Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON Link to this

My colleague Tony Ryall asked whether the Deputy Prime Minister knew at the time. I guess the answer hinges on the word “knowingly”.

Now I want to explore just one thing, and I would be very keen for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Michael Cullen, to respond to it. I have heard—and he can confirm this or not—that the former Chief Electoral Officer, David Henry—he is now gone, but he was the Chief Electoral Officer back in September of last year—wrote a letter. Not only did he do that, but he started off with a phone call. The phone call and the letter both told the Labour Party that if it went ahead with the pledge card and distributed it, then that would be accountable election expenditure and Labour would be over the limit. If David Henry did not write such a letter, I want the Minister in the chair to tell us—

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON Link to this

Well, I do not know. The Minister has a good chance to tell us.

Bob Clarkson went under the blowtorch for his expenditure in Tauranga. Fortunately, he was like most of us, who always leave a little bit of leeway so that we never spend an amount quite close to 20 grand, in case we are in trouble. I always make sure I am way under that, so I cannot be caught. That is what we have to do in order to stay in compliance with the law.

But if the Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the Labour Party in early September and said that if the party put out that pledge card—even if we forget about the fact that it was funded by the taxpayers, which is another outrage—then it would breach the cap, I say that makes this Government an illegitimate Government. It is an illegitimate Government if, by breaching the spending cap, it broke the law of the land—and for an illegitimate Government to be now trying to legitimise itself in Parliament would make Robert Mugabe happy. That is what this legislation would do. If members got here by false pretences and they now use the false mandate they acquired in order to make themselves the legitimate Government of the land, it would be laughable in any despotic regime in the Horn of Africa. Someone such as Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlins would have pulled off that sort of trick in order to make himself part of a legitimate Government.

So the central question that this Parliament needs to know the answer to today is whether Labour was informed in advance that if it spent the money on the pledge card, it would be accountable, because that would take it to over its limit and it would breach the spending cap that applies to political parties.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON Link to this

If Labour members did know that in advance—my colleague Mr Clarkson calls out that they are crooks—in my view they are guilty of a corrupt practice, because that is the term the Electoral Act uses. I am not trying to get into pejorative terms or nasty words; I am trying to explain what the Act actually states, which is that that is a corrupt practice. If that is not the case and the Labour Party says it does not care about the spending cap—that it will spend whatever it likes, then face the consequences afterwards—then let us just get rid of any spending limitations and let the situation be a free-for-all. Would Labour be prepared to do that? No, it would not. It would want the strict limits to be enforced on everybody else.

But David Henry is the key to this issue. The Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the party—not after the event, not after the election, not some time later—and then it went: “Oh dear, these are the rules. Maybe they have changed, and maybe we have been caught out.” No sirree, he wrote to Labour before the election and it ignored him.

Dr WAYNE MAPP Link to this

I withdraw and apologise. Labour members know that that is the most cynical manipulation of the law that this country has seen. What is more, they expect to be able to just wipe the proceedings from our courts as if they never mattered.

One of the most important things we have in this country is independent courts—courts that examine what Governments do. People in the House and in this country can cite decisions of the courts from over the years—Fitzgerald v Muldoon, the New Zealand Maori Council case. These are cardinal decisions. They set out the rules for the future, they set out the limits of parliamentary power. I have no doubt that in the case of, the court would have made a declaration that the spending was fundamentally unlawful. It would have set out the limits of parliamentary power. That is how democracy works. On the one hand we have Parliament, which makes the law, but on the other hand we have the courts, which set out the limitations on parliamentary power.

This Government wants to completely overturn those fundamental constitutional principles. It wants to set itself up as the complete arbiter of all the law. It is as if it thinks it has papal infallibility. It wants to pretend that the unlawful becomes lawful—as if it never was unlawful. That is a cynical manipulation of the public, and the public sees it exactly for what it is. I want to point out to the former Attorney-General that this is a view shared by the editor of the New Zealand Law Journal. For instance, in September this year he said that there were two severe threats for the future of our democracy. One was the State funding of political parties; the other was retrospective legislation validating Labour’s chicanery at the last election.

