Member Vacancy — Epsom Electoral District—Hon John Banks

I move, That pursuant to section 131(b) of the Electoral Act 1993, a vacancy in the Epsom Electoral District having arisen and the House having been informed that a general election is to be held within six months of the occurrence of the vacancy, no writ be issued for the election of a member of Parliament for that Electoral District to supply the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of John Archibald Banks. What an irony it is that we are here today debating as a House, and most likely agreeing, that there should be no by-election in the Epsom electorate—a by-election that is caused by the resignation of the Hon John Archibald Banks, subsequent to the findings of the court that his memory of donations around an election campaign were, to say the least, hazy.

I will speak more of John Archibald Banks in a few minutes, but the irony is that we are debating this today when there are so many rumours swirling about undeclared donations by the Labour Party—donations that can total, we believe, if all is to be revealed, some tens of thousands of dollars. Today we have the allegation out there that a $15,000 donation has been made to the Labour Party and not declared. What we hear is that the Labour members have no record of it, they have no memory of it, and there is no possibility that the donation was made.

Well, there is more to come on that, but the real point here is that the Hon David Cunliffe used that same set of excuses in the last couple of days. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am merely pointing out that the House has dealt with matters today—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Members on my left have been here a long time and they know the Standing Orders. A point of order is to be put tersely and there are to be no interjections whatsoever.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I was in the middle of a point of order, I believe.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Yes, you were.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It was that you were giving the well-known Ross Robertson signal for “Come back to the topic”. I was accepting that you were actually signalling a wide scope at that point—I assume that it was not to get me in scope of your view—but it was in fact worth recognising that many of the matters—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Is this a point of order?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yes, I am in the middle of it.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you. Look, can I just say to the honourable members on my left, whom I have known for many years, that you are well versed in the Standing Orders. All members are well versed in the Standing Orders. I call the Hon Gerry Brownlee.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: To continue my point of order, I assume.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Continue your point of order.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: My point of order is that the matters I was discussing and that you were suggesting might be slightly out of scope are incredibly relevant to the circumstances that have caused the House to have this debate today, and I think it is not unreasonable that they are, at least in passing, rehearsed.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I am standing up to agree with the member but to say that comments on Speakers’ rulings, even if they are descriptions of width, are something that you should not be doing in a point of order. If you are giving the member signals and making rulings in a sign-language way, then it would be most disorderly for the member to comment on it by way of a point of order.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Speaking to the point of order, it is just that I am used to all sorts of hand signals and other gestures from the Labour Party.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order. That can actually lead to disorder.

Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! We have a point of order on the floor.

Tracey Martin: This is a plea for clarification. Mr Brownlee is saying that the debate should be wide because there is some stuff in the paper about the Labour Party, but my understanding is that this debate is because Mr Banks has been found guilty of fraud. I do not understand how there is this wide debate when, actually, it is about a person who has resigned because he has been found guilty of fraud.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The issue is actually sub judice. Members have to be careful what they say in this debate, because it can lead to disorder. I just ask members to be conscious of that, for when we throw mud we lose ground.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is important that we get the parameters of this right, but the fact that the member has been found guilty of electoral fraud is not sub judice; that is a matter of fact and recorded by the court.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That it is, Mr Mallard, but it is still sub judice in the sense that there has been no sentence as yet, so I am just cautioning members that we need to be careful how we couch this debate.

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I hear that and I do not disagree with the ruling, but we are able to say things about the Hon John Banks, who is no longer a member. The protections that exist for members do not exist for former members.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Well, can I just say to members that matters that are sub judice are subject to the discretion of the Speaker. Members are to be cautioned as to the use of parliamentary privilege to circumvent the judicial process as it can undermine public confidence when standards falter or appear to falter. We live in a democracy and although we enjoy freedom of speech, it comes with the responsibility to the common good. So I am just cautioning members about the issue.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Thank you for your very wise words, Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate them. The point is that no doubt when other members stand up this afternoon, they are going to engage in some sort of reasonably severe character assassination on the Hon John Archibald Banks. I am making the point quite simply that although he was, in fact, dragged into the courts over a local body electoral issue, and although it was pointed out to him that his recollections of events were not found to be as the court would like them, we also have a situation here in this Parliament right now where there are allegations about donations to a political party, the Labour Party—tens of thousands of donations from a Mr Bill Liu. We have got a party that knows that all that is there, and it has a leader who has been found out to be someone who is, to say the very least, reckless with the truth, and it is going to put the boot into John Banks. Well, Mr Banks did the right thing. He resigned from Parliament.

Hon Annette King: He had to!

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: He has not been convicted. He has resigned from Parliament. He did not have to. He has not, at this point, been convicted. But he is an honourable man. He is a friend of mine and he will remain that. The point that is made in this debate is about setting aside the need for a very, very expensive by-election, and it could be simply made by everyone agreeing in one or two sentences that spending up to $1 million on a by-election so close to a general election would be a waste of time. But I know that you are going to get the fake sanctimony from the other side of the House as the members all roll out trying to protect a beleaguered and besieged leader who has got a huge job to convince anybody that anything he says is worth listening to, let alone believing. Now we are going to see a character assassination of John Banks. I am wanting to pre-empt that by making it clear that it is not appropriate in this House for the pot to call the kettle black, which is effectively what I am sure we are going to see this afternoon.

I am aware that Grant Robertson, the shadow Leader of the House, has said “Well, all bets are off. This is an unlimited debate and so we’re just going to go at it hard and the Government will be here all the way to 31 July debating this particular motion.” Well, I want to make the point that that is not going to happen because there is no confidence on that side of the House in the situation that Mr Cunliffe finds himself in today. There is no comfort in the House over the undisclosed donations. There is no acceptance that there is some sort of a blunder inside the Labour Party that has meant that a donation that should have been recorded and should have been made available to the Electoral Commission has not been declared.

I think it is going to be very, very interesting to see the positions that are taken today by our opponents. We do not think an election is a good idea at this point because it could end up being on the Saturday of the general election, the Saturday before, or—even worse, if the days are extrapolated—the weekend after the general election, when the public would be asked to vote for a member for a Parliament that no longer exists. In any event, on 14 August this Parliament ceases to exist, so unless that by-election were held before that date, everyone would be trotting off to the polls to vote for someone for a Parliament that no longer exists. So I think there is, in actual fact, quite a hole in the electoral law that deals with all of these circumstances. I do not think the clauses in the Electoral Act have actually got us to a point where we can—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What happened?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member over there, Mr Peters, asks what happened. Mr Peters is one of those members in the House who is probably more singularly responsible for the rewrite in electoral law than anybody else here. I say that not because he has been here forever but simply because of his other interactions at various times.

We are, really, having a debate because the law requires us to, but it is a nonsense, because there is no way that someone could be elected to sit in Parliament for a Parliament that no longer exists. I just look forward to the contributions from those over there who are amassing, circling the wagons, around David Cunliffe. I note that, as the Leader of the Opposition, he would normally have something to say about the setting aside of a by-election.

That is unlikely this afternoon, and that is largely because of the contradiction in circumstances that we find here today—a member, having gone all the way through the courts, and having been found to have not appropriately declared donations; and a member today found to have misled the media and all sorts of other people over his knowledge of Donghua Liu. And it gets worse than that. I will read from his letter in a minute—and some of the Labour Party members should do so too. Also, that member is not prepared to deal with, or acknowledge, the fact that there was at least one donation—and we know there were more–from Donghua Liu. If anybody is under any doubt about whether or not it is fair for Mr Cunliffe to say “I had a brain fade. I don’t remember.”, this letter—

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a pretty broad debate that we are engaged in here, but, really, David Cunliffe is not the subject of the debate under any interpretation of the Standing Orders.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): This is a robust debate, a robust Parliament, and it is within the Standing Orders.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: So here we have across the House a little bit of interplay, saying that my comments have so upset the Labour Party that it is going to make this a rough one. Well, let us see how good it is, because, in the end, it is on the back foot big time. Mr Cunliffe in his letter said “It would be very helpful to Mr Liu to be advised”—in others words, for him to be advised—“of an estimated period of time in which he could expect a decision.” That is the sort of letter that you write if the person who is being written about is well known to you. So any suggestion that it was some sort of formal thing is absolute rubbish.

It is going to be interesting to see how the Labour Party positions itself this afternoon. I think there are matters that it will be aware of that are going to come to light in the next few days, which I think is going to be, to say the least, interesting. Although the Labour Party thinks that we might have come down the Yangtze River on a cabbage boat, let me suggest that there are far more plush vessels that have travelled down the Yangtze River than a cabbage boat, and we will see in the next couple of days just who was on board.

It is a sad day today, but it is also a just day. I am somewhat saddened that when the Leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee, stood to take a call he did not actually traverse what has led to the resignation of the Hon John Banks. He, instead, tried to spray accusations around against other people.

Hon Tau Henare: It’s coming!

Hon DAVID PARKER: What is that?

Hon Tau Henare: It’s coming!

