Urgent Debates — Hon Clare Curran—Removal from Cabinet

I have received a letter from the Hon Simon Bridges seeking to debate, under Standing Order 389, the removal of the Hon Clare Curran from Cabinet and her resignation of two portfolios. This is a particular case of recent occurrence that involved ministerial responsibility. Not every ministerial resignation will lead to an urgent debate being accepted, particularly where the Minister concerned has resigned portfolios rather than ceased being a Minister altogether. However, in this instance the Prime Minister has removed a Minister from Cabinet for conduct involving answers to questions from this House. After weighing up the circumstances and the public interest in ministerial probity, I have decided to allow the debate to be held today. Therefore, I call on the Hon Simon Bridges to move that the House take note of an urgent matter of public importance.

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

Over the sorry Clare Curran saga, we have seen some of the weakest leadership this Parliament has ever seen occur under Jacinda Ardern—some of the weakest leadership we have ever seen. It’s been part and parcel—actually, it’s been more than that; it’s been symbolic of a torrid, an incompetent, and a shambolic few days for the Prime Minister, who’s leading a Government of absolute amateurs—look no further than Willie Jackson, who’s not here, actually. They are failing to get off the ground.

Let’s just go through the facts of what we’ve seen happen here with Clare Curran and the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister found out—what was it?—three Mondays ago, we’re told, about her former flatmate, now Minister in the Government, and her meeting with Derek Handley. It took months and months and months to get to the point where the Prime Minister learnt and Clare Curran fessed up. Actually, according to David Cormack—someone who writes his columns usually on me but, for once, has done a column on something else—it was only because the internal affairs department had said so.

It took months and months and months for this meeting to come out, and we’re told that this was just an honest mistake—it’s just an honest mistake what’s happened here. Why, then, was it that the meeting with Derek Handley—wait for it; this is remarkable—was only a week after Clare Curran had been asked questions in this Parliament about the very same sort of thing: secret meetings she wasn’t recording with Carol Hirschfeld? The very same issue the week before—secret meetings, not declared—and we are led to believe that that’s just an honest mistake. Well, I say to this House that either it was intentional or, if it wasn’t, it was a special form of stupid by that Minister. Either way, Clare Curran should have been stripped of her warrant, stripped of all ministerial responsibilities, and no longer be in this Parliament as a Minister.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Make room for Paul Eagle.

Paul Eagle’s coming through; I think that’s probably true.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Rino—Rino’s a runner.

Rino—I’ve heard that one, too. But there’s more to this than just the months and months that it took for this to come to the Prime Minister’s attention in terms of the timings, because when she found out—Prime Minister Ardern—about this on the Monday afternoon, do you think she acted, what, on the Tuesday?

💬 Hon Members: No!

Tuesday afternoon?

💬 Hon Members: No!

Wednesday?

💬 Hon Members: No!

Wednesday afternoon?

💬 Hon Members: No!

Thursday morning?

💬 Hon Members: No!

On Friday at 4 p.m., the Prime Minister put out the issue in relation to Clare Curran and told the public about it, some four—what was it?—five days later. That’s not only weak leadership; that’s stupid, and it is as cynical as it gets in this Parliament. And don’t believe me; my good old friend David Cormack made it quite clear. He said it was very cynical, and if he says that, look, I tell you, it’s at the top end of cynical.

And why was it at 4 o’clock on a Friday? Well, because the Prime Minister had come back, and she wanted to have an announceable every day to show everyone how good things were going. We had some really significant announcements over that time. We had wheel-clamping from Kris Faafoi—wheel-clamping from Kris Faafoi. “Well, it worked for me—it got me into Cabinet. It had no public importance, but it got me into Cabinet.”, so good luck to Kris Faafoi on that one. And we had our 153rd working group from the Prime Minister—an acknowledgment that they are failing business, they are failing the economy, and they are showing no leadership whatsoever in that area.

They couldn’t do the right thing until Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock. It was weak, it was stupid, and it was incredibly cynical. And it was too little, too late—it was too little, too late—because it could’ve been Tuesday, it could’ve been Wednesday, or it could’ve been Thursday. It could’ve been but it wasn’t, and it was too late, too little, actually, because after the secret meeting with Carol Hirschfeld came the secret meeting—with exactly the same secretive formula—with Derek Handley. We all know the saying: you fool me once—not you, Mr Speaker—shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

And yet Clare Curran still has her warrant. She still has her ministerial salary and her perks. I know what Helen Clark would’ve done in this situation.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh, no, you don’t.

Well, what would she have done, Ruth Dyson? I know what she did to Ruth Dyson—it took about four minutes. Well, I tell you what: Clare Curran would’ve been gone straight after Carol Hirschfeld. She would’ve been gone after that Astoria breakfast, not by lunchtime, actually, and I know what John Key would’ve done in that situation—it would’ve been exactly the same. And yet Clare Curran—really, as a symbol of the Prime Minister’s lack of leadership—is still there on her ministerial salary and with those ministerial perks.

