General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGeneral Debate[Sitting date: 10 October 2007. Volume:642;Page:12224. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]General DebateHon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence): I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business. I think theSunday Star-Times—Madam SPEAKER: Before we get under way with battle commencing would those members who are leaving the House please do so quickly and quietly.Hon PHIL GOFF:—summed it up. Let me read from it: “Tony Ryall lost his smug smile last week”. There he was prancing down the catwalk that he thought led to National victory and the next minute he was bottoms up in the swamp. As unattractive as that analogy is it is undoubtedly accurate.There was the National Party 2 years into the term of this Parliament with a failure to release a single policy. National members were under pressure so there they were and they thought they would come up with a health policy. When they revealed their policy they revealed a lot more than they intended to reveal. Mr Ryall told the country that National’s policy was to take the cap off doctors’ subsidies. Now it was a televised press conference and there was John Key with the other National MPs around him and they were thunderstruck. They were appalled and they were staggered—not at the policy you understand because that caucus had approved the policy. They were appalled that Tony Ryall had actually revealed what was on National’s hidden agenda. There it wasThe Hollow Men all over again.Mr Ryall was telling the country that his party would hurl millions of dollars of subsidies into the health system but would not ask where the subsidies went. It is clear what would happen in that situation: the subsidies that are designed to keep doctors’ fees down for people on limited incomes would go into the business profits of the practices. Mr Ryall said “No the market will control it and you can trust the general practitioners.”Hon Jim Anderton: Yeah right!Hon PHIL GOFF: “Yeah right!” as my colleague has said. Actually theSunday Star-Timessaid something different. It said “At a stroke Ryall showed himself to be both shifty and silly.” So that was the first case of dropping the ball.But then there was the other one. Bill English came out with the policy that indicated that back on National’s agenda was the privatisation of community-owned assets. Poor old John Key was a bit shattered at that revelation too. He approved it no doubt. He knew it was there but was he going to come out and say that? No. So what do we have? We have John Key saying “No that isn’t our policy.” and we have Bill English saying “Yes”. There they are at it again with the struggle over the leadership emerging in the policy differences.The problem with regard to John Key was that he made his own slip-up—the first of many slip-ups. It was the one where he said that the private sector could and should own and build schools. Yes that reveals more than Mr Key intended to reveal as well. Katherine Rich did not know about it and when the media came to ask Mr Key about it he was nowhere to be found. He went to ground for 24 hours as did Katherine Rich. But there revealed to all of us was a National Party policy that says that is the top of the slippery slope for the privatisation of our public education system. We know National’s track record and we know its ideology—it isThe Hollow Men; “the shallow men” as Mike Moore said. That is what is on the National Party agenda.Then came the third of the policy revelations. It was on foreign affairs and defence but it was a total turn-round. Having spent 7 years criticising this Government’s defence and foreign policy and saying the scrapping of the air combat wing would leave New Zealand defenceless suddenly the National Party has had a revelation: the Labour Party was right all along. Then there is the nuclear-free policy. National members say “Yes we believe in the nuclear-free policy.” but that was not what was revealed in the foreign policy cable that stated the nuclear-free policy would be gone by lunchtime. The National Party has decided that political expediency will govern and it has embraced everything that Labour has done but can we believe it? If a party like the National Party is driven not by political conviction or by principle but by political expediency it will do anything. National cannot be trusted; its agenda is revealed.JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition): It is always better when you get the vein-popper from Phil Goff. It is no more coherent but it is slightly more entertaining which I think is better. One place I can confidently confirm the war is not over is in the Labour Party caucus room. I will tell members something for nothing: those members were a down-in-the-mouth bunch of little puppies yesterday when they walked in there. You see the war is on. It is not about the next 12 months. It does not really matter that Helen Clark is off to the Pacific Islands Forum and then she will be back to send a third of the Cabinet to the guillotine; that does not actually matter. They are fighting over the shape of the caucus post-election when they will be in Opposition and Phil Goff needs his mates in there to get himself in as the leader. That is what he is worried about. He has been waiting waiting waiting for a long time and now he can see it coming coming coming towards him.His mate Steve Maharey did not have a very good last couple of weeks either because in his rush to make hysterical comments he forgot that the private sector built aschool under Labour in 2002 and Labour praised it. While he was at it he ruled out any use of private sector capital in any road construction in New Zealand. So if people live up the Kapiti Coast and use Transmission Gully then this is the message from Labour: it will never come. There will be no Transmission Gully under Labour; it is never coming.This is the big news for today: a surplus of $8.7 billion. Another way of looking at it is that it is the nice big kitty that Helen Clark has decided she will gather and finally dish out in election year. This Government over the last 4 years has collected $35 billion in surpluses. This is the message from Labour: it is OK if the Government takes more surplus and more tax from people than it needs because it is OK as long as the Government is fine so people should not worry. This Government does not care about New Zealanders who are struggling to pay the bills or that prices are going up; none of that matters!Over the last 8 years and for the last 5½ years that I have been in the House I have heard every excuse from Michael Cullen down for why tax cuts are not affordable. You see the reason Labour is on the slide and New Zealanders have given up on it is that they are sick of Michael Cullen’s excuses. Yesterday he came into the House and said that tax cuts were possible if one met the four tests. They were: do not borrow to pay for them do not cut services to pay for them do not implement them in times of inflation and do not do things that make for inequality.Actually there was a fifth one that he forgot to announce: tax cuts