Cunliffe David: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: General Debate[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13700. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition): I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business. In the life of any Government there approaches a tipping point. It is a point where the temperature in the House rises as the public makes up its mind and where the Government of the day starts to look tired ragged and desperate. According to the Government I was not born in New Zealand. I am a militant Islamic terrorist and I was actually born in Kenya! We will get more from it on that.We are not fooled. The real issue going on is that the Government is covering up for a Minister of Conservation who is such an endangered species that he could not even crawl his way into the Chamber. This is a—Hon Member: Point of order—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I think I can anticipate—the member must not refer to the fact that a Minister is not in the Chamber.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: This Government is showing all the signs of a third-term Government in its second term. This is a Government on its way out and this is an Opposition on its way in. The endangered Minister is guilty of three capital crimes: self-contradiction excess intervention and repeat offending.In a self-contradiction on 29 July he said: “The first I knew of there being an issue overDOC’s submission [forRuataniwha] to the board was at my weekly meeting with officials on Monday 29 July.” On the 31st he said he received a full briefing and a final submission from his department. Roll the clock forward to 19 September. He told the media and the House: “I have consistently said I never saw this draft until Tuesday of this week.” That was months later. On 19 July he said: “I did not know that this draft document even existed.”—he did not know that a draft existed. When the deputy director-general of the Department of Conservation expressed the Minister’s concern what was so nuclear in the draft? It was the department doing its duty: warning that the poor littlefishies in the Tukituki River might be harmed by the nitrates in the dam.This caused the second capital crime: excess intervention. It was not nitrates in the water that was the problem; it was whatever was in the Minister’s waters because the Minister stomped all over proper departmental process. In so doing he thwarted the Department of Conservation fulfilling its statutory mandate: saving the littlefishies of the Tukituki River.The third capital crime is repeat offending because this Minister has a history of scandals rather reminiscent of theRuataniwha troubles. He sacked the Environment Canterbury board because it got in the way of big irrigator interests. I wonder which big irrigating interests are leaning on this particular project. He has a habit of going off half-cocked. He wrote letters of support to ACC for National Party campaigner BronwynPullar when he was Minister for ACC. He has a history of defamation cases—defamation cases. It rather reminds me of a certain MatthewHooton—but we will not go there—the timber companyOsmose the Exclusive Brethren Dave Henderson Bruce Stuart-Menteath and then of course the little matter of being found in contempt of court.Look at them on the other side. One almost feels sorry for them. There comes a point past the tipping point where you just want to put them out of their misery. That time is now ladies and gentlemen. Let us get a new Labour-led Government and give New Zealanders back their country.