Urgent Debates — Hon Meka Whaitiri—Removal as a Minister

I have received a letter from the Hon Amy Adams seeking to debate, under Standing Order 389, the Prime Minister’s removal of the Hon Meka Whaitiri as a Minister. It is a particular case of recent occurrence that involves ministerial responsibility. The removal of a Minister is a significant matter. 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 Amy Adams 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.

The removal of a Minister has to be one of the most serious instances that this House can deal with. Ministers are placed in a position of incredibly high trust and respect. They hold positions that are critical to New Zealand, and New Zealand quite rightly expects our Prime Ministers to ensure that standards that are fair for a person holding that role are met. In this instance, we are left with the overwhelming impression that this is increasingly a Government where secrecy and questionable standards are the order of the day.

There is nothing about the removal of Meka Whaitiri that answers questions; there is everything about it that leaves more and more questions unanswered. This Parliament and, more importantly, the people of New Zealand deserve to know what is going on. This is happening far too often. It is particularly concerning because in this instance, what we do know is that the incident—and we’ve heard a lot about an incident, and that’s all, frankly, that the Acting Prime Minister today would reference; that’s all the Prime Minister would reference in her press conference. An incident occurred but we do know it involved a staff member. What is clearly apparent from putting together all of the comments that have been made is that this involves allegations of, at the very least, bullying and, at the worst, violence and assault.

If we’re talking about a Minister laying hands on a staff member, that is incredibly serious and that speaks right to the heart of the standards in this Government, the standards that the Prime Minister should expect from her Ministers. But so far, we’ve had nothing. We’ve had no proper statement of what happened. We’ve had no proper statement from Meka Whatiri. We’ve had no apology to the staff member concerned, and it’s become apparent to me today that it is now quite clear to many people that we’re talking about a staff member who ended up with bruising. Now, again, the Acting Prime Minister is refusing to make those sorts of confirmations, but I would suggest the public of New Zealand deserve to know if we have Minister of the Crown laying hands on a staff member to the extent that they end up with bruising. That is a fundamental expectation, and I would have thought it would be 101—not, frankly, just for a Minister; not even just for a member of this House; but as a human being. You do not go around laying hands on other people to the extent that it leaves bruising.

No doubt speakers will get up on the other side and deny all sorts of things, but here’s the thing: this is a Government that has refused to give any information whatsoever.

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: Meant to be the most open and transparent—

Exactly. My colleague Mr Goldsmith makes the point that I was just going to say. How often have we heard this Government and this Prime Minister say this will be the most transparent Government ever? That is becoming laughable. Frankly, that suggestion is now a mere mockery when it is made. It is an utter joke. And the reality is that this is quickly becoming one of the least transparent Governments New Zealand has ever seen—one of the least transparent. And it’s even more egregious because they hide it under a veil of pretty words. They say the right things as if they care, they want to have compassion and kindness and have a new standard, but every one of the dirty, dodgy, questionable actions leaves us thinking that that simply isn’t true.

It isn’t just Meka Whaitiri. Unfortunately Meka Whaitiri is just the latest in what has become quite a long list for a Government that’s been in office for such a short time. Look at their response to the Labour sex camps. The report was buried—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

No one was allowed to see it.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Can we have a—[Speaker makes narrowing gesture]

The response to Meka Whaitiri is reminiscent again of the actions we saw with the dismissal of the last Minister, Clare Curran. This is relevant, of course, because it speaks to the way the Prime Minister is holding her Ministers to account. Instead of coming out with fulsome information, putting the facts out on the table, matters are being forced to be dragged out one by one, and Ministers only accept them when they’re forced into some sort of disclosure. We’ve seen that just today with the Derek Handley emails, and we’re seeing it again in this case. Rather than an open, fulsome explanation of what happened with this Minister, what happened with this staff member, and what happened in Gisborne on 27 August, we’re seeing dodging, weaving, ducking, diving, and refusal to answer basic questions.

Now, the Prime Minister has taken three weeks to get to this point, three weeks where we’ve heard no apology to the staff member—very little mention of the staff member, actually; it’s all been about what’s fair to Meka Whaitiri, and what the Prime Minister expects, the way she would be treated. What about that staff member who we now know has been left bruised?