can happen only in election year! The only time we can have a tax cut under Labour is in election year. The other little one he forgot about was that Labour will never actually go through with them. The last time Labour promised a tax cut was in 2005 and it never turned up. Labour cannot be trusted on tax cuts and it cannot be trusted on the economy either. The interesting thing is that a while ago Michael Cullen answered a question in the House from Mark Gosche. He said: “I have seen reports of Australia’s experience of introducing large-scale tax cuts earlier this year. The result was higher interest rates and higher mortgage repayments leading to a slump in consumer sentiment.”Well from what I can see that is what we have in New Zealand and we have not actually had a tax cut. That is the point is it not? Labour came in when interest rates were at 5 percent and they are now at 8.25 percent. About a third of New Zealanders will be renegotiating their mortgages in the next couple of months and all they can rely on is Helen Clark’s telling them that it is more important for her Government to build up a kitty than for them to get their own money. That is the message. The message under Labour is that the Government can spend New Zealanders’ money better than they can spend it themselves.That is why the Government spends $1 billion of it a week that is why it has taken $335 billion in the last year and that is why it does not care. New Zealanders are angry because they are sick of working hard and they are sick of paying a lot of taxes. All their taxes are there just to be a political machine that can buy an election for Labour. It is “lolly-nomics”. Next year it will not be anything to do with whether or not tax cuts are affordable; they will arrive because it is an election year.Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of State Services): I just want New Zealanders to know—the ones watching on Sky channel 94—that John Key who has just criticised the Prime Minister for making overseas trips that bring New Zealand credit is just about to leave on a 2-week European junket. It was to be rugby rugby rugby and wining and dining. The Rugby World Cup quarter-final result means he now has a pretty empty diary indeed.After a disastrous series of leadership changes the National Party believes it has finally found the man. National members have seen off Mr Bolger they have seen offMrs Shipley they have seen off Mr English and Dr Brash and now they have put all their political eggs in the Key basket. Mr Key is the new face of the National Party. He swept in announcing the abandonment of long-held National policies and principles and he quickly adopted Labour ones. He adopted many Labour policies to the extent that commentators are increasingly calling him “Mr Labour-lite”. “Mr Labour-lite” is what they are calling him now.With a series of nice photo opportunities Mr Key has deliberately positioned himself and the National Party as the answer to all New Zealand’s problems. Well if that is the answer we would have to ask ourselves what the question was. Of course there has never been any detail about National’s policies; there has been no detail about what those members would do. There has been lots of puffery and lots of promises but increasingly this side of the House the media and political commentators have put the squeeze on the National Party saying: “Give us some policy detail. Don’t give us carbon copies of Labour’s policy or New Zealand First’s policy. Give us some of your own policy. Give us your own thought your own words your own proposed action.”Well the National Party decided in the last 2 weeks that it was a great time to release a little bit of policy. After all Parliament was not sitting and National members thought they would not have to have too much scrutiny. The Prime Minister was overseas representing her country and the country was following the All Blacks so it was time for National to drop a few policy hints and hope that people would not notice them—but it would satisfy the critics who had been asking for a while.What those members did not reckon on was that they were not going to drop some policy hints; they were going to drop some policy clangers—and did they ever drop some policy clangers! There was a series of them. It started with Bill English onAgenda. He is the man who is supposed to know what the New Zealand public are feeling. He believes he has his finger on the pulse. So he announced to the people of New Zealand that he would like to sell off some of mum and dad’s silver—some of our State-owned assets. He thinks the public are thirsting to see their State-owned assets sold off yet again. What he did not reckon on was what the public thought of that and the bow wave of that has washed right over him and Mr Key. The public do not like it. They will not entertain it. I make this prediction: by the time of the election the sale of State-owned assets will be off the National Party’s agenda and its policy will be the same as the Labour Party’s.The next thing was Mr Key’s blunder his clanger on foreign policy. He said: “The war is over.” and then he tried to cover up by saying that he did not really mean that but was talking about something else. He has been caught out for misleading and it is up there on the website for every New Zealander to see. I say that New Zealanders should go and look at it. If they want to see a man who is trying to mislead them then they should just read that transcript. He said the war was over. But he forgot to make the phone call to Mr Bush—he did not know it was over—and he forgot to make the phone call to the Iraqi Government. They did not know it was over.Then Mr Key spoke about the privatisation of schools. That was clanger No. 3. [Interruption] Members opposite are enjoying this very much I can tell. National wants to privatise our schools. It wants to build them and the private sector to own them. That was something Katherine Rich did not know about; she has more integrity than that. She was not told about the policy—it was National’s social welfare policy all over again. But the doozy of them all has to be the bumbled announcement that National would take the cap off general practitioners’ fees. That will go down as the biggest blunder it has made.TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki):Tēna koe Mr Speaker. While it is quiet I thought I would share with the House some views about Te AoMāori as an educational exercise. Ourtūpuna continue to amaze me with their insightfulness about life often explained inwhakataukīkīwahawhakatauākī; and for those who are not sure what I am talking about let me give a bit of an explanation. Mr Speaker you might have heard this one: e kore tepātiki e hoki kitōnapuehu; the flounder never returns to its disturbed sand. Have you heard that one? [Interruption] Yes now and again. Some of the tribes talk about it like this: e kore tekurī e kaiitōnaruaki; the dog never eats its own vomit or “chunder” in rugby terms! These are the sorts of encouragements that tell us today “If you do a job do it right first up; don’t stuff up and try to cover your tracks with excuses; and don’t excuse your incompetence.” There