And what about the substance of the meeting with Derek Handley? What do we know about it? Well, firstly, we know it was in relation to a position of Chief Technology Officer—a solution looking for a problem. An absolute waste of time—no need for it. No one is calling for it. The tech sector is saying they don’t know why it’s happening, and as—look, no necessary friend of the National Party, but The Spinoff says, in relation to this, “Much of New Zealand’s tech community has reacted with derision to a report entrepreneur Derek Handley is all-but-certain to soon be announced as New Zealand’s first chief technology officer.” It goes on to quote many in the tech sector: “It ‘has the potential to become a major embarrassment for the government’, said one, while another referred to what they perceived as his ‘poor industry reputation… (he) was presumably unvetted.’ The storm was best captured by Nat Dudley:”—quote—“ ‘Literally everyone I know in tech, an industry known for arguing over the stupidest [stuff] like which almost-identical JavaScript framework they’re going to use, is united in the idea that Handley would be a terrible pick for NZ CTO.’ ”

💬 Hon Amy Adams: He’ll still get it, though.

And it goes on, and it goes on. And we’re hearing—you’re right, Amy Adams—that he is going to get it despite the appalling, secretive process. This appointment

💬 Hon Amy Adams: It smacks of Steve Maharey.

—leads to all manner of wider issues for the Government here. It’s exactly right, Amy Adams—it smacks of Steve Maharey. The arrogance of this Government that officials don’t need to be involved in appointments and processes—secret meetings, secret phones, and secret email addresses, not just in relation to Derek Handley but Steve Maharey.

Actually, we heard today in questioning that Mark Gosche was, we’re led to believe, actually in the process of being appointed while Rabin Rabindran was still in the job. And the Prime Minister talks to us today—she has the audacity to talk to us today about natural justice. Well, she should show Meka Whaitiri the same sort of natural justice she showed Rabin Rabindran—absolutely appalling.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Bye-bye. Bye-bye, Simon.

And it’s not just this person; it’s many, many others—well, my friend over there says “Bye-bye”. This is the guy that jumps up and down because he’s at 2 percent in the polls, and he knows it. Look at him—look at him.

Despite the rhetoric of transformation, of this being—what has the Prime Minister said?—the most transformative and the most open and transparent Government ever, what have we got? Their Minister of, quote, “Open Government” has been sacked for her complete lack of transparency and openness in relation to all things—secret meetings, secret mobile phones, and secret emails.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Easy, tiger.

And you know what we hear? Well, let’s see where it goes, Kris Faafoi—let’s see where it goes. This guy over here, Chris Hipkins, is vigorously writing—he’s getting his clever lines out—but he knows what I’m saying is right. It’s the kind of Government and secrecy Hillary Clinton would be proud of, Chris Hipkins—that’s what we’re seeing here.

And it’s not just Carol Hirschfeld, of course; it was Derek Handley, as well. What did Tim Murphy, New Zealand Herald editor to Newsroom editor, as well, say about the transparency of this Government—all hope, all transformation, all openness. He said, “Labour’s record of deletions or obstructions under the Official Information Act, for example, has been as bad or worse than” all previous Governments. Bryce Edwards, a commentator, has also made it quite clear on Clare Curran and the affair around this. It has led to a whiffy-ness on this Government, Chris Hipkins—

💬 Brett Hudson: You can smell it from here.

—a whiffy-ness that I can smell right here, as I stand across from the member. A tarnishing effect on the Government—shame on Clare Curran, who is still getting her ministerial salary, and shame on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her weak leadership for allowing it.

Clare Curran is a symbol of exactly what is happening in this Government. It is weak, it is incompetent, and it is a shambolic Government. Rather than fairy dust breezing around the Government, I think it’s asbestos, actually, and it’s breezing around the Cabinet table as we speak, with the litany of fiascos, because it’s not—Chris Hipkins—just Clare Curran. It’s not just that. Actually, it’s a Young Labour camp where zero accountability has been had for that. It’s Shane Jones in open defiance because he knows, actually, what a fiasco yet another working group is on the real issues that small businesses are saying to me and, if he’s getting out and about, they’ll be saying to him, as well. It’s Winston Peters on refugees. It’s Meka Whaitiri, where it’s very simple: all the Prime Minister needed to do was look that Minister in the eye and ask her what had happened. It doesn’t take another working group, another review, and several weeks’ process.

I know what Helen Clark and I know what John Key would have done on that, and on the incompetence that we’re seeing from the likes of, well, many, many Ministers, but let’s just pick on Willie Jackson this afternoon, who says a few percentage points don’t matter, and went on The Nation with more fake news than Donald Trump has in two months. It was absolutely a shocker.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: There goes the US invite.

Well, on this side of the House, Kris Faafoi—the wheel-clamping man, who’ll always be famous for that, if nothing else—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: We’ll clamp your car—clamp your Crown car, then.

Well, you’re focused on the big issues, that’s for sure! The Government really is!

Well, I say to those members on the other side of the House, on this side we won’t be weak. We’ll be a strong and stable Government with high-growth policies that will get this country back on track. We’ll provide the certainty that some 160 working groups, and counting—one every couple of days of their tenure is going on. We’re doing the work now, whether it’s on small and medium sized enterprises right at the moment, or whether it’s on other groups, to give this country a real choice at the next election, and to give it the leadership—not the weakness—that it deserves.

