Mackey Moana: General Debate 
Mackey Moana: General Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9277] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 What an extraordinary speech from the National member Simon Power. It showed once again how out of touch National members are with the ordinary concerns of ordinary New Zealanders. It was an entire speech dedicated to denigrating people on the opposite side of the House. 
I think National members need to get over the fact that they lost the last election. They seem to show once again their complete misunderstanding of how MMP works—the fact that one’s party needs to work with other parties in the House. Understanding that fact might involve a few less personal attacks on those people in order to be able to work with them. 
National members seem to forget that the last time they were in Government they were propped up by what can only be described as an incredibly bizarre set of people including a member who came into this House with the Alliance as a list MP and was then happy to prop up a National-led Government. So I say to National members that they should look a bit more closely at their own backyard before they start to criticise other parties in terms of the way they work in an MMP environment. 
I am looking forward to tomorrow’s Budget. I know that once again we will see more steady economic management—the kind Dr Cullen has shown over the last 7 years when he has delivered Budgets in this House. I look forward to National’s alternative Budget that combines all the spending it has been promising. Its members have all individually gone around the country promising everyone that they will pay for everything. If anyone has a gripe that something is not being paid for and National thinks there is electoral advantage in promising to pay for it they will do that. They will say to every group in the community: “We think it’s terrible that the Labour Government is not paying for it. Well the National Government will.” 
I want to see an alternative Budget from the National Opposition—which seems to think it should be in Government and that it is ready to be—that combines every spending promise that has been made by everyone of its MPs since the last election. I assume that all those promises have been accepted by the caucus. I assume that all those promises have been accepted by their leader John Key. I assume National is ready to go out there and make all of these spending promises to all these groups and that this alternative Budget will include not only all of those spending promises but the huge tax cuts that National keeps promising it will deliver. 
It has gone very quiet on the Opposition side of the House and do members know why? It is because we will never see a Budget like that from National. We will never see an alternative Budget that honestly lays out what all National MPs are going around this country and telling New Zealanders. We have already seen an extraordinary number of policy U-turns by the National Party under its new leader John Key. We have seen a U-turn on the policy for income-related rents in State housing. We have seen a U-turn on the nuclear-free policy—something that Dr Brash said would be gone by lunchtime and what he said was supported by his caucus. Now that statement is gone by lunchtime as well and we all apparently agree with the nuclear-free policy. 
We have seen an astounding U-turn on the Kyoto Protocol from a man who said not that long ago that he thought climate change was a hoax. We are about to see a huge U-turn on Labour’s interest-free student loan policy—something that the National Party at the last election said was an irresponsible bribe. Now apparently National will go into the next election with it as part of its policy! We are also about to see a U-turn on the KiwiSaver scheme. Again that is something the National Party opposed; it said it thoroughly disagreed with Kiwisaver. Now the scheme is going to form a part of its policy. 
As my colleague Paul Swain has pointed out how can we trust a party and a leader who have made so many U-turns on so many issues that are meant to be core to the philosophy of the National Party? The fact is that we cannot. The fact is that National will do what National always does which is say one thing in Opposition and then do exactly the opposite the minute it becomes the Government. That is what New Zealanders have come to expect from National. 
Already we are seeing indications in the House that National is about to revert to its roots on industrial relations policy. We are getting speeches in the House saying that the Employment Contracts Act was really not that bad in hindsight. In fact when Ruth Dyson stood here and showed how much better the Employment Relations Act has been in terms of work stoppages and days lost National members kept saying: “Well yes but in this 1 year in the ECA that we managed to find and compare to 3 months of the ERA we found that the ECA was better.” 
We can argue about the semantics but the fact is that it is a very very scary revelation for the workers of New Zealand that the punitive Employment Contracts Act—I am sure it will be given a different name; it will be some nice soft fluffy name—will be back in its substantive form under a National Government. I do not think National will tell New Zealanders this before the election because National members know it was incredibly unpopular legislation. It helped lead to a gap in wages between Australians and New Zealanders it destroyed workers’ rights and it destroyed the relationships between workers and employers. Under the Employment Relations Act the Labour Government has been able to substantially remove that imbalance and restore those relationships. But the National Party is so philosophically aligned to the Employment Contracts Act that we will see that legislation back. 
I think that New Zealanders need to think very carefully when they hear slick John Key saying exactly what he thinks they want to hear—that is what he is good at. National will deliver something completely different because that is what it has always done.