Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19649] 
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  
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 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  
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 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  
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 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.