Birch passes tiller, leaves ship of state

By Vernon Small

Mr Fix-it, the Prince of Darkness, the Minister of Everything, has gone.

After 27 years in the House, 15 of them as a minister, Sir William Birch said farewell to Parliament yesterday in typical fashion - unfailingly polite, loyal to his leader, delivering a long, considered speech with barely a trace of emotion.

Sir William, a former surveyor, was first elected to Parliament in 1972 and has held 17 portfolios, most recently that of Finance.

In his later career he was synonymous with a steady hand on the economic tiller, and it was to numbers he turned to map out his time in politics.

"I have answered, impeccably, 5259 parliamentary questions and asked ... 1531 penetrating parliamentary questions," he said with a smile.

He had introduced 80 bills, "no doubt repealed many more," and in the past six years alone had read, ticked or rejected 14,050 Treasury reports.

Once responsible for state-funded Think Big energy projects in the 1970s (which he defends to this day), he was a devoted convert to hands-off economic management.

While he was an enemy of MMP, he became the glue that held Mauri Pacific and National's other supporters together after the collapse of the coalition with New Zealand First.

In recognition, Mauri Pacific MPs gave him a greenstone mere that took pride of place on his desk during his valedictory speech.

Sir William, aged 65, said he respected the group's integrity as they supported the Government on confidence and supply.

But despite his success in working the MMP system, he called for New Zealanders to toss it out.

While it had brought more women and ethnic representation, "the current system does create instability and is unsustainable."

He said the referendum next month would vote to cut the number of MPs from 120 to 99, providing the chance to move towards a supplementary member system.

In his view, the greatest challenge to the developing world was to drop barriers to agricultural exports. He said it was unacceptable, unfair and inequitable that developed nations could export manufactured goods without hindrance while there were still barriers on agricultural products.

The politicians' politician, who epitomised horse-trading and backroom negotiations, declared himself better suited outside the place.

"I'm going to return to the public sector where I really belong and again take up a real job."