Ryall Tony: General Debate 
Ryall Tony: General Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9282] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 That speaker Shane Jones is apparently the future of the Labour Party. What I find most interesting about all the write-ups about that speaker is that we could just change his name to John Tamihere. We have read all the speculation before and we know exactly what came of it. If one looks at the speculation of the  
New Zealand Herald  
with the headline “Government says NO to personal tax cuts” one sees that it should have read “Government says NO to continued Labour Government”. Because this week we saw what we have not seen for 8 years which is the leader of the National Party being the most preferred Prime Minister of New Zealand. John Key struck a chord with New Zealanders when he said that it is time that this tired lifeless Government was put out of its misery. Today another one jumped ship—Copeland went. We know that there are some more who will probably go. Taito Phillip Field has gone. 
It is 1998 all over again. Having seen what happened then I can tell members of the House that it is happening all over again. The players in the Cabinet will be up there now trying to work out how they can cobble together this ragtag Government for a few more months before the whole thing falls apart. Because that is what is happening. No one knows whether Gordon Copeland will cast his vote for the Budget tomorrow. No one knows what his price will be. No one knows what Jeanette Fitzsimons meant by her rather obtuse question today about what the Greens were expecting from this Government. That is what the players in the Cabinet will be working on right now. I know they are because we faced the same thing in 1998. It is insidious. It is absolutely insidious that this goes on underlining that it is a Government that is losing its members by the month. It will not take long before the other minor parties in the coalition start to realise— 
Jill Pettis 
: Remember the Alamein. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: The massively defeated former MP for Whanganui says: “Remember the Alamein.” Members should change “Alamein” to “Copeland”. Members should change “Alamein” to “Taito Phillip Field”. That is what the Labour Party will have more of in the months ahead. This is a Government that has run out of ideas. It has run out of passion for the future. The Government started the general debate on the day before the Budget with a speech about something that is absolutely unrelated to what could be the centrepiece of some recovery it is proposing. Labour has been in Government for 7½ years. It is tired. The party has the same old people. Even the Prime Minister has talked about the managed exit list of all the MPs who are not wanted. A couple of them are sitting in the cross benches over there today—Jill Pettis who has probably been offered Niue; Fairbrother is going; Moana Mackey has been told she is on the managed exit list with the rest of them; and Ann Hartley is off as well. That sort of dismissal by the leader of a party of those soon-to-be-former members of Parliament is yet again the sort of thing that will undermine confidence in this Government. 
This is a Government that has fallen in every public opinion poll this year. Labour cannot form a Government with its mates the Greens according to any public opinion poll printed this year. This is a Government that is on the way out because it has squandered the opportunity to make this an even greater country than it already is. The Government has overtaxed over-regulated and overstretched itself to try to give us a country that New Zealanders can be proud of. 
It is not 600 New Zealanders a week leaving to go to Australia as Don Brash used to talk about; it is 700 New Zealanders a week leaving this country because of the Labour Government and its lack of vision and direction and the fact that it has no hope for this country. The Labour Party is a tired bunch of people who have been trying to run this country for 7½ years and have missed the opportunity completely. 
Instead of overtaxing New Zealanders for those 7½ years why were we not letting that money stay in the pockets of hardworking New Zealanders so that they could invest in growing their businesses? This country would have been much richer today if we had.