On the opposition benches there will be a number of Parties who will vote against Asset Sales. Labour was unequivocal at the 2011 election SoEs were Not For Sale. But the country has voted and National will drive ahead with its agenda, despite widespread concern from Maori about inadequate protections as affirmed in s.9 of the SoE Act.

Rather than delve into the debate, I wanted to raise whether there was an opportunity for a culture shift in the way opposition parties attacked the Government on specific BIG ISSUES like Asset Sales, like Growing Inequality, Like Children Living in Poverty. Some may consider this a broad coalition of the opposition, and to be frank post-election it will be an organic exercise.

Could it be an opportunity for doing things differently in opposition in an MMP environment – your thoughts?

Wednesday, 8 February 2012:

• 4.30 pm Tracey Martin, NZ First
• 4.45 pm Andrew Williams, NZ First
• 5.00 pm Richard Prosser, NZ First
• 5.15 pm Brendan Horan, NZ First
• 5.30 pm Denis O’Rourke, NZ First
• 5.45 pm Asenati Lole-Taylor, NZ First

Thursday, 9 February 2012:

• 3.45 pm Mike Sabin, National

Tuesday, 14 February 2012:

• 5.00 pm David Clark, Labour
• 5.15 pm Andrew Little, Labour
• 5.30 pm Megan Woods, Labour
• 5.45 pm Rino Tirikatene, Labour

Wednesday, 15 February 2012:

• 4.15 pm Mojo Mathers, Green
• 4.30 pm Steffan Browning, Green
• 4.45 pm Julie Anne Genter, Green
• 5.00 pm Jan Logie, Green
• 5.15 pm Denise Roche, Green
• 5.30 pm Eugenie Sage, Green
• 5.45 pm Holly Walker, Green

Thursday, 16 February 2012:

• National Party members (order TBA)

As the new MPs complete their speeches, I’ll add a link to the video clip. If you’re a bit impatient, you can find them on www.inthehouse.co.nz

Easily solved.

Indemnify the companies. Essentially what the act does now. Risk unchanged and stays with the crown.

If the Maori Party settle for less they are stupid.

Better still of course, abandon the sell down.

New Zealand has a ridiculous number of Ministers for a country our size.

It had got slightly worse under MMP but this government has taken it beyond absurd with 80% of the non National confidence and supply partner members bought off with a Ministerial post, and the final one on a promise of getting one during the term.

I spent three years as a whip which included cabinet committee experience in the 1980s and the nine years as a Minister in the Clark government.

I saw lots of weak, and some frankly useless Ministers. Most, but not all, were in the second half of the rankings. They often caused more work than they added value. There was an enormous amount of time wasted explaining what was either obvious or buried in papers that if they had been read hadn’t been understood.

Quiet discussion has confirmed it is no different in the Key government and was also the case under Bolger.

Consultation time seems to be multiplicative based on the number of Ministers with a stake in an issue. Minor points brought up by a department and easily dealt with or to by a Minister with a broad view become cause célèbre for someone run by their department or with nothing better to do.

I think we don’t need more than ten or a dozen Ministers. They should all be in Cabinet. And to trial talent we should use three or four Under Secretaries who report directly to the relevant Minister.

Having a smaller number of Ministers ensures decisions are well enough thought through to get caucus agreement on merit not on obligation because of position.

Saves bauble money but more importantly is much more efficient.

I agree, subject to the proviso that we fix the dates. This year has shown it can be done. Of course if the Governor General was convinced that no one could command the confidence of the house there could be an “early” election.

Four Three years is just not long enough to implement a coherent programme.

There have been two referenda proposing an increase in the length of Parliament in my memory. Both rejected. And we voted to increase drinking hours at the time rejected doing the same to Parliament.

Bloggers have added to that by linking. I’m not.

I’m generally in favour of a pretty liberal interpretation of what it is appropriate for media to cover. But a game that is based on killing the PM is not.

Many politicians who have been in the spotlight get threats. Most are not serious and the vast majority are from people with psychiatric conditions that are unlikely to follow through.

Notwithstanding that, I think it is better for media to if there is any doubt just to ignore stuff like that.

So, lets get this right. John Key gets an email from someone he won’t name who says he was at a meeting with some Standard and Poor’s people and they said something that this annonymous person ‘inferred’ meant that a Labour led government would mean a greater chance of a downgrade.

Up against this is Kyran Curry a named person from Standard and Poors who was at the meeting, on the record in the New Zealand Herald.

