Cullen Michael: General Debates 
Cullen Michael: General Debates 
[Volume:613;Page:10153] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
That was the fifth deputy leader of the National Party since it went into Opposition. Now we have two words for Gerry Brownlee—[ 
Interruption 
]— apart from “Watch what the expert might do with a broken glass!” which is “Next please!”. Who will be No. 6 in the deputy leader’s position?  
He went on about my surplus. I have to say that my surplus will never be as big as his. He is a man who has visibly grown into the role already since yesterday morning and cannot even do his jacket up on the second day as deputy leader of the National Party.  
He told us about the nurses—the bleeding-heart National Party! Do members remember what the first act of the National Government was in 1990? It repealed the pay equity legislation. That was the first statute passed in 1990—though of course in those days he was still a woodwork teacher. I have to tell Dr Brash to be worried about Mr Brownlee. He is the first deputy who can build his own scaffold in the office. Dr Brash has to worry; Gerry Brownlee is looking up the Internet now and he is trying to find out Don Brash’s weight. Put that knowledge together with a scaffold and members will know what the plan is for Don Brash at some point in the future.  
The honeymoon is over. Nick Smith has been thrown out of bed after 2½ weeks of failing to perform and Gerry Brownlee has jumped in. There is not much room in many beds for Gerry Brownlee plus somebody the size of Dr Brash.  
This all started with an accidental coup where the Bill English camp thought it had the numbers allowed some proxy votes to get cast and found out it had lost; Dr Brash found out to his surprise that he had won. Now clearly we have the party of Murphy’s Law. What a hopeless bunch: the front bench the duo at the lead—“Mogadon” and “Mastodon” leading the National Party! That is what we face on this side of the House.  
Nobody believes that this relationship is going to be a stable one. Dr Brash has worries that ACT has given up the fight for the right and become a populist party. Mr Brownlee does not want to get into bed with the ACT party at all.  
What about Dr Brash’s view of his colleagues? This is a wonderful quote: “It is a very different environment in politics. In the Reserve Bank I had a number of very bright staff who were very committed and worked very hard and were willing to debate issues very actively and aggressively.” What has he got now? He has got his National Party colleagues. They are clearly not very bright very committed working very hard or willing to debate issues very actively or aggressively. The shining light over there according to the newspapers over the last few days is Clem Simich. While the rest of the National members were out fighting Mr Simich was doing what any decent National Party MP would be doing he was rescuing an elderly couple who backed their car over the edge and whose lives were endangered. I look forward to the day when the House is to yield up a very fine Assistant Speaker and Mr Simich becomes the deputy leader or leader of the National Party because over there is a car that is halfway over the cliff with a couple of elderly people sitting inside and Mr Simich needs to rescue them and get them back on the road.  
Then we have got ACT. It is trying to chuck out Donna Awatere Huata; it is trying to ignore Deborah Coddington because of dodgy stuff around publishing; and now we have this wonderful Mr Roodt—an ACT candidate who walked out on his sewerage obligations. He went around promising to build septic tanks for people charged them money upfront and now there are all these people on Waiheke Island sitting there knowing they have got no septic tank at the other end.  
Is that not what the ACT party actually stands for? It stands for leaving the country sitting in a permanently anally retentive state in the knowledge that it has paid a lot of money and that whatever it produces is not going to go anywhere useful or go where it is supposed to go. If this is the kind of coalition that the National Party and the ACT party offer the country it is no wonder that the Labour Party is still in the lead.