General Debate

It is with some diffidence that I, a mere newcomer to this Chamber, will try to tackle a leader of another party, but, when I consider that his time in this Chamber is the same length as my own, I feel a little more enthused and encouraged.

I think it is a sad day for the leadership of parties when they seek to make leadership an issue on a false premise. The false premise, of course, was revealed when Dr Don Brash tabled in the House yesterday the full brief of evidence of the Prime Minister in the proceedings of Doone against Independent News Auckland Ltd. Interestingly, before doing that, Dr Brash quoted half a passage in the document, and either he did not write the question or he was distracted from reading the full passage, because the truth of what was contained in the statement—

💬 John Carter: Yes, Don Brash can talk about the truth.

Yes, he should talk about the truth, because the effect of the statement was to underscore the integrity of what the Prime Minister had said on 3 May, 4 May, and 10 May. [Interruption] If Mr Carter would just listen, rather than follow the method in this House whereby those with nothing to say make a lot of noise, he would hear what the brief of evidence said. Clearly, the member has not read it, or he would not have made the statement he made a few seconds ago.

At paragraph 28 in the brief, the Prime Minister stated: “Mr Alley wanted information about process, and also whether the information held by Ministers was consistent with information he had obtained from his inquiries. … I would have confirmed to him that information held by Ministers included allegations that the Constable who stopped the car occupied by the Commissioner had a sniffer in his hand. It also included information that Mr Doone was said to have stated to the constable during the discussion that ‘that won’t be necessary’, seemingly as a reference to the use of the device. “I am informed that Mr Alley said he put those propositions to me and I said words to the effect of ‘you’re not wrong’. I accept that this is correct although I do not have a current recollection of this detail. I am certain that I drew attention to the issue that Mr Doone had disputed these details during the inquiries to which I have referred.” That is the totality of what the Prime Minister said in that interview with Mr Alley, and is entirely consistent—if members care to reflect—with the answers given in this House.

Further, the call from Mr Alley on the next day is dealt with at paragraph 31 of the brief—which has been available even for Mr Hide to have someone read it to him—“I recall that the discussion with Mr Alley focused on his view that the key issue was whether the Commissioner had erred in talking to the constable, given that the constable recognised who he was, and that this may have resulted in normal procedures not being followed. I recall that when discussing the Constable’s evidence, I emphasised the need to make it clear that Mr Doone had described the events differently.”

That is precisely what the Prime Minister said to this House in response to questions from various members, and of course it throws into question the leadership of the parties that have tried deliberately to misquote this brief of evidence. I say “deliberately”, because they have now had the brief of evidence as a tabled document since yesterday morning, and any member making assertions in question time today, or in the general debate this afternoon, does so in the face of that document. It would be surprising if anyone in this House—knowing what is in the document—spoke differently about this issue. It would suggest only that those making the noise in this general debate and at question time have not taken the rudimentary step of reading the brief of evidence that is there for all to see.

If they had, we would have had apologies today from Mr Hide, from Dr Brash, and from those who asserted that the Prime Minister had told two different stories. We would not have had that attempt by Gerry Brownlee to humiliate the Prime Minister, by suggesting that she should come down and confirm she did not lie to the paper, when of course all she had been talking about was not the truth of what happened but about the information she had and its coincidence or otherwise with what the newspaper had.

💬 Rodney Hide: Has she seen the transcript?

Obviously, Mr Hide has been so busy with his own importance that he has not had time to read this brief; otherwise, he would have moved to an entirely different subject. In the very generous way he has, I am sure he will come to me to get the brief shortly, have someone read it to him—or I will read it to him—and, as he takes a speech later in this or the next general debate, admit that the Prime Minister has acted with the integrity we would expect from her. A lack of integrity shows up the lack of leadership of others in this House in other parties—which perhaps demonstrates why the polls reflect that the Prime Minister is someone who provides leadership. Others who aspire to that leadership start from shaky ground, and the public realise that rhetoric is empty noise without any substance.

I know that this House is preoccupied with matters of Mr Doone, and so forth, but ordinary people in New Zealand are concerned about other issues, as well. One of them is featured in today’s Christchurch Press, where a huge headline states: “Children’s teeth rotting away”. The article reports an epidemic of tooth decay in Christchurch, and how young children are having half of their teeth removed, and that there is a huge waiting list of children needing teeth removed. The clinical director of the Canterbury District Health Board’s school and community dental service, Dr Martin Lee, says that the main reason for this epidemic of tooth decay is that children’s diets are overloaded with sugar. In particular, he points to high-sugar drinks.