There’s one message that’s abundantly clear from that contribution, and that is that it was probably the longest 15 minutes in Simon Bridges’ life, because having demanded the House set aside time for an urgent debate on a ministerial demotion, he then struggled to string together more than two or three sentences on that particular issue before veering off into other things. In fact, I would go so far as to say that contribution was two snappers short of a resignation. I’ve sat on that side of the House and I’ve watched the looks on the faces of the caucus. You could see as he went along that they were slumping further and further down in their chairs—been there before and seen that before. You’ve been there waiting for your leader to give a big, rousing speech to rally the troops and stick it to the Government, and they come up with that and you sit there and you think, “Oh, no.” That’s exactly what Simon Bridges just did, and you could see their morale sapping out of the Chamber, and Simon Bridges went on and on in the longest 15 minutes of his life.

But one thing that Simon Bridges did mention—which shows what’s really on his mind—was 2 percent in the polls when he was referring to Shane Jones. Well, if Shane Jones’ preferred rating is 2 percent, the one thing I’d say to Simon Bridges is that at least he’s a net positive. That’s a good thing. I’ve got to say that at least he’s a net positive. But let’s run through a few names here: Richard Worth, Maurice Williamson, Pansy Wong, Judith Collins, Phil Heatley, Nick Smith—so let’s talk about ministerial standards. How many of those people and in how many of those cases did that Prime Minister act as decisively and as quickly as Jacinda Ardern did? Not in any of those cases. In fact, in some of those cases, John Key had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do anything about them.

I’m not going to bother wasting the House’s time with 15 minutes on this, because it doesn’t actually require it. There’s one message from the Government on this: the Prime Minister has set very high standards for her Ministers, and if they don’t meet them, there will be consequences in that. Now Clare Curran—I like Clare. She’s a good friend of mine, and I believe that she’s doing a good job. But she failed to meet those standards twice and she has faced the consequences of that failure, and I think that it’s a pretty tough one. I’ve got to say that if there were resignations from the previous Government every time a Minister failed to answer a written parliamentary question correctly more than once, most of that Cabinet would have gone.

In fact, it’s a very, very high threshold. Ministers across all sides of the House, including on this side of the House, give wrong answers. It happens and, I’ll tell you what, it’s embarrassing when it happens. I have one—which I am just about to correct—because Crown Law gave me wrong advice. I relied on that advice in putting out a written parliamentary question answer and it was wrong, and I have just literally, as I’ve sat here, signed the correction—because it was the first time I became aware that the answer was wrong—and that correction will be lodged immediately. But I’ve got to say that a very, very high threshold has been set here, and it’s one that all of us on this side of the House will be very mindful of.

There is a very high threshold for accuracy around written parliamentary questions, as there should be, and I think it’s a message to everybody that we have to get this right. We have to get this right. And yes, we need to do better on open government, but at least we’re aspiring to do so. Unlike the previous Government, who didn’t care about open government, this Government is actually aspiring to make Government a more open and inclusive process, and it’s something that the members on the other side might like to actually think about—the principle at stake here, which is that Government should be open and inclusive.

And yes, we’ve got a way to go, because we’ve inherited a culture of secrecy from the last Government, where information wasn’t released, where the Prime Minister, at the very highest level—the Prime Minister encouraged his Ministers publicly to ignore the Official Information Act. He encouraged his Ministers to break the law when it came to releasing information under the Official Information Act. The Prime Minister on this side of the House, Jacinda Ardern, has been very clear that her criteria, her standards, are very high. And that’s a message to all of us that we need to do better, and we need to continue to strive to do better.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think the Leader of the Opposition actually might have his inquiries mixed up. He spoke about stupidity and he spoke about the use of secret phones—well, clearly that’s a conversation that he’s been having on that side of the House with his own inquiry into his own caucus members. And then he asked about whether or not the Prime Minister had looked them in the eye. Well, my challenge to the Opposition leader is to answer this question in the House today: have you looked your own caucus members in the eye and asked them the question: who did it, yes or no—yes or no, whether he has done that or not already. Clearly, this is a failure of leadership on his part. I’d suggest that he might do his caucus a favour and resign, but I challenge him to do this side of the House a favour and keep to his guns. Stay strong.

I rise on behalf of this Government, and specifically on behalf of New Zealand First, to address the puffery from the Opposition leader, and to say to him and those on that side that the Prime Minister has made a hard decision. She made the right decision when she removed the Hon Clare Curran from Cabinet and removed her from those portfolios. Clearly, this Government expects a high level of conduct and integrity from all of its MPs on this side of the House and, most especially, from its Ministers.

Minister Curran’s actions were unacceptable. This Government continues to stand for transparency and accountability, and Minister Curran has taken full responsibility for that and has followed proper process. So the Minister has been removed; definitive and quite hard actions have been taken. She has been removed from Cabinet and two of the portfolios will now be in the hands of the Hon Dr Megan Woods and the Hon Chris Hipkins.

This is a stable Government that stands proudly to say that we have high expectations and we are willing to hold our own to account. Thank you very much.

Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, what I don’t understand about the so-called demotion of Clare Curran, and the question that I would like answered, is: how can it be that her behaviour is acceptable for her to be a Minister outside of Cabinet but not be acceptable for her to be a Minister inside Cabinet? What we’ve repeatedly heard is that the punishment is proportionate—yeah? The punishment is proportionate to the crime is what we heard both the Prime Minister say, and it’s certainly what we heard from Minister Curran, kind of, giving her sort of context to it. Proportionate for who? Proportionate for Clare Curran; not actually for the standard that we expect from Ministers and we should expect from Ministers.