So what are we seeing here today? We are seeing a Government shoving this bill through in urgency with no consultation with the public, and using a cynical manipulation of parliamentary procedures to put through retrospective legislation validating its thievery at the election. I find that abhorrent.

I find it appalling, firstly, that we are spending this time in this Parliament today in the pretence that every single party for the last 16 years has done something unlawful, when that is not true. The Auditor-General focused only on 3 months. He made that perfectly clear. The second thing I find reprehensible is this Government’s cavalier approach of removing the right of citizens to have its cases heard in the courts and to have judges declare what the law of the country is and how it should be interpreted, so that we now have a Parliament that places itself effectively above the law. That is wrong, and that will be judged harshly by the public in the future.

PHIL HEATLEY Link to this

—he did not mention his bunion—so that he can avoid the bottom line the public is asking for, which is for him to pay back the money. Winston should just pay back the money! He is dancing on the head of a pin. That is New Zealand First’s strategy.

The Minister outside Cabinet clearly has not spoken to Dr Cullen. Dr Cullen’s idea of killing off the truth is not through a thousand cuts and diversions—Labour has tried lots of diversions over the last 6 months and has failed—but through one thrust of the knife. This retrospective legislation will make legal what is illegal, so Dr Cullen thinks he can walk out of this Chamber whiter than snow. But it is not working, because Dr Cullen, Helen Clark, and the Labour Party have already been tried in the court of public opinion and found wanting.

PHIL HEATLEY Link to this

They are guilty in the court of public opinion—absolutely found wanting.

I have another question for Minister Cullen: how much did he know about this pledge card being developed, being delivered before the election, and being used during the campaign? I can guarantee that he would have had very close contact with the campaign committee. Clearly, one would not have Pete Hodgson going out there on the campaign committee by himself, without someone holding his hand. How much did Dr Cullen know about Heather Simpson and Helen Clark’s decision to use taxpayer funding for this electioneering expense—$450,000 worth? I ask that question, because Dover Samuels has to write out a cheque for $10,000, and he never made the decision. Mita Ririnui has to write out a $10,000 cheque, and he never knew the decision. Dr Ashraf Choudhary—the member opposite who abstains—would have abstained from the decision about using the pledge card. But he still has to write out a $6,000 cheque.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON Link to this

As I was saying, I have proposed a number of amendments to clause 3, the purpose clause, which foreshadow further amendments that will be introduced when we debate Part 2. The first of those amendments is to provide, in the purpose clause, that any expenditure the Auditor-General has found was unauthorised must be repaid. The second issue of concern to the public is dealt with in paragraph (d) of my proposed clause 3, which provides a reporting mechanism to ensure that members of the public can be satisfied that any party that has incurred any unauthorised expenditure has repaid that expenditure, because the Parliamentary Service Commission, as we know, is not subject to the Official Information Act.

So these are mechanisms that I seek to introduce, and I foreshadow ones in Part 2, to try to address the real concerns of the public, because at the moment there is no obligation to repay. Mr Copeland, in his second reading speech yesterday, said there was a moral obligation. That is not good enough. We want a legal obligation, and expenditure that is unauthorised should be repaid with interest and penalties, if not paid on time. It is interesting to hear the kinds of things the Inland Revenue Department is proposing to do to miscreants who do not pay their tax. There will be heavy penalties. In the interests, as the Attorney-General said, of lowering the temperature and conducting the debate in a seemly way, I am proposing that interest not be paid at Inland Revenue Department rates but pursuant to the interest provisions of the Judicature Act—a mere 7.5 percent—which I think is very generous.

Perhaps the most odious aspect of this legislation is that it removes litigation rights, and the litigation rights of those who have commenced a proceeding in the High Court. As Dr Mapp said, in Fitzgerald v Muldoon the Government changed the law after the litigation was concluded. Even Dr Cullen, as Minister of Finance when the Ngāti Apa case was decided, changed the law after the Court of Appeal decision had come out. But here in the Darnton case the litigation has not even been determined in the High Court, let alone at the appellate level. That is why I support amendments, which my friend Dr Mapp will be introducing shortly, to say that the High Court case of Darnton is not to be affected by the passage of this litigation. Litigation rights should be preserved.