Well, we do know that in those three weeks the Labour Māori caucus went to see the Prime Minister and lobbied very extensively for Ms Whaitiri to remain. Yet when the Prime Minister was asked in her press conference about the sacking, about this very matter, she said—when asked whether she was lobbied by the Labour Māori caucus—“No”, she said. “No, I wasn’t.” I heard that very clearly. It was one of the few times we’ve had a clear answer, and now we know that indeed she was. She was lobbied by the Labour Māori caucus, but even that, it seems—now that the report has at least gone to the Prime Minister—wasn’t enough to save her, which tells me that the matter is an incredibly serious one.

I would expect a Prime Minister who wants to hold herself out as being open and transparent and caring about people would be upfront with the people of New Zealand. It’s a pretty simple expectation for a Prime Minister who wants to be treated as if she is going to have kindness and compassion and is going to put transparency at the head of her agenda. She clearly is not.

The question now, of course, remains this: what happened on 27 August in Gisborne?

💬 Hon Member: We don’t know.

We don’t know. What we do know is that while there is a report, it’s not going to be released. What the Prime Minister has said is “That report can’t be released. There will be a version of it released once we’ve had a chance to”—I’m now paraphrasing—“sanitise it.” Once a sanitised report has been prepared that works for the Government’s narrative, that might come out, but I can tell you right now it won’t tell us what happened in Gisborne on 27 August. That is not acceptable conduct. That is not what we would expect to have happen. It is certainly not transparent.

Now, of course, the question is, well why should Meka Whaitiri be fit to stand as a member of Parliament? Why should she be fit to remain as a member of Parliament? Do you know what occurred to me when I was thinking about the parallels here? We had a member on this side of the House, a younger member of the House, who was accused of a minor criminal offence—never proven, but he was accused of it. He was hounded out of this House by those members of Parliament, who said it was unacceptable for relations with a staff member to have even a hint of impropriety. It was totally unacceptable for Todd McClay—Todd Barclay; sorry, Todd—for Todd Barclay to stay as a member of Parliament.

Well, what do we have now? We have Meka Whaitiri accused of assaulting a staff member, leaving, we understand, bruising on her. Assault—members of the Government, if you’ve forgotten—is a criminal offence. So I ask the members of the Government: on what planet is it OK for a member who assaults a staff member to remain as a member of Parliament, when Todd Barclay, for the offence of taping a staff member, which he didn’t know was an offence—for that to be totally unacceptable to remain even in this House? What a double standard. What an utter double standard.

It seems to me that the Prime Minister has utterly outsourced her responsibilities in this regard. The Prime Minister decides whether she has confidence in her Ministers. Every Minister serves at the privilege and the will of the Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister loses confidence in a Minister, they’re gone. On this side of the House, I can tell you, if any one of us at any point in time lost the respect or the confidence of John Key or Bill English, we were gone. Neither of them would have ever outsourced it to Ministerial Services to decide whether the Prime Minister has confidence. It is not a question for bureaucrats to decide whether the Prime Minister has confidence in a Minister; it is a Prime Minister’s responsibility. All we heard from Jacinda Ardern was “It’s not up to me. Ministerial Services will decide.” Well, I’m sorry, Prime Minister, but that’s not good enough. It is not good enough to outsource your judgment to Parliamentary Service, to Ministerial Services—to a pack of bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats do their jobs well—I have no issue with them—but they are not a substitute for the Prime Minister of New Zealand. And now we are having a Prime Minister who is outsourcing and abdicating her responsibilities to a process within the corridors of the bureaucracy. That is not what New Zealand thought they were electing. That is not what New Zealand thinks of as a Prime Minister.

It isn’t good enough to have now a member representing Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, a member chairing the Labour Māori caucus, who is accused of assault in this House. It is not good enough to say “We’ll decide that without giving the public and the Parliament the information on which to make their decision.” It’s not a big ask. When you are Ministers in this House you know you’re accountable for everything you do. You should expect to answer questions. You should expect to be challenged on your behaviour. You should expect to be upfront. The Prime Minister should be expected to be challenged and questioned and held to account on what’s happened.