are some others such as ko tekōura hokiwhakamuri; the crayfish that walks backwards. Those in the know will be aware thatkōura have a sort of reverse gear. When they become alarmed or shocked they shoot back into shelter by flicking their tails pretty violently.I reckon ourtūpuna had a fairly insightful understanding about things and that probably explains some of the things we have dealt with in the last couple of weeks and indeed we are dealing with today. Firstly there was the unprecedented back-down covering the sale of Crown land. In February this year the Hon Mark Burton came out loud and clear stating: “The Crown’s policy is that Landcorp properties are generally not available for use in settlements.” TheMāori Party raised some alarm.Ngāti Kahu HaurakiTūwharetoa and other iwi andhapū spoke out publicly about the management of those lands by Landcorp and the Office of Treaty Settlements. Nationwide attention centred on the role of Landcorp in threatening to sell Whenuakite on the Coromandel PeninsulaRangiputa in Northland as well as Raurimu in the national park area. And then what do you know? Thekōura starts edging backwards and hey presto another new process is created. It is a major back-up; a 360-degree reversal if you like with officials now being specifically asked to consider whether there are cultural values in such properties as well as assessing potential claimant interest in the land for Treaty settlements.In talking of Treaty settlements let us go back to 23 and 24 August 2007. The main players are the Waitangi Tribunal the Federation ofMāori Authorities the New ZealandMāori Council and other central North Island iwi including Te Arawa andNgātiTūwharetoa who had been following legal action through the courts. On 23 August the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations was reported by theNew Zealand Heraldas saying that despite the grave concerns expressed by the Waitangi Tribunal about the interests of overlappinghapū and the durability of future central North Island settlements “the Government would be moving ahead with the settlement and it was up to interest groups to organise their own hui.” Hello! Within less than 24 hoursi hokiwhakamuri tekōura thekōura retreated once more.The Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations the Minister of Finance and the Minister ofMāori Affairs announce that they will meet with central North Island iwi who are not part of the affiliate Te Arawa iwi andhapū settlement agreement to discuss their concerns about the accumulated rentals for deferred purchase land arising from aspects of the settlement package. Not long after this the Ministers announce that they wantTāmaki-makau-rau iwi to have a workshop to advance their claims on the back of the Waitangi Tribunal report that said there were serious issues to be dealt with resulting from the failure of the Office of Treaty Settlements to act in good faith.Then there is housing. Our co-leader Tariana Turia says that there are major housing problems in Porirua—leaking homes no restoration work and the health and well-being of people is being seriously compromised. There are similar cases I might add in theRūātoki valley and the Waitahanui area in my electorate. The Minister is hot off themark and defends the ministry to the hilt but once again 24 hours later admits that there is a serious problem. Too much!One other fact about thekōura that might be relevant to the discussion is thatkōura are scavengers that feed off left-overs that float by in the water or settle on the bottom. Once the food is caught its sharp pincers push it into its mouth where it is ground to a pulp in order to digest it.So I turn to the issue of the status of tangata whenua. For 24 years tangata whenua includingMāori have been working with the UN working parties responsible for the current draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is an aspirational document—something to aim at—yet we have a Government that once said it saw the Treaty as the foundation of this nation. That is why theMāori Party is important in this House.Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National): Mr Assistant Speaker—Darren Hughes: Old “Fire Sale Bill”.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well the member forOtaki has just found out he will certainly lose his seat because today the Labour Government said there will be no private money for Transmission Gully. Dr Cullen has said he will not borrow a dollar. So the only way the people of Wellington and the Kapiti Coast can get Transmission Gully is with about a 50c regional petrol tax.Hon Maurice Williamson: At least!Hon BILL ENGLISH: It will probably be more my colleague Maurice Williamson tells me. So the member opposite should keep his head down. He lost his seat certainly today; if there was any doubt about it then yesterday.It highlights the way the Labour attack has fizzled out in its own incoherence. Those members have turned out to be not just a bunch of hysterics but also a bunch of hypocrites.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member knows he cannot use that word.Hon BILL ENGLISH: I withdraw. It turns out that Labour is doing public-private partnerships everywhere. Now the definition of a public-private partnership is that if it is built by the private sector then it is a public-private partnership. Well that means every school and hospital in New Zealand is a public-private partnership. The fact is that Labour is burdened by its clichés of the past and they are dragging it down.Over the next 10 years New Zealand needs billions of dollars of infrastructure investment for a growing economy and Labour has ruled out the main sources of funds for doing that. So I question how Dr Cullen will be able to cut taxes if he needs all the money to build Transmission Gully and to fund all the roading that is required in Auckland. How will he cut taxes if he will not borrow any money for infrastructure or use any private money for infrastructure? He will have to use cash surpluses.Hon Murray McCully: It will come from the tooth fairy.Hon BILL ENGLISH: He will get it from the tooth fairy and only the tooth fairy believes anything that Dr Cullen says about tax cuts.In October last year Dr Cullen said: “People who think there should be tax cuts on the back of big surpluses should be taken out and drowned.” Is that a suicide note; did he predict his own demise? You see Dr Cullen promises tax cuts in an election year and then after the election he cancels them because he wants the money. It is as simple as that and he will do it all again. But whose money is it?Well the massive surplus announced today is paid for by people on $39000 who pay 33c in the dollar—the rich man’s tax rate! When Labour came to office those people were on $32000. Did Labour promise them they would end up on the rich man’s tax rate under its Government? That is what has happened. What are those householdsdealing with? They are dealing with interest rates that have gone up by 4 percentage points since Labour took office and they are now paying 9.25 percent on their mortgages. They have seen electricity prices rise by 25 to 30 percent. In the last couple of months they have seen milk and butter go up by 20 percent.These people are facing a real squeeze on their household budget and what does Helen Clark say? She says: “We are building up the kitty. We are taking hard-earned cash out of your pocket we do not need so we can buy your vote.” and that is why those people have stopped listening. They do not believe Labour any more.Labour members do not care about those people on $39000 paying a rich man’s tax rate. They said yesterday that it is more important for the Government to get the money and decide how to spend it in order to win those people’s votes. That is what is going on here. The Labour Government is preying on middle and low income New Zealanders and wringing tax out of them. Those members are sitting in their flash offices in the Beehive and coming up with grandiose schemes about how to pull a rabbit out of a hat 2 weeks before the election.Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health): We have just heard a spirited address from a man who has more positions on taxation than can be found in theKama Sutra. This man changes his mind in the course of a week in the course of month and actually has been known to change his mind in the course of a question time. This man wants taxes to be cut but he wants interest rates to fall as well.The truth of the matter is that Bill English gave a spirited speech full of anger but the reality is that no matter how angry he wishes to be he cannot hide and no matter how much obfuscation he wants to put into place members in his party cannot take back the words they have been uttering over the past couple of weeks. They can scramble them but they cannot erase them. The truth is out. We now have a sense of the emerging ideology of this party that would wish to be a Government one day. We also have a sense of its incompetence.It started of course on Wednesday 26 September. A health document was to be released. It was given to the media. There was a line-up of National Party spokespeople. The leader was there the National spokesperson on health was there and the National Party health team—which keeps changing—was there too. In the 45 pages of that document there was no mention of an increase in general practitioners’ fees—not one.Darren Hughes: Not a word.Hon PETE HODGSON: Not a word. Because and only because the media persisted with their questioning the following words were uttered by Mr Tony Ryall: “We don’t support Labour’s fee control system. We’ll be knocking it on the head.”Darren Hughes: In that arrogant way of his.Hon PETE HODGSON: In that arrogant way of his. Did anyone see the television that night? Did anyone see the eyes of the caucus colleagues start to roll? A lot of people all of a sudden did not want to be there. They did not want to be in the room. They said to themselves noiselessly: “Oh dang! That was the bit we weren’t supposed to say.” But it was out. Mr Ryall had turned his press conference into a train wreck because he had tried to deny the position. That is what happened and I thank the media for their persistence.The truth of the matter is that the cover-up is where the farce really began. We saw Mr Key the leader of the National Party in a corner immediately reach for the market. We heard him immediately say: “Oh this is just like going to your accountant or your mechanic. If doctors put up fees people will go somewhere else.” Oh yeah! Will rural people go somewhere else? Will urban people go to an accident and emergency department instead? The point really is to ask why National would want to do that when we know that better heath outcomes follow cheaper access to general practitioners. Thisis not something that was made up by the New Zealand Labour Party; it is something that is found throughout the international literature. National members do not care about people’s health.Then the cover-up continued. Mr Ryall said: “Oh but I’ve been saying that for a long time. I said this in a speech. I’ve said it many times. This is settled policy and it shouldn’t be any surprise to any of you media people.” A question arises from that. If this was settled policy from the National Party and there was a 45-page document with photographs and graphs and things in it why was it not in the document? If it was settled policy why was it not in the document? There was comment in the document about universal primary health care but there was no argument in the document to say that it would be universal primary health care at a higher fee. That was not in the document.Then National started to go from bad to worse. Mr Key defended market forces as a means of keeping general practitioners’ fees at a reasonable level and then as ColinEspiner said in thePress he backed away from it. Mr Key then went on to say that he proposed the involvement of the private sector in both the building and the operation of State schools. Then he said he was talking only about construction. Mr Key denied talking to Macquarie Bank about a private-public partnership then he admitted talking to Macquarie Bank about a private-public partnership. Are members getting the pattern here? He backed away from Mr English’s suggestions that State assets should be sold and then he declared the Iraq war to be over. But what did he do the next day about the Iraq war? He said onbFM that the people on Radio New Zealand National had asked him about an invasion. They had not.KATHERINE RICH (National): The big question for the member who has just resumed his seat the Hon Pete Hodgson is how he will explain to that woman on television last night who had attempted to get an operation to have a cancerous growth removed why she had her surgery cancelled three times. She was even at the point when she was getting ready and was gowned up only to be told for a third time that she could not get her hospital treatment. These are the kinds of examples we are seeing time and time again.It has certainly been a bad couple of weeks for Steve Maharey. For a Minister who is usually a cool calm and somewhat smarmy operator in this House in the last week we have seen him become the “Captain Panic Pants” of the Labour Party as he has reacted to some of National’s ideas that have been talked about in the last couple of weeks. His hysterical reaction to some of National’s ideas demonstrates I think that he is more interested in scaremongering and upsetting the education sector than actually looking at facts and ideas.I am glad that so many have come to the conclusion that the Minister has over-egged his pudding somewhat and overstated things. When he scuttled up and down the press gallery and took interviews and said he would die in a ditch over this issue he forgot that the Government already does not own the buildings of some 3000 early childhood education providers and over 300 State schools and 107 private schools. Even yesterday when Steve Maharey decided to serve himself the ultimate patsy question he forgot that that day he had announced additional funding to establish some new early childhood sector centres that the Government does not own and will not own once they are established. So as for dying in a ditch we are just wondering how he keeps managing