This legislation is an abuse of parliamentary sovereignty, and I venture to suggest that it is so odious that were Lord Cooke still sitting in the Court of Appeal today, he would be sorely tempted to pick up the words he said in Taylor v New Zealand Poultry Board and have it struck down, because it is an affront to democracy and it is an affront to the rule of law.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON Link to this

It is called decency and common sense in a democracy, I say to Dr Cullen—something that his Government does not seem to know too much about. The Attorney-General and his cohorts are people who are staring into the abyss; they are people who are led by a Prime Minister who increasingly suffers from delusions of decency; and this legislation is proof, if proof be needed, that changes need to be made.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN Link to this

Oh yes, he just said precisely that. I thought sooner or later he would fall into that trap in this House—

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN Link to this

So what we have is a member who fully supports—obviously, from the tone of his voice, from the dripping sincerity that came forth—that Lord Cooke would have struck down this bill, but he himself did not support that. Well, why on earth did he make the statement? What was the point of making the statement in that respect? What a silly, foolish, prissy little statement to make in this Committee, if he did not actually mean that he thinks courts are able to strike down Acts of Parliament—which would get us into the awful mess that jurisdictions of the United States are in, in that regard.

Let me come back to the point I was making right at the start. There is so much fake sincere anger on the opposite side that it is almost impossible to believe. I am waiting, yet again, for a lecture on morality from Mr McCully. What else did we have? We had a lecture on the rule of law from Dr Nick Smith. The only person in this House to be convicted of contempt of court comes and lectures us on respect for the rule of law. [Interruption] Now we hear Sandra Goudie speaking, who last week gave, I think, the funniest point of order I have ever heard in this House in my 25 years in the place. She seemed to have a brain that was completely disconnected from her vocal chords at that particular point.

Let us come back to a very simple point. What the National Party cannot demonstrate, in trying to justify the position taken by the Auditor-General, is that there is a single sentence in the 2005 report that says the then assumed interpretation of the spending rules was wrong. It is nowhere in that report. All that happened is that a year later the Auditor-General said that he had said something like that. But he did not. All he said in that report was that the rules are unclear and need to be clarified after the election, and people should obey the rules as they were. It was like a referee during a game of rugby saying what the going-over-the-top rule is, then, after the game, pinging somebody and saying he had breached the rule, although no explanation was given at the time. That is what the Auditor-General has done.

The entire case actually rests upon that point. National Party members are trying to say—and I want to get this very clear—that they are the only party in the House that knew that the interpretation of the rules had changed. Clearly, nobody else did. Yet they went ahead and broke the rules as they understood them—the only party to do so. What every other party has said is that the rules were such that the spending was legitimate, and the Auditor-General has changed the interpretation of those rules.

This bill takes us back to the status quo ante in terms of the interpretation of the rules. That is a totally different issue; the issue before this Committee has nothing to do with it. The issue before this Committee is what the rules should be. National Party members say they deliberately broke the rules, just as they deliberately broke the GST rules on broadcasting expenditure, but they happened not to have—believe it or not—a written contract with their advertising agency for nearly a million dollars worth of expenditure, so nothing was traceable. There are no fingerprints because there are no documents—so there could be no fingerprints. I say to Mr Finlayson: “How about that for proper legal procedure?”.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON Link to this

I think I have more or less traversed the arguments in my earlier point of order. The Attorney-General was reduced to saying that he thought, from the tone of my voice, that I was supporting what the late Lord Cooke said. His comments are clearly wrong, and, by the way in which he picked up the statement after the point of order, they come perilously close to breaching Standing Order 400(b).

SANDRA GOUDIE Link to this

The actions of Dr Cullen do not surprise me, but I am surprised by some of the comments made by the previous speaker to this debate.

I want to say a few words about the Auditor-General’s comments. The Auditor-General’s report stated: “Some MPs and parliamentary parties have said that I have acted unfairly by ‘changing the rules’ after the event. I have not changed any rules.” The proposition that has been touted is that the Auditor-General’s report indicates that millions of dollars have been misspent since 1989, and that this spending needs to be validated. That is absolutely false. The Auditor-General, as Labour members have repeatedly pointed out, has already signed off the annual accounts from 1989 right through until 2003-04. Therefore, there is nothing illegal to validate.

