Duncan Helen: General Debates 
Duncan Helen: General Debates 
[Volume:609;Page:6575] 
HELEN DUNCAN (NZ Labour) 
: 
 This afternoon’s debate has been quite interesting in that it has really shown up the deficiencies of the Opposition. There are so many issues to discuss and so many interesting things are happening in our country and what do those members do? They raise pointless pernickety points of order that go on and on and on. Members’ day is one of those days when people come along here to listen to what they think will be good speeches and interesting discussion but Opposition members can find nothing better to do than to make fools of themselves through their points of order. 
It is interesting that today the Leader of the Opposition demonstrated just why he cannot seem to get any traction either personally or for his party in the opinion polls. He led his party’s attack on the Prime Minister and did his best to convince New Zealand that Helen Clark through her principled stand against the Iraq war has ruined New Zealand’s chances of a free-trade deal with the United States. It is interesting that that campaign that Bill English led had no success even though the National Party managed to get the media to put it on the front pages of newspapers a couple of weeks ago. What happened when the polls were taken? What result did the polls show? They showed National going down not up. National is going down again. The Colmar Brunton poll held on 15 June—after National had done its worst—showed Labour at 54 percent and National at 28 percent. Helen Clark as preferred Prime Minister came in at 44 percent. Bill English came in at 7 percent which is not too good. 
The reason is that New Zealanders know that the National Party is not consistent. After all the fuss about Helen Clark scuttling the free-trade deal with the US what did Bill English say on  
Morning Report 
 on Friday 20 June? He said talking about the Americans: “In fact they are often at pains here in any of the discussions we’ve had to say that both the Iraq war - type decision and nuclear policy are separate from how they treat trade. In fact one of the things that has come through is that the US only does trade agreements where it believes there’s a net economic benefit to the US. They don’t do them as a favour to anyone else; they do them as a favour to themselves.” That is what Bill English said on Friday 20 June and it was absolutely in direct contrast to all the things he said in this House when he accused the Prime Minister of ruining because of our principled stand against the war in the Iraq New Zealand’s chances of a free-trade deal. 
Well the people of New Zealand did not believe him and they showed that very clearly in their responses in the opinion poll. They showed that they did not believe that our Prime Minister had done anything to hurt our country’s chances for a free-trade agreement and Bill English himself then admitted that what he had said and tried to put forward to the New Zealand people was in fact an absolute fabrication. It had no basis in fact at all. Unfortunately what happens when one tries to mislead the people is they realise they are being misled and they do not take kindly to it; nor do they take kindly to parties and politicians who do that. 
It was interesting this afternoon to hear the leader of New Zealand First suggest that this nation should repudiate the Treaty of Waitangi—the foundation on which this country is built. That is typical of the man who said in 1996: “Vote for New Zealand First—the only party that can get rid of the National Government.” And what did he do? As soon as he had the balance of power he went into coalition with the National Party and kept that National Government in power. 
Mark Peck 
: Great success! 
HELEN DUNCAN 
: Oh that was a great success for both those parties—they have never looked back have they!