to limp along to the House every day given that he has set such a high bar.In terms of what the Minister is actually looking at if he is going to die in a ditch why not use that kind of rhetoric over some of things that are really important in education right now? If he is going to die in a ditch what about the 40 percent of primary schools that were in deficit last year or the 50 percent of secondary schools thatwere in deficit last year? Yes the Government announced an $8.7 billion surplus today but I can tell the Minister that schools have faced increasing costs since 2000: their power prices have gone up by 30 percent their wages and salaries have gone up as well but more important so many of the costs of running schools have gone up and have not been kept in line with the operations grant. So if the Minister is going to die in a ditch why does he not talk about the $2.5 million he has just shaved from operations budgets for secondary schools or the nearly $8 million he has taken from primary schools? He has not given schools any time really to prepare for budget changes before the end of next year.He could die in a ditch about the 41 percent increase in the truancy rate just since 2002. Every given week some 30000 kids do not go to school and do not turn up for their classes. There is one simple thing that we all know—if they are not in class they cannot learn and they cannot get qualifications. That is why the statistics are bad particularly forMāori students who leave school with no qualifications whatsoever. The Minister announced the schools report in glowing terms but I do not think he has actually read it. If he had read it he would have read that some 46 percent of teachers were effective only sometimes when teaching writing. Only a fifth of teachers are effective when teaching social studies. I can tell the Minister that if it were my kids who were in those classrooms I would have extremely high expectations. Every parent in this country expects that the teachers in front of his or her kids will be effective at what they are teaching.How much of the $8.7 billion announced today will go to schools? Certainly there are some gaps to cover and changes that need to be made. I think that the Minister needs to focus on the things that are really important in education. We all know that it is the quality of education and the quality of teaching that are important not who owns the buildings. That is not the issue that a Minister should consider dying in a ditch over when there are so many other more important issues facing schools and teachers.I remember back to my economics class and I wonder how the Minister can stand there and say that tax cuts under National are inflationary but that tax cuts under Labour are not. Labour will probably announce tax cuts but it will be in an election year and people will see the tax cuts for what they are—just a bribe.DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki): Over recent months during the Wednesday general debate it has been the habit of Labour members to ask National members one simple question: “What’s your policy?”. That has been the continual call from Labour members on this side to the Tory members sitting over there. We want them to tell us just one policy. They would get up to speak after us and ask why we were always talking about them and why did we not talk about ourselves. Of course the reason Labour members want to talk about policy is that so much of what we have done for this country and with this country in the last 8 years has delivered a real improvement in the standard of living of ordinary people. We have fairer employment law and sound economic management; Modern Apprenticeships and interest-free student loans; record spending on health and education; investment in our public services; and as we go into this third term exciting ideas for savings and lifting Kiwi homeownership rates across the community.We have always been a policy-based Government which is why we put the acid test on that lot of people sitting over there and asked them to be policy based as well. Every week they would fail on that charge but over the last parliamentary adjournment they came to the party—they turned up with policy and we are glad about that because now we are finally starting to see the whites of the eyes of National members. That is why sitting in this debate here today I was amazed to see the Leader of the Opposition and the deputy leader of the National Party take two calls between them and not mentionone time any of the policy they released over the adjournment. Is that the approach of people who are proud of the policy work they are doing—the hard yards they claim to be doing across health and foreign policy; Bill English’s view on privatisation and State assets? Not at all. I can describe the parliamentary adjournment only as a series of “Key-tastrophes” for the National Party. There were “Key-tastrophes” all over the show no matter what one looked at; whether it was the removing of caps on general practitioner fees it was a “Key-tastrophe”; whether it was the privatising of State assets it was a “Key-tastrophe”; whether it was the blasé view on who owns our public schools it was a “Key-tastrophe” or whether it was the continuation of this amateurish approach to foreign and defence policy it was a “Key-tastrophe” as well. We are now chasing National members to try to find out what their view will be on student fees. I reckon that when they are honest about that it will be yet another “Key-tastrophe”.It has been very interesting in Parliament in the last couple of days to see how the National Party has tried to shift its ground on the ownership question to the “PPP” question. Of course Labour has a very clear record on public-private partnerships which we put into law. On the National side of the House its members think that “PPP” stands for privatising public property. That is all it means to the Tory members because they want the private sector to own the asset. In Labour we say that we will work with the private sector to build things and that is where the Land Transport Management Act has sat on the law books since 2004 but National members want to sell those assets and put them into the ownership of the private sector. They do not care who owns the schools. They want the ownership to be put into the hands of people in the private sector. When it came to our State-owned assets Bill English went on television and said that we should partially sell them to mum and dad investors. But National members want only some mums and dads to own our State assets. We in the Labour Government want all mums and dads to own our State assets.I was delighted to hear theŌtaki electorate that I so proudly represent mentioned in question time today. I thought that was a very good thing. There was talk about Transmission Gully. I am glad that this Government is making the biggest advances on that project that have ever happened. Certainly when the National Party was in power nothing happened. Right now we have $80 million in the Budget to do all the scoping work necessary to build that road. The Government has already put up $400 million. We have put up the