If we look at the purpose of this legislation, we see that it is a validation bill. But there is nothing to validate, other than what Labour has got itself caught up in with regard to its pledge card. What makes it even worse is that if this legislation is passed, Labour will more than likely be free to indulge once again in spending $800,000 or more on similar pledge cards using taxpayers’ money. It is nothing more than a con job on a grand scale.

This validation is not required; all it does is make legal the spending Labour has indulged in—and, yes, Labour has claimed it will pay it back, but will it really do so—so that Labour can come along and say: “Hey, we didn’t do anything illegal anyway. That has already been identified by the fact that we have put legislation through the House.” So Labour is putting legislation through that it has a pecuniary interest in. It means that Labour’s spending is legal, and it then does not have to pay it back, in spite of the fact it said it would. It is nothing more than a con job on the New Zealand public, and Labour is playing fast and loose with taxpayers’ money.

I bring everybody’s attention to a report by Roger Kerr from the New Zealand Business Roundtable. He comments that some politicians—and I would certainly say this applies to those members in the current Labour Party—do not know how hard taxpayers work for the money they have to pass to Government, to be spent in an appropriate, efficient, and effective manner. Taxpayers would prefer their money to be spent only when they cannot spend it better themselves. We have to ask how taxpayers can have any confidence in a Government that passes legislation to protect the wasteful expenditure of their money.

There is absolutely no way that the majority of the New Zealand public will see this legislation as being anything other than a con job. The New Zealand public are not silly. They know what is going on here. They know that the legislation is designed to get members of the Government, the Labour Party, and Helen Clark off the hook. How many times has Helen Clark been in situations where she has got off the hook? It is no wonder the New Zealand public are becoming increasingly cynical about Parliament, when we have a Government and a leadership that is bringing it into disrepute constantly. It is a never-ending battle.

If we look at Part 1 of the bill, “Preliminary provisions”, we see that it is called a validation bill, but we know that it is not a validation bill—it is worse than that. The New Zealand public do not realise the further con that has been perpetrated here. A question needs to be asked about whether this legislation will also open the door to State-funded and taxpayer-funded election spending—and it does.

The New Zealand public need to stand up and say that enough is enough. They need to beat their chests, to beat their drums, to get on those talkback radio programmes, and to get in touch with all their media outlets. They need to talk to all their members of Parliament, and to talk to whomever they can talk to—and get out on the street with a megaphone—in order to say they are not putting up with this. And they need to do it today. Why? It is because the Government—this Labour Party and Helen Clark—is rushing through this legislation, under urgency, and ignoring what the New Zealand public and the taxpayers of this country feel about that. Those Labour members do not care what the public feels about that. They do not care that members of the public cannot have some input into this legislation.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

Taihoa, taihoa. Did you overspend, or did you not? That is the question.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

That is exactly the issue. Did you overspend—

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

I am addressing this to the National Party. Did the National Party overspend, or did it not? That is the question that should be asked. Did the National Party overspend, or did it not? Come on! Members can say anything in this Chamber. Did the National Party overspend, or did it not? If it did not overspend, then why did it pay the money back? Come on! Tell the truth. Address the facts. Did the National Party overspend, or did it not? If it did not overspend, then there would have been no need to pay back any money. It is very simple. If the National Party did not overspend, then why did it pay back some money? This is what the public is asking. Why did the National Party pay it back? The simple reason is that it did overspend. That is the simple reason. These are the facts. The National Party did overspend.

Then the question remains as to what extent it overspent. Yes, it did not overspend as much as any other party but it still committed the offence. It did still overspend. Simply paying the money back does not exonerate the National Party from having committed the offence. It still committed the offence, and the New Zealand is aware of and awake to all the shenanigans, the excuses, and the talk and rubbish about its taking the moral high ground. What a lot of bullshit! Absolute bullshit!