Hon DAVID PARKER: It is coming? Well, I am happy to traverse the facts of this. The Labour Party will be supporting the motion that no writ be issued for a by-election in the Epsom Electoral District. It would be ridiculous to have a by-election at this stage, but it is important that we have a clean democracy. One of the ways that you have a clean democracy is that you have transparency of what goes wrong and people are held to account for their mistakes.

That is what has happened here. Mr Banks failed to make declarations of donations received during his mayoral campaign some years back when he was standing for re-election as Mayor of Auckland and did not succeed. But during that period he received donations from a number of parties, including Skycity and Dotcom, he filed a declaration to say that he did not know of those donations, and a court has found that he did. That is why we are here today.

I think this episode brings into stark relief what happens when there are what I think are, effectively, abuses of the Electoral Act. The litany of mistakes by the ACT Party, which has led it to this place, goes back a number of members and for a number of years. They were here in this place this time only because of the deal that was done with the National Party, including in respect of the “tea party”, which I will come to. You have to go back only 3 years and the ACT Party was already mired in controversy. The ACT Party was on its knees because its prior leader, Rodney Hide, the so-called perk buster, was busted for perks. He had around him David Garrett. David Garrett had railed against short sentences and name suppression, and was shown to be a hypocrite because he had obtained name suppression and discharge without conviction for passport fraud. He had stolen the identity of a dead baby and obtained a passport using it. He had been pushed on to the ACT Party by the Sensible Sentencing Trust, whose members, including Garth McVicar, had supported him in those efforts to get a discharge without conviction and name suppression. It was against that background that the ACT Party was in such a terrible state of affairs that it suffered a takeover from a septuagenarian, Don Brash, who was not even a member of their party.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Don’t be ageist.

Hon DAVID PARKER: It was actually a description, Mr Finlayson. So neither of them were members of the ACT Party at that time but they saw political advantage to help the National Party. Remember that Don Brash was a former leader of the National Party and John Banks was a former National Minister. They saw advantage for the National Party and so they took over the ACT Party even while they were not members.

The ACT Party then stood in Epsom. I stood in the Epsom electorate. We had the embarrassing spectacle of Paul Goldsmith caught pulling out his own electoral hoardings—he was photographed doing it—and then the signal was sent to the electors of the Epsom electorate that they should not vote for the National Party candidate but should vote, rather, for the ACT Party candidate in an attempt to use the single-seat lifeboat provision in the MMP legislation. That legislation says that you normally have to get 5 percent of the seats in order to get representation in Parliament. If you get one seat, you get the proportion of your seats even if you get less than 5 percent. So someone can get 4 percent in an election and get no representation but someone, some party—like the ACT Party—could get one seat but, say, 2 percent and they would get proportionate representation, which is plainly unfair.

That provision has been recommended against by reviews of the MMP environment. It is widely hated by electors, and, in fact, it brings democracy into disrepute, and that is a bad thing because democracy is such an important thing, but, none the less, the National Party persists in supporting that rule. We have a member’s bill to close that loophole, and the bill has been drawn from the ballot. National has said it will not vote for it or advance it, and the reason for that is that National does deals such as the deal it did with John Banks. It is strange, though, that National backed him. You would think that this was the party of fiscal rectitude—this was John Banks, who, on the record, had tripled council debt when he was last mayor. So he is hardly a fiscal conservative—this was all about political advantage.

So we then come to the “tea tapes”. I was there on the day; the media tipped me off. I was standing in the electorate. I went along to the cafe. The whole thing was a stunt—everyone knows that. There were about 40 journalists there with cameras clicking away. They had an interview with John Key and John Banks, and John Key told people they should vote ACT and not for Paul Goldsmith in the local electorate. Then they had a staged cup of tea behind some glass with 40 cameras there. It was a publicity stunt—it was public. Ambrose, the photographer, left on the table a container that was a recording device that uploaded automatically from his camera. He did not know it was operating, according to what he said, and he got back to the office and he found that he had audio of the conversation between Banks and Key. Key then called in the police in order to use that against the media during an election. He used the power of the State against the media during an election, caused a week of controversy, which suited him, because he was the centre of attention for a week, and then, at the end of it, the police did not prosecute, but John Key deemed the photographer to be guilty. That is what John Key said—he deemed him to be guilty despite the fact he always had two defences: one, that it was inadvertent—if you believe what he says, and I have no reason to doubt him—and, two, that it was a public event. There was no way a court was ever going to convict that journalist for what happened, because it was a publicity stunt gone wrong.

So here we have it. After that, John Banks came in here and it is found out that he lied about his donations. I can say that—he lied about his donations. It is true, and I can say that, and that will forever be to his shame. He pretended that he could not remember a helicopter trip to Dotcom’s mansion. He pretended that he had not asked for the cheques to be split into two amounts so it was less obvious. He pretended that he did not know of the donations, and none of those lies—because they were lies—were believed by the court. John Key knew this at the time, because it was set out in the witness statements that were produced by the police, but he refused to read them. He did not want to know, because it did not suit his political imperative, which was to keep John Banks’ vote in this House.

Hon Trevor Mallard: So he wouldn’t know he was a liar.

Hon DAVID PARKER: That is right. He refused to look at the facts that showed John Banks to be a liar. We have seen other instances of that with Peter Dunne and the Government Communications Security Bureau fiasco. We have seen other acts of unprincipled behaviour by John Key and the National Party.

This is yet another reminder as to why MMP needs to be changed to remove the single-seat lifeboat. The Rt Hon Winston Peters agrees with this. The Green Party agrees with this. The Rt Hon Winston Peters, even though it is not in his interests to have a 5 percent threshold, says we should keep the threshold at 5 percent and not have the single-seat lifeboat for the likes of John Banks. Mr Peters is a man of principle. So is the Green Party, and so are we. We could all seek electoral advantage from this but none of the other parties does. The Rt Hon Winston Peters recognises that the threshold is appropriate to keep out the loony parties, essentially, which have very little support but could distort Parliament, which is exactly what John Banks has done for the last 3 years, and it is a shameful stain upon our Parliament that the police did not prosecute.

The police did not prosecute. They were happy to deem Ambrose guilty but they would not prosecute John Banks. They did not prosecute John Banks. The police were politicised by—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: That’s a disgraceful allegation.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, it is absolutely disgraceful that the Prime Minister used the police against the media during an election and then deemed Ambrose guilty when he would never have been convicted. This is a stain upon this House. We ought to be criticising John Banks. We ought to be criticising the things that led to this not being brought to a head many years earlier. Effectively, the Government has got away with it. The Government has got away with it. For 3 years it was able to close its eyes to what was an obvious rorting of the system. It is just that John Banks was convicted, albeit it is sad.

We are having this debate today because John Banks has effectively been found to be lying about a donation to a political party, or rather to himself as part of a local body election. He hid the source of the donation. The reason why that is important is that if our democracy is to be protected, it is important that there is transparency about the money that goes to politicians and political parties. That is one of the founding principles of electoral finance rules and all the rules we have around our democracy to try to protect it from the influence of money. What John Banks did is he took donations—large donations—and he lied about them in his donations return in order to try to cover up the source of the donations. Gerry Brownlee has got up in this House and said he thinks John Banks is an honourable man in spite of this. I think it is extraordinary that the Government, the National Party—and I assume Gerry Brownlee represents the National Party—thinks it is an honourable thing to do to break the electoral finance laws, because that is what John Banks did.

He broke one of the founding laws that protect our democracy from the influence of money, because it requires political parties and politicians to tell the public, within certain rules, who gave them the money. That is important.

If you think about what the Government does—what does it do, day in and day out? It spends $60 million to $70 billion of public money. It makes a whole bunch of rules that have a huge influence on what happens in our society, who can make money, who cannot, and how they do it. So we want to know who is giving money to political parties so that we can see whether those political parties are influenced by those donations. What John Banks did is circumvent those founding electoral finance laws in order to hide the source of the donations. That is why he has had to leave Parliament, after the matter has gone to court. You pointed out, Mr Assistant Speaker, that he has not had a conviction registered against him yet, but he has lost the case, and the judge will make a decision shortly. That is why Mr Banks had to leave Parliament—because he broke those laws.

The National Party has come out in this debate and said that Mr Banks is an honourable man. I think it tells you a lot about the values of the National Party that its members seem to think it is OK to break electoral finance laws, and that you are still an honourable person even if you get forced out of the House when you break electoral finance laws.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: How’s Jolyon White?

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Chris Finlayson is speaking out about it, but Gerry Brownlee just stood up in this House and said that Mr Banks is an honourable man, even though Mr Banks has just been proven to have lied in his donations return and to have hidden the source of the money that was funding his campaign. That is pretty shocking from this Government. I think it says a lot about the values of this Government.

John Key, of course, is implicated in this up to his eyeballs, because it was John Key who gifted the seat of Epsom to John Banks in the first place. John Key failed in his duty as Prime Minister when he failed to look at the evidence that was mounting around John Banks, the evidence that John Banks had broken the electoral finance law, and the evidence that John Banks had been lying. Mr Key, of course, is on the record in relation to a whole different issue during the Privileges Committee in 2008, which was a very high-profile issue involving Mr Peters and many others, when he called on Prime Minister Helen Clark to stand Mr Peters down, saying that that was what he would do if he were Prime Minister. Well, where are the standards? That is what Mr Key said back in 2008. Then, when Mr Banks was found, very clearly, to have broken the law, Mr Key did not even want to look at the police report. He was faced with a very similar situation, he would not act, and he would not enforce those standards.

