Brownlee in General Debate

In yesterday’s General Debate, Gerry Brownlee revealed the extent of the fixation Clayton Cosgrove has with him:

That leaves just one possibility as a dead cert to be dropped off the front bench, and that is my Canterbury colleague the Hon Clayton Cosgrove. This comes as a deeply disturbing thing for me because Clayton Cosgrove has spoken in the House 21 times since the beginning of 2012—not a bad sort of record for substantial speeches in the House. In every one of those speeches he has mentioned my name multiple times. It is almost a fixation that the poor man has. In the imprest supply debate he mentioned my name six times. In the Environment Canterbury bill it was five times. There are many threes, there are many fours, and there are many fives. I got mentioned six times in the Canterbury schools debate. But, somewhat inexplicably, he mentioned me five times in the debate on the State-owned energy companies and delay of sale of Mighty River Power—five times. Then when it came to the Mixed Ownership Model Bill in Committee I got nine mentions—nine mentions. These were 5-minute speeches and I took up most of them. In the Address in Reply debate this year he outdid himself. In the Address in Reply debate he outdid himself. In a 10-minute speech I got 11 mentions. That is one a minute. It is quite clear that the man thinks of nothing else but me. Clearly, he is a man who does not have his eye on his policy portfolio issues and who has a certain fixation with me, which is worrying because the deputy leader once had one of those as well. 

We await the caucus reshuffle on Monday with interest!