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

This is what the New Zealand public understands—

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

I withdraw and apologise.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

What I am trying to reiterate is that ordinary New Zealanders out there know that the National Party overspent. Does simply paying back the money mean that all of a sudden it becomes holy? Those members opposite sling abuse at every other party and say they committed an offence but National did not. That is total humbug, and the New Zealand public knows it. I will come back to the point again, because this is really the crux of it. Did the National Party overspend, or did it not? It did. It overspent. So there has been absolute hypocrisy in this Chamber on the part of the National Party.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

I withdraw and apologise.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

I come back to the point—a point that is very valid and basic to this argument. If the Labour Party overspent and the National Party overspent, then the principle is exactly the same. The National Party is saying that it is whiter than white. It committed the offence.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH Link to this

I withdraw and apologise. This Government is an illegitimate Government. Let me explain why to Mr Samuels. The extent of the Government’s overspend amounts to about $14,000 per electorate. Does he know how hard it is for party volunteers, with their raffles and with all the work that goes on, to raise that little bit of money? And the Labour Party cheated by $14,000 per electorate! Members opposite say it is OK because they will pay the money back. Well, it is still a rort, and I will tell members why. They are being asked to pay back only $800,000 but they have benefited by over $2 million from their rort.

Hon TONY RYALL Link to this

He did? I see all the chuckles from the Labour members opposite—the heads are nodding, they wonder about that, too. But we want to know how much each of those front-benchers knew about this electoral fraud. This Government has no legitimacy. It stole the election and does not deserve to be there.

DARREN HUGHES Link to this

The National Party needs Part 1 of this legislation to be passed. The National Party expended appropriations in the last Parliament before the last general election that were unlawful. The National Party spent about $10,000 that it should not have, and by passing Part 1 of this bill, the legislation will validate that.

I support the legislation because all political parties in the Parliament—with the exception of the Progressive party—operated under a set of rules that the Auditor-General’s report brought down last Thursday has changed. It is necessary for this legislation to validate the spending of all political parties in Parliament because all parties have been found—apart from one, the Progressive party—to have actually been outside the scope. This bill is therefore necessary for that.

It is very unusual to hear the yelling, screaming, and fake false sincerity from the National Party members as though this is some sort of huge issue of principle for them to stand on. They come into the Chamber yelling and screaming as though they are members of the purest political party ever to have existed in political party history. If that is the case, why did they overspend their own budget in the 3 months before the last election? There is silence from National Party members for the first time this morning in the Chamber as not one of the screamers can explain to us why they overspent and why they misspent their budget before the last election. Why was that? Why was that money misspent? They cannot tell us why and that is why we need Part 1.

We need Part 1 of this bill to make sure that the spending has been validated. In addition to that, another thing has happened that has nothing to do with the bill—that is, parties have said they will refund the money. The Labour Party is committed to refunding money and the National Party has said it will refund the money and has paid its $10,000. But that does not change the fact that law is needed to validate the spending. Let me ask National Party members this question. Did they misuse any of their spending at the 2002 election? There is silence again. For the 2002 election, did the National Party use any of its funding in a way that was outside what the Auditor-General ruled last week? There is no answer to that. In the 1999 election, did the National Party use any of its money in a way that the Auditor-General, based on his ruling last Thursday, would have found to be inappropriate? There is no answer to that, as well.

So the National members are now telling us that for three general elections in a row, they needed Part 1 of this bill to validate their spending. So I think that pretty much cuts to the chase quickly; National members have no idea why they are opposing Part 1, apart from the fact they see some sort of political game in throwing around words like “corruption” and “Zimbabwe” and a whole lot of stuff that is really stupid to say and silly and way outside the way anything happens in New Zealand. But that is what they have come to Parliament to try to do, because it is about their raw politics.

Let us turn to the politics. Mr Ryall just asked us whether the Labour Party had overspent because of the spending return that we had put in to the Chief Electoral Office at the last election. What did we do? We included the money that was spent promoting a Labour-led Government by organisations like the unions. That was included in the return that the Labour Party put in. Let me ask the National Party this. If not breaching an electoral spending cap is so important, why does the National Party not include the Exclusive Brethren money spent in its support? [Interruption] One of the members said they did not need to. The Labour Party did not need to include the union spending as part of our return, either. We did not need to do that; there was no legal reason to do it. But we did it because the money was spent in support of a Labour Government.

