Hughes Darren: General Debate 
Hughes Darren: General Debate 
[Volume:644;Page:13523] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Deputy Leader of the House) 
: 
 I start my contribution to the general debate this afternoon by offering my congratulations to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard the new Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. They are from the Australian Labor Party which has stormed to victory and to a pretty comprehensive win for a new Government for Australia. It has been interesting to watch what has been happening in Australia in recent times because a lot is mentioned about it in our media and politics. The thing that strikes me most about what has happened in Australia is that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard won office on the policies that Helen Clark and Michael Cullen have been implementing here in New Zealand. You know for a long time there was a group of workers in Australia who voted for the previous Government. It was not until that Government went to the right and to the style of the Employment Contracts Act of National in New Zealand that those people—who were known as the “Howard battlers”—moved over and voted for a Labor Government. 
I congratulate Kevin Rudd on the stand he has taken on climate change. He has adopted a clear policy—just like New Zealand Labour has adopted. His opponent was a last-minute convert to the climate change challenge just as we have a half-hearted effort from the parliamentary Opposition here in New Zealand in that regard as well. Of course Kevin Rudd supports Helen Clark’s stand against the war in Iraq and in not committing troops into that combat zone just as we have done in New Zealand. I congratulate Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on the work they will do in Australia. 
The other thing I think is interesting about Australian politics is the way in which a certain style has been allowed to enter the conservative side of politics which is most easily illustrated by the activities of the Exclusive Brethren Church. We are debating that in Parliament at the moment with the passage of the Electoral Finance Bill. It is a bill about which the National Opposition basically alone in Parliament is causing all sorts of outrage and false crocodile tears with its stand against it. The bill has been introduced because the book  
The Hollow Men 
 exposed behaviour at the last election that not one National MP opposite will say he or she is proud of. 
Anne Tolley 
: It’s a work of fiction. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Mrs Tolley knows it is not. She knows that basically it is an encyclopaedia. Does she deny that the emails and the footnotes in the back of that book are true? 
Anne Tolley 
: It’s a work of fiction. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I hope National members keep up this approach through the rest of the afternoon and week because that book puts out absolutely clearly why electoral finance reform is needed in this country. It is why not one of the speeches of bluster we have heard from Mr English and his cronies has gone any way to try to defend what the National Party did in 2005 when its campaign was basically run by the Exclusive Brethren Church. It is why the National Party has not offered one word of defence for the way Bill English ran the campaign in 2002 when National’s election campaign was basically funded by Parliamentary Service. That is a point he has never denied in Parliament and a point he never refers to in debating the Electoral Finance Bill. So let us have just a little bit less of the moral outrage from that side of the House in that regard. 
Something they should feel morally outraged about is the DVD that was going to be the great circuit-breaker for John Key. We found out that he is ambitious for New Zealand. One of the members of Parliament in this Chamber whom I dislike the most is Tony Ryall. He is just a mean nasty person—but I think he is ambitious for New Zealand. I do not deny for a minute that he is an ambitious person for our country—I mean that as a compliment incidentally—I have not met a single member of Parliament who is not ambitious for New Zealand. We are all in that state. 
I put on the DVD and tried to watch it for 13 minutes which felt like a lifetime—trying to work out how John Key was differently ambitious for New Zealand from the rest of us. There was not a single answer on the DVD. But I am glad they chose the DVD because DVDs are interesting things. They are all shiny but hollow at the core. That reminds me a lot of the Leader of the Opposition. While I was watching the DVD I thought that if I were John Key and I knew that people thought I was all style and no substance and I put out a DVD I would try to counter that claim by packing it full of policy. But John Key did not put one thing on there because the policies that National has released are all desperately unpopular. 
Tony Ryall’s health discussion document—the only discussion document National members do not want us to talk about—puts up general practitioner fees for New Zealanders accessing primary health care. Bill English’s State-owned enterprises policy is the one whereby he partially privatises the family silver. National members do not want to talk about that. Those two policies were not on the DVD either. The other policy National had was about the war in Iraq. That was not on the DVD either. National members do not want to talk about the policies we know National has and the policies they keep trying to hide are the ones that were not on the DVD. We saw that in Australia right-wing industrial relations law led to the defeat of a Government. In New Zealand we know that National wants to go back to an Employment Contracts Act style. We have had a couple of quotes around the place that refer to it. But National members are never up front about what industrial relations law they want. It is about time they reissued this DVD and put some policy on it.