This side of the House and the public of New Zealand are not going to take an answer of “There was an incident. We’ve looked at it. End of story.” That is not good enough. And today in the House we had the Acting Prime Minister thinking it was good enough to simply bat it away with an unconcerned flick of his hand, saying, “There was an incident. That’s all you need to know.” Well, I’m sorry, Mr Peters. That is not good enough. It is not leadership. It is not the standard we expect of our Government. And Ministers, on their $300,000-plus a year packages, should expect to be held to account, and they can expect that we will not accept allegations of bullying, abuse, assault, violence of any form to be in any way acceptable. They’re not acceptable for a Minister, they’re not acceptable for an MP, they’re not acceptable for a New Zealander.

This side of the House is not going to let this Government continue to get away with obfuscating, denying the public information, trickery, and, frankly, being dismissive and contemptuous of the processes in this House where we hold the Government to account. Time after time, Ministers are refusing to answer questions, refusing to front up about meetings, only admitting to things piece by piece as they’re dragged out and admitted to. In this case of Meka Whaitiri, you can bet it will be the same. Unless the Government is shamed and forced into releasing the information, you can bet we won’t find out the true story. Well, actually, the people of New Zealand are going to expect better. They’re not going to want a Minister of Customs, an Associate Minister of Agriculture, an Associate Minister of Local Government, an Associate Minister for Crown/Māori Relations—important roles. These are important roles, and the public expects people to hold those roles who are honest, who have integrity, who have principles, and who treat others with respect.

Respect—it’s not a big word; it’s not a lot to ask. But nothing we have seen from this Government, nothing we have seen in the way the Prime Minister has treated the accountability processes, nothing we saw today from Winston Peters in answering questions, and nothing we’ve managed to piece together from the scant little information we’ve been given about this shameful affair speaks of respect for the people of New Zealand or speaks of respect to this House. I think, very quickly, New Zealand is going to tire of being treated like little children who don’t deserve to know the truth. That is what we’re seeing. We are seeing, time and again, a patronising, parental—

💬 Hon Member: Arrogant!

—nanny State, arrogant Government, from a group of people who clearly did not have the knowledge, the competence, or, frankly, the morals and values to hold the roles that they now hold. We can disagree on policy. We get that. We understand that in this House: we will have a view; they will have a view. We will debate policy. But we will not—and the people of New Zealand will not—accept Governments who deceive, who hide, who obfuscate, who dodge, who dance on the head of the pin, who split hairs, who play semantics, who think they are so arrogant, and so much better than everyone else that they don’t need to be honest. That is not the sort of New Zealand that New Zealanders want to see.

For a Minister to sit at home for three weeks on full pay, while the Prime Minister “um’d” and “ah’d” about whether she still had confidence in this Minister, is outrageous. It is outrageous for a Government to have—twice, now, in two weeks—lost a Minister in circumstances that make it clear that the Government has no standards. They will only move if they’re forced into action. The Prime Minister is not sure when she should sack anybody. She couldn’t even bring herself, in the end, to sack Clare Curran—poor Clare Curran had to fall on her own sword in the end because the Prime Minister couldn’t do it. And only when a report made it impossible for the Prime Minister to not act did she finally take any action on Meka Whaitiri.

If that is the standard of this Government, we’re in for a long next couple of years as New Zealanders see through the gilt and the glamour and the pretty words and see behind it to know that what we have here is a dodgy, decrepit, immoral Government that won’t hold itself up for accountability, that won’t stand up to be judged, that won’t be honest with the public of New Zealand, that won’t put information out and let people judge for themselves. That is not a Government—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

When we’re talking about openness and transparency, the question that the Acting Prime Minister has been asking right now is very relevant: who’s the leaker? Who is the leaker in the National Party? There has been an investigation going on for how long? How long? And it’s gone nowhere. We know nothing about the leak. The leak was all about Simon Bridges—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You granted the debate on the basis that it was a debate about the Prime Minister’s decision to terminate the ministerial career of Meka Whaitiri. How, then, does the beginning of the speech by Kelvin Davis meet those criteria? Or is it a general debate, and therefore a bit of a free-for-all?