So let me ask the National members why the Exclusive Brethren money was not used in the same regard. There is silence again. There has been a lot of noise in Parliament in the last few days and the last few hours, but whenever National members are asked a question, there is silence because the paucity of their argument is clear for everybody to see. They have no idea why they are opposing Part 1. Part 1 helps the National Party. Part 1 validates what their own leaders did. Most of the noise is coming from new members of Parliament who were not here in the 3 months before the last election. That is why they have the most to say about it, even though they cannot answer any questions about it at all. They have nothing else to do, which is why they are sitting down here yelling and screaming.

Let me ask the National members this. If they had $10,000 of misspending in the 3 months before the election, how much would it have been if the Auditor-General had gone back 4 months? What is so special about 3 months before the election, from the point of view of Parliamentary Service spending? What is special about that? There is nothing. What if we had gone back 4 months? Where would the National Party have been then? I want to know why the National Party did not include the money from the Exclusive Brethren, when the Labour Party included money that was spent in its support.

Hon TAU HENARE Link to this

It is “H2”—Heather Simpson. What will Heather Simpson pay? If I had done this when I was working at the Kōhanga Reo National Trust or for Newstalk ZB—that fine radio station—I would have been slung out on my ears. This is nothing but a rort that no business person in his or her right mind would stand for.

Hon TAU HENARE Link to this

It is a con, that is what it is. This bill should be called “The Sting Bill”, “The Con Bill”, or the “Cover Your Tracks Bill”, because that is what it is all about. There is nothing in here that needs to be done today—nothing at all. We should be able to sit here for 6 months talking about how we are going to improve the system, because systems always need to be improved, and that is what they say this will do, but it will not.

There is something sinister in this bill. It is a sinister attempt by some people so that at the close of play today, when this bill goes through—well, hopefully, it will not go through. The Greens are going to abstain. They are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to come here and vote, but what do they do? They turn up, eat their lunch, and do not even vote, for goodness’ sake! What a have they are. [Interruption] Marian Hobbs should be quiet. She is one of those who rorted the system before. For goodness’ sake, the Government benches are full of them! The front bench is full of people who know how to rort the system, and rort the system they do.

Hon TAU HENARE Link to this

I do not know, she bought some curtains or stayed outside her area somewhere and then claimed expenses—I do not know, it was something like that. But it does not really matter, we are not really talking about Marian, we are talking about a thieving Government. It is a Government that stole the election from the rightful winners.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

It is amazing that some members of the Opposition do not want to hear the facts. The fact is that we won the election. What I am hearing from members on the other side of the Chamber is that they think the people of this country are bonkers—that they are stupid. You are talking about public integrity. It was the public of New Zealand who elected this Government to lead this country. You know what that was based on? It was based on the very clear policies put forward by the Labour Party.

The National Party had its chance and the Labour Party had its chance, but now that we have become the Government, those members are crying sooky bubba. You are using all those findings and all those tactics—and do you know what you are doing? The National Party is undermining the public of this country. They were the ones who went to the ballot box. Now you are saying that the election was a stolen election—that, in fact, somebody stole something. So if you are saying that, are you saying that the public of New Zealand are dummies? Are you saying they are stupid? That is the implication of your comments. Are you saying they are stupid? Do you think they were rorted? Do you think they are stupid? Is that what the National Party is saying?

We went through a public election. We went through a proper democratic process. The Labour Party won, we are the Government, and you do not like it. So you get up in the Chamber, and you throw all that rubbish across the Chamber about us being thieves—

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I will refer to the National Party as the parties with the Tories in it.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

I thank Murray McCully for suggesting that I am making a colourful contribution to the debate. I thank that member for giving me credit for that. But I think we all understand that this debate has been colourful. The colour has come from both sides of the colour spectrum. It would be unfortunate if this Parliament allowed colourful debate to come from only one side of the Chamber and not the other, because there have certainly been a lot of accusations. A lot of colourful adjectives have been slung from the Opposition side of the Chamber. Unfortunately, those members do not like to take; they like to give.