We have respected community clinicians pointing out to us that high-sugar fizzy drinks and foods are the major culprits in the epidemic of tooth decay amongst our children, and we know they are also the main reason for the epidemic of obesity and for the numbers of children getting diabetes at younger and younger ages. If that is the case, why are high-sugar fizzy drinks in particular, and also junk food, on sale in vending machines in most publicly funded secondary schools in New Zealand? Why are we collectively wringing our hands about the obesity epidemic and dental decay, if we are not prepared to take very simple, small steps, like removing the food and drink that we know is contributing to dental decay, obesity, and diabetes? The Government last year, with great fanfare, launched Healthy Eating—Healthy Action, a national strategy on nutrition, but why, despite all those nicely printed national strategies on healthy eating, is it doing nothing about the atrocious food sold in our schools that is undermining its strategy?

About a month or so ago a researcher in the Green Party looked up on the Internet the school lunches that are sold in tuck-shops in 50 primary and secondary schools around New Zealand—just the schools that had their lunches printed on the Net. We found that the overwhelming majority of the school menus on offer had pies, hot dogs, sausage rolls, chips, cookies, doughnuts, cakes, and chocolate. Most—68 percent—did not even include fruit on the menu. There was not a roll or sandwich on the menu of 22 percent of the schools we surveyed, and in 24 percent the roll or sandwich was more expensive than the pie.

To understand why we are in the midst of epidemics of childhood obesity and diabetes, we need look no further than those school lunches. We worked out that a child eating what is on offer in most of those schools—say, a pie, chips, a cookie, and a fizzy drink for lunch—would be consuming 10 teaspoons of fat and 20 teaspoons of sugar for lunch. Most parents would not feed their children a constant diet of pies, sausage rolls, doughnuts, and chips, which we know contribute to obesity, diabetes, and dental decay. So why are we allowing our schools to sell that sort of food?

This has prompted the Green Party to launch a school food campaign in order to get unhealthy food and drink out of our schools. It is a very, very simple campaign. All we are aiming for is that the Minister of Education will change the National Administration Guidelines and the National Education Guidelines to require schools to develop a policy that only healthy food and drink can be sold—only food that encourages good eating habits and does not contribute to obesity, diabetes, or dental decay. This is extraordinarily simple. It does not require a legislative change.

Last year, to his great credit, Mr Mallard amended the national educational goals and school guidelines to require all schools to give priority to physical education, and that is fantastic. He did it quietly overnight—a little rule change that is having a significant impact in schools. So now we are saying that that is fine to Mr Mallard—or I think it might now be Mr Benson-Pope—but we would like him to make a similarly simple change to require that only healthy food and drink is to be sold in schools. I can assure him that there is huge support for this campaign, because parents are horrified about the food that is being sold in schools.

In the general debate we often talk about the relative merits of the leadership of different political parties. Today we have seen again the lamentable performance of Dr Brash, who is now resorting to dirty tactics: misquoting documents to try to discredit the Prime Minister. But let us look at the truth, in terms of leadership. The Labour Party leadership generally gets it right and the National Party leadership generally gets it wrong. Let us look at a few recent instances. We have just had Anzac Day. Anzac Day reinforces that amongst the most serious decisions that we make in this Parliament is the decision on whether our country ever goes to war. The most recent time a decision like that was taken in New Zealand was in respect of Iraq. What did the National Party propose? The National Party said that we should have gone to war without a UN mandate. There was no UN mandate because there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Despite that, the National Party got it wrong. National members said that we should have reversed that most serious Government decision. They said that we should have gone to war, but Helen Clark and this Government got it right. Don Brash, even after his premature elevation to the role of party leader, still said that if he had been leading a National Government, New Zealand would have gone to war. That is wrong.

Let us look at what National members do on other important issues like women’s representation. There are no women on the National Opposition front bench. There is not one woman on the front bench of the National Party, and there are very few women in that party. Three out of four of the women who had roles of significance have been dumped. Firstly, we saw Georgina te Heuheu dumped, then we saw Lynda Scott dumped from health, and then we saw Katherine Rich dumped from the front bench to the second bench—another mistake made by Dr Brash. Let us look at one of the other most significant decisions taken in this country in recent years. It deals with the Superannuation Fund, or putting away a bit of money out of today’s taxpayers’ earnings so that we can afford superannuation in the future. On that issue the Labour Party and, to his credit, Winston Peters got the issue right. What did the National Party do? Those members got it wrong. They are consistently wrong on the big issues. The National Party has since flip-flopped on that issue, of course, and its members now say that they support it. Let us look at the next decision—4 weeks’ annual leave. The National Party members opposed it. They have now flip-flopped, taken the Labour Government’s position, and agree with it.

What is the most recent example of lamentable leadership on the part of the National Party? It is those members’ response to the terrible issue that we have had to deal with in the last day relating to foot-and-mouth. The Government’s response was to go through the legal process, and to learn from the lesson of the United Kingdom, which had a foot-and-mouth outbreak and did not respond quickly enough, leading to the disease’s spread and to a worse incident than that country would otherwise have had to deal with. We have been openly dealing with the issue as if it is real until it is proven to be a hoax. Everyone overseas agrees that that is the appropriate way to handle the issue, and what did Dr Brash say? He said: “I am surprised they made a public statement about it, to be frank. If it’s only a hoax, they have done a lot of damage to our reputation.” Of course, as Federated Farmers and former National Party members have pointed out, we actually do not know whether it is a hoax until it is too late to stop the disease’s spread. It is wrong to ignore the issue as a potential hoax and not to treat it with the seriousness that it deserves.