We constantly hear that she hasn’t met her own high standards, and in fact the Prime Minister said that in the House this very day—that actually her Minister did not meet her own standard or indeed the Prime Minister’s standards, but she met the standard to remain a Minister in an area and in a role of just such huge responsibility and privilege. That standard was met. Somehow that standard was met. Her own actual poor standards were not met at all, but she’s met the standard to remain being a Minister in a hugely privileged role. Haven’t we seen, as many commentators have said, a level of arrogance by a number of Ministers that one would expect in a third or a fourth-term administration—so arrogant that they make meetings via their Gmail late at night and make sure that other people don’t know about them? I think that’s extraordinary, quite frankly, absolutely extraordinary: weak leadership that accepts that that’s actually the standard that can be set.

What we heard from the previous speaker, Minister Chris Hipkins, who was standing up to defend his colleague, is that actually the Prime Minister has set a very high standard. The Prime Minister has set a very low standard—a very low standard. It says you can misrepresent, and in the very week that you are being questioned in Parliament about the standards you’ve set over secret meetings with Carol Hirschfeld, who in the end lost her job—Carol Hirschfeld did; Carol Hirschfeld lost her job and had a major hit to her reputation because of the way that Minister Clare Curran represented a secret meeting that she set up to then have with her—in the same week she was being questioned on that, she set up another secret meeting with a senior person and then totally misrepresented that in a written answer to a colleague.

That is not right for democracy. It is not the standards one should have in their Cabinet. And by accepting that that is the standard that is acceptable, we have a Prime Minister, who, quite frankly, looks like she has no standards herself, and weak leadership in not standing up to what is absolutely despicable behaviour. [Interruption] It is. It is the behaviour and the arrogance from a Minister who believes in transparent and open government, by the way. I mean everybody can see the absolute irony of that.

So in a made-up portfolio that in itself had nothing much behind it, we now have a Minister who was perhaps the least open and the least transparent out of any of the—what is it?—28 members of the executive, and we could go into another whole speech about how many that is and how utterly ridiculous it is. By the way, colleagues, she is still a member of the 28 executive. So she is still in that incredibly privileged role and has met a standard that the Prime Minister thinks is acceptable and above many of her colleagues. So there must be many of them that are sitting there in the second and third bench, looking at her and thinking, “That is the standard that I actually have to meet to get into Cabinet, and she is better than me and has more value to add than I do.” You can see people like Michael Wood getting really, really antsy about it. The member’s own colleague, Darroch Ball, must be sitting there thinking, “Really? So if Clare Curran is the standard of excellence that this Prime Minister wants as part of her executive, then I’m not up to that standard or better and that’s somehow acceptable?”

I just want to go back through this, because this is really important. In the very week that she was being questioned and challenged about a meeting that she did not tell the truth about, with Carol Hirschfeld, who ended up losing her job, it was somehow acceptable for her to organise a secret meeting via her Gmail account with someone late at night, not tell anyone about it, and then forget to mention it in a written question. We had the current Minister of State Services, who previously spoke, who was able to stand up here and justify that it was only about not answering a written question correctly. Yet we all know that that is not the standard of excellence that one should expect from the privileged position of being a Minister in a Government, and I think it’s despicable.

Let’s get to the point of this being known—what was it?—on the Monday, but it happened to come out at 4 o’clock on a Friday. So into that great void of—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Free, open, and transparent.

—“Let’s hope it’s lost in the weekend.” But you make an interesting point, Nick Smith. How open and transparent is it to actually drop something at 4 o’clock on a Friday and hope that it gets lost in the weekend sport that this country gets pretty obsessed with—and for good reason, because it is often more interesting than politics—but anyway, just to hope and drop it into that void that everyone knows is between 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock on a Friday and it might get ignored.

So knowing it since Monday—by the way, for any poor person that’s actually out there watching this, this happened in February, and then two weeks ago, it was acceptable for the Prime Minister herself to drop this at 4 o’clock and then have the audacity to turn around and lecture us about openness and transparency and kindness, and that’s the standard that’s been set in this current Government and it’s one that won’t be acceptable to New Zealanders and is certainly not acceptable to the Opposition.

We are seeing it in the behaviour of other Ministers, quite frankly, and that’s embarrassing. We might be in Opposition but actually we’d quite like to be proud of our country and proud of the work that’s going on. We’ve now, of course, got very serious questions going on with the Minister Meka Whaitiri. She must be sitting there going, “Well, that’s the standard that’s being set, and I just saw a colleague get vaguely demoted.” That kind of arrogance and that kind of behaviour, I tell you what, in the previous two or three Prime Ministers—I will put it, including Bill English and John Key and Helen Clark—none of that would have been acceptable. Absolutely, none of it would have been acceptable.

What would have happened is we would have had a Prime Minister that looked those two Ministers in the eye and said, “Tell me exactly what happened.”—but instead we get dodgy phone calls that might be happening—and then that Prime Minister would make a decision on what should be done. So look them in the eye, actually make a call on things, and show some leadership. Show some standards that you expect from your executive. Show exactly what you want to happen, and then stand up and have the courage of your own convictions to set standards that should be at a level not proportionate for the Minister, actually proportionate for this country. They deserve to have the very best that they possibly can in a Minister, and they’re not getting it in this current Government.

