view is shared by some of my colleagues—a better day to have as New Zealand Day is the day before or after or a day very close to Anzac Day. That day is recognised by young old Maori and non-Maori as really a part of this country’s history; a day when everybody united together to fight for this country. If we are going to have a New Zealand Day it would not be a bad idea—and this is the view of some of my colleagues—to have a separate day closely associated with Anzac Day. 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: Another holiday? 
PETER BROWN 
: If this bill states that we should have a holiday to celebrate New Zealand let us have one not take another holiday and rename it. If we want a holiday because we are multicultural and because we have all sorts of people here let us be brave enough to say that we should have a holiday. This bill targets one day and changes the name of it to New Zealand Day and it just smacks a little bit of political opportunism. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: It’s mean. 
PETER BROWN 
: My colleague says it is meanness. I suggest that this bill would not have been brought by the member had Waitangi Day been peaceful in the past. I hope the honourable member will clarify that. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party is pleased to join with other parties in this House to support the bill going to the select committee. I want to congratulate the Hon Peter Dunne because he has achieved what many of us never achieve in our time in Parliament where we have bills debated in the House that never thereafter see the light of day. It sounds as if this bill will go to the select committee. 
I personally have had six members’ bills drawn since I have been in Parliament. One is on the Order Paper at the moment awaiting debate and five have been defeated. Some of those have received some support in the House but all of them have been voted against by Labour. I understand the spirit of MMP to be that any bill that is significant and has merit should be sent to a select committee so that Parliament can have a proper look at it and the country can also put its views forward. In that spirit I am delighted to support this bill on behalf of ACT. 
I agree with other members who have spoken in this debate that New Zealanders do need a day that we can feel proud of. I think many of us who are a bit older worry that there does not seem to be enough Kiwi pride around now. Many of us feel we need to re-energise New Zealand so that everyone can recall what it is to feel good about being a New Zealander. When the Olympic Games are on and people win medals and so on and our national anthem is played we all get a sense of national pride. In a way it would be great if we as Kiwis felt that pride on a more regular basis. 
I am sad to say as a member of Parliament who has been here during the whole time of this Labour Government that the pride many New Zealanders used to feel under previous Governments is now slipping away. I do not know about other members of the House but on a daily basis I get messages from good New Zealanders who say they have just had enough they are going to pack their bags and leave the country because they no longer feel that New Zealand is offering the great life they expected. 
When we think about it we see that national pride is made up of many different factors; our values as a nation how we as a country treat people in need and where we are going as a country—what we can provide for future generations of New Zealanders. It seems to me that when we melt it all down and ask what is really important we find that it is that we as a country retain the fact that we are a free and prosperous nation. 
It worries me greatly that although our prosperity seems on the surface to be high when we go beneath the surface we see families all over the place who are struggling and we realise that in fact we are not doing as well as we should be doing. We can point to high tax rates too much regulation and all those sorts of things as the key reasons. Let us look at the word “free”. Are we a free country? I have to say that the amount of regulation and political correctness that come out of the ninth floor of the Beehive and out of this Chamber mean that in fact every day we are losing some of those freedoms. Then we ask ourselves whether this is a country where citizens can succeed. I think the answer is that we do not succeed as well as we used to in the past. So it is a worry that we do not have that national pride. 
It is also a worry that under the provisions in this bill Waitangi Day will be replaced when what we should really be doing is sorting out the problems with Waitangi Day. It was a day that founded this nation. It has become a day of protest. We have to address the underlying causes of that. 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party opposes this bill and will be voting against it. In large part the Greens and Mr Dunne probably agree that it is important to recognise diversity and important for all sectors of our society to feel that they can contribute to our society and to our nation as a whole. The difference of course is that Mr Dunne wants to make a name change whereas the Greens are very much committed to ensuring that New Zealanders as a whole have real access to information about our collective history and that we engage with and are enabled to embrace that history—warts and all—and use it as a means to eliminate racism deepen our understanding and most importantly foster peace in our communities. That will take much more commitment from our politicians than just changing the name of a holiday. 
