Pettis Jill: General Debate 
Pettis Jill: General Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21153] 
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 Is it not amazing that in New Zealand First a British immigrant and an immigrant from Pakistan are always going on about immigration yet New Zealand First tangata whenua members sit there with their gobs shut. It is a bit ironic but never mind those tangata whenua know their place and clearly it is at the back of the room. 
I say to National members opposite in particular Don Brash: “Put on the flak jackets fellows and all of the protection jackets you can find.” because if by some absolute miracle a number of new National MPs should come into this Parliament—although I think the chances are pretty slim as New Zealanders become exposed to the absolute lack of policy from Don Brash or any of his other hangers-on—those few new MPs will be shocked when they realise what the radical true agenda of the National Party is. It will be 1990-91 all over again when some hapless National MPs came into this place and suddenly realised what the real agenda was. In 1990-91 it was division factions and leaking to the media all over the show. I predict that is exactly what would happen again because I know from listening to the radio this morning that a candidate is out there representing the National Party who does not have a clue about what National is doing about tax policy. 
By accident this morning I had the occasion to listen to the third-time running candidate in Whanganui when the announcer from the Hawera radio station asked him: “So when is the tax policy going to come out?”. He answered: “Well we were told a couple of weeks ago that it was coming out in a couple of weeks and a couple of weeks is up next week so I guess it will be next week.” It just goes to show how uninformed those poor hapless sods are out there in the rest of New Zealand and how much they know about what Don Brash has got planned about tax. Don Brash will sit on this tax policy for as long as he can because he will not want New Zealand to get a hold of it too quickly. Once New Zealand realises the extremity and the radical nature of what that man is proposing with tax and other financial matters they will be mortified. 
The general public of New Zealand contains some who might be soft Tories. Some of those Tory candidates out there think: “I’ve got her vote”; “I’ve got his vote” and they are votes from whom one would call soft Tories. When they realise that Don Brash has put the family silver back on the market again they will be horrified. They will be banging on the doors of National Party candidates and those hapless naive innocent candidates will not know what has struck them. They do not understand the hard cold reality of politics. They do not know that Don Brash will say anything to get elected and then have no accountability once he is elected. 
There will be huge dissent out there in the community particularly from Grey Power. That is not a group that is easily hoodwinked but I have to say I am warning Mr Brash that if he sells Kiwibank which he has said he will do then Grey Power will be on to him like a rat up a drainpipe. Grey Power will leave no stone unturned because it knows the value of Kiwibank. Grey Power and other organisations that care and advocate for people out in the community will be horrified when they come to learn the full extent of what Don Brash wants to sell. 
I quote from a lecture he gave in 1996 which is not so long ago and it shows his philosophy has been fairly constant: “There is clearly scope for further reform … The Government still owns major trading activities which could in principle be privatised.” Some of those trading activities are things that New Zealanders call their own. They are things that they have taken to heart like New Zealand Post and the Accident Compensation Corporation.