Brownlee Gerry: Budget Debate 
Brownlee Gerry: Budget Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3380] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 We now know why Labour members had to get linguistics expert Clare Curran to come and give them a lecture on how to talk to people. I understand that remedial classes are being organised as we speak for the Hon Parekura Horomia in order that he might be able to more clearly follow the Labour line. The Labour line says that National has grabbed the agenda. National led the agenda right throughout the election and bar some explosion inside National it will be the next Government in this country. That is the internal Labour document that is supposed to have encouraged Ministers like Parekura Horomia to for example tell the truth. Well that would be novel for a Labour Minister. 
The same Clare Curran had a huge effect on the Budget itself referring to the tax take as “an investment in the future” and to burgeoning numbers of beneficiaries as investing in people’s futures and suggesting that the best thing Labour could do now is apologise for the way it has run the country for the last 6 years. That is the Clare Curran document. What is worse do members know where all this “special information” that was given to Labour came from? It came from the United States. That is right. A US linguist is quoted liberally throughout the programme. A US thinktank known as the The Rockridge Institute is apparently where all this comes from; and the Center for American Progress also contributed. 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Is there a doctor in the House? I am very worried about our colleague across the other side of the Chamber. He seems to be hanging on to his heart. He might have a heart attack. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member knows that that is not a point of order. He should not interrupt the member’s speech. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I tell members that all of the points of order in the world will not stop Dover Samuels from being on the Labour managed-exit list. He is joined there today by his colleague the Hon Parekura Horomia. He is a man who is on the way out. I ask members to imagine this. This man is a Minister. We have already been told by Helen Clark that he is not a very good Minister and they pay him a bit less than the other Ministers. None the less he sits up there in his plush office. He turns up in the mornings wonders what to do after he has done the colouring-in on the kids’ page in the newspaper and then one of his departmental officials comes in. He says: “What’s going on?”. The official says: “Don’t worry. It’s all under control.” He says: “Thank you. That’ll do me.” And that is his day. 
Then he goes to Cabinet and hears that a Budget coming up. He hears that Ministers bid for the funds they need to run their departments. So he goes back to the office and calls in the departmental head and says: “What are we going to do about this?”. The departmental head has a look at it shakes like a leaf thinks “Oh my God if they find out what we’re doing we’re dead.” and says: “Look tell you what Minister don’t put in a bid. Don’t ask for anything. In fact offer to give some back because we can’t use it. We’re so sloshing round in cash we don’t need any more money and besides that there’s only so many hangis and huis we can have in one year anyway.” 
So then what happens? Parekura turns up after the Budget has been read finds out that he has made a huge mistake and he is deeply embarrassed. He has turned up here today wanting to say that everything is rosy. Well the Minister with all the help that a US linguist can give him all the help from a US thinktank all the help from the Center for American Progress has not convinced anybody that he knows what is going on in his own portfolio. 
The reality is that this is a hopeless outfit that is doing very little for Maori. How can he sit there this afternoon and say how marvellous Labour has been for Maori when he knows that 60000 Maori families do not get a cent out of Working for Families? They are simply the new poor of this country. They have been cast on the scrap heap and told by a Minister who has no care for them that that is the best they can ever expect. The only consolation Parekura Horomia can take from this Budget is that about 159000 Maori did get a tax cut. They are the 159000 Maori who are living in Australia. They are the iwi from across the ditch who have been lost to us. He sits there telling us that this Budget was about investment in people’s lives; this was a Budget crowing about how well the Labour Party has done. 
I will ask the Minister the same question I asked him at the select committee this morning and I am still waiting for an answer. What does Te Puni Kokiri do? One would expect after 7 years as the Minister that he might know. In an hour and a half this morning the Minister failed to answer that question. Do members know why? Because he does not know—that is why. When he woke up in Cabinet when he was disturbed from his slumber at the Cabinet table and heard that there was a Budget on he wondered what the heck he had to do about it. I do not think he even knows who his departmental head is. It did not look to me like they talk very much when they came to the select committee this morning. The only good news they could tell us was that they get $156 billion of funding a year and the one thing they could tell us is that they have set up a second-hand computers in homes programme in Wairoa. 
The rest of it with all due respect to the Minister was a great long list of huis and hangis for the great and the good like Mr Jones who sits next to the Minister. He is Parliament’s greatest and most insidious double-dipper. He is the great white hope of the Labour Party—the great brown hope of the Labour Party—who is quite unable to survive on the minimal existence of a back-bencher’s salary. He has to go double-dipping through Te Ohu Kai Moana. I cannot help thinking that Te Ohu Kai Moana is almost a metaphor for how Labour likes to treat Maori. The fisheries arrangements are a metaphor for how Labour likes to treat Maori. Give them a little bit sort of but do not let them touch it; do not let them decide what to do with it. Leave it to clever people like Mr Jones to work out what goes on so that those 60000 Maori families that are supposed to have an interest in the fishing rights around this country get nothing. 
Mr Jones is sitting over there saying how much he has done for the Maori people. He has done a lot more for himself than he has done for any Maori I can say that much. There is the man who has golden pockets. We saw him up there prancing up and down in front of the Maori Queen in his pinstripe suit—a Bond Street Maori if ever I saw one—with the hat on looking like well I do not know how it could be described. I am lost for words again. He leaves me like that most of the time. But what it really points to is the entirely cosmetic way in which Labour is trying to relate to Maori in this country. 
There are some real issues; there are some serious issues. They are about the future of this country. One of the things that should worry anybody is the way in which the demographics are starting to point to the new population in this country. When we consider that what we can see very clearly is that for future generations when Maori will be more significant in the economy of this country far too many will come from a legacy of welfare dependence even in their middle class because the Labour Government does not believe in allowing people to keep more of the dollars they earn in their pockets. I support the motion moved by Don Brash leader of the National Party. This is an inadequate Budget and we have no confidence in this Government.