King Annette: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3426. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 The animal manure and blatherskite of the National Government rolls on. We have had 4 years of government by slogan: closing the gap with Australia a brighter future and so on. We have had report after report after report. We have had working parties task forces and summits where there were more participants than jobs created. We have had photo opportunity after photo opportunity and the doozy of them all was Anne Tolley standing on a crushed car in stiletto high heels. If it was not so serious it would make a great comedy. It would not be called  
Gliding On  
where you have the public servant in the grey buttoned-up cardy. It would be called “ 
Glossing Over 
” or “ 
Glamouring It Up 
” led by John Key in his Versace suit. 
We now have got what we are calling the “Gonna Government”. It is “gonna” do this and it is “gonna” do that and it is “gonna” do the other thing but unfortunately it never gets round to doing anything. All we get is list after list after list of “gonna do’s”. In 2010 there was a six-point plan. In 2011 there was a revised six-point plan. In 2012 there was a revised revised six-point plan that then became a four-point plan. Then in March this year there was another six-point plan and a week later there was an eight-point plan. Let us not forget the plan that had 106 targets. And now this week we have a 10-point plan. So we have tons of targets and tons of plans and very very little action. The Minister who has just spoken the Minister for Social Development should be ashamed of herself—4 years as a Minister and all she has got is a task force a number of plans some targets and no action. 
I have to say that I have got a 10-point argument for this Government as to why its 0800 Public Service will not work for New Zealanders. You see it wants to provide public service through a telephone line. It does not provide an office. It does not provide a real person to talk to. It does not provide what the “Minister of Animal Manure” produced and said would be a “Smarter. Faster. Fairer.” service—Housing New Zealand Corporation’s 0800 number. What you do is you ring the number and it rings and it rings and it rings and then someone says: “Please hold.” In the case of Phil Goff’s secretary 22 minutes later he finally got a voice. So you hold and you hold and you hold and then you hang up and then you give up. Because you see this is not a better smarter faster Public Service. It is a nonsense and it has been proved to be a nonsense.  
Here are 10 things that are wrong with this service. First of all it was a bad idea because there is nothing smarter faster or fairer about it. Secondly it was poorly planned. There are not enough staff. So what did they do? They sacked 70 and re-employed an extra 69 and the numbers are going up. Thirdly they told people not to call at peak time but you wait 30 minutes on a Friday night. Fourthly the maintenance workers were told to call the 0800 number—the very people who are meant to fix the houses wait and wait and wait to talk to somebody about fixing the house. Then they told all the social workers to join the queue on the 0800 number. If you wanted to get through and tell them about what was wrong just wait hang on and you will finally get through. Then they were told that their calls would be answered faster—46 minutes is the record that I have heard. Then there is the number of unanswered calls which has gone up for the second month in a row. It is up to 56000 unanswered calls costing hundreds and thousands of dollars to taxpayers because the calls are not answered. And then we have got the Housing New Zealand Corporation making it so difficult that not even the journalists can get the right answers out of them. Then they said it would save money. Well it has cost over $90 million for the smarter faster service so far and nobody has got a better service. The final of the 10 points I wanted to make is that what is wrong with it is Phil Heatley the Minister of Housing. He said it was going to be smarter faster and fairer. Well I have to say that he might have been proud of saying that then but he certainly is not proud of it now.