idea of a regional fuel tax and said that the law allows tolling to occur. We have no idea what the National Party thinks its view on it will be but under Labour we are making steady progress.Hon David Parker: They won’t borrow the money they will just get it from overseas.DARREN HUGHES: That is the kind of economic management approach that is taken by rising stars in the National Party like Mrs Dean. But of course Mr English had the cheek to talk for 2 days in a row about his concern for people on $39000 a year saying that they paid 33c in the dollar tax. He did not bother to say that the 33c rate is paid only on the last $1000 of income. The first $38000 is at the lower tax rate. It is only the last $1000 that is at that higher rate.That is typical of the spin of the National Party that we find so offensive.The Hollow Men is just as real today as when Don Brash was National’s leader. National members tried to bury that book when he left this Parliament but their attitude over the adjournment shows that every single page is still true. The ink is still not dry onThe Hollow Men. They talked about inoculating policies not fronting up to the public on what they really think and swallowing dead rats. All of those things were shown to be true over the course of the adjournment and no more so than in relation to removing the cap on general practitioner fees. Their attitude towards people is just to let them godown the road to another general practitioner. They want to let the invisible hand of the market overtake the provision of primary health services. National members are the unreconstructed right-wingers they always were and people should party vote for Labour to stop them.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga): Today we have heard the greatest rewrite of New Zealand’s history that I have ever been involved in—that is the definition of what is a public-private partnership. That is what we heard from Annette King today in order to get herself off the hook after some stupid comment made by Steve Maharey that Labour would not let public-private partnerships occur even when building roads. Let us remember that every Labour Government in the states of Australia has involved public-private partnerships so it is not as if they are just for a Tory regime. The Labour Government in the United Kingdom built the M6 Toll with a public-private partnership. Socialist Governments throughout Europe have used public-private partnerships. But finally Steve Maharey who knows better than anybody else has said “No I have ruled them out.” He did that in a press release and Annette King had to get herself off the hook today so she redefined public-private partnerships. She said: “That is where the private sector—you know the chippies and the bricklayers—go in and they actually build it but the public sector the Government funds it.”Well I have news for Annette King—that is how it has always been in the history of this country. Under Michael Joseph Savage there were public-private partnerships under that definition. In other words the Government funded new schools but the private sector carpenters went in and did the actual work of building them.Dr Wayne Mapp: Sir James Fletcher.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Sir James Fletcher went in and did quite well out of them. I want to know from Annette King why the Government passed the Land Transport Management Act of 2003 which it said enabled public-private partnerships. Labour members said that that was great legislation. Darren Hughes said: “I welcome the public-private partnerships that are part of this bill.” But according to Annette King today the only thing that is a public-private partnership under Labour is a partnership when the State pays for it and the private sector contractors with their trucks asphalt and tarseal make it. Well I can tell Mr Hughes that that has always been the case. We did not need a Land Transport Management Act in 2003 because the Government has always funded the roads. Transit does not build a road; Transit actually manages it funds it and so on but it gets the private sector to build it. So what we have heard today has been the greatest rewrite in history.I want my colleagues in this House to know that every school that has been built in this country and every hospital that has been built in this country—in fact every prison and that will be of great interest to a number of people—has been built as a public-private partnership if we use Annette King’s definition. The State has put up the money but the chippies the carpenters the plumbers and the electricians working on those buildings have not all been Government employees; they have been private sector guys who came along and did the contracts to build them. This is the greatest obfuscation I have ever seen.But I want to cover one other issue today. Headlines in theNew Zealand Heraldtoday state: “Motorway work has not helped crawl”. It is not talking about the Labour Party; it is talking about the speed at which traffic now moves in Auckland. The article states that the average speed at which traffic now moves has dropped to 34 kilometres an hour across the whole 300 kilometre network of Auckland’s roading—the lowest ever. It is the lowest ever. The average speed has dropped to 34 kilometres an hour across the whole 300 kilometre network. Labour has perpetuated a couple of myths here. It says that it has put so much more money into roading. Well I think thateveryone knows that with inflation every year the amount of money spent on roading has gone up. When National was in power the amount spent on roading every year went up and even under Labour—sorry I do not want to mislead the House: under Labour there was one year when the actual amount of money spent went down.But everyone knows that as a percentage of the economy if that amount of money were to grow we should have seen it. If members look at the graph I have here they will see what percentage was being spent on roading by Labour as a percentage of our GDP. It was less. It was less than when National was in power during the whole of the 1990s—and those members opposite do not like that. If it were true and if they had solved the roading problem so Auckland no longer had the adoring drive time audience who are out there now listening to me—drivers who are stuck in their cars and will be for hours—then they would not have seen the article by MatthewDearnaly in theNew Zealand Heraldtoday stating that the average speed of the traffic on our motorway network has got to its lowest level ever.The reason is that this Government has not put anywhere near enough investment in. More important it has today totally ruled out any private sector money for roading. That is a disgrace.RON MARK (NZ First): I rise in this House today to ask a couple of questions. First what do GregCarvell Daniel Ball andShyan Ricky Hill all have in common? Indeed how do the names Steven Wallace and Stephen Bellingham sit with these names?Well GregCarvell we all know was a gentleman who defended himself whilst under attack. He shot a man and was subsequently charged by the police run through the courts and was acquitted. Daniel Ball was a 