What I want to draw attention to today are all the bills that have been passed in this House because of the vote of the disgraced John Banks. There is now a series of laws in New Zealand on the statute book only because of the disgraced vote of a disgraced MP who broke the campaign finance laws before he came to this place. Before he even got here he had broken the campaign finance laws, and he should never have been in Parliament. Because of that one vote—that dodgy vote that John Key organised with the dodgy deal in Epsom—a series of laws was passed. There was an amendment to the Crown Minerals Act that made it easier to mine our conservation land. Thank you, John Banks and the National Party. That amendment undermines the ability of the Minister of Conservation to carry out the protection and preservation of our conservation estate, and it gave the Minister of Energy and Resources input into the decisions on mining on conservation land. It also undermined the right of New Zealanders to protest. That was in the Anadarko amendment, which restricts people’s protests at sea and criminalises protests at sea. That law exists on the statute book only because of the vote of John Banks, the man who should never have been in this Parliament and who broke campaign finance rules before he even stepped back in here again. It was his vote that delivered that law.

Then we had the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill, which not only brought back youth rates, but extended them to 18 and 19-year-olds. It overturned all the hard work done by the Greens, unions, and others working with Labour when it was in Government in getting rid of youth rates in 2008. This law is a clear discrimination on the basis of age. That law only got through on the single vote of the disgraced MP John Banks. It would never have happened if John Banks had not been here. There was the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill—Tau Henare’s bill—which was a solution looking for a problem. The Mixed Ownership Model Bill, which is the partial privatisation of electricity companies, is perhaps the most destructive legacy of this Government. That bill got through by only a single vote, and that was the vote of the disgraced MP John Banks, a man who should never have been in this Parliament. The Government even used the vote of John Banks to help pass the Skycity legislation, despite the fact that Skycity was involved in Mr Banks’ court case.

The fact that Parliament ended up passing these controversial bills and that the National Government was happy to rely on the vote of John Banks to pass all of these controversial bills tells you everything about the values of the National Government. The Prime Minister had a police report sitting on his desk that told the truth about John Banks, and the Prime Minister refused to open and read that police report, because he knew that if the truth came out, Mr Banks would be kicked out of Parliament and Mr Key would not be able to pass all of these pieces of legislation through our House, because he would not be able to rely on the disgraced vote of the disgraced MP John Banks. That is the reality of what has happened in this Parliament.

It is time to clean up the donations regime and the campaign finance rules. It was important that John Banks got caught and it was important that he got prosecuted, and good on Mr McCready. It would not have happened had he not done it, because, of course, the police did not pursue the case, but it was a pretty cut and dried case as it turned out. But we do need to clean up the rules. We need to clean up campaign finance rules around donations and spending caps, non-party party election activities, and the partial public funding of political parties. We also need to look at whether the current set up—the electoral agencies—should be able to enforce campaign finance rules, because one of the things we discovered, of course, was that the police do not seem to want to prosecute these cases, which in this case was a pretty straightforward case.

Of course, this also goes back to amending MMP. We just had a referendum on MMP, and the people of New Zealand wanted to keep it, by a majority, but they also wanted to reform it. The independent umpire went away and made a series of recommendations about how we could fix the anomalies around MMP, which is the coat-tailing rule in exchange for lowering the threshold to 4 percent. There were a number of other amendments proposed by the Electoral Commission. The party that blocked progress on reforming MMP was the National Party. The other parties in this House would have been able to deliver a 75 percent majority in order to fix the one thing that everyone was concerned about in MMP, which was the coat-tailing rule. The independent umpire, the Electoral Commission, recommended that we change the coat-tailing rule and lower the threshold to 4 percent, and the National Party blocked the progress of it. That is just the facts. The National Party wants to abuse that rule in Epsom with ACT and John Banks, as we saw, and with others. MMP is a great system, but like all good systems it needs to be improved. The independent umpire gave Parliament a series of improvements that it could make, and the National Party blocked making progress on those improvements, which actually would have led to a better and fairer electoral system.

As Andrew Geddis said, the National Party is acting in manifest bad faith regarding electoral reform. That is because it is acting in its own petty political vested interest, rather than acting for the country as a whole in order to improve our electoral system, as the independent umpire, the Electoral Commission, recommended to this Parliament and the other parties around here, except the National Party, which blocked progress on implementing the recommendations of that independent umpire. That is why we need to actually implement those recommendations. When there is change of Government in September this year, we will implement the recommendations of the Electoral Commission.

The ACT Party’s recent affair is a long-running saga of political sleaze, double talk, and cant, unparalleled by any party in this country’s history. The National Party can smile. The National Party can laugh, but I know what happened here. John Banks took legal advice. It was wrong and he should have turned away from it when he determined that that was the case, having looked at the charges against him, and, sadly, he has wrecked his career. But he should have known this from the start.

The ACT Party was no party to join in the first place. Finally, justice has prevailed, and it should be without any thanks to the Prime Minister of this country. The Prime Minister, you know, has no knowledge of electoral law, he has no view that it is a cornerstone of our democracy, and if electoral law can be flouted and manipulated with apparent ease, what sort of country would New Zealand finally become?

Right now, as we know, next week the Conservative Party is going to launch its campaign in East Coast Bays. Tell me, when are we going to learn about the sleazy deal that is going to happen there? As it has for the ACT Party, as it has for United Future, and, sadly, as it has for the Māori Party, which has destroyed all reason for special seats for Māoridom if that is the way it is going to construct its politics. The whole integrity of our system is put at risk. The law is the law, and the Prime Minister seems oblivious to why we have electoral law.

This party has faced these accusations in the past. I want to remind members that in 2008 it was the ACT Party and the United Future offshoot that brought charges against New Zealand First for funds for an electoral petition—not a campaign, but for an electoral petition—as to who was the right member of Parliament for a seat called Tauranga. The accusations, you know, went to the police, the Serious Fraud Office, and the Electoral Commission, and all turned out to be doughnuts—nothing—but the National Party did not stop, did it? No, no, it had a Privileges Committee hearing—a total kangaroo court—and sort of said: “We’ll hang him in the morning, but before that we’ll give him a trial.”

I want to remind those members and, most of all, the member who is the Attorney-General, because he is meant to be an expert in law, that if he goes to the three drafts from that commissioned report—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: They’re a great Privileges Committee.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —no, do not mumble—the three drafts of that committee all have this statement. Those three final drafts said that should Winston Peters have won the case in Tauranga, then he would have pecuniary interests because he would become the MP with all the extra additional electorate funding. Look at the three drafts, it is all there.

I called up the clerk of the committee—knowing full well that the chairman was Simon Power, a lawyer; they had an adviser, Stephen Kós, who is now Justice Kós, a lawyer; and the committee clerk was a lawyer—and I said to her: “I cannot believe with all the lawyers on that committee and your legal advice that you don’t understand the law, because it is not going to be one MP out, another MP in. No, it is a by-election, and an extra cost to the member. So how can they possibly allege pecuniary interests?”.

Look at the final draft. Out comes that clause—it said that he still had pecuniary interests, and it applied it retrospectively. I know when politics stinks, and we came back from that because a lot of people in this country—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Ha, ha!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, Mr Finlayson, they do not think it is a joke. They know that parts of our system are rotten. Despite that, New Zealand First still said that we should keep the 5 percent threshold and that we should get rid of the coat-tailing provisions, and that is the way we should run our democracy under MMP, not pervert and distort it at every move. What did Mr Key say back then? Before the committee even had the inquiry, he said: “He doesn’t meet my standards.” He had not heard any evidence, of course. No, no, he believed Owen Glenn, although I demolished 32 statements that Mr Glenn had made. I demolished 31, but could not find the phone accounts in 4 days, as the committee was demanding.

It is rotten, but we are back, and we are never going to forget it, Mr Finlayson, because your party used the whole system in a kangaroo court, in a majority report, and who were the strongest proponents? The ACT Party, the Māori Party, and United Future all stood there in condemnation. So if you think we are going to forget that—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —then you are dreaming. No, no, no, you will not forget it, Mr Assistant Speaker, because the law is the law. I say again, look at those three drafts, which all make the allegation of pecuniary interest. It becomes demolished by the—

Hon Anne Tolley: Move on.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, “Move on.” Oh, of course she says: “Move on.” because she is the Minister of Police. Why she is the Minister of Police is beyond me, because she does not understand the law. I saw her the other day helping a member of Parliament, and boy, she is going to be embarrassed by that, as these facts are unfolding. It just shows why she is so unqualified to be the Minister of Police. And the Minister of Justice, as well, was doing the same thing, as was the head of the Māori Affairs Committee, Tau Henare. There is a day of reckoning—

Hon Anne Tolley: All right. Rave on. You’re good at making accusations, but you never actually prove them.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, no, you will make my day. I will not be making yours, of that you can be sure. It is no use shouting out here. The point is that it is sleaze to think that you can organise all these arrangements before the election, prop up the guy in Epsom, prop up the guy in Ōhariu, maybe prop up the Māori Party—although it is wasting its time there—and, last of all, do a deal with someone who says: “There is such a great demand for our brand of politics that we need a ladder from the National Party.” Unbelievable. And that is the reason why MMP will soon sort itself out. It is because the public are wising up to this.

