Collins Judith: General Debate 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Volume:640;Page:10264] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 We have just heard from one of Labour’s bright young things. It is great to see Dave Hereora who is actually—to be fair—one of the nice people in Labour. Dave is a nice enough bloke. He has never offended anyone because he has never done anything. One of the great things about Dave is that he is one of the bright young stars of Labour. We do in fact support paid parental leave as long as it is fair and that is why we did not like it the first time. It excluded self-employed women and we did not think that was fair. It was not fair and now Labour has seen the error of its ways. 
It has been great today to hear from some of the people in Labour in particular. There is not much that I agree with Helen Clark on except maybe that it really is time for rejuvenation in Labour’s ranks. We heard from my colleague Gerry Brownlee today about the last supper that was held last night for the Labour people who have been told that frankly there is not a lot of point in having them around. Let us look at some of those people. Marian Hobbs—what was Marian Hobbs’ crime? Well Marian Hobbs just could not stand the thought of years and years of Opposition. She just could not stand it. So as she is a smart woman she decided to go off and do a bit of retraining and leave the country. But she is still here by the way being paid by the taxpayer. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes I say to Mrs Tolley she is still here. 
Dianne Yates—what is wrong with her? What has she done wrong? Well she lost to David Bennett—and why would she not lose? David Bennett is a bright young man. He is coming through he did well and he took Hamilton East. 
Jill Pettis—her crime is that she lost Whanganui and to Chester Borrows who has been absolutely fantastic with his section 59 of the Crimes Act work and his police work. Of course she just lost to a better person. Poor Mrs Pettis used to be the senior Government whip. She is the only senior Government whip never to have become a Cabinet Minister—the only person. For goodness’ sake Labour promoted Benson-Pope so its standards are not very high. 
Anne Tolley 
: And Rick Barker! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: And Rick Barker as Mrs Tolley says. 
Russell Fairbrother—what has he done wrong? Well he has now been sent to Timor-Leste. I think it is because he is checking out what the accommodation will be like in the ambassador’s residence. It is very important that he do that because we are being told that another smart young thing—Stuart Nash apparently his name is—is coming down from Auckland to take Napier away from Russell Fairbrother. But of course Russell Fairbrother was yet again beaten by guess what a better man—Chris Tremain. 
What has Dover Samuels done? Well we know what Dover Samuels has done so we will not go there! Frankly it is not good enough for good company. What about George Hawkins? He has done nothing wrong actually apart from being the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs over the agent orange issue and denying the existence of the map that showed exactly that there had been agent orange sprayed on our troops. But at the end of the day George is a survivor and my pick is he is going to stay in Manurewa because he is a pretty smart old boy when it comes to things like boundary changes and I reckon he has got it sussed. No matter what Helen Clark thinks George is going to stay. I do not mind that because currently he is one of my constituents and I always like to look after my constituents. 
Paul Swain—well he has got a life and one has to congratulate him on that. I say “Good on you Paul.” He is leaving. What about Rick Barker? Well what can we say about Rick Barker? This is a man who stood up in the House and said he had faith in Veterans Affairs New Zealand. He is absolutely confident it is doing well. The trouble is he forgot about the little report that the Defence Force did into Veterans Affairs New Zealand—in fact in March this year. Apparently Rick is waiting to be given a copy. All he has to do is to ring my office. I will send him a copy because frankly one fell into my lap and I have made sure that people know about it. What we know about Rick being in charge is that he does not know how many veterans there are and he does not know who gets a veterans card. He does not know anything. He is the most useless Minister even in a useless Labour Government. 
What about Mark Burton? We have heard a lot from Mark today calling out from the sidelines. What has he done? Well he has almost lost Taupo. We know he is being undermined day in day out on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I tell him that right now he is being undermined by his own people and unfortunately there is someone who has him in their sights. I tell him right now his days are numbered in justice. 
As to Mita Ririnui people ask: “Who is that?” and I too say: “Who is that?”. Apparently his days are numbered. But what about Steve Chadwick? That poor woman; she had Health Committee meetings going day in day out just to suck up to the Prime Minister but she has been thrown back to the backbenches where she belongs.