Hon DOVER SAMUELS Link to this

If that member had been listening, she would have heard some of the statements made by members on her side of the Chamber. It is incumbent upon those of us who are on the Government side of the Chamber to respond to those statements, and that is exactly what I am doing. Earlier in my speech, I raised the fact that Mr McCully was talking about the colourful contribution that is coming from me as an MP. My response to that is to say that a number of colourful contributions have come from all sides of the Chamber. There have been some mischievous contributions, and some adjectives have been used that, in my view, have not been complimentary to the debate.

DAVID BENNETT Link to this

Why would I start on them? Let us not let them get away with another day off. There is a reason why New Zealand First members are doing what they are doing. It is because they know they will be out of this place in 3 years’ time, and they will leave a $150,000 debt with the public. That debt will be all tied up in the courts for the following 2 years, and they will never pay it back. This is all part of their strategy—

DAVID BENNETT Link to this

Thank you, Mr Chairperson.

DAVID BENNETT Link to this

Those members are sensitive because they have an exit strategy out of this House. Their leader has a new job. What will they do? They will leave the taxpayers with a $150,000 debt. These are the people who said they would be honest and stand up for the ordinary New Zealander. Well, what have they done? They have stolen from the ordinary New Zealander, and they have not even had the decency to pay the money back.

DAVID BENNETT Link to this

No, it is disgusting. On the other hand, Labour will actually pay the money back, by the looks of things. Labour is having the great whip-round, as we can see on TradeMe. People can buy a Labour Party deck of cards—“Labour is trumps”—that is sold by the New Zealand Labour Party. On the TradeMe website it says that no one has traded with the New Zealand Labour Party yet, and it has been a member of TradeMe since October 2006. No address is verified, but the seller allows pick-ups.

What does the website say about the chances of getting a Labour Party deck of cards? It says: “they’re still wrapped in cellophane and in mint condition.”—never been used. The description continues: “If you prefer not to unwrap them they’d surely also make a fabulous addition to any mantelpiece.” That is what Labour Party voters have on their mantelpieces—a pack of Labour Party cards that has never been opened!

There is also a Labour pledge card on TradeMe—as new. This is quite possibly the most expensive piece of cardboard for sale on TradeMe; it is an absolute collector’s item—it is brilliant stuff! Or do members want a Labour Party autograph book—“1st Labour Govt, 1936”—that will be a good one, will it not? The description states: “You are bidding on a genuine New Zealand Labour Party autograph book …”. It continues: “Keep them in Power and New Zealand is safe.” Yeah, right! This item was also put up by the New Zealand Labour Party, but no one has traded with it yet. There is another item—the New Zealand Labour Party journal. It is described as a large, soft cover book, but the book’s state is “fair to good”—certainly not worth trading on.

Members should look at what the public has been saying about Labour’s trading; these remarks are quite interesting. In regard to the pledge card a question states: “No i was asking if they are the only ones stupid enough to pay for it twice. Considering its been paid for already”. The answer to that question states: “I think Labour MPs will be paying for it twice. Firstly with stolen money and now, very reluctantly, with their own.” That is the truth of the matter.

Someone else asked: “can I pay you in april 2008—with a pack of chewing gum?”. The answer to that question is: “Try bubble gum. That effort will have to be inflated quite a lot for anyone to go for it.” This is the stuff that the public has been thinking about what Labour has been doing to them. Other questions include: “What happened to my bid? That was deadly serious.” The answer to that question states: “Your bid was retrospectively legislated against. Just pretend it never happened.” That is the reality of what people have been thinking.

Another question on the website asks: “Is the signature authentic?”. The answer to that question states: “Art experts disagree. It’s a difficult question because if the signature is real, then the card may be fake. Politics is all about integrity.” These are beautiful comments, are they not? Another question asks: “Is this card used? Or just tarnished?”. The answer states: “This card is not only used, it’s been heavily abused.” Finally, a question asks: “Are these the same tired old promises, and are these pledges ever likely to be fulfilled?”. The answer states: “The promises are not worth the paper they’re written on. Rest assured though that the paper they’re printed on was very expensive.”

That is what the public of New Zealand think. They are sick and tired of this Government taking advantage of Government money and using it in this way. This Government stole the last election. Members of that party would not be in this Parliament if they did not have that $14,000 per electorate. That is theft.