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: If you would’ve followed the speech from the previous speaker, Amy Adams, it was, seriously, a sermon on values, transparency, morality, openness, and honesty. Now, surely, when you put those sorts of principles into the mix, someone’s entitled to start, in their first breath, to question whether or not there are examples of that not being held in the House. He hardly got going and Mr Brownlee objected to it. Surely he could’ve waited until he got into the substance of his speech.

💬 SPEAKER: I couldn’t have put it better myself.

It’s interesting, the defensiveness. They can raise issues around transparency with us, openness, and then what happens? As soon as we raise something about their lack of openness, their lack of transparency, they want to shut things down. But let me tell you about what the Prime Minister did do. The Prime Minister, when she heard that there had been an incident, acted decisively. She acted immediately. There was an investigation set up, an independent investigation which took a couple of weeks to do the job that it was meant to do, and in that time Meka Whaitiri wasn’t sitting at home on full pay. She was actually going about her business as the member of Parliament for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, doing what a member of Parliament should do in a situation like this, and that is looking after her constituents.

So there was a report that was produced, and within 24 hours the Prime Minister had made the decision to stand Meka Whaitiri down. It wasn’t a decision that she made lightly; we know she wrestled with it. We know that she is a fair but firm leader, but, in the end, she had made her decision and she made it swiftly—unlike the Opposition, who we still don’t know who the leaker is.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

💬 Hon David Bennett: You have to go now.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: The Speaker has ruled that this is a very wide debate, but I would point out that when the Hon Amy Adams was speaking and raised the issue of the sexual assaults at the Labour youth camp earlier this year, the signal was very clearly given that the debate should be narrowed, with the sort of concertina-type movements of the Speaker’s hands, at that time. I do hope that there will be a degree of consistency applied to the speech of the struggling Kelvin Davis.

Madam Speaker, point of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t need any help on the point of order. Thank you, the Hon Gerry Brownlee. I will take your comments into account as I listen to the continuing debate.

There is an issue, though, that the facts in the case are disputed. So there is a situation—

💬 SPEAKER: I apologise to the member for interrupting. There is a very strong convention in the House that Speakers are not given advice, especially abusive advice, as they leave the Chair. David Bennett will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

💬 Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise.

The facts of the case are disputed, and this is where this, sort of, little legal feature of natural justice needs to come into play. It’s important that somebody is given the benefit of the doubt and is innocent until proven guilty, but instead we’ve already heard from Amy Adams that in her mind there are some facts that are undisputed. She says she hasn’t seen the report, and yet she’s saying that these certain things definitely did happen. Well, we have to ask, if they don’t know anything about the report, how is it that she has all of these facts? It’s totally necessary that we allow the process to go ahead, that there is an investigation. That investigation has occurred. That investigation came up with its findings, some elements of which are disputed. There are some elements that are not disputed, and it was on that basis that the Prime Minister made her decision to stand down Meka Whaitiri.

We heard Amy Adams talking about how under John Key and Bill English, things would’ve been acted on decisively and that none of them would be here if they had lost the confidence of the Prime Minister of the day. Well, I’ve got a two-word question for that. The two-word question is Judith Collins. Why is she still here? We know—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member has yet again referred to a matter where I was completely exonerated by the Chisholm inquiry, led by retired Justice Chisholm. That is totally inappropriate for this particular debate. I ask that he withdraw and apologise.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, the difficulty that I have is that—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I speak to the point of order?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I’m just ruling on this point of order, if you don’t mind.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, that’s the point of order I want to speak about.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I’m going to rule on this point of order. Would you please sit down? The difficulty that I have, Hon Judith Collins, in ruling on that, is that he’s only mentioned your name; he hasn’t actually referred to any indiscretion. So he has, actually, nothing to withdraw and apologise for. However, I’m sure that the member will continue to listen in case the Hon Kelvin Davis goes further.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: That’s my point.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I’m glad we’re in agreement.

