Quinn Paul: General Debate 
Quinn Paul: General Debate 
[Volume:656;Page:5688] 
PAUL QUINN (National) 
: 
 It gives me a great deal of pleasure to take this call from the whips’ office. I want to reflect on what we have heard during the adjournment and that is that the highlight for Labour members was their magical mystery bus tour to nowhere. I take this opportunity to share with members my highlight during the adjournment. 
My highlight was when I was invited by the Mayor of Hutt City Mayor Ogden to attend a meeting of local community leaders in his office to talk about local issues on Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock. I duly turned up in response to his very polite invitation. Everyone else was there but we had to wait for the last two stragglers to turn up—namely Trevor Mallard and Chris Hipkins. What happened? The Hon Trevor Mallard walked in and went straight up to Mayor Ogden and asked what I was doing there. Mayor Ogden said it was because he had invited me. What did the Hon Trevor Mallard say to Mayor Ogden? He said that if I was at the next meeting he would not be coming as that meeting was not for me. That member is so self-indulgent that he puts his own self-importance ahead of the interests of the community. I was asked to attend the meeting to discuss progressing the interests of the community but Trevor Mallard got his nose out of joint. 
He does not realise of course that Labour is no longer in Government and that if the community is to make progress it needs to speak to the Government. That is why Mayor Ogden wants Government members to attend these meetings. But it has not got through to Trevor Mallard that he is no longer in Government. We can now see why as a retread he will not be the next leader of the Labour Party. It is simply because he is interested only in himself and not in the wider interests of the community. 
Who else might we consider as an alternative leader? Perhaps we could have Shane Jones. He is a chap who purports to represent good decent hard-working New Zealanders and to champion workers as the backbone of the economy. The only problem with Shane Jones is that he does not know what hard work is. His other problem is that he is fighting with David Cunliffe for the right-hand side of the scrum and at the moment they cannot select between them who gets to go forward. Unfortunately they could not sort that out on the bus. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: If this member was 2 inches taller he would have been an All Black. 
PAUL QUINN 
: We are now hearing from someone who is an expert on the All Blacks. As a result of his inferiority complex he never got anywhere in rugby past liniment rubbing in the changing sheds. Unfortunately he has never been good enough at sport. He sits there and pontificates on everything. The best he ever did was go around and pick the gear up off the floor and put it into the laundry bags. That is the closest he ever got to anything. 
Let us look at Darren Hughes. I have always thought that Darren Hughes shows good leadership potential. He is reasonably bright. He lost his constituency so there may be a bit of a problem because the next time round he may not be high enough on the list to get back into Parliament. The problem with Darren Hughes is that he is such a good talker that not only does he talk himself into the job but also he talks himself back out of the job. Of course he has had an opportunity in the publicly announced position of shadow Leader of the House but unfortunately one would never know it because Trevor Mallard keeps overriding him. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.