The Greens believe that we should be proud of Waitangi Day the day that commemorates the signing of the treaty. It is the only day that commemorates that signing and that treaty. It is the only day that recognises and celebrates the Maori contribution to our nation. It is the only day that puts Maori at the forefront as the hosts of celebrations discussions and debates. It is the only day when Maori are recognised as the tangata whenua of this country. The tangata whenua have a special place—a particular status—in our nation and changing the name of Waitangi Day to New Zealand Day would be a shift in consciousness away from that. It is a day for non-Maori—for all of us and all our communities—to take stock of where we are and of how much we are all living up to our responsibilities under the Treaty of Waitangi. It is a day to assess whether our nation the Government and Parliament are truly abiding by the essence and provisions of the treaty whether we are making progress in the righting of historical wrongs whether we are empowering Maori communities to take control of their own lives and whether we are properly resourcing tangata whenua iwi and hapu to overcome the historical disadvantages caused by the past mistakes of our Governments. 
Some people say that Waitangi Day is discredited but they are wrong. Sure it has been a day of debate passion and protest and there is nothing wrong with that. That is what our democracy is all about—the right to disagree. But we have some way to travel before we can become a bicultural bi-structural nation. The debate over the foreshore and seabed when there was so much anger and hurt from Maori and from Pakeha illustrates how far we have yet to go. The Government ran roughshod over Maori and Pakeha concerns that Maori cultural and customary practices and Maori entitlements to their traditional resources were being extinguished by legislation. We cannot and must not hide from the divisions that exist in our society—divisions about what the treaty means to us all and what the ways forward for us might be—by taking away the platforms for dialogue and debate the key one being Waitangi Day. We cannot just change the name of Waitangi Day to New Zealand Day and pretend that in doing so we will make things better. It will make no difference to the situation we find ourselves in. It will not mean that we become one people and that Maori will suddenly forget about all the things that have happened to them in the past or that Pakeha will forget their own histories in our nation. 
In the explanatory note of the bill Peter Dunne talks about how we are now a modern multicultural nation and how New Zealand Day would recognise that better than Waitangi Day. But true multiculturalism can be consistent with biculturalism. True multiculturalists take pride in recognising the place and role of indigenous peoples in their own countries. Migrants often recognise that much better than our Pakeha community. Migrant communities often take on the reo and songs. Some migrant communities like the Sri Lankan Tamil community have special educational events on Waitangi Day to learn about the treaty and its implications for them as a community. Those are important activities. The bonds are growing. Migrants are becoming more bicultural. They understand what it is to be indigenous in a country and to face and suffer the difficulties that arise from that. Maori and migrant communities sense a need to prevent their cultures from being undermined by the dominant State. The Greens do not knock a bit more holiday time for New Zealanders but we need a day to celebrate and recognise Waitangi and what it means for us all. Long may Waitangi continue! 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 My colleagues John Carter and Katherine Rich have already indicated that National will support this bill going to a select committee for an exploration of the issues and for an opportunity for the public to make a contribution have a say and put their views. I understand why Mr Dunne is presenting this bill and given the way that discussions around these issues have progressed over the last 3 to 4 years this is probably not a bad way to provide a forum for some of those discussions to be held. More important it will give those people in New Zealand who have perhaps felt that Waitangi Day did not reflect their own views on different issues an opportunity to make a submission too. 
I do when looking at the explanatory note agree with Mr Dunne’s initial comment that contemporary New Zealand is becoming an increasingly diverse nation culturally and ethnically. He describes New Zealand as a modern multicultural nation. As part of the debate in developing that multicultural nation—and this is a young country we are dealing with—this is a step in the direction of encouraging dialogue between the various citizens of this country on important issues such as the name of the day that they believe reflects the birth I guess of this country. 
So National will support the bill going to a select committee. I do not think that the passage of this bill will be straightforward and easy Mr Dunne—if I could breach the Standing Orders for a moment by making comments to a fellow member directly. It is members’ day and I would appreciate Mr Speaker you allowing me some leeway there. I believe that the passage of this bill will be tidal shall we say. I do not think that it will be plain sailing. I do think though that any nation that is serious about its own development needs to take the opportunity to be proud of the debates that go with part of that growth. 
