Dalziel Lianne: General Debates 
Dalziel Lianne: General Debates 
[Volume:611;Page:8124] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 The National Party had 2 days in Christchurch last week—which I think is a perfectly acceptable use of adjournment time—so that its members could get together strategise and think about how they could improve their performance in the House and in the polls. What do we get after they spent 2 days away together? They put David Carter up as their speaker in the general debate. Well that was a worthwhile couple of days to work that one out. 
There is nothing that this once-proud National Party can do to lift its performance. Why? Simply because it has not one jot of credibility either inside its party or outside its party. National’s own leader cannot drag himself out of the margin of error—and that is just within his own caucus. Everyone knows he is not up to it and everyone knows that his heart is not in it. We are happy to support him as the Leader of the Opposition. 
The National Party cannot position itself on the political spectrum because it does not know where it belongs any more. It has no leadership and the talk has started again. We have heard Mr Mallard tell us about those meetings and we know about them happening all the time. We know that approaches are being made so who is being approached? I can tell the House that not one single member of the brat pack has been approached by anyone in the National Party caucus. In fact caucus members are so disgusted with the appalling behaviour of Roger Sowry Tony Ryall and Nick Smith that they are looking again more widely and they are looking over the fence. They are not staying within their own caucus to make those approaches. Mr English may have been mending fences with the ACT party last night because he had failed to back up Murray McCully when that member made overtures at a regional ACT party conference or maybe Mr English was just getting some advice on how to earn an independent salary which one does not have to disclose when one is a back-bench MP. I think Mr Hide was at that meal and I am sure that he would have been able to give very good advice on that particular subject. 
Other members of the National Party caucus have been looking jealously at the recent poll rating which can perhaps appropriately be described as a rogue poll given its subject namely one Winston Peters. Certainly National Party back-benchers are so appalled at where their once-proud party sits in the polls they are currying favour with Winston Peters so that they can at least get themselves into the headlines. But I think Mr Peters should be exposed for the incompetent bumbling fool he has become. The media have dubbed him the “MP for Courtenay Place” and late nights are taking a toll on him. Members should look at his behaviour over the Refugee Council. He was invited to speak at the Refugee Council’s annual general meeting. He assumed he was the only one asked to speak agreed to attend and then found out that I was going to be there and did not even have the gumption to front. The bottom line is that he is made a fool of in this House over and over again. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I know that a gracious providence intervened and the bell went but the Minister did not sit down. It does not get better in the retelling. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I made a mistake. The bell should not have gone. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: That member has made an absolute fool of himself in Parliament by raising questions about immigration matters that go nowhere. He puts out press statements but to use his own favourite expression he produces not one single shred of evidence in support of anything he raises in this Parliament on immigration matters. Yesterday he tabled a letter in the House that apparently was evidence to back up a press statement. Every single element of that press statement was wrong. The individual concerned had been removed from New Zealand 9 days before Mr Peters even put out the press statement. He had been in jail since April so he was never “lost to the system”; he was not missing. There was no cover-up but that member just tries to get a headline. The bottom line is that it is really sad the National Party is sidling up to such a hopeless case.