Moroney Sue: General Debate 
Moroney Sue: General Debate 
[Volume:633;Page:4631] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 This week in Parliament has been a week of comings and goings and ups and downs. Of course I am partially referring to the comings and goings of people who have retired and whom we have farewelled in the last week. We have farewelled Dame Silvia Cartwright Peter Cartwright and the Hon Jim Sutton and of course we have welcomed our new colleague Charles Chauvel. But as part of Labour’s positive agenda of pressing ahead with what we have been doing this week has been no different. The business tax review and the revised school curriculum mean that more consultation is going on with real New Zealanders. We are consulting real New Zealanders about real issues that affect everyday people. 
In talking about the performance in the House and the ups and down and the comings and goings I point out that the most interesting “up and down” that happened in the last week was when the Prime Minister asked: “Would the leader of the National Party please stand up.” Well up gets Gerry Brownlee followed by Dr Brash—but not for long because Dr Don Brash was severely shoved back down in his seat. Someone should tell Gerry Brownlee that actions speak louder than words and that action certainly told us a lot. But perhaps Gerry Brownlee did not understand the question. I understand that these days the National Party is so cool that the question probably needed to be put to it in the form of a rap song rather than in a direct question to the House. Had the Prime Minister asked: “Would the real Slim Shady please stand up please stand up please stand up?” perhaps National would have got the answer right. However it is hard to imagine Gerry Brownlee standing up for that one. 
But National’s leader Dr Don Brash has tried his very best to set the scene. He has been trying to paint a picture of what New Zealand should look like. He said that immigrants who come to New Zealand should have to agree with bedrock beliefs. But then there was silence. Why has nobody else in his party backed that up? How can one set a scene when the rest of one’s team do not pick up the ball and run with it? Not one other National member of Parliament has raised the issue of bedrock values. What are National members so embarrassed about? I think the rest of them have worked out that their power base at the last election—the Exclusive Brethren—will not be very pleased to hear that it is not welcome in this country if it does not believe in democracy. The Exclusive Brethren—an organisation that stops its people from turning up to vote—does not believe in democracy. 
What about equality? The Exclusive Brethren certainly does not promote that. National MPs have not been able to back up Don Brash’s scene-setting speech because it actually undermines their key organisation in their electorates of the Exclusive Brethren. The Exclusive Brethren must be wondering what sort of bad investment it made in the last election. I should invite that organisation to come to a racecourse to make a better investment than the one it made with the money it poured down the drain by supporting the National Party—a party whose leader then turned round and talked against the organisation’s bedrock values. 
I would like to see some more from the exciting new bunch of National MPs who were brought in at the last election—visionaries like Chris Auchinvole Bob Clarkson Chester Borrows and Allan Peachey. Why do we not hear more from those members? Perhaps it is because so much elbowing is going on in the front bench that there is no breathing space for them. 
Certainly there is no policy going on in the National Party because National knows that it would be unelectable if it told the electorate what it really intended to do. However it has given us a few clues. One of the most recent is the 90-day probationary period bill that has been drawn out of the ballot. This bill is one of the very few clues we have received about National Party policy. The most significant issue that faces employers in this country today is getting people with the appropriate skills to apply for the jobs at the right time. What is the National Party’s answer to that? It is to get rid of workers’ rights; it is to tell workers that they can be got rid of within the 90 days for any reason that the employer wants. That will bring people with the right skills to the doors of employers at the right time! 
That bill is giving us a very good clue as to the sorts of policies National would put into place. It is a very timely reminder that its policies are backward policies. They are very backward policies that take away workers’ rights and that have not worked in other work environments. But what is working and what is delivering on those issues is skills development—the investment in skills development that is happening under the Labour Government.