Brownlee Gerry: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Brownlee Gerry: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Sitting date: 12 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7484. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 In this very brief 5-minute call I just want to join with others who have thanked the legions of people who make life easy for us here in Parliament and to add my sincere agreement with the sentiments that have been expressed to this point. Anyone listening to this debate will pick up some of the vitriol that is perhaps natural. It is the time of year when you reflect on a year gone and there is a great willingness and eagerness on the part of everybody to separate out the differences between us all as politicians working for the betterment of New Zealand. But I want to just for a moment put my hat on as Leader of the House and make some comments that are about the way in which the House has operated this year. I think what many will not understand is that although there will be fierce debate on issues that we have clear policy division on there is a great deal of work done in this place that is simply for the betterment of New Zealanders and there is a lot of legislation that has passed through the House that adds to the quality of life and to the ease of doing your daily business in this country that has agreement across the floor of the House. 
There has been a lot of criticism over many years about the way in which urgency has been used and I will not go into that other than to say that at the beginning of the 2008 Parliament I put a notice of motion on the Order Paper proposing that there might be some change in the way in which some of that agreed business that the House deals with could be handled. The Standing Orders Committee picked up that idea and parties from across the House wrote it into the Standing Orders for this Parliament. So we now have this capacity for extended hours. The result of that this year has been that the House has had only one session of urgency appropriately around the Budget. It finished at 6 o’clock on the Thursday night meaning that there were no extra hours worked but the business was concluded satisfactorily. 
We have had 12 sessions held under extended hours with agreement by the Business Committee and one session held under extended hours by Government motion. The Business Committee is a group convened by the Speaker. It has representatives from all parties and it works on near unanimity. In other words if the representatives of the greatest number of parliamentarians agree on something it can happen. I want to pay tribute to all members of the Business Committee. I acknowledge Trevor Mallard as the shadow Leader of the House for his contribution in changing what I think has been the way in which we sensibly look at business that we are not divided on. Treaty settlement bills are a perfect example. The progress that is now being made which really is the fruition of many many years of work across different Governments is I think a splendid example of the way in which Parliament can work when these provisions are used appropriately. 
It also means that Parliament this year has sat for the equivalent of 35-plus weeks. Given that our constitutional arrangements require us to sit for 30 weeks that indicates a very significant extra commitment from members. So this has been a year when the maturity of Parliament has come to fruition and that is due to the senior members who sit on that business community— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Committee. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: —and I think the whole Parliament should be proud of them. I am not sure what Mr Mallard is saying but he may be allowed 5 minutes at some stage in this debate to make his thoughts clear. Then again in a party that is so divided as the Labour Party a true parliamentarian like Trevor Mallard just does not get a go. 
Instead we have to listen to the sort of drivel that we got from David Shearer. I want to know how much the Labour Party paid to have that speech written. It was not his material he hardly knew it he stumbled over his words he did not get the punchlines and he had an audience behind him like a group of trained seals clapping and laughing out of sequence. It was like watching a movie where it just sort of misses that cog in the wheel and you get the language and then the action coming in behind it. 
Then there is poor old Winston Peters. I want to say this to his group who were there chanting behind him. We have seen two Parliaments full of New Zealand First chanters and not one of them is still here. So that is basically saying to the world “We’ll have Winston.” which means “We’re out of here.”—gone. I now have to conclude but I want to thank you Mr Speaker as a presiding officer and all presiding officers and the Clerks for everything they do as well.