Before me sits an irony-free zone. We’ve just had the Leader of the Opposition stand up and talk for I think it was up to 15 minutes—I think he might’ve run a little short—about people conducting behaviour that he didn’t approve of, talking about leadership while sitting behind him—and at that stage the House was full—was someone who leaked all his details not a week ago.

So here he was, standing here, moving. No wonder he was moving so much, because clearly there would have been a little red mark on his back that he wouldn’t have wanted to settle anywhere between his shoulder blades. To stand here while all that is happening—boy, the stitching on some of those seats must be coming apart considering how much buttocks moving, squeezing, would have been going on as that absolutely ironic tirade came out from the Leader of the Opposition.

Just the week before last, I was fortunate enough to be in Canberra with a select committee. We sat there behind the Liberal Party benches as we saw the coup building before our very eyes. We had the pleasure of being out with the Speaker, out with the President of the Senate, and many other MPs on that Monday night when it was all happening. So what we did is we saw—we understand when we see this—a coup in progress, and, boy, it’s good to sit here and watch and see a coup in progress. Oh, Mr Mitchell, you’re laughing. Mr Mitchell, it’s funny; as I watched Peter Dutton, I thought, “Ah, Peter Dutton. Who in the Opposition fits the profile of Peter Dutton most?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! I know it’s a very broad debate, but there is a topic, and I would like the member to come to that topic.

Thank you for your direction, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’ll just finish, perhaps, on that honourable member. As I say, I just thought—and I was nudging, and there were several of us watching. We thought, “Who fits what role in this particular place?”, and I thought the Peter Dutton of the Opposition is the man I’d watch, who I’d be moving—speaking of having little sniper’s rifle markers on your back; yeah, we know who’s most likely to have one of them, too. So I’ll be watching, Mr Mitchell—I’ll be watching. Of course, there was Julie Bishop there. Well, I looked about—who’s the Julie Bishop in there? Well, there were a few contenders there. Blonde hair—I thought, yeah, that’s a whole field we’ve opened up here.

And, of course, who was the one that came through? Oh, Mr Morrison. Who’s the real Mr Morrison? Who’s the one that’s actually going to come through? Who’s going to win? Well, I’m just sitting watching. We’ll watch that—it’s great. I sit up the back there most of the time. It’s a great place to watch; you can watch the body language. So we’ll be taking a few bets on our side of the House. In fact, I might even run a book on it, and we’ll see.

So, coming back from Australia, I feel like I’m fairly accomplished in watching coups take place, and, boy, I loved what I saw over there. But on a more serious note, Madam Deputy Speaker—and I’ll take your advice and come back to the topic—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: To the topic would be nice. To the topic—yes.

Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was speaking too loud—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no, I want you to speak to the topic. It would be very refreshing.

Oh, right—back to the topic. When I came to this House—and I’m a very new member—one thing I’ve always respected, and, of course, Mr Mitchell will be the same, is good, decisive leadership—tinged also with kindness. We know where we stand, and, boy, on this side we know where we stand now, and that’s absolutely necessary. Consistency is also what we like, and the word Oravida comes to mind there about consistency. I’ve loved it, again, when I’ve heard the Opposition on the other side talking about what’s happened over here. But just going back to Oravida, I sat there, and at that stage I—

💬 Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I really reluctantly interrupt the speaker, because I do respect a general debate, but, actually, this is blatantly about Clare Curran and her being stood down. We’ve not heard her name mentioned once. We’ve not seen that addressed at all, and we’re at nearly five minutes, and I think that it does need to be addressed.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I actually support that point of order. I have spoken to the member twice, and if the member does not come to the topic for this urgent debate—it’s not a general debate; it’s an urgent debate—then I will have to curtail his time.

Thank you for your direction there, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will come now—because I think I do like to build some context for my point in this debate. One of my main points in this debate is this: look, I agree with my colleague; I think I’ve seen what’s happened with the Hon Clare Curran and I’ve seen what’s happened. She’s been, really, the personification of what we understand now is the expected standard of behaviour. We will be left with no doubt on this side of the House.

But can I just make a little more serious point around this. I in no way justify what’s happened and absolutely agree with the decision of Jacinda Ardern, our Prime Minister, around this. But can I just finish by saying it will be a shame if Ministers can’t actually have conversations with people—casual conversations. I’m not justifying what happened, but it would be a shame if, as a result of this, Ministers never actually got to have conversations off the grid.

But thank you very much for the opportunity to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I’ll just say I’m very proud to be part of an organisation, of a party, that shows the decisive leadership that has been shown on this occasion.

That speech was nearly as big an embarrassment as Clare Curran is as a Minister. This is almost comical in what has occurred. We have a Minister of open Government—actually, the very first Minister of open Government that’s ever existed in this Parliament—and the promise of the Minister of open Government was to be the most open and transparent Government that this country has ever had, and then what we find out from that Minister is that not once but twice that Minister behaved in a secretive, in a sneaky, and in a dirty way. The contributions from Greg O’Connor and Chris Hipkins in this debate show that the Government doesn’t get it. If you come to this Parliament as a new Government promising to be open and transparent—surprise, surprise! We expect you to practise what you preach.