At the risk of prolonging my comments further I say that National will support this bill going to a select committee and that we await the outcome of public submissions and further discussions on this issue. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 Can I firstly thank members and parties that have indicated support for this bill and can I at the outset indicate that I entirely agree with Mr Power’s comments about “Where to from here?”. I am reminded of a speech made in this House recently by the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt when he told the saga of the Adult Adoption Bill and the many years it took before that was passed. 
This is the second time I have tried to bring in this bill. It is interesting to note how positions on various sides of the House have moved in the 4 years that have intervened. I give notice that if I do not quite succeed this time then I will come back again and again and one day we will succeed. 
I want to pick up a couple of the comments that members have made during the course of the debate because they have been essentially constructive even from those who are opposed to the bill. I readily acknowledge that changing the name of Waitangi Day to New Zealand Day does not resolve all the problems we have confronted over the years with regard to Waitangi and how it should be commemorated. But I make the point that it is a symbolic start. It is a fresh start and it provides a new way of approaching the issue. It is not sweeping it under the carpet and it is not simply saying that a name change resolves all the problems. This bill gives us the opportunity to move forward and debate what it is we really want from our national day. 
I am equally open-minded in response particularly to Mr Brown’s comments about what day we have it. I have actually looked at all the alternative days on offer and I have come to the following conclusions. Anzac Day has been raised. I do not think that is appropriate; I think that is a sacrosanct day in many respects. Others have raised Queen’s Birthday. As a republican I might say it is highly desirable to replace Queen’s Birthday with the day we celebrate the establishment of the republic of New Zealand. But that is some way off yet. Others have said: “Well what about the old Dominion Day?”. I think the difficulty with that is that if we are talking about a national day that sets aside a new framework for the country then to celebrate the day we became a British Dominion is not really the appropriate occasion. So when one looks around at all the dates— 
Peter Brown 
: What about a new day? 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: Well I am coming to that point. When we looks around at all the dates it seems to me we are faced with either of two alternatives. One is to revert to New Zealand Day as it had been for that brief period in the 1970s when we elevated Waitangi Day from being essentially the Northland Anniversary date to being a national day called New Zealand Day. The other is to try to pick a new day and it could be any of the other 360-something days in the calendar. That may well be an option. But I think it is important that we start the debate and that is why I have promoted this bill. 
I want to see it go to a select committee so that New Zealanders can have the opportunity to discuss this and I agree with Mr Power that the time is probably right. People for a variety of reasons—as even this debate has indicated—have had their own thinking shift forward and are looking for a way forward and they ought to have the chance to express that. If the select committee comes to the conclusion that amending 6th February is not the way to go but would like to propose another day I am certainly happy to engage in discussion about that. 
The bottom line is that I think New Zealand is at a point in its development and history where it is mature enough to take on the notion of a national day that embraces all of the cultures and all of the backgrounds that make up this country. We have a unique opportunity here to forge the modern New Zealander as a very special and unique being where we have terrific pride in our country recognition of the various strands of our heritage that make up this country and the confidence to go forward. It seems to me that a small part of that is what this bill is trying to achieve. 
I welcome the support that I have from other parties. I do hope that the select committee—and I indicate that I will move shortly that it be the Justice and Electoral Committee—does give this matter careful consideration and that we can start to see some considered progress made over the years ahead because it would be one further step in the maturing of this nation. 
Bill read a first time. 
Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.referred to Justice and Electoral Committee 
Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.  
At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The tension of trying to juggle paid work and family responsibilities is taking a huge toll on families today. As dual-income families become the norm and as more and more parents are in the workforce even when their children are young employees are feeling overloaded tired and chronically stressed from trying to juggle full-time work and care for their children at the same time. The problem is especially acute here in New Zealand where we have a long working hours ethic in our culture and one of the highest proportions of workers putting in long hours of paid work of any country in the OECD. 
In recent surveys a majority of employees said they were working longer hours than previously that they were feeling under constant stress that their lives were out of balance and that the relentless pressure was having a debilitating effect on their lives and those of their families. Employees said that they were able to spend less and less time with their families that the limited time they were able to spend at home was corroding their relationships with their partners and children and that they were missing out on crucial stepping stones and key milestones in their children’s development. 