17-year-old youth who was doing nothing more than sitting at a bus stop minding his own business and talking with his friends when he was set upon and attacked by a passing group of young thugs. He ended up in accident and emergency care and very nearly lost his sight in one eye. His mother took the phone call late at night. It was the sort of call all mothers dread. Daniel Ball’s assailant some time later when he was finally caught—a man by the name of Michael CharlesBrunning—eventually ended up with a 21-month prison sentence.Shyan Ricky Hill is a young man who by the age of 5 had been admitted to hospital 44 times due to chronic asthma. He is ofMāori descent although he looks like aPākehā. He was raised in a law-abiding family. He did not steal he was not a thug and he was always told to get a job to work and to be a law-abiding young man. Indeed I know some of his family and they are all humble—not wealthy—law-abiding Kiwis.Shyan Ricky Hill was a trained chef who is described by his family as a gentle giant. He never caused trouble. He is a relatively sickly boy who is going blind in both eyes and suffers from dyslexia. He is on the waiting list for eye surgery. He is on numerous medications due to his asthma. He left his house little when he was young for the reason that he was often too ill. He was a hard-worker attending polytech in Christchurch during the day and working until 11 o’clock in the evenings.On a particular day in ChristchurchShyan Ricky Hill was at a bus stop when he was attacked by a group of skinheads. Due to his gentle nature he did not react to this assault. He simply extricated himself from the situation. He was very angry and upset and he told his parents. In some ways he reacted as an angry young man should act after a mindless attack. But he got on with it.On another particular day he was returning home from work late at night. He was sitting on a bus with hishoodie up and his earphones in whereupon he was attacked by a gang of six youths armed with knuckledusters spanners a flick knife and metal pipes. The youths began taunting him. He was wearing red. The young thugs who attacked him taunted him struck him and spat on him were members of a little thuggroup known as the Aranui TownMāori gang affiliated to the AmericanCrips who just happen to wear blue.Upon getting off the busShyan Ricky Hill was assaulted by one of the youths. He defended himself and in that defence he pulled out one of his chef’s knives from the bag he was carrying stabbed an assailant and put him down. The youth he stabbed was 6 foot 2 inches and weighed 16 stone. He was one of a gang of six. The youths attacked him because he was wearing red. They saw him as a member of a rival gang whose colour was red and he was nothing of the sort. He was not a gang member. Upon stabbing the youth he made no attempt to flee. He took instructions from the bus driver then eventually walked home. The police picked him up and took him to the cells. He had been working a late-night shift and the police kept him up until 5 in the morning taking information.The upshot of this is that at the end of the day—after depositions where the police tried to charge this young man and expressed the desire to charge him with attempted murder—Shyan Ricky Hill pleaded guilty to a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to injure. The sentencing judge sympathised with his predicament but gave him a 2-year prison sentence with leave to apply for home detention. His mother would have liked to defend the case vigorously and had she had an extra $50000 she would have done so.The question is: what price justice? The question is: what has happened to this young man’s attackers—these thugs these bullies these armed offenders? What has happened to them? We know that since then other young men have been assaulted. In fact the young man Daniel Ball was assaulted after that incident. The question for New Zealand is: how far are we going to go before we accede to the demands of the public that the laws of self-defence be tightened and that New Zealand citizens be given the right to defend themselves so that young men likeShyan Ricky Hill receive justice?MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I am very pleased to take a call in this general debate. Has it not been interesting that all the contributions from National members have not been about how proud they are of the policies they espoused over the adjournment or about how proud they are of their vision for this country? No not at all. In fact John Key’s speech was incredibly flat. This was a man who suddenly realised that not everyone loves him and that as soon as he starts saying what he really thinks he is going to get himself into significant trouble particularly when he disagrees with his deputy leader Bill English on everything.Maurice Williamson is a man with an extensive knowledge of the transport sector and road-building. Unfortunately his knowledge is only theoretical because not a single new road was built during his time as Minister of Transport. He showed us a graph which apparently was about all the extra money he claimed to have got when Minister. Yet he is probably the only man in this House who is able to stand up and be proud of getting so much extra money without doing a single thing with it or having a single thing to show for it.But has it not been interesting over the adjournment? The “me too” mask of John Key has slipped and we have seen the cold face of the free market that lies behind it. When the rubber hits the road John Key does not have what it takes to be a leader of this country unless we want a Prime Minister who builds his policy on the last person he talked to especially when that person probably is Murray McCully.We have heard National members trying to claim that Labour is out of touch then they go ahead and copy all our policies. They have tried to say that this Government has no new ideas. This is a Government that has done more to prepare this country for the future than any other Government in recent history. We have KiwiSaver. We have the superannuation fund which means that New Zealand is now one of the most preparedcountries in the world for the baby-boom generation to go into superannuation. We have Working for Families which puts tax credits back into the pockets of families that need it most. We have increased industry training and Modern Apprenticeships and we have introduced a rates rebate scheme and paid parental leave. We have fairer industrial relations legislation. We now have every cent of money—and more—that comes into the Government coffers for transport spending going to transport. We have an independent foreign policy we are proud of our nuclear-free status and we did not go into the war in Iraq as the National Party would have.What does the National Party have—the new revitalised John Key National Party? It has the failed policies of the 1990s. Not one new policy has come out of the National Party that was not a resoundingly abysmal failure in the 1990s. National members have said they are going to sell our assets. They say they are only going to “partially” sell them but who really believes that National will only partially