Hughes Darren: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Darren: General Debate[Sitting date: 10 October 2007. Volume:642;Page:12232. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki): Over recent months during the Wednesday general debate it has been the habit of Labour members to ask National members one simple question: “What’s your policy?”. That has been the continual call from Labour members on this side to the Tory members sitting over there. We want them to tell us just one policy. They would get up to speak after us and ask why we were always talking about them and why did we not talk about ourselves. Of course the reason Labour members want to talk about policy is that so much of what we have done for this country and with this country in the last 8 years has delivered a real improvement in the standard of living of ordinary people. We have fairer employment law and sound economic management; Modern Apprenticeships and interest-free student loans; record spending on health and education; investment in our public services; and as we go into this third term exciting ideas for savings and lifting Kiwi homeownership rates across the community.We have always been a policy-based Government which is why we put the acid test on that lot of people sitting over there and asked them to be policy based as well. Every week they would fail on that charge but over the last parliamentary adjournment they came to the party—they turned up with policy and we are glad about that because now we are finally starting to see the whites of the eyes of National members. That is why sitting in this debate here today I was amazed to see the Leader of the Opposition and the deputy leader of the National Party take two calls between them and not mentionone time any of the policy they released over the adjournment. Is that the approach of people who are proud of the policy work they are doing—the hard yards they claim to be doing across health and foreign policy; Bill English’s view on privatisation and State assets? Not at all. I can describe the parliamentary adjournment only as a series of “Key-tastrophes” for the National Party. There were “Key-tastrophes” all over the show no matter what one looked at; whether it was the removing of caps on general practitioner fees it was a “Key-tastrophe”; whether it was the privatising of State assets it was a “Key-tastrophe”; whether it was the blasé view on who owns our public schools it was a “Key-tastrophe” or whether it was the continuation of this amateurish approach to foreign and defence policy it was a “Key-tastrophe” as well. We are now chasing National members to try to find out what their view will be on student fees. I reckon that when they are honest about that it will be yet another “Key-tastrophe”.It has been very interesting in Parliament in the last couple of days to see how the National Party has tried to shift its ground on the ownership question to the “PPP” question. Of course Labour has a very clear record on public-private partnerships which we put into law. On the National side of the House its members think that “PPP” stands for privatising public property. That is all it means to the Tory members because they want the private sector to own the asset. In Labour we say that we will work with the private sector to build things and that is where the Land Transport Management Act has sat on the law books since 2004 but National members want to sell those assets and put them into the ownership of the private sector. They do not care who owns the schools. They want the ownership to be put into the hands of people in the private sector. When it came to our State-owned assets Bill English went on television and said that we should partially sell them to mum and dad investors. But National members want only some mums and dads to own our State assets. We in the Labour Government want all mums and dads to own our State assets.I was delighted to hear theŌtaki electorate that I so proudly represent mentioned in question time today. I thought that was a very good thing. There was talk about Transmission Gully. I am glad that this Government is making the biggest advances on that project that have ever happened. Certainly when the National Party was in power nothing happened. Right now we have $80 million in the Budget to do all the scoping work necessary to build that road. The Government has already put up $400 million. We have put up the idea of a regional fuel tax and said that the law allows tolling to occur. We have no idea what the National Party thinks its view on it will be but under Labour we are making steady progress.Hon David Parker: They won’t borrow the money they will just get it from overseas.DARREN HUGHES: That is the kind of economic management approach that is taken by rising stars in the National Party like Mrs Dean. But of course Mr English had the cheek to talk for 2 days in a row about his concern for people on $39000 a year saying that they paid 33c in the dollar tax. He did not bother to say that the 33c rate is paid only on the last $1000 of income. The first $38000 is at the lower tax rate. It is only the last $1000 that is at that higher rate.That is typical of the spin of the National Party that we find so offensive.The Hollow Men is just as real today as when Don Brash was National’s leader. National members tried to bury that book when he left this Parliament but their attitude over the adjournment shows that every single page is still true. The ink is still not dry onThe Hollow Men. They talked about inoculating policies not fronting up to the public on what they really think and swallowing dead rats. All of those things were shown to be true over the course of the adjournment and no more so than in relation to removing the cap on general practitioner fees. Their attitude towards people is just to let them godown the road to another general practitioner. They want to let the invisible hand of the market overtake the provision of primary health services. National members are the unreconstructed right-wingers they always were and people should party vote for Labour to stop them.