But what I want to ask the National Party is this: why did it apply such duplicitous standards in the case of Mr Banks? Why did the Prime Minister say: “I am not going to read the police report.”? Next question: “Why not?”. Answer: “Because I trust Mr Banks.” Likewise, do you remember when it came to the allegations about Mr Peter Dunne—whose speech today, I mean, I could not believe this. I thought: “This guy is going to get struck by lightning very shortly. He is seriously going to get struck by lightning because he is talking about integrity and honour in politics.” And what did Mr Key say about the leak in respect of the Government Communications Security Bureau report? He said: “I would like to believe him.”—“I would like to believe him.” Then he went, and suddenly he found a renewed belief because Mr Dunne came back, and he is back now as a Minister. He leaked State secrets four times.

This Prime Minister has got standards that are so low, they could parachute out of the bottom of a snake on issues like this. That is how bad it is. No, do not frown. Out there, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of National Party people, who in a recent poll said that they find all of this business so distasteful, but those members will not be making allegations about New Zealand First receiving money for campaign funding, will they? No, the National Party is so bad that to get round the electoral law, it had an auction to play a game of golf against the world’s most famous golfer—John Key—and up gets an Oravida man who pays $53,000 to play a game of golf against John Key. How do you like that? Naked, venal, sleazy, underhand—

Melissa Lee: Because they won’t pay to play with you, mate.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: What did you say there, the woman over there who made that statement?

Melissa Lee: I said they won’t pay to play a game with you. That’s why you’re jealous.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, nobody tries to play a game with New Zealand First. Do you know why? We have got honour. We have principles. We stand for them. Out there in New Zealand there are hundreds of thousands of people who are telling me that they seriously want us back in big numbers in 2014, and, yes, one-third of them happen to be National supporters. Oh, that took the smile off their faces. I have got great news for them. In 21 years this party called New Zealand First has never engaged in this sleazy coat-tailing, coathanger deal - type of behaviour—21 years. It is the only immutable, honourable party in this respect.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: 1999.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: What was the deal we did in 1999? Remind me, Mr Finlayson. Remind me. What was the deal in 1999? Oh, he has gone silent. Just makes an allegation off the top of his head, opens up his mouth, lets the wind blow his tongue around, and he cannot sheet home the allegation. He is meant to be a lawyer. He tells us he is the best one Parliament has ever seen—the best one Parliament has ever seen. But when he is asked the simple question: “What was the deal that New Zealand First did in 1999?”, he has gone strangely silent. Not a mutter, not a murmur, not a syllable, not a sound.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Hey, what was the deal that brought Denis O’Rourke in here? Tell us about Denis.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, and they made the allegations, of course, about Mr O’Rourke to the media, and guess who got nailed? The National Party member over there—the National Party member over there, the recently imported one. Poor old Claudette, she got nailed. The allegation was against my member. Let me be honest. I thought: “We’re not taking that sort of thing in this campaign. I know someone who is doing just that. Her name is Claudette. I’ll tell the media.”, and the rest is history.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member must use—

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Thank you very much—I know, I know, I know. But, you see, somebody over there wanted an example. Mr Coleman—again, tongue engaged before brain—and now he has found out, again.

Hon Members: Dr Coleman.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, Dr Coleman. Well, if that is the case, it is the Rt Hon Winston Peters to you then, sunshine. I am sorry for John Banks. I personally am, because I—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Oh, yeah, right!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, no, hang on a minute. John asked me—or at least his team did—whether I would bear witness in his case. I did not say no. That is a fact, because I think he was badly advised by the lawyers. But my real point is that he exposed the National Party for what it is—a shadow of its former self.

I stand in this House to support the motion in front of us today—which we might have all forgotten after that tirade—that we do not have a by-election in the Epsom electorate. Following the court judgment and, of course, the resignation of the Hon John Banks from this House, that makes eminent sense, because if the normal processes were followed, we could expect to see a by-election held in Epsom probably in early August, some time around 2 or 3 August.

I believe there are three good reasons why we should not be doing that. First of all, that by-election would have to be held on the old boundaries. As we all know, the boundaries have changed and that would be very confusing to the electors. Secondly, it would be less than 2 months out from a general election, and, of course, the House would have risen, so you would be electing someone to come when there was nowhere to go, and it would all be a bit outrageous. Most important of all, it is an enormous waste of taxpayers’ money—almost a million dollars to run a by-election. In fact, I think Christchurch East cost about $870,000. So the motion in front of us today is the right one, and I am sure that this House will have the sense to vote for it.

I would like to say that I want to recognise the contribution by the Hon John Banks. He gave almost four decades of service both in local government and in Parliament and, of course, he was the Minister of Police. I have a special place for him because he had been the Minister of Police for only about a month when we had the Aramoana massacre. Of course, people remember that that was by a 33-year-old unemployed man, who shot and killed 13 people in the very small township of Aramoana. The first police respondent on the scene, who was subsequently shot, was, of course, Sergeant Stewart Guthrie. That was a tragedy for the police force, for New Zealand, and for that small township, of course, which would take many, many years to recover. I think everyone in this House can appreciate the difficulty of being a Minister at a terrible time like that.

I just want to make the point that somebody said earlier that the Hon John Banks had to resign. Of course he did not have to. He could have stayed here right until Parliament rose, but he actually chose to do the right thing. He did the honourable thing by resigning, and I think that that deserves some recognition. He was a good man and he did good for a lot of people, and that needs to be remembered. Our Prime Minister, John Key, said, I think today, actually, that politics is all about trust. Well, Banksie realised that he had lost that trust and he went.

There are others in this House who need to take a lesson from him. It is very easy to stand and be all holier than thou, but, actually, you have got to be aware of history. So, speaking of trust—and I will come back to David Cunliffe in a minute, because at the moment trust and David Cunliffe are interposed and intertwined in people’s minds. I want to talk about another sort of trust. I want to talk about the trust we must have as legislators in our very excellent police here in New Zealand and our very excellent justice system. We are envied by countries around the world for both our police service and our justice system. This National Government, this John Key - led Government, trusts the police to use their independence wisely. We trust them to do that and to make their decisions independently from any politics and any politicians. We trust them to do that. The police deal with around 140,000 prosecution cases every year—140,000. So this Government trusts that they have expert advice, whether it is in-house or whether they seek that from other places—legal advisers who will give them good advice on cases that might be simple or that might be sensitive or, indeed, complex cases.

Actually, the Opposition over there does not have that trust. Andrew Little was very quick off the mark and he publicly called for an independent, high-powered inquiry into not just this case but the way that politically charged cases are handled.

Hon Members: There is one.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes, there is. Why did Andrew Little not just say “The Independent Police Conduct Authority should have a look at this, and I am going to refer the case to them.” He could have said that, but he did not. He said “We want an independent, high-powered inquiry into politically charged cases.” You have to ask whether that would then have included David Cunliffe’s illegal tweet on the by-election day in Christchurch. Should that have been investigated by an independent investigator? Would it include, perhaps, the Labour Party’s illegal use of taxpayers’ money on electioneering with its pledge card? David Parker talked in this House earlier about the abuse of the Electoral Act. That was the major abuse, so should there be a high-powered independent inquiry into those sorts of breaches? Would it also include events leading up to the resignation of the Labour MP Darren Hughes? Should that have gone to an independent, high-powered inquiry?

You tread very carefully when you start making statements about what the police should do and what the police should not do, and who should be looking over their shoulders, because we have good systems and this Government respects them. It is very clear that the people sitting on those Opposition benches do not, because of the very—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but we have members who do not have the floor interjecting on each other, which is out of order.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: My point is that members on that side of the House have made very serious allegations about police behaviour and they need to be very careful because—I think someone has already said it in this House—people who throw stones should not be standing in glass houses. Andrew Little went on to say that those charged with upholding the integrity of the electoral system need to be willing to account where necessary and to prove that they were independent of Ministers, but clearly that is not needed when it concerns Labour MPs.

Speaking again of trust, Jacinda Ardern then got involved. She not only questioned the processes used by police; she questioned their decision making and the decisions they had reached. She worked with the police union, trying to link police decisions with funding. Of course, the police’s response to that was “We can however say that suggestions that resourcing issues meant police did not seek a Crown Law opinion are absolute nonsense.” It is the police saying that, not me: “absolute nonsense”. It did not stop her; she went on. But, I have to say, why would the police trust either of those two MPs or, in fact, David Parker?

Really, for the whole Labour Opposition sitting across the House here to interfere with the police independent prosecutorial role—because its members have already suggested that the police got it wrong, that they know better than the police and therefore we need an independent, high-level investigation into any of those politically charged events. Just because an MP is being investigated or a politician is being investigated, it does not mean that other politicians should get involved in the process. This Government believes in the police. They have the duty of care and they have to take the responsibility.