Let us look at what Dr Brash is doing. He is avoiding all the big issues and attacking the Prime Minister’s integrity. We have Mr Doone, who had been stopped in a car with the person who is now his wife, because the car had no lights on. The policeman walked away to get a breath-testing device. The then Commissioner of Police, Mr Doone, intervened. The then Deputy Commissioner of Police inquired and found that action to be inappropriate. The Police Complaints Authority said that Mr Doone’s actions were unwise. Now, 5 years later, the Opposition is trying to besmirch the reputation of the Prime Minister, alleging that the mistakes were hers and not Mr Doone’s. What a load of tripe! What a load of rubbish! The only thing that we can conclude is that there must be an election getting close.

Let us remember the dirty tactics at the last election, concerning the allegations surrounding the corn incident that were laid at the door of the Prime Minister. It was alleged that she was involved in illegality and a cover-up. Those issues were subsequently investigated by a select committee of this Parliament, which took over a year to hold its inquiry, and what did that select committee conclude unanimously? Members from the Opposition, from the Greens and from this Government found that the allegations besmirching the Prime Minister in that situation were unfounded, and that there had been no illegality on her part. We cleared her of wrongdoing. [Interruption] Yes, “we”—the members of the select committee. I was one of the members, but it was a cross-party finding to that effect, which included Mr Hide’s own party.

Generally, the big election issue is the economy. Why is there not much mainstream criticism of the Government’s handling of the economy now? The criticism has slowed to a dribble.

If we knew someone in our lives who had some confidential information and who had deliberately gone out and leaked it to the media, told half the truth about it—[Interruption]—misused the information, twisted it around, told lies about it, and had absolutely got the story wrong so that it impacted on another person to the extent that that person lost his or her job, we would call the person who did that a liar. We would call that person a scumbag, and we would call him or her all sorts of things—horrible names. In this House members cannot do that, because the Standing Orders prohibit them from using those words. But I have to say that it is an absolute disgrace that we have a Prime Minister who is known to have had confidential information, and who leaked it with the intention to have somebody dismissed from his or her job.

💬 Rodney Hide: Not just “somebody”.

She actually had not just “somebody” but the then Commissioner of Police removed from his job. She misused the truth so that the Government could get its way—whatever that was—and now she is trying to cover it up. That is not good enough.

The problem is that it is our Prime Minister we are talking about. It is not just a member of Parliament or a Cabinet Minister, but our Prime Minister—the most senior political position in New Zealand. We have somebody in that position who misuses the truth, breaks confidences, and absolutely misuses and twists stories so that a person—in this case, the then Commissioner of Police—loses his or her job, and it is not the first time. If members could only use the words that they can use outside the House, they would be able to properly describe what has happened. But this is not the first time. Let us run through some of those instances that Government members are so ashamed of that, whenever one of the issues is raised, they have their heads bowed just like they do now. They know that they are in the wrong, and that the Prime Minister is in the wrong. The body language says it all. None of them are prepared to stand up and defend her—not on your nelly! They know that she has misled this House. They know that she leaked the stuff. They know that she has twisted the truth all the way through.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will be seated. The member cannot accuse a member of misusing the truth or misleading the House. The member will withdraw and apologise.

I withdraw and apologise. I draw the House’s attention to “paintergate”. We all know what happened: the Prime Minister was finally caught and had to fess up. She did not like it and nor did the Labour members, but what happened is on the record. I will leave it for the public to go back and refresh their memories if they need to. We know about “corngate”. That was the same thing, and it is all on the record. We have a Prime Minister who is prepared to make sure that things are covered up. We know about the Ellis issue. We know about the Auckland surgeon Joe Brownlee. We know what happened there. There, again, the Prime Minister misused her influence to have an impact on individuals. We know about the speeding issue. We have a whole raft of things—and now the Doone case.

Why will the Prime Minister not come clean? Why will she not tell New Zealand exactly what happened? If the matter is so simple—if she has told us all there is—why will she not just lay the tapes on the table? Why will she not just put the transcripts out, so that we all know what happened? I will tell the House why: she knows she is in trouble. She knows that the answers she has given have not been the full story. She knows that there is something to be covered up. The Prime Minister knows that she is in real trouble, and those members over there on the Government side of the House—her Ministers and her back-benchers—all know that she has not come clean on this issue at all. Quite honestly, the country is watching and waiting, because the facts will come out. Those things always do. I remind the House that seven Ministers in this administration have lost their jobs for actions less serious than this one. It is an absolute disgrace, and the Prime Minister needs to feel absolutely disgraced because of her actions.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.