Now, let’s come to the events that have led to Clare Curran’s resignation as the Minister of open Government. Firstly, we had the incident with Radio New Zealand. Let’s understand how important that is. A free, politically neutral media goes to the heart of how our democracy works. We are not—well, I hope we’re not; I sometimes doubt it when I hear members opposite—one of those countries where we have a State media that just spins the Government line, like you might get in North Korea or Zimbabwe. Here we have Clare Curran having private, secret meetings with the head of news—not some public servant. What is the Minister of broadcasting doing having meetings—secret meetings—with the head of news at Radio New Zealand? There wouldn’t be a member in this House, not even my newest colleagues, that wouldn’t have a feeling that, well, that doesn’t feel quite right. “I’m the Minister of broadcasting; I shouldn’t really be having secret meetings with the head of Radio New Zealand news.”

But here’s the part that has me gobsmacked: the week after this Parliament admonishes her for being dishonest about the secret meeting, guess what Clare Curran does? She arranges another secret meeting, this time wearing the portfolio as the Minister of digital technologies. I’ve been here for 28 years. I’ve seen some Ministers goof it up. What I have never seen is a dicky Minister commit exactly the same crime just one week after there’s a massive controversy. Now, as Simon Bridges correctly said, there are only two possibilities here. Either she’s dumb, or she’s dishonest. I’m sorry, there can only be two explanations for that course of events that has occurred.

Let’s dig into the issue of the appointment of the information officer for the Government. Now, is there a single member of this Parliament that doesn’t understand the neutrality of the Public Service? I heard lectures all the time, when we were in Government, about respecting the neutrality. I even heard speeches from Clare Curran lecturing the previous Government about the neutrality of the Public Service. I have never heard of a Minister privately and secretly meeting about the appointment of a very senior public servant to be made by this Government.

I challenge members opposite to tell me a single example that you can think of in the last 20 to 30 years, where a Government appointment has been made and that has been done in a secret meeting. I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I’ve had 14 different ministerial portfolios. I have never had a meeting in 14 years about which my ministerial staff did not know. What is going on in the culture of the ministerial offices of this Government that they have to keep meetings that they’ve having secret?

💬 Hon Dr Megan Woods: Did you tell everyone about the Bronwyn Pullar meeting?

Oh, Megan Woods is interjecting. I say to Megan Woods: how many meetings have you had that you’ve kept secret from your ministerial staffers?

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Two words: Bronwyn Pullar—Bronwyn Pullar! Tell us how many meetings.

Andrew Little’s confessing he has secret meetings without his ministerial staffers knowing, and all that reminds me of, including the interjections, is how low the standards of integrity have already fallen in this Government.

You see, the members opposite campaigned on being the most open, transparent Government ever. My criticism this afternoon is not just of Clare Curran. I want to go to the Prime Minister. How open and transparent was it for the Prime Minister to announce Clare Curran’s resignation at 4 p.m. on a Friday? Does that meet the standard of the members opposite for the standards of openness and transparency? Strange silence. They have their heads hung, across on those Government benches, and appropriately so, because this actually goes deeper—deeper than just Clare Curran. This goes to the heart of and to the character of the Government we now have, because it’s not just in the area of open and transparent Government that there is a canyon between the promise and the performance. Actually, if you dig into every single area of this Government, it’s all as though if they say words, somehow that delivers results for New Zealanders.

Here’s the bit from Clare Curran that I found extraordinary from the Government. You have the Government announce that open Government is so important that we’re going to have to have a strategy for open Government. So members of the Cabinet opposite produce a 24-page open Government strategy, and members on this side of the House ask Clare Curran: can we have a copy of the strategy under the Official Information Act? And here’s the comical part. Every single page of the open Government strategy was kept secret—was kept secret. Now, it would be hilarious if it were not so serious. Again, it illustrates the gulf between the promise of this Government and its performance.

Here’s the last part: does any member of this House recall any time in the last 30 years where you’ve had two Ministers, effectively, fall over in one week?

💬 Hon Members: No.

That is a shambles. That is the sort of incompetence that is now being shown in this Government, and it’s more serious than this. This is a Government that’s been lecturing New Zealanders about issues of physical violence, and it’s being practised by one of its Ministers. Isn’t that extraordinary? And then we have the incident over the same recess of their secret report on the Labour Party camp. I challenge members opposite: where is the openness and transparency when you commission a report about the awful incident that occurred at the Labour camp over the sexual abuse of young people and keep it secret?

So whether it is on sexual abuse issues, whether it’s on physical violence, or whether it is on open Government, this is a Government that says one thing and does the opposite. They have lost their moral authority, and the resignation of Clare Curran is just a smell of the rot that exists within this Government, in which they are promising New Zealanders one thing and delivering the exact opposite. Any Prime Minister—whether it was Bill English, whether it was John Key, whether it was Helen Clark—would have dealt with the Clare Curran issue that occurred way back in February far more decisively, and it equally applies to the very serious accusations that I have not heard of in 30 years of a Minister assaulting a staff member. The rot in this Government runs very, very deep indeed.

Well, goodness me! If we’ve ever heard a case of the pot calling the kettle black, that absolutely had to be the finest contribution that we could have ever had from an Opposition member, who was, if I recall, demoted from his rank as a former Minister for ACC for having secret meetings with a former client of that ministry that I think he probably wishes he’d put in his diary. So if we want to get really frank about previous ministerial behaviour, I think that some of those members currently sitting on the Opposition benches need to take some hard time to reflect on their previous administration’s lack of administration.