If politics is all about trust, and I think that was a very, very good saying from the Prime Minister this morning, then today’s revelations show that, really, we cannot trust—nobody can trust—this Labour Opposition.

David Cunliffe either told a lie or did not actually care enough about a constituent. This was a constituent who came to him for help. It is unbelievable to me that David Cunliffe, who has been in Parliament since 1999, does not have a record in his office of the constituents for whom he advocates. We know he advocates because Sue Moroney earlier on talked about how he had advocated—

Hon Member: Have you got all your records going back 15 years?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: You can dance on the head of a pin, but I have heard members in this House accuse various people of advocating on behalf of constituents. In fact, a Minister lost his job when all he did was write a letter. That quite clearly was not advocating, but he fell on his sword because he knew he had lost trust. So be careful again about—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister, but her time has expired.

I am going to slightly divert at the start from what I was going to say, to answer the allegations that the Hon Anne Tolley has made with regard to the role of the police in this matter. The police got it wrong. The police have accepted they got it wrong. David Carruthers is investigating it. The Minister of Police has got to stop defending the indefensible. This is not a general criticism of the police, but I think there is a specific criticism in this case—they did not do what they should have done where there is a marginal case of this sort, as they thought. They did not refer it to the Crown Law Office in the way that was appropriate and in the way that would have been an appropriate protection for them. But that matter is now being investigated by David Carruthers.

I do want to make some comments about John Banks and say that, frankly, I have found, over the years, John Banks to be a mixed bag. In the mid-1980s, when I was advocating for homosexual law reform, there was not one more rabid person in the House on that issue than John Banks. He was absolutely awful. He was shocking. He was rude. He was obscene. He was offensive in this House and outside the House. But what I want to say is that over the years after that he grew. He began to understand the issues. He began to have some compassion and understanding in the area, to the point where he voted for the marriage equality legislation last year.

I just want to say that I admire him. It is sometimes easier for those of us who generally have been liberal on issues to stay being liberal than it is for people who have had deep convictions to move from those convictions to what he considered in the end was a point of principle. I also want to say that I very much appreciate the leadership he has taken in the last year or so around the awful legislation that the Hon Peter Dunne was in charge of around legal highs, and in particular the leadership he has taken with regard to the position of animals being experimented on. I think that without his support we would not have been able to make the changes that we have, and I want to acknowledge Mr Banks for that and to say thank you.

I also want to say that his judgment has never been brilliant, and in this particular area he made a very fundamental error in that he trusted Michelle Boag. Michelle Boag designed for him a system to cut donations into $25,000 chunks and thereby pretend that they were anonymous. The Dotcom one is one where there has been a lot of publicity, but those were not the only two $25,000 cheques that were donated into this campaign. That system was designed by a fund-raiser with enormous experience in fund-raising for the National Party and hiding that money—Michelle Boag.

One of the questions that I think David Carruthers and other people who are reviewing this case should look at is whether a case should be reopened in this area, whether in fact Michelle Boag is an accessory to John Banks’ electoral fraud, and whether she has herself committed a crime. That is something that I hope is covered in one of the reports that are going to be considered.

I also say that although John Banks has moved from very conservative to quite liberal in a number of areas, I just think it is awful that he is leaving the ACT Party to a leader who is promoting incest. I mean, it is just awful that John Banks, having come to a point of principle, is leaving a party that will have “Duelling Banjos” as its theme tune for the next election. I think the idea that a deal will be done whereby Paul Goldsmith continues not to run in Epsom and we will have the third failure—we have had Rodney Hide, we have had John Banks, and we now have a new ACT person who I am sure will be a failure as well in that area—is very sad.

I do want to make clear that I have an interest in this matter. It was my letter of 23 April 2012 to Bruce Thomas, who was the electoral officer at the Auckland Council, that kicked off the series of investigations into John Banks. The original complaint contrasted the comment from Skycity that it had donated to both campaigns with the fact that Mr Banks did not declare. I did that on 23 April 2012, and I followed it up on 30 April because, following the publicity around it, which flowed from my letter, Kim Dotcom made some public comments, which I then added, and Mr Thomas made a quick and a proper decision to refer the matter to the police.

The police, for reasons that I cannot work out, decided that instead of getting one of their legal experts or one of their leading investigators from head office to deal with it, or even from Auckland, they would get a Canterbury police officer, a detective superintendent based in Christchurch, to investigate this matter. That to me was, I think, to say the least, surprising. Peter Read, who was at the time Detective Superintendent Southern, was the person who was responsible for the egregious error in this case. I think it is quite sad that that occurred.

The Labour Party will not force a by-election in the Epsom electorate. It is just not in the public interest to have someone elected to Parliament when the first time that they could come to the Parliament would be after the Parliament has dissolved. That is something that is just silly. It is senseless, and it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. We will not support that.

What has come out of this, though, is a lot of focus on the manipulation of the system that is occurring on the part of the National Party with regard to MMP. I just want to say to members opposite that in the end the public will get sick of it. They will get sick of the National Party saying that it does not matter whether Peter Dunne leaks State secrets—vote for him anyway—and it does not matter in Epsom.

It appears that someone is sharpening the rusty screwdriver for Murray McCully so that he cuts his arm off, because that is what he said he would do before he gave up the seat to Colin Craig. The point I make is that I want to see people with integrity, people like Kelvin Davis, who say they are not match fixers. They are not going to rort the system. When the Labour Party runs in a seat, it runs in a seat. It does not run in a seat and say “Don’t vote for me.” Although I will say as a final comment that I hope that Holly Walker, when she comes to speak in Hutt South, says the party vote is the most important. Thank you very much.

I just want to take a brief call because some very serious allegations have been made about the course of this prosecution and I think it is incumbent on me as the senior law officer of the Crown to make a few comments about that, because they are serious allegations and this is a very serious matter. I support the motion for all the reasons that other members have referred to. We are very close to a general election. By-elections cost a great deal of money. For example, the Te Tai Tokerau one a couple of years ago is an example of where someone put the State to a lot of money to prove some principle to himself but not many other people.

I too want to say something about Mr Banks. I wish him all the best for the future. It has been a humiliating period for him, made doubly worse this afternoon, I am sure, by the prospect of him having to listen to and be lectured on bad judgment by someone like Mr Mallard, whose entire career or, indeed, entire life has been characterised by misjudgments. That is the person who was convicted of common assault for, I think it was said to be, punching Mr Henare in the House, but my understanding was that it was more a sort of adolescent slap. But, be that as it may, it was one of a number of convictions—

Hon Trevor Mallard: He went down.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: His head went down—oh yeah, right! This is the person who used to do girly weights at Bodyworks with Chris Carter, lecturing people on manliness. Oh, he is back—he is back.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did do weights occasionally, but I did not get my trainer to carry my drink bottle and towel like that member did.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I will have a bicep competition with that member any day.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sure that will read well in Hansard.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Anyway, getting away from Mr Mallard’s lack of biceps and coming to the real issue, I think we need to take the House very carefully through what happened in the course of this matter. First, an important starting point, as the member for Rongotai, Annette King, will know, is the Policing Act, which she was responsible for when she was Minister of Police, and section 16(2). It makes it very clear—very clear—that the commissioner must act independently of any Minister of the Crown in relation to the enforcement of the law in any particular instance, in particular, in the investigation and the prosecution of offences. The law makes it clear that these cannot be political decisions. Some of the allegations that have been made over the last few weeks have suggested that it has got close to a political decision, which is a grotesque allegation in our democracy.

So what happened was that a complaint was laid with the police regarding Mr Banks’ electoral return. The police investigated, and in July 2012 they concluded that there was insufficient evidence to consider a prosecution under the Local Electoral Act 2001. Then Mr McCready brought a private prosecution in the Wellington District Court after the police decided not to press charges. This private prosecution was brought by Mr McCready. It came before a number of judges, including Judge Gittos, who decided that there was sufficient evidence to commit Mr Banks to trial, and then the Solicitor-General, the junior law officer of the Crown—utterly independently of anything to do with me—took over the prosecution and instructed an independent Queen’s Counsel to conduct the prosecution. The key point is that at each juncture the justice system has worked according to proper process.

That is all that can be said because the decision in relation to the police is before Sir David Carruthers, and I would caution members not to get too far into that material. But I thought that given some of the, frankly, scurrilous allegations that have been made about political interference and so on, it was important to bring those salient matters to the attention of the House. It could well be that there should be a mature discussion next year in the context of the review of the electoral laws about whether or not there should be an independent political prosecutor.

I would be very keen to engage in that discussion with the Labour Party members, but I would say to them, with respect and affection, to be careful what you wish for. Because, for example, in 2006 the police investigated the Labour Party’s pledge card and leaflet and established that there was sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case in relation to an offence under the Electoral Act, but they let the party off with a warning. In 2008 the police investigated a Labour Party pamphlet that was found by the Electoral Commission to breach the Electoral Act. They exercised their discretion, and did not bring charges. In 2011 the Electoral Commission again referred the Labour Party’s electoral propaganda to the police, and Mr Robertson said the party had taken the view that the flyer was not an election advertisement. In 2011 the Labour campaign manager and former Minister Jim Anderton was referred to the police by the Electoral Commission. The police exercised their discretion and no charges were laid. In 2013 the Labour leader, David Cunliffe, decided to test the law by tweeting an encouragement to vote on the day of a by-election. No charges were laid despite Mr Cunliffe’s admission of responsibility and an apology.

