PM praises Kopu but says little about Nat members

By Audrey Young

Jenny Shipley delivered thin praise for some of her departing National MPs in Parliament's breakup yesterday but paid tribute to list MP Alamein Kopu.

"I have, as I have come to know her, grown in my respect for her," she said to hoots from Labour.

"She has made a difference in this Parliament and she has spoken for a group of people who would otherwise not have been represented."

Mrs Kopu was a former unemployment beneficiary and was elected as an Alliance list MP. But she was widely derided as the first of 11 MPs to defect from their party in the MMP Parliament.

Mrs Shipley lumped four of her own MPs together for a comparatively impersonal farewell: "Denis Marshall [15 years], Joy Quigley [nine years], Peter Gresham [nine years] and Roger Maxwell [15 years] have all been highly valued and dedicated members of the National team."

Steering to election issues, Mrs Shipley said National's ACC reforms had freed hundreds of millions of dollars for employers to invest in new jobs.

The Government had taken vital decisions to build new hospitals in Auckland and Wellington and had passed legislation, such as harsher penalties for home invasion, to get tougher on criminals.

Labour leader Helen Clark, in one of her strongest speeches this year, said she was not sad to see the end of the Parliament.

"One of the worst features of it has been the disloyalty of far too many members to the parties who put them here."

She said New Zealand stood at a crossroad in almost every respect, with a new millennium and hopes for a fresh start.

The model of economic and social policy followed by New Zealand "has failed this country utterly."

"What could be a more graphic illustration of that than this morning's news which reported on the one hand, that the public health system in Northland had made a considerable profit for the third year in a row while down the road from the hospital in a suburb of Whangarei there was the worst TB outbreak in Northland in 30 years."