Clearly that sort of long working hours culture discriminates against employees with families who want to work more flexible working hours that better suit the needs of their families. It is no wonder that so many employees with children simply give up the struggle and drop out of the labour market because they cannot find ways to combine paid work and the demands of looking after young children. It is interesting that one in three mothers do not come back into the workforce after having children when their children are young. Some employers have responded to the call for better work-life balance and more flexible working patterns and they do offer their employees flexible working options. Treasury the Buller District Council EDS (New Zealand) Ltd and Deloitte are very good examples of that. Despite all the rhetoric we have heard in recent years about work-life balance those employers are the exception rather than the rule. Not nearly enough is being done to encourage and support parents who want to work flexibly when their children are young. 
It is interesting—and Mr Mapp may be interested to know this—that a Department of Labour survey of work-life balance found that most New Zealanders it surveyed felt reluctant even to broach the subject of flexible working hours with their employers because they were afraid that they would be penalised for doing so. That is why Governments are stepping in to protect employees who want to have choice about how they balance work and family life especially when their children are young. Germany Italy Belgium and the Netherlands all provide employees with a legal right to request more flexible working arrangements or to reduce their working hours. The United Kingdom has introduced legislation that gives employees with young or disabled children the right to request flexible working hours and this bill is based on that. Other Governments are actively promoting flexible working hours. Clearly New Zealand is lagging behind in failing to encourage more flexible working conditions for employees especially when their children are young and that is why I have drafted this bill. 
The aim of the bill is modest: to change workplace culture so that employers more readily accommodate the needs of parents with young children to work more flexible working hours by giving employees with children under 5 or with disabled children under 18 a statutory right to request flexible working arrangements. It places a legal duty on employers to consider any such request seriously. It also enables employers to refuse a request under certain circumstances such as the inability of an organisation to reorganise itself or to recruit additional staff. Mothers fathers guardians and foster parents will all be eligible to apply provided that they have worked for an employer for 6 months. They can apply to change the hours they work and the times of day they are required to work. They can apply to work part-time work compressed hours work a 4-day working week and so on. 
The right to work flexibly as enshrined in this bill is designed to meet the needs of employers as well as employees. Far from dictating to employers as Wayne Mapp suggested in a press release last week its intention is to provide a framework to negotiate reduced working hours that are mutually agreed to and to find a solution that works for both the employer and employee. The employee will make a written request pointing out the working pattern that he or she wants to work. He or she will then meet the employer discuss it and consider alternatives if the request cannot be met. Employers will have a statutory duty to make a formal business assessment of the request and will only be able to refuse a request where there are clear business reasons for doing so based on designated criteria. An employee whose request is turned down can challenge that through an appeals procedure. But hopefully recourse to mediation will be rare because studies show that flexible working arrangements not only make life easier for parents and children but have significant benefits for employers and the economy as a whole. 
Numerous studies have shown that flexible working arrangements make employees more satisfied more motivated and more productive and that they reduce absenteeism stress-related health problems workplace accidents staff turnover and therefore recruitment costs. They enable employers to attract and retain employees with valuable skills and knowledge who would otherwise leave the workplace to care full-time for their families. A recent review of the British legislation that this bill is based on found that it has been very successful in changing workplace culture and making it more family-friendly for employees with young children. The British legislation is so successful that the Labour Government there has promised to review it and to extend it to cover parents with children under 12 and employees with elderly and other dependents. We would welcome an extension of the provisions of this bill and I hope that that will be considered in the select committee. In England since the legislation has been introduced about one million British parents have made a request to work flexibly. Eight out of 10 requests have been granted and a compromise has been reached in a further one out of 10 requests. 
Both the nurses union and the Council of Trade Unions have come out in support of this bill. They say that the pressure to balance work and family life is a major problem for many workers and that flexible working arrangements would overcome one of the key barriers to women pursuing a career. The Prime Minister announced recently that she wants there to be more women in the paid workforce. Making paid work more flexible and enabling parents with children to work more flexibly or part-time would help to achieve that goal. 