I have to say I have got no particular problem with any of those decisions. The police were operating independently. They looked at the matter, exercised discretion, and decided not to prosecute. Last year, again—and this was not an Electoral Act matter—Mr Goff breached a suppression order in a coronial inquiry. He was let off with a warning, although other citizens have been prosecuted for doing exactly the same thing. And, of course, I say to Holly Walker, there is Jolyon White, the social justice coordinator for the Anglican diocese in Christchurch who was investigated. It still remains an open investigation, so one should be careful with what one says about vandalising all the National Party billboards and breaching the Electoral Act. The police are independently looking at that matter without fear or favour.

So maybe we do need to have a discussion about an independent electoral prosecutor. As I said, if I am privileged enough to be back here after 20 September, I certainly would contend for that. But I would say to the Labour Party to be very, very careful. Be careful what you wish for because that party’s record is not all that flash. There is one party whose name is constantly being referred to the police for breaches of the Electoral Act and that is the Labour Party. I remind the House that it was a Labour candidate, Mr Singh, who was sentenced earlier this year for his involvement in a case of electoral fraud where, unbelievably, he registered 51 votes at the same address in the 2010 super-city elections. Of course, we all know about Mr Phillip Field, but, out of compassion and charity, I am not going to say anything about him. He has left this place. He cannot answer for himself here, and I think that some of the purple prose placed in the direction of Mr Banks this afternoon was pretty unfortunate, to say the least.

So let us have that discussion next year. These are important issues. Let us have a principled discussion over these things in the context of the Electoral Act. I simply say to the Labour Party that it is time to get off the flea-bitten old nag because, when all is said and done, it is that party whose record over the years has caused so many complaints to the police.

The Labour Party is, of course, supporting this motion. We do not believe that there should be a by-election held at this time so close to the general election. As other speakers have pointed out, anyone who is actually elected in any by-election would not be able to take up their seat in this House at all. Also, I do not think that the people of Epsom should be put through the charade that National puts them through every election again and again. We have already heard from David Parker about the sight of Paul Goldsmith pulling his own electorate hoardings out of the ground, trying desperately to stop people from voting for him. The people of Epsom do not need that. We have already seen in this period leading up to the election in 2014 that Paul Goldsmith will not show up to debates and that Michael Wood, the very excellent Labour candidate in the Epsom electorate, has provided for the people of Epsom a substitute in the form of a bag of flour. That bag of flour is making some great comments compared with Mr Goldsmith recently, and that is what National puts the people of Epsom through.

I do, on that note, want to say that I think that National members are coming across the “three strikes and you’re out” law for themselves. They might want to make the people of Epsom go through the farce of an election where they do not want their candidate to win, they might want the people of Ōhāriu to have to keep voting for Peter Dunne despite all of the murk and mess around what has happened to him in this term, but if they try it on one more time in the East Coast Bays to get Colin Craig up and push Murray McCully out, I predict that that will be “three strikes and you’re out” for manipulation of the electoral system by National. The people of New Zealand, rightly, have expected National to come forward with some changes to the MMP laws and rules, because that is what the Electoral Commission got charged with doing. People worked very hard to produce a report, which was then put back to the Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, who, quite frankly, did absolutely nothing to try to get the kind of cross-party support that would be required.

The Minister did that deliberately because she did not want to face up to the fact that it is National that has twice now rorted the system—and I predict a third time. It will try to use the system in a way that goes against what New Zealanders believe is fair and right. In that Electoral Commission report there were recommendations that could have got broad-based support across this Parliament. The Labour Party has a member’s bill, in the name of Iain Lees-Galloway, to do away with the coat-tailing, to reduce the threshold for entry of parties into Parliament, and to help tidy up the MMP legislation, which New Zealanders were promised in the wake of the referendum. This is what New Zealanders were promised in the wake of the referendum. Instead, the very thing that brought John Banks to this Parliament, the very deal that brought John Banks to this Parliament, continues to be protected by National rather than be followed through on what the Electoral Commission asked and what New Zealanders were led to believe they would get. It would be a major stain on this system that we have now if National goes for three deals, three cups of tea, around the country—but I predict that is what it will do and I think it will suffer for that.

I want to speak briefly about John Banks. I respect the fact that colleagues in this House who have known Mr Banks over a long period of time have said that they have mixed views about him. I do not actually have a particular desire to dance on his political grave. I will say this though. I have been prevented in this House from calling John Banks a liar because we have rules about the way we treat one another when we are members of Parliament. The problem we have had for nearly 2 years is that John Banks was lying. He lied to New Zealanders, he lied to this House, he lied to John Key, and he lied to the police. That is what John Banks did and we have not been able to say that because he was in here, so it is important to put that on record. This was not a pursuit of a matter of insignificance. This was the pursuit of a person who was a member of Parliament who has now been found guilty of electoral fraud.

The reason why the maximum sentence for that crime is 2 years is because it is regarded as so serious. The reason why Mr Banks would inevitably have had to resign, even though he has done it before a conviction has been entered, is because of the length of the sentence. The length of the sentence has been set in law because this is an extremely serious matter. As MPs we all know that when we sign off on our returns after an election it is us who are responsible for them. We are the people who have to stand up and say to New Zealanders that we have followed the rules. John Banks did not. He broke the rules, he knew that he broke the rules, and that is why he has had to resign. Mr Banks called it a tragedy. I think it has had more elements of a farce than a tragedy, to be honest with you. But the tragedy here is that the law was broken and the trust in all of us as politicians gets compromised when people do this. All of us—we know that. Everyone across the House knows that it ends up being a stain on all politicians, and that is why it is good and right that this went through the process.

I do want to comment briefly on the question of whether the police should have prosecuted this. Mr Finlayson in his list of what happened was factual, but he paused at a point and that is the point at which the police decided not to prosecute. The police did not take advice from Crown Law about whether they should prosecute. They made that decision themselves. As Trevor Mallard has said, they have acknowledged that decision was wrong, it was incorrect, and I welcome an Independent Police Conduct Authority investigation into this, because anybody who looks at the facts of what happened in this case would have concluded that it should have gone through to prosecution, and we look forward to the outcome of that.

The person I want to talk about tonight is actually John Key, because John Banks’ resignation should have come far, far earlier in this process. In the judgment that was brought down on Mr Banks the concept of wilful blindness is the most important concept within that judgment, and it is John Key’s wilful blindness that went on here. He deliberately hung on to John Banks to prop up his Government. John Key is on the record as saying he would do whatever it takes to be in Government. Well, what it took was to cling on to somebody who he knew was not being upfront with New Zealanders, who he knew was not telling the truth when he was being questioned about this. John Key has gone on the record and said that John Banks is a thoroughly honest man. Well, the problem for John Key is that that has now been proven in a court to not be the case.

John Key deliberately did not look into that. Day after day I stood up in this House and I asked John Key questions about the police report into this case, and day after day John Key said he would not read that report. He refused to read the police report because he did not want to know what was in it. That is the kind of wilful blindness that this Prime Minister is now becoming known for. That is the kind of approach that he said he would not do. He said he would lift the standards of ministerial behaviour and he has completely failed to do that. So John Banks should have resigned but he should have resigned a lot earlier.

John Key actually said this. This is one of the answers he gave in the House to a question when we asked whether it was right that John Banks was still here. He said: “There is quite a wide definition of ethics. The test I have to apply is the law. I think he did exactly what he’d always said, which was comply with the law.” If John Key had read the police report back in 2012, he would never have said that. He would never have said that because it simply was not borne out by the facts. The Cabinet Manual tells Ministers they must uphold the law, act lawfully, and behave in a way that upholds and is seen to uphold the highest ethical standards. For months and months in this House it was clear that John Banks had not done that and, yet, John Key refused to act. John Key refused to do anything to call him to account for what he had done.

In November 2008 John Key said: “I expect high standards from my Ministers … if they don’t [meet these standards I set], then obviously I will take action …”. John Key did not do that. John Key hung on to John Banks for electoral convenience and that is a stain on his Government and on this whole House. John Banks has been found guilty of electoral fraud. He has resigned. He should have resigned earlier. The fact that he did not sits at the feet of John Key. The fact is that John Key was prepared to hold on to his slim majority in this House, no matter what, to pass legislation like the asset sales legislation and to pass legislation that was bad for New Zealand in the course of this—charter schools coming in. The one good thing is that we will not get the employment relations law passed because of that.

There should not be a by-election in Epsom, but this is not a happy day. This is a sad day because a member of Parliament has committed electoral fraud and National continues to stand for that kind of behaviour.

Well, like the other parties that have spoken so far in this debate, the Green Party will support the motion that no writ be issued for an Epsom by-election following the sad departure of Mr Banks. Like others, we agree that it is in no one’s interests to have a by-election just 3 months out from an election, with just 4 sitting weeks left in this term of Parliament.

