Collins Judith: General Debate 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Volume:649;Page:17784] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 If there is one person left in the country who thinks we should not have a referendum on MMP then I invite him or her to consider that speech from the member Sue Moroney. For goodness’ sake! We need a referendum in order to have some good members come in for the Labour Party because that member certainly is not good. 
Unfortunately this country is in recession. But have we heard a scrap on that today from Labour members? Have we heard even a word about what their plans are to do anything about it? No! What we have heard all afternoon are personal attacks on members of the Opposition front bench; personal attacks on John Key personal attacks on Bill English personal attacks on members of Parliament on this side of the House. Members opposite have been using words like “Crosby/Textor” “slippery” and whatever else Mike Williams’ focus groups have told them to say. 
Last weekend John Key was outlining a 10-point plan to get this economy going. He was looking at having a 10-point plan to reverse the trend of 80000 people leaving this country every year; a 10-point plan of aspiration of moving forward and of not looking back 40 or 50 years and whinging and moaning; a 10-point plan with which we can move forward and deal with the things that people care about. I have news for Labour members: people around the country in Auckland Christchurch and Dunedin do not care about those members’ personal attacks. What they really care about is having the ability to pay the mortgage to get a great education for their children and to stay in this country which is the country of their birth and the country they love. All we get from Labour is a group of extremely coarse-voiced women screaming out at members on this side of the House and frankly they could all do with some elocution lessons. All those members have done is engage in dirty tricks. 
During the weekend we saw the Labour Party flunkeys who work on The Standard the weblog that Labour has—which is paid for with taxpayers’ money because the people who work on it are employed by the Labour Party and Parliamentary Service—secretly recording personal conversations while making out that they were Young Nationals. They were doing the dirty work for Helen Clark. Helen Clark has been asked to front up and condemn that behaviour. Has she? No she has not because they were doing the job that Labour wants them to do. That is what they were doing. They have been engaged in covert bugging and they have been engaged in push-polling which means ringing people and asking “Do you think John Key is slippery?” and if people say in reply “Oh well um I—” they are recorded as saying yes. 
Labour has been engaged in dirty rorts of the pledge-card type. Instead of having the pledge card rort this year we now have the great brochure rort. It is the same rort but just bigger. That is Labour. It has been involved in email thefts. It has received stolen emails and used them for its own advantage. It has destroyed people’s reputations. Look what Helen Clark did to Peter Doone. There were secret little conversations with the media—“I’ve got dirt on him.” The Prime Minister of our country did that. Labour people have gone through rubbish bins. They went through John Key’s rubbish bin before the last election trying to find the tax package. That is what they will do; that is what they will stoop to. 
Do members remember what they did in the last week before the election? They sent out a letter under the names of David Benson-Pope and Pete Hodgson to all the State tenants in the country telling them that National was going to sell their State houses out from under them. It was a dirty filthy little lie of the kind that we expect from the people who signed that letter. That is what they did and they did it to the most vulnerable people in this country just to scare them. We cannot trust the Labour Party. Its tactics at this election will be the dirtiest filthiest tactics that this country has ever seen and frankly by Labour’s standards that is saying something. 
This is all at a time when inflation is heading to 5 percent and we are moving towards the worst recession we have seen for 20 years. This Government has no answers. Sickness beneficiary and invalids beneficiary numbers now are at a record level—132000 people. That is what we have from this Government and what can its members say? All Labour can do is get its flunkeys over there to stand up and give little quotes that the Labour research unit people—all of whom probably work for The Standard as well—give them about attacking John Key attacking his credibility. John Key is a credible person. John Key is an extremely credible person unlike any member on that side of the House. Labour has those harridans over there scream and carry on screeching and abusing everybody but there is not one word from them about policy. I have this question for them: when is the election? Why is Helen Clark not fronting up on that issue?