National has suggested that the bill could create an environment whereby employers would not hire women because they would be more likely to require flexible working hours. That is a nonsensical suggestion. It is precisely the argument that was used against equal pay against pay equity and against paid parental leave and it has not come to pass. It has not happened in the United Kingdom and it will not happen here because the entitlement applies equally to men and women and—this will be a surprise for Wayne Mapp—as many men want to spend more time with their families as there are women who want to do that. I am confident that those fears will not be realised and that employers will find that flexible working hours are something to embrace—that they will enhance workplace productivity and make workplaces more attractive to employees. 
Flexible working hours make sense for individual families for employers and for society as a whole. As a society it makes sense that we help parents to spend more time with their families when children are young. It makes sense that we modernise our workplaces and change our workplace culture so that it is a results-driven not a work-to-clock culture. It makes sense that we redesign work in a way that responds to employees’ needs and gives employees some choice over the actual time they work. That makes sense in terms of the health of families the health of children and the health of the nation. As I have said the aim of the bill is a modest one and we would like to see the bill extended in the select committee. We are astonished that parties that claim to be family-friendly such as United Future and National would turn down such a modest simple request to establish a right for parents with children to work more flexibly and to work part-time. I think that many New Zealanders would be utterly astonished at why those parties should be opposing this bill. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 The Government will be supporting the referral of the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee so that public submissions can be sought. It is not committed however to supporting the bill beyond that stage. This Government is prepared to listen to the public on these issues and to take their views on board. There is no better place to do that in respect of this bill than in a select committee. 
This is a family-friendly Government that has introduced a wide range of policies designed to help working families. The major package coming into effect this week Working for Families follows on from previous policies that introduced paid parental leave fairer holidays legislation affordable quality childcare and so much more. 
The select committee will have to listen to the submissions I am sure will come from employers employee organisations and individual New Zealanders. It was very interesting to hear Dr Wayne Mapp say that because this bill is supported by nurses and teachers it must be bad. I ask him to repeat that statement when he gets up on his hind legs again because nurses and teachers will be very interested to hear the National Opposition spokesperson on industrial relations say that they should be ignored and that their views and wishes on these issues are bad. They are the people who make this country so good. Where would we be without nurses and teachers? The National Party would have us do without them because it will scrap as many jobs as it can if it cuts taxes as it says it will. 
We on this side of the House are prepared to listen to the arguments. It may not be necessary to enact legislation to achieve the measures in this bill. Many employers realise that with a Government as good as this one that is bringing unemployment down so low they do have to be more flexible about the working environment and to go the extra mile to get parents to the job. That may mean shorter hours and more flexible working relationships but it may not require legislation. However let us hear the arguments. Let us look at the facts and not judge just on bias and ignorance like the National Party and others who oppose the bill. 
I like Sue Kedgley am always interested in hearing from the so-called family values side of the House. The National Party always goes on about family values and how important it is to uphold them. Let us think back. When I was growing up I and my brothers and sisters played sport and engaged in all sorts of activities and I could almost guarantee that every week my mum and dad would be there alongside all the other mums and dads either at practices during the week or at the games on Saturdays and Sundays when we played rugby league cricket soccer or whatever it might have been. When my children who are now in their 20s were growing up most of the time I or my wife could be there. Sometimes we coached the sports teams or organised the activities. A lot of parents were able to do what we did as our children were growing up. Members should go out there now and see what it is like on the sports fields of New Zealand. Members should ask themselves why very few children engage in sporting and other activities. It is not because they do not want to; it is because it is now extraordinarily difficult for families to be involved. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Ha ha! 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Wayne Mapp laughs at that because he has no connection with that part of New Zealand with ordinary New Zealanders who want to be there with their children and enjoy the opportunity to be on the sidelines to be there for rehearsals to run the Scout troops to be part of ballet classes and to do all the things that I did for my sons and daughters and that my mum and dad did for us—all nine of us or seven of us or however many were living in the house at the time. The National Party has no connection with that. It knows nothing about it. National Party members mock this sort of legislation and say that it does not even have the right to go before a select committee. 