Look, they say in sport that the best defence is offence. And if I was the member for Tauranga right now, I’d be wanting to put up a mighty good defence to cast away any light that could ever be put on me, because I’d know I had a bright light, a burning light, a sniper-red light shining at the back of my head that I would not want to draw any further attention to—whether that be the polls that I know that the member from Tauranga will be seeing crashing down or whether that’s public opinion about the fact that they have some internal squeaky leaks that they need to tidy up on the Opposition benches. They will do whatever they need to do to distract from the fact that they are on a sinking ship with a captain that’s losing credibility.

I turn to the matter at hand. The question is whether our Prime Minister has acted with decisiveness, with certainty, and with a steady hand. What we’ve seen from our Prime Minister in the management of Minister Curran has been absolutely decisive, has been absolutely steely, and has been absolutely assertive. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I can say we stand as a Government that is prepared to act in a determined, decisive, and swift manner in holding our Ministers to a high account. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yes, that previous member, Kiritapu Allan, said “a Government that would like to act”, and I agree with that—act in an underhanded and sneaky manner. They are a dodgy Government. The thing I think that this demotion of Clare Curran highlights most of all is that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is weak and indecisive. She’s indecisive because it took five days from once, apparently, she knew about Ms Curran’s second indiscretion to finally make a decision public. It’s kind of odd, isn’t it, that that decision was made public at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon, right about the time when the bad news dump might get hidden in the weekend’s activities. She’s weak—weak in that all she did was strip her of a couple of portfolios.

The message that the Prime Minister sent to New Zealand, and indeed to her own caucus, in taking just a couple of portfolios was that if you’re a Cabinet Minister, openness and transparency apply, but if you’re a Minister outside Cabinet you don’t need to worry about any of that stuff. You can be as sneaky as you want to be, because Ms Curran remains a Minister outside Cabinet. She still gets a good salary, gets the privileges like the ride in the Beemer—there’s hardly a punishment there at all.

“Proportionate”, the Prime Minister says. Proportionate? I don’t think that’s the way the rest of New Zealand sees this at all. What they see is what they heard. When the Government came in they said this would be the most open and transparent Government New Zealand had ever had. So New Zealanders expect that what they’ll see is what it says on the tin. Instead, what they get is at least one Minister who hides meetings, and then gets a little bit sort of clever about what that first meeting with Carol Hirschfeld was about, and in the second case simply tries to sweep it under the carpet to begin with.

I was quite astounded because when the information dump came out, what did become clear was that Mr Handley approached Minister Curran about the possibilities of the Chief Technology Officer role, and they sort of conversed via Twitter about whether they might meet. It was Minister Curran that initiated an email exchange that led to the appointment being made, and she did so on her private Gmail account—not on a ministerial mail account, not on a parliamentary mail account. She carries, probably, two mobile devices: a BlackBerry for secure communications that Ministers are required to have, and probably an iPhone for other communications, I would have thought. She had plenty of opportunity and ability to communicate with Mr Handley to set that meeting up using parliamentary devices. She chose instead to use a private email account. Now, there’s only one thing New Zealanders are going to take from that, and that is the Minister was deliberately seeking to make that a secret meeting. She had no intention of anyone ever finding out about it.

All that happens when that underhandedness is finally uncovered is she gets a minor demotion—a minor demotion. That’s weak government, weak leadership from the Prime Minister. Her actions and the limited sanction actually warrant an investigation, if you will. They warrant the Prime Minister and her Government actually being open with us for once. We deserve—New Zealanders deserve—to know what communications, what conversations were had between either that Minister or other Ministers around the appointment process of this Government’s Chief Technology Officer role, because there are just so many questions. We don’t know. We don’t know how many other times things have been hidden. We don’t know what conversations have been had. We don’t know what influence Ministers may have tried to have over that appointment process.

One thing we do know is that Mr Handley did apply for the job, and he applied for the job in the second wave of recruitment, at or before the closing time for those applications. And then on 9 June he was interviewed by Lisa Owen on The Nation in his capacity as a technology entrepreneur. He was asked questions directly about the characteristics of a Chief Technology Officer, knowing he’d applied for it. So he was asked what he thought the right characteristics were—deeply conflicted—and then asked if it was him for the role, and he fudged that too. This is a senior Public Service role. He completely failed the test of managing conflicts of interest, and he could yet be appointed to that role. It certainly calls into question his fitness for that role, but equally, behind that, given that all the rumour is that he will be appointed, I think it’s important that we know what influence Ministers might have had or tried to have on his appointment to the role, because there’s more to come from this yet. Ms Curran deserves to be sitting down the back of the House, and that’s what a strong Prime Minister would have done.

Technically this call should have been a 10-minute Labour call, but the Greens didn’t take their call, which means that proportionality has been slightly affected, so I’m going to give a five-minute call each to National and Labour.

I stand here today proud to be a member of a ministry led by the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, a woman who shows leadership, who shows fairness, and who shows proportionality. Minister Clare Curran has paid a hefty price for behaviour that she has admitted herself was not up to the standards demanded by our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. She has been stripped of two portfolios and she has been placed outside Cabinet.