We do not want to waste taxpayers’ time and we do not want to waste taxpayers’ money with an unnecessary by-election at the same time as a general election campaign. It would be irresponsible to allow a by-election to go ahead. But, of course, plenty of taxpayers’ time and money have already been wasted in this sad affair. In fact, you could argue that the past 3 years have been a complete waste of time and money for Epsom voters because they are ending this term of Parliament with no MP, and for much of the term their representative was under a cloud after being charged with, and eventually being found guilty of, electoral fraud relating to donations he received before he even re-entered Parliament at the last election, during his 2010 Auckland mayoral campaign.

The unfortunate events resulting in Mr Banks being found guilty of electoral fraud are not good for this Parliament, as we have just heard from the previous speaker, Grant Robertson. It reinforces the perception many members of the public hold that Parliament is full of corruptible, self-interested, dishonest individuals, and it does nothing to enhance the reputation of this institution. This case not only reflects on all of us here in this House in a poor light but also brings into question much of the legislation that has been passed in this term of Parliament.

As my colleague and co-leader Dr Russel Norman noted in his earlier contribution in this debate, the single-vote majority afforded to this National Government by Mr Banks has allowed this Government to pass 13 controversial bills by 61 to 60—a single-vote majority—during the current term of Parliament. Bearing in mind that the offence that Mr Banks has been found guilty of took place before this term of Parliament commenced, I believe that that calls into question the legitimacy of that legislation. That legislation includes the legislation that allowed the sale of our State assets. It includes the legislation that returned us to the discriminatory system of paying a lower minimum wage to young workers. It includes legislation that removed protections from our conservation estate, that gave the Minister for Economic Development decision-making power over our conservation estate, and that restricted New Zealanders’ rights to protest at sea. These were controversial bills that were not supported by the majority of New Zealanders, but they squeaked across the line in this House thanks to the vote of someone who has now been convicted of a dishonesty offence that took place before the commencement of this term of Parliament.

That single vote is a vote that John Key was prepared to keep casting on behalf of Mr Banks. Even after the allegations were made public, even after the police report was placed on John Key’s desk, even after a private prosecution was taken and found to have merit, even after the police belatedly took up the case and it was taken up by Crown Law, and even after it was obvious that John Banks was going to stand trial in the dock for electoral fraud, this Government and its leader, John Key, were perfectly happy to keep casting the vote of Mr Banks to pass legislation like those 13 controversial bills. And for a brief moment last week, after the verdict in the case, and before his advisers had got in his ear, the Prime Minister was even prepared to keep casting John Banks’ vote for the remainder of this term of Parliament—before somebody had a quiet word and said it might be better for Mr Banks to simply go.

So were it not for Mr Banks, none of that legislation would have been passed. It should never have been passed, and the fact that it did highlights how badly we need reforms to improve the transparency of both central government and local government and to tighten the rules on electoral donations, particularly anonymous donations. The Green Party has a bill to do just that. It is our Local Electoral (Finance) Amendment Bill, in the name of my colleague Denise Roche. That bill would bring the provisions for local elections into line with those for general elections when it comes to the declaration of donations, when it comes to filing returns, and when it comes to the limits for anonymous donations. It would lower the limits and bring those rules more into line. We went some way towards doing that earlier in this term of Parliament, but we have not gone far enough, and the case of Mr Banks in Epsom, I think, highlights exactly why that bill needs to be adopted and passed in this House.

I also want to speak briefly about the implications of all of this for our electoral system, MMP. The Green Party is supporting this motion not to have a by-election in Epsom because we do not want to waste taxpayers’ time and money. In many ways any election in Epsom is a waste of time and money because of the way that this Government has chosen to continually exploit the MMP electoral system. For the last several elections—and it looks like this year’s election is going to be no different—the National Party and the ACT Party have collaborated to attempt to exploit the coat-tailing provision, where if a member wins a single seat, their party’s party vote allows them to bring more MPs with them into Parliament in order to maximise the majority in Parliament for the National Government. That worked for them when Rodney Hide was the leader of the ACT Party in 2008. Because he won the seat, he brought several MPs into Parliament with him. It did not work so well, actually, in 2011, because despite the sideshow that was the cup of tea in Epsom, all we got was John Banks—thank goodness—and his single vote, allowing National to govern and to pass the kind of legislation I talked about earlier. What it showed was that voters are absolutely sick of that coat-tailing provision being exploited in that way.

The sideshow that was the cup of tea in Epsom was really the nail in the coffin, I think, in terms of the public’s opinion of that coat-tailing rule. So when we had the opportunity to review MMP because of the referendum and the review system that was set up as a result of a positive result in favour of keeping MMP at the referendum in 2011, voters spoke out in no uncertain terms, saying that they would like to see that provision changed. In terms of the large amount of feedback that was received by the Electoral Commission in reviewing MMP, the one-electoral-seat threshold was by far the one that received the most feedback, and it was the clearest in terms of public opinion, both in the polling that was undertaken and also in terms of the submissions received. Not only that but the members of the royal commission that recommended the introduction of MMP in the first place, back in 1987, have subsequently said they feel that the introduction of the coat-tailing rule was their one mistake in the introduction of MMP. So there is a very, very clear set of public opinion that that coat-tailing provision should no longer exist.

Unfortunately, though, John Banks is not the only recent example of people trying to exploit that rule, and there are new parties forming at the moment aiming to do the same thing. As the Green Party spokesperson for electoral reform, I am extremely concerned that as a result of all of this, our electoral system is becoming a political football. It never should be, and it would not have been, had the process that was set up following that referendum on MMP in 2011 been followed correctly. What happened was that a referendum was held and the public vote of 58 percent to retain MMP—because, clearly, people saw that it was a good system and that it should be retained—triggered a review process where changes could be made and where people could have their say on things like that coat-tailing provision, the 5 percent threshold, and a number of other aspects of the system.

In good faith, many thousands of members of the public engaged with that process, thinking that this was their opportunity to make the changes to our electoral system that they wanted to see. Unfortunately, after that process was completed—as Russel Norman mentioned in his contribution before—we got no further because the Minister of Justice sat on it for months and months and months until there was pretty much no time left in which to make the changes before the election. Then she announced she could not get the majority in Parliament that she needed to make those changes, neglecting to mention that the only party that was not prepared to entertain those changes was her own party, the National Party.

What has happened since is that our electoral system has become a political football. We now have parties seeking to exploit the rules again. We also have parties seeking to change the rules in this House through members’ bills and through other proposals from outside Parliament to amend parts of the electoral system. We have parties taking different positions on different recommendations, and I fear that this is going to continue and that the public’s confidence in our electoral system will continue to be eroded. What should have happened is that the Electoral Commission’s recommendations should have been adopted as a package. Until that happens, unfortunately, the sad case of Mr Banks simply continues to underline the fact that our electoral system has become a political football.

The Labour Party supports the motion that is before the House today that no writ be issued for a by-election in the Epsom electoral district. We will not be party to forcing a by-election in this electorate, because it is not in the public interest. We all know that we are very close to a general election, and a by-election is unnecessary and would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. They are expensive and it would be seen by voters to be a frivolous political stunt, and I think there have been far many of them already in the Epsom electorate. We would like to take the opportunity today in this debate to say to John Key that it is time that we did change the Electoral Act to stop the coat-tailing provision that enables parties like ACT to come in by winning a seat. It is time that we took these issues seriously, instead of looking only at the close political advantage that might be gained from them.

But I want to begin by saying that I think this is a very sad day in the New Zealand Parliament—a very sad day. It is a day when, because of the actions of a member of this House, we are debating not issuing a writ for a by-election. It has been caused by the conviction of a member of Parliament for electoral fraud. It is a sad day for John Banks, and I feel sorry for him at a personal level. He is a man who has come from the school of hard knocks. He was brought up in a number of foster homes. He was pushed from pillar to post. He was estranged from his parents, who spent much of their lives in and out of jail. He was a man who decided to make a better life for himself and his family. He pulled himself up and became the member of Parliament for Whangarei. He was proud to be a member of Parliament. He was proud to be the people’s representative, as he used to say, living in God’s own country. He became a Minister and he strutted his stuff as Minister of Police. He was very proud that he could pass the police fitness test—probably the only Minister of Police who has. He could be funny, he could be outrageous, he could be caring, and he could be courageous.

But he has been proven to be cunning, to be conniving, and to have been careless, and, in the end, he was convicted. That is why we are here today debating this issue. So I feel sorry for him on a personal level, but I feel sorry for this Parliament as well. None of us like to be here doing this. It is not the way to end a political career. Most of us would like to have the opportunity to stand before our colleagues and make a valedictory speech, as many will come July. Some of us are sent to the wilderness for a short time when the voters vote us out; others end as John Banks has. Fortunately, that is not very often. My cousin Christopher Finlayson, when he went through the list and the litany of problems—always mentioning only the Labour Party—was generous enough to mention that probably there has been only one real fraud issue, that of Phillip Field.