The Government says we should hear what New Zealanders have to say on this bill. We will make a judgment on whether legislation is required but New Zealanders really feel strongly about this stuff. We want a workforce that is flexible. We now work 7 days a week 24 hours a day in this land. What suffers as a result is the family cohesion that I grew up with that my children grew up with and that today’s children are missing out on. That is what I talk about when I talk about family values. It is not about dollars and cents production and so on in isolation. We need a complete society. 
I think bills like this are very healthy and should be supported. That is why the Government will support the referral of this bill. It sits alongside a whole lot of measures we have already introduced. We want it to go to the select committee. We will see what happens within that select committee before we commit any further on this legislation. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 That was a speech from a tired old unionist—so tired that Mr Tamihere had this to say about him: “Mark Gosche never delivered for them so they’re bringing in Maryann Street…”. Mr Gosche is so tired he could not even deliver. We heard Mr Gosche go on about family values ballet and so forth. Right throughout the electorate I serve and right throughout the electorates all National members serve we can go to sports fields to ballet classes and to an enormous range of activities that parents support. Mr Gosche is simply not telling the truth. I guess that is why Labour has had to bring Maryan Street in. She is a militant unionist but I guess Labour thinks that at least she provides better value than Mr Gosche. 
It is extraordinary to hear the justification given for this bill because it is actually a bill in search of a problem. The problem the Green Party talks about simply does not exist. I guess the one thing we can say about the New Zealand workforce today more than at any other time is that it is flexible open and dynamic and that people make a whole variety of choices—choices that in fact meet their particular needs. When I listen to the ultra-leftists that the Greens are it seems to me that they have never heard of negotiation flexibility choice or the practical experience of people in the workforce. That does not surprise me because the Green Party and the Labour Party are chock-full of unionists and people who simply have never had to negotiate in small business. In small businesses up and down this country people make arrangements to suit their needs. 
Let us look at the real facts rather than the allegations. The number of women in the workforce—and to be honest I guess we are largely talking about women here—has increased 16.1 percent in the last 4 years. Those women are making choices that suit their particular circumstances. A large amount of that increase involves part-time work. Who takes part-time work? It is mothers with children at home. They choose a flexible approach that meets their family needs. We do not need legislation to achieve that particular outcome. 
The Government and the Green Party refer to Europe. Europe is their mantra and mentor. We have heard about all sorts of European countries and Britain is one of them. There is a reason why they choose Europe. They do so because it is the European centralist bureaucratic model that they admire. That model is all about low productivity high taxes and European decline. That is what it is about—European decline. This Government loves the European model. This Government would ally itself with the European model on every single option that it can choose. Unfortunately it is voting on the wrong side of history. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Simon Power 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am quite happy to sit on this side of the House and indulge in a bit of jousting with Government members—that is the custom of this place—but a comment made by the “Associate Minister for Communications and Power Lines” was completely unacceptable. If Dr Mapp did not take offence I certainly did. The Government whip has also made comments indicating that it was unacceptable. The Minister should be made to withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The Minister will stand withdraw and apologise. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: On the basis that— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: When the Minister stands he just withdraws and apologises with no comment. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: I guess that is the sort of comment that causes Mr Tamihere to have such opprobrium for that particular Minister. The trouble with this legislation is that it is a bureaucratic centralised solution to a non-existent problem. I guess it is not surprising that the Green Party chooses the European model and I guess it is not surprising that the Labour Party chooses the European model. Those are countries with low productivity failing economies and low growth. National aspires to a country with high productivity and flexible negotiations—situations in which people can make real choices. That is why this bill is simply not necessary. 
HELEN DUNCAN (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand and support this bill. The Government is proud to be a family-friendly Government and it is therefore happy to support this bill going to the select committee. The ideas in it seem good and should be subject to public scrutiny. Then we can see whether we need to go forward with it. 
The previous speaker demonstrated yet again his utter contempt for the working people of New Zealand. At least today he did not repeat his scurrilous comments about the teachers and nurses of this country. But it is quite clear that he has no sympathy whatsoever for the hard-working families of New Zealand who are trying to juggle the commitments of their working lives and balance that with giving real support to their children in their educational and recreational activities. 