Standard and Poor’s sovereign rating analyst Kyran Curry, who attended the meeting in Auckland, said that would not have happened. “In Auckland last month, I might have talked about the importance of the Government maintaining a strong fiscal position in the medium term but I would never have touched on individual parties. “It is something we just don’t do,” Mr Curry said. “We don’t rate political parties. We rate Governments.”

John Key came to Parliament and gave everyone (including as you can hear in the video the Press Gallery journalists) the impression that this was a direct quote about what Standard and Poors said. Judge for yourself, here is what John Key said in Parliament

‘When Standard and Poor’s was giving a meeting in New Zealand about month ago, what it did say was that there was about a 30% chance that we would be downgraded. That is what happens when one is on a negative outlook. It did go on to say, though, that if there was a change of Government, that downgrade would be much more likely

This not true, and John Key knows it. Standard and Poors did not “say” anything, someone who John Key won’t name thinks that is what they might have meant. There is a big difference. As John Pagani said on radio earlier today one of the things that frustrates Labour MPs about John Key is that the public don’t see or hear some of the things he does in Parliament. This time he has been caught out.

And lest anyone forget, this was all part of the strategy of obfuscation and buck passing in response to the fact that we did get downgraded on John Key’s watch, the first time since 1998.

18 colleagues across the parliament are leaving. Fourteen of them gave their valedictory speeches in the last two weeks. All were posted on Red Alert.

Four didn’t give a valedictory speech. Rodney Hyde, Hilary Calvert and John Boscowan from Act. And Alan Peachey from National.

I think Hilary felt she hadn’t been around long enough. Boscowan is standing in a unwinnable seat in order to secure some Act party votes so couldn’t give a speech and Hyde, well who knows why he didn’t. Perhaps he thinks he’ll be back (like Arnie).

Allan Peachey didn’t give a valedictory for reasons many of us will understand. Trevor wrote a thoughtful post about him.

All the valedictory speeches were all powerful in their own way. I found myself a bit teary during many of them. Doesn’t matter which side of the political spectrum you are on, hearing a colleague speak from the heart evokes an emotional response.

A few I’d like to mention. I learnt things about my colleagues Ashraf, George and Mita that I didn’t know. I loved Lynne Pillay’s line that while she was lucky to have her partner Mike, that he was lucky to have her too (true).

There was a common theme in several of the speeches of the importance of action, not just words.

Jim Anderton put it like this:

To those critics who constantly belittle and cynically demean political participation and representation in parliament, I can do no better than quote the words of former United States President, Teddy Roosevelt, who said, in a speech on ‘citizenship’:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who knows at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall not be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Pete Hodgson, my Dunedin colleague who’s experience and wisom will be greatly missed by me and others (the ODT wrote a great editorial today), put it like this in his trademark succinct style:

In all of those (14) portfolios a lot got done. I was an activist Minister. I was and am a restless person. The government was a restless government. We were criticised sometimes for having too many strategies to implement. I say better too many than too few.

And Simon Power, who despite me not agreeing with much of what he’s done, has my respect for his approach to doing it. He said:

Politicians must have a plan. A plan that is in place early, and one they are prepared to lead.

I believe that politics is 90% preparation and 10% execution. At a day-to-day level, politics, particularly at a ministerial level, can quickly deteriorate to the daily management of tasks – dealing with papers, the media, OIA requests, Question Time, Written Questions, expectations from colleagues and your Party; tasks that become all consuming, and tasks that in the end do not improve the lives of New Zealanders at all.

That’s not why we run for Parliament. We run to lead agendas, improve the lot of our countrymen, to push change, and to execute ideas. People don’t spend years getting elected, more years waiting to get into Cabinet, to then say “Well, I managed that week well, I minimised risk, had no view, took no decisions, stayed out of trouble: well done me.”

Once in office, you’ve got to do something. That is why having a plan matters. Ideas also matter. In politics, ideas matter more than the political players themselves, because those people will come and go, but ideas endure.

The ideas do endure. The people who had them are to be honoured.

The Herald broke the rules (albeit antediluvian) relating to pictures taken in Parliament. They should have been warned or possibly had a minor punishment.

The Speaker reacted in a way which was almost unbelievable. John Armstrong puts it pretty well.

Backdown with a capital “H”. That is “H” as in humiliation; humiliation complete and utter.

That was the only condition that could be ascribed to Speaker Lockwood Smith yesterday afternoon as he tried to clear up the sorry mess he had created less than 24 hours earlier with his outrageous decision to ban Herald journalists from working within the precincts of Parliament.