Now, I want us to actually just calm down a little in this House and actually think about what has happened. A Minister did not meet standards. She did not record a meeting in her diary. Was this something that was revealed by the Opposition? Was this something that came out? No. This is something that the Prime Minister found out about and then dealt with openly. Did she try to sweep it under the carpet? No. She dealt with it fairly, she dealt with it decisively, and she dealt with it transparently. She was the one who made public what had happened with Ms Curran’s failure to record the meeting in her diary after it was found out, and I think we should keep that proportionality in mind. That is what leadership looks like.

What we’ve had here is a lot of behaviour that begins with the letter “h”—a word that we can’t say in this House—from members on the opposite benches this afternoon. To have Paula Bennett standing there talking about standards when Ms Bennett, as a Minister, released the details of two beneficiaries who dared to criticise her Government—well, I think she should come back and talk about the standards that her boss, John Key, required of her, because that is despicable behaviour. Then for Nick Smith to stand there and say that to do things twice was unbelievable—well, Mr Smith, you intervened on Bronwyn Pullar’s case not once but twice. It wasn’t just once.

So this is a rough place, and this is a workplace where the consequences for not meeting standards are high. Ms Curran has not met the standards demanded by Jacinda Ardern, and she has paid the price. But I think what we need to do is we need to make sure that when we’re standing in the Opposition benches having a go, we actually think back about other things that have happened over the life of this House. This is a place where perhaps we do have to accept that when people make mistakes they pay a price bigger than in most workplaces. I am proud of the kind of leadership we are seeing from Jacinda Ardern. She is a leader who is leading by example. She is a leader who is demanding the highest ever standards of her Ministers, who is dealing with issues as they come up and not attempting to sweep them under the carpet, as we saw from the previous administration. So what we have is an unfortunate situation where a member of this House has paid a price, and we have a Prime Minister who we can rightly be proud of. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, here we are back after a fortnight’s adjournment, and when I reflect back on that last fortnight, what a terrible period it has been for the current Government. We’ve had Shane Jones with his attacks on Christopher Luxon, his attacks on Fonterra at an event that I attended, and all sorts of other things. We’ve had Willie Jackson with his tongue running away with him in an interview for which he was fundamentally ill prepared. And we have had two Ministers who have fallen on their swords, either because one has been demoted or because the other has been forced to stand aside. As the last Minister of Customs, I have to say I am watching with particular interest what happens with that inquiry.

But today, of course, we are focusing on the other Minister who’s in trouble, and, as the Hon Dr Nick Smith noted a short time ago, this is an issue that goes to the very heart and character of the current Government. And so, much as the Hon Dr Megan Woods might like to trivialise the importance of this particular issue, it is very important. There is a very high threshold that is required for the Speaker to set aside the business of this House and grant an urgent debate. This issue met that threshold, and so it behoves the members opposite, the members of the Government, to engage in the debate and to come up with substantive reasons to defend what their Prime Minister has done. What we’ve seen, though, is members either being reluctant to take calls at all or taking very short calls and, in some cases, speaking totally off the subject.

It isn’t just once that the Hon Clare Curran has committed a significant indiscretion that is unbecoming of a Minister; she’s done it twice. She’s done it twice in one calendar year—and, as Brett Hudson’s mentioned, at least twice. This debate highlights the weakness of the current Prime Minister in being able to run a ministry and set and demand the standards that are required of Ministers—well-paid Ministers who must meet a very high standard of public service.

In the current Prime Minister’s desire to minimise the damage that these incidents have done to her ministry, she has failed in her duty to New Zealanders. She has failed to set and enforce high standards. She has failed to insist that the earlier mistake over the Carol Hirschfeld secret appointment, that got Clare Curran into trouble in the first instance, was unacceptable and must never be repeated.

And yet what sort of responses have we had from members opposite? I thought the member for Ōhāriu would take his chance today to really hammer home his audition for a place in Cabinet, but instead he produced his best Uriah Heep impression. He wrung his hands, he rocked from side to side, and he alternately grimaced and chortled, but he said absolutely nothing about the Hon Clare Curran and her conduct or her indiscretions.

As the member who’s looking down knows, that Minister has now offended twice in the same year. So why is it that that Minister is still a Minister of the Crown—albeit now outside Cabinet? She’s now being paid a lower salary, as a Minister outside Cabinet, but she’s only got half the workload. And I’m here thinking, well, surely, if you’ve only got half the workload, your pay would go down by half as well, wouldn’t it? But, oh no, there she still is because the current Prime Minister won’t rock the boat any more than she feels is absolutely necessary. I’m left wondering: is the current Labour Party caucus so bereft of talent, so bereft of potential, that there is nobody else who could do a better job, particularly in the role of Minister for open government. I mean, it is absolutely bizarre that somebody who held that portfolio should have committed these indiscretions.

And, as I say, we’ve had the Hon Dr Megan Woods seeking to trivialise the issue and suggesting that the Prime Minister’s response was proportionate. Well, it was not. This is not good enough. This Government needs to sharpen up quickly, tidy up its act, set much higher standards, show the public that they are focused on dealing with the important issues that they have been charged with as they lead the Government of this country, and not lurch from crisis to crisis, sideshow to sideshow, in a way that totally undermines the confidence that the New Zealand public have in their Government.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.