As I said this Government—unlike the Government of the previous speaker—is a family-friendly Government. We have made huge commitments to families. Since we introduced the paid parental leave scheme in 2002 we have increased the entitlements each year and from the end of this year eligible parents will get 14 weeks’ paid parental leave. I know that Sue Kedgley supports those measures. The Working for Families package is designed to reduce the barriers to work and to ensure that people are better off working. It also ensures that families are able to give their children the best possible start in life. The Working for Families package does make a huge difference to the lives of a great many New Zealand families. Of course from 2007 there will be 4 weeks’ holiday for all working people and that is another thing that will make a difference to family life. We have put fairer sickness and bereavement leave provisions into our industrial relations legislation as well. It makes a huge difference to families in times of stress just to have the right to a decent amount of leave. We have put in place fairer public holiday rates so that people who work a public holiday while everyone else is off on holiday at least get a little bit extra to compensate them for that work. What we have done is all about restoring the fairness for working people that was taken away under the 9 years of National Government in the 1990s. We are committed to affordable quality childcare to enable parents who wish to work to do so knowing that their children have good-quality childcare. Those things we have done. 
However we are still quite prepared to look at Sue Kedgley’s bill and if there is a lot of support for it from the public at large then we can support it through. It looks like a good idea and we are prepared to give it a go. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 Let me say from the word go that we agree with much of what the last speaker said and of what the Hon Mark Gosche said earlier. We believe that parents should spend more time with their children. But we have looked at this bill inside out and not one person has made any representation to us on the matter it deals with at all. 
Simon Power 
: Not one? 
PETER BROWN 
: Not one. 
Simon Power 
: It’s a non-problem. 
PETER BROWN 
: It is a non-problem. I say to those members over there—and I respect their sincerity—that this is a nation of small employers and that those employers have families and need a bit of consideration in industrial relations areas. This bill would impose on them quite some added responsibilities. I have quite a few friends who are employers and I do not know of one of them being totally inflexible when it comes to the concerns or the welfare of their staff. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: That’s the reality. 
PETER BROWN 
: That is the reality as my colleague said. Voluntary flexibility is far better than imposed flexibility. The explanatory note of the bill states—and this scares me witless: “Parents will be given two weeks to appeal in writing against the decision”—that is a decision that goes against them—“and set out the reasons for the appeal. Where cases cannot be resolved in the workplace binding mediation and arbitration will be available and the opportunity for an employee to take a case to the Employment Tribunal.” That will impose a lot of restrictions and costs on small employers. 
Sue Kedgley 
: It happened in the UK. 
PETER BROWN 
: People from the UK have come to me as their first port of call because I have been out here for 40 years and they see me as having made a success of my life in New Zealand. They tell me: “You wouldn’t want to go back there now Peter. You would not survive.” That is what they are telling me. I suggest that the member talk to a few people and ask them why they have come here from the UK. She should not quote the UK to me as the be-all and end-all of everything. 
This bill makes the assumption that a significant number of employers are inflexible and uncaring and just want to impose their will on their staff no matter what. That is not true in New Zealand. One of the attractions of this country is that employers here work in to a very large degree with their staff. This country is a classless society compared with the UK. That is the difference in the UK which Sue Kedgley talks about. The UK might need a little bit of legislation—I do not know and I will not comment on it. But my experience of this country—and it is a long experience—is that employers here are very very mindful of the needs of their staff and the needs of the families of their staff. I hear very very regularly things that impress me about New Zealand and New Zealand’s attitude to families. I have to say that the Hon Mark Gosche was wrong on one point. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: Just one! 
PETER BROWN 
: He is wrong on one point. From time to time I go to watch youngsters play soccer. I know this will amaze the member but I am now on the sideline as a grandad not a father. I know that the member will find that hard to believe. But I can tell him that hundreds of parents are out there on the sidelines—and I have to get in a little plug for soccer because it is the biggest sport in this country in terms of youngsters participating. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: I hope it’s not Newcastle United. 