privatise assets? As Chris Trotter has said it is a little bit like being a “little bit pregnant”. But National is telling mums and dads that it is going to do this so that they can have an ownership stake in assets they already own. Well that is Tory generosity for us.Perhaps the most chilling thing about the announcements over the adjournment was the resurgence of the invisible hand of the market—the market will deliver for all of us. Well it worked great in the electricity sector. That has been a resounding success has it not? No one in New Zealand will say that the market has worked incredibly well for average consumers of electricity. But I say that when National pulls out of the public funding of health and when National pulls out of the public funding of schools the private sector will not flood into places like Wairoa GisborneŌpōtiki andWhakatāne to fill those gaps.The invisible hand of the market nearly destroyed our provincial communities in the 1990s. It was only because of the election of a Labour-led Government in 1999 that that process was halted and we have seen an absolute resurgence in the economies and the social cultural and economic well-being of our provincial communities. What happened in the 1990s under the privatisation agenda—which we are seeing being reborn here today—was that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The National Party delivered for its mates for its voters but everyone else was welcome to go to hell in a handbasket because they had not voted for the National Party.New Zealand deserves better than that—that should not be acceptable in this country in the 21st century. The Labour Party is here to govern for all New Zealanders. We are here to govern to ensure that the poorest the sickest and the most—well Chris Auchinvole thinks that this is boring. Chris Auchinvole thinks that this is a joke. He will never win that seat on the West Coast because of his Tory arrogance about the most vulnerable people. His party this week voted to say that rural and the poorest communities did not have the right to the same levels of safe drinking-water—that same certainty that Mr Auchinvole has at his house—or the right to expect that their drinking water was safe. Those members opposite are fine; Mr Auchinvole can afford a system that ensures that his drinking water is fine but a number of people in our communities cannot. Those are the people whom the National Party has never represented. Those are the people the National Party nearly destroyed in the 1990s so I urge people not to give them another chance.TIM GROSER (National): It would be tempting I suppose to describe the Labour Party’s reaction to the National Party’s external strategies paper as intriguing but I am afraid it would not be very accurate. The reaction we have had was exactly predicted and predictable. Rather than to understand that New Zealand foreign policy defence policy and trade policy should be guided by New Zealand interests which do not change with the flux of the electoral cycle every 3 years the last thing the Labour Partyactually wants here is an effective consensus between the two major political forces in New Zealand on key long-term external priorities and on how to pursue them.We have to ask ourselves how it is possible that the Labour Party could want to continue to draw controversy out of a large measure of consensus. Well we have actually had that demonstrated this afternoon by an earlier ludicrous attempt by Minister Goff to try to characterise the way in which we describe Iraq as a key issue facing this country. If the Labour Party really believes come the next election in approximately 12 months’ time that the New Zealand public will cast its decision about who will lead this country over an abstract debate about how we characterise the ongoing ghastly process in Iraq then I say good luck to the Labour Party. But I think the New Zealand public will be focused on the real agenda both internally and externally and fundamentally they are linked.We had a disappointment last week as a country at one World Cup. But every week there is a World Cup of an economic sort taking place around the world and New Zealand is not even qualifying. Next week 800 more New Zealanders will leave this country for Australia and 80 percent of them will be under the age of 40. We are not qualifying for that World Cup. That is the issue. That will be the decision that New Zealanders will have in their minds when they come to the crucial point in approximately 12 months’ time; not some abstract debate over false issues about how we describe the situation in Iraq.Let us examine a little more the “Labour-lite” accusation made about this paper. First of all when I was a young foreign service officer 30 years ago we used to talk about there being an effective bipartisan policy in this country on foreign policy broadly defined. I think there was such a policy but it was a fundamentally different bipartisan foreign policy from what exists today and it has taken about two to three decades to come into shape.The idea that this is a tango danced by only one player simply does not stand up to 5 minutes’ serious scrutiny. Anyone who is familiar with the history of the Labour Party on these issues knows that it is inconceivable that the Helen Clark of 20 to 25 years ago would have committed SAS troops—as she should have—to fight alongside US troops in Afghanistan. It is inconceivable. Everyone who knows a little bit about the history of Labour’s foreign policy knows that it is equally inconceivable that the Helen Clark of 20 to 25 years ago—who espoused trade policies that were the polar opposite to the trade policies she is espousing today—would be out there now with the best of them negotiating free-trade agreements with China in spite of and sitting on top of opposition from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. It is inconceivable.The Labour Party has made massive shifts I would argue quite correctly in response to the changed strategic environment facing this country. To pretend that this is only a one-way movement does not stand up to even elementary scrutiny.Let us look at the issue of defence. Labour’s front bench comes historically out of the left wing of the Labour Party in the 1980s which was a bunch of people who basically wanted New Zealand to adopt a non-aligned movement position on defence or even to move to neutrality—you know Sweden without the 3 percent of GDP spent on the armed forces. But I think those people have discovered—and I would argue “Thank goodness!”—to their astonishment that for foreign policy causes that they think and I agree with them are important to New Zealand such as intervention in Timor-Leste even that small country needs a highly effective military force. I think they have been astonished by their own changes. So the idea once again that this is a one-way movement does not stand up to any serious scrutiny.Let us move on to the fourth element which we did not develop in this paper because we had already addressed it in an earlier discussion paper put up by Dr Nick Smith. The fourth element is climate change.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.