So I think it is a sad day for this Parliament, and I wish we did not have to do this. It is sad because the truth is that John Banks had been misleading this House for almost 2 years, and a blind eye was turned to that. A blind eye was turned because when you look at the evidence that was provided from the witnesses, it was as plain as the nose on one’s face that Mr Banks knew he had received anonymous donations. He had solicited anonymous donations from people he knew. It has been clear to many, including Mr McCready, who lives in my electorate, and Mr Brooking, that this member of Parliament was misleading the public and knew that he had got anonymous donations.

The sadness is that the Prime Minister knew that as well. It was his job to uphold the highest standards. I have listened as we have gone through the list of members of Parliament who were Ministers who have lost their jobs under John Key and how he upholds the highest of standards. And I think in the beginning he did. I think in the beginning he wanted to show that he was upholding standards and was looking very carefully at how he managed his Cabinet. But as the years have gone by, those standards have slipped, and they slipped to the very bottom when it came to John Banks. John Key knew that John Banks had done wrong, but John Key turned a blind eye because he needed that one discredited vote from the ACT Party. He needed it because he needed to pass legislation, so he did not want to know that wrong had been done.

I have to say that it is the sort of cynical manipulation of our democratic system that many of our old soldiers went to war to oppose. They do not like cynical manipulation of democratic systems, but that is what has happened under the leadership of John Key. Let us have a look at what he has been saying about holding on to power. He does have his motto. He has said: “Whatever it takes.” That is what he has said. That is a quote—“Whatever it takes.” He said: “We are going to do what we practically can to … form the next Government,”. That meant taking the vote of John Banks with a deal that was done over a cup of tea—a deal that has been discredited and criticised ever since. He was so desperate to do a deal then that he is prepared to continue in that vein at this next election. He is prepared to put aside the fact that in September 2012 Colin Craig, a person he is going to do a deal with, sent out 20,000 leaflets in Mr Key’s own Helensville electorate telling the voters of Helensville not to vote for Mr Key because he was “too gay” to be their member of Parliament. That is a quote. That is a direct quote from Mr Colin Craig. I would be wondering whether I would want to do a deal with him. But the deal will be done, just as it was with John Banks. So the sadness to me is that a blind eye was turned when it should have been investigated and action taken 2 years ago.

We have had enough of those dodgy deals, but they are going to happen again in this election. But what happened from that grubby deal and blind eye was that we had legislation passed with John Banks’ vote that many in New Zealand had opposed. The most obvious example is asset sales. Thousands of New Zealanders signed a petition against asset sales. The vote was so close in this House because many parties also opposed it. But with John Banks’ vote, the Government was able to sell off our assets—a hugely unpopular policy. Of course, it was sold to the public that they had given the Government a mandate to do it. Well, I do not believe that when people vote they vote on just one thing; they vote on a number of things. There are some things they like and some things they do not like. For example, they took the Prime Minister at his word that he would not increase GST, but when he came into Government, he did. But then they returned him to power 3 years later, so they forgave him for that. So when the Government said it has a mandate to sell assets, it did not listen to the voices of the people when it came to the oldest form of talking to the Government: a petition to this Parliament. The Government relied on the vote of John Banks.

Another example is charter schools. I could go through a number of pieces of legislation passed over those 2 years with the vote of a person who has been convicted of electoral fraud, and the National Party knew that 2 years ago.

It is a pleasure to take a call in this debate about whether we should have a by-election in Epsom, given the resignation of John Banks. I think it is all about timing, really, is it not? This debate is all about timing because when these allegations first came to light, if the police had prosecuted at that point, then we would not be having a debate about whether to have a by-election; we would definitely be having one, because it would have been around about 2 years ago that this would have all occurred. And then we would have had the prospect of trying to find out whether the National Party was going to stand a bag of flour, whether it was going to stand a candidate, or, in fact, what it would do in the case of a by-election for Epsom. Because the police chose not to and made a decision not to prosecute Mr Banks at that time, we are instead here having this debate on this day where all the parties are agreeing that it actually would not be a good idea to have a by-election even though the disgraced MP has resigned, because of the timing of this now. We are running hard up against a general election, and everyone, I think, whom I have heard speak so far in the debate has seen the logic of not having a by-election at this particular point in time.

But I think there are questions that remain around why that prosecution did not happen 2 years ago when it should have. My colleague Annette King is quite right—there are a number of pieces of legislation that have been to the detriment of the New Zealand public that would not have passed if John Banks’ vote had not been used to prop up those pieces of legislation. These are pieces of legislation that have not found favour with the public, like the sale of our State-owned assets and pieces of legislation like charter schools. Just hearing Annette King speak about that reminded me that, of course, at the time when the charter schools legislation went through, supported by John Banks’ one vote, the Government was not really very upfront at that time and did not tell us that, of course, the students going to these charter schools would be funded at a much higher rate than children who are going through our State schooling system. I wonder, had John Banks known that—or perhaps he did—whether he would have voted for that legislation and it may not have gone through anyway.

Here we are, some 18 months or 2 years on from when this debate could have been held about a by-election in Epsom, when it would have been in a suitable time frame for exactly that course of action to be taken. Some many pieces of dreadful legislation later—propped up by John Banks, who has now departed this place—and we are all saying that having a by-election would not be in the best interests of the public purse or of the public spend because we have got an election coming up. However, in the meantime, quite a lot of damage has been done by a vote that should never have been able to be used. I think that is the thing that causes me grief for democratic principles. What we have been talking about on this side of the House is that it was plain to us 2 years ago that this action should have been taken.

I think it was plain to the National Party as well, because I can see now in hindsight exactly why the Prime Minister chose the election date of 20 September. It was earlier than many people were expecting, but, of course, the Prime Minister, in hindsight, I believe chose that date knowing that John Banks would be found guilty and would, in fact, be prosecuted, and, therefore, would have to leave as a member of Parliament. So I find that a deeply cynical thing for the Prime Minister to have done—to have been so certain that John Banks was, in fact, guilty of what he had been accused of that, I believe, the election timetable has been set around that certainty. And if I am right, and if the Prime Minister was certain that that was going to be the outcome of the court case, then why did he not do what he should have done all along and actually act on the information that he had? Why did the Prime Minister sit it out and wait it out for around 2 years, knowing what he knew, and wait for a court to make that decision?

I just want to place on record my view that the Prime Minister did, in fact, know—that he did, in fact, know—exactly the finding that the court would come to, because what other explanation do we have for a 20 September election date?

Ian McKelvie: How could he know that?

SUE MORONEY: How could he know it? Ian McKelvie asks how the Prime Minister could know that. Well, just use your imagination, Mr McKelvie. The Prime Minister kept saying over and over again that he took Mr Banks at his word, and yet once he knew that John Banks was going in front of a court of law, he set about choosing an election timetable that would have us having this debate around about this time, with parties conceding that, actually, having a by-election at this point, so close to a general election, probably is not the best use of taxpayer funding. I think that the timing of that has been quite deliberate. So I am concerned about that, but I am also concerned about that one vote and I think that now New Zealanders can look at this and go: “Gosh, actually, this Government is hanging on by a thread—absolutely hanging on by a thread.” And do you know how they know that? It is because members of the public now know that the Government has not got the votes to put through some legislation it dearly wants to put through.

I want to speak about one of those pieces of legislation, because it is a piece that is very dear to my heart. That is the amendment legislation that the Government has in front of this House to take away the legal right to have a tea break at work. It is very dear to my heart because, actually, I wrote the original piece of legislation. It was a member’s bill that I had in my name in my first term in 2005, when I came in. Fortunately, it was a Labour-led Government and the Labour-led Government chose to take up my member’s bill as a Government bill. Labour actually added a little bit more on to it around breastfeeding breaks at work as well, but up until that point—I think it finally got passed in about 2007—there was no legal right for people to have a tea break, a lunch break, or a meal break at work. If they had it in their employment agreement, it was a legal right for them, but if their collective employment agreement was silent, then they did not have that right.

That law was passed in 2007 by Labour, and that is the piece of law that is part of the piece of legislation that the Government now cannot pass—thank goodness—because John Banks is no longer here to prop up that very, very bad piece of employment legislation. Of course, it does other very bad things as well, like taking away the ability for people to get a decent pay rise by ensuring that employers do not have to negotiate and do not have to conclude a collective employment agreement. It does all sorts of terrible things for working people, but I am really pleased that that one vote will no longer be used to take away people’s legal right to have a break at work.

So I am very pleased in some ways that the Government no longer has that very—what would I call it? I cannot use the word I really want to use, but the mandate that it has used, the one vote that it has used to put all sorts of dreadful laws through—it should never have had the right to use that vote, because this debate has been going on for a couple of years now about whether John Banks knew what he knew and whether he did what he was accused of doing. I think the National Party knew all the way along that he was, in fact, guilty as the court has found him, and it should never have been using his vote to prop up the very bad legislation that it has been putting through in that time.

It is a sad day for Parliament because one of our own has had to resign. He has had to resign because, in fact, when you are found guilty of a charge such as the one he has been found guilty of, then you have no choice but to resign. The only thing that he had a choice about was the timing of that resignation. The timing of this debate I think has been constructed for some time. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.