PETER BROWN 
: I hope it is not Newcastle United too. I think the less we say about that the better. All I am saying is that parents are still taking a keen interest in their children’s activities. I believe that there is plenty of scope in this country for parents to go to their employers and say they want to change their working hours a little. I can tell members that if we pass this bill then there will be employers who are forced into saying that a person is not employable because he or she does not fit in with the working hours. There will be discrimination. 
Debate interrupted. 
Sittings of the House 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister for Communications) 
: 
 I seek leave for the House to continue sitting so that the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill may be completed and at the completion of the bill for the House to then rise so that members can participate in the State dinner for the President of Indonesia. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think I heard a Government Minister saying that we should stop Parliament so he can go and have a rip-roaringly good dinner with the President of Indonesia. 
Hon Member 
: Flexible working hours. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Well that is flexible working hours. That is one of the most outrageous proposals I have heard from a Minister for a long time. We are elected here to be members of Parliament not to go and have dinners whenever we feel like it. Speaking on behalf of the ACT party I say that we are here to represent the taxpayer and to keep the Government honest and we most certainly will not agree to a proposal like that regardless of how ambitious Mr Cunliffe might be to go to a dinner. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: So the member is taking objection.  
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I seek leave for the House to rise at the conclusion of this debate and the taking of the vote on the bill. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The Government junior Minister put exactly the same proposal at 6 o’clock. The idea that Parliament should adjourn so that Government Ministers can go to a dinner is an outrage. The ACT party believes we are paid to be here as members of Parliament and we are prepared to stay here. We most certainly will not agree but of course if the Government wants to be more reasonable and allow question time next week we will reconsider the matter. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: So there is an objection. Leave has been declined. 
Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
Debate resumed. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak as I said I wanted to to the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill. 
The question was raised by Lindsay Tisch that a Minister was not present in the Chamber. The bell was rung. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I hope there has been no collusion between the Speaker and the Ministers because we did hear of an outrageous suggestion that Government Ministers are so keen to go eating and drinking with the Indonesian Prime Minister— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is this a point of order? 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I am making a parliamentary and political point that in my time— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: There is no collusion. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I have never seen Ministers walking out. I also ask for an assurance from you which is a point of order— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It is an outrageous suggestion. Would you please sit down—[ 
Interruption 
] I am on my feet. Under the Standing Orders as you well know if there is no Minister in the House then the Speaker is required to apply the Standing Orders. I am applying the Standing Orders. The bell is ringing. I understand that under the Standing Orders it is a 5-minute bell. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I notice that you did not reply to the point that I made and it appeared to me—maybe it was the body language of the Leader of the House—that there is collusion between the Speaker and the Leader of the House. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would you please sit down. That is an outrageous allegation and I ask you to please sit down. It is outrageous to suggest that a Speaker would do that. It is my job to apply the Standing Orders. I am doing that. There is no collusion. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Were you advised or were you not? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member please refrain. I was not advised of anything except to come back to the House because the session was to continue. I was advised that leave would be sought to lift the House. That is all. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: In that case I withdraw and apologise for my statement suggesting that you had been given prior notice of this. It is a shame that you did not know but the rest of us did. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member for that otherwise he would also have had to withdraw. The bell is ringing. 
John Carter 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I came into the Chamber because I heard the bell ringing. Could somebody provide clarification for me and for those who have just arrived in the Chamber. I understand that the reason the bell is ringing is that there is no Minister present in the House. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is right. 
John Carter 
: I understand that the reason behind it is that the Government does not want us to have members’ day tonight. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The junior National whip raised the matter that there was no Minister in the House. Therefore it was the responsibility of the Speaker to ring the bell for 5 minutes to ensure that a Minister will get to the House. 
John Carter 
: Thank you for that. Of course it is the Government’s responsibility to make sure there is a Minister in the House and the Government is failing in its duty if one does not arrive. 
Peter Brown 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Can you assure the House that this is not a test run for flexible hours of work to prove that it will not work? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I point out that these are interesting points of order but no proceedings can take place until there is a Minister present. 
The Speaker declared that a Minister was not present. 
Debate interrupted. 
The House adjourned at 7.37 p.m. pursuant to Standing Order 38.