Then there’s also Richard Worth. Now, Richard Worth is a name that is a footnote in history, and yet we still don’t know the reasons behind his disappearance from Parliament. We will never know. We asked the questions. We asked the same questions that they’re asking, and yet we were never given any reason, and we never will. So, you know, we just find it extremely disappointing that somebody can stand up on that side and point the finger at us when we know that in the former National Government, Ministers disappeared without a trace, and nobody is any the wiser as to the reasons they disappeared.

Then the member Amy Adams, who spoke, raised the issue around Todd Barclay. Now, if the National Government was so decisive, why did the Todd Barclay debacle linger for months and months and months? We know that the former leadership of the National Party was slow and they were not the decisive machine that we’ve been led to believe in this House.

There’s any number of former Ministers that’ve had their day in the sun, sadly. I’ve already mentioned Richard Worth. There was Phil Heatley—he resigned over financial irregularities with his Crown credit card. Pansy Wong—remember her? She resigned over abuse of taxpayer-funded travel perks. Nick Smith is still here. He resigned over abusing his office to help a close friend. Kate Wilkinson—that’s another name that was once bandied around these walls but has disappeared through the ether of time. Peter Dunne himself—resignation connected with a leak from the GCSB. John Banks—he resigned. Maurice Williamson—old Maurice. He resigned after being caught abusing his position to help a wealthy businessman avoid domestic violence charges. When that party over there is pointing the finger over at us, that means there are three fingers pointing back at them. They know that they’ve got issues to hide.

We also—no, I won’t go into that. There’s a Minister that—rumours circulated around her treatment of staff in the last Parliament, in the last Government. We know that media are aware of those issues and those allegations. That party over there—they know that we know. They need to be really careful about what they’re saying about us over here because they’ve got skeletons in their closet as well. There are certainly double standards when it comes to the National Party.

As I’ve said, the Prime Minister—she was decisive. She heard about the allegations around Meka Whaitiri, and within 24 hours she’d decided that there needed to be an investigation. That investigation occurred. It took a couple of weeks to happen. As soon as she found out and received the report and read the report, within 24 hours she had made that decision to stand the Minister down from her duties. As I’ve said, it was not something that she took lightly, but, as I’ve said, the Prime Minister is compassionate. She is a firm but fair leader, and it’s fairness that was necessary in this case, because you can’t just go dumping people based on allegations. It’s a matter of having a look at the facts, at what’s happening, and then making your decisions from there.

As we’ve heard from Amy Adams—she said that people will soon get sick and tired of certain things. Well, let me say, people are getting sick and tired of the National Party barking at every car. They bark at every single issue that’s going on. They don’t have a focus. They know that this Government is very, very popular. They know that the work of the Minister of Finance is starting to show rewards. We’ve talked about the growth in GDP over the last quarter: it’s more than what they expected—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Could we focus on the debate, please—could we focus on the debate, please.

Yes, sure, Madam Deputy Speaker. They know that this Government is doing well. They know that the Prime Minister, right now, is showing her leadership skills across there in America, representing New Zealand well. She’s been a leader on that stage. The Prime Minister’s showing leadership overseas. She’s showing leadership domestically. She’s a Prime Minister that we are all very proud of, and she’s shown her leadership mettle.

Now, some people think that leadership is all about waving the big stick and trying to talk tough and be tough, but there are different forms of leadership, and our Prime Minister shows that you can be compassionate, you can be fair, you can be just, but you can still make the hard decisions when you need to, and that is exactly what Jacinda Ardern has done. She’s made the hard decisions. She’s had to deal with this issue with former Minister Whaitiri. I was there in the office when she had the discussion.

I’m sorry, that’s another thing that was raised by Amy Adams: talking about the Māori caucus. She talks about the Labour Māori caucus as if she’s an authority on Māori issues, as if she actually knows anything about what’s happening in the Labour Māori caucus. Let me say: our Māori caucus is strong, and one of the things we do is we stick to our tikanga, and one of our tikanga is to stand up and support our people when they need our support. It doesn’t mean to say we pass judgment. It doesn’t mean to say we agree or disagree, but we know in Māoridom that it’s important to stand beside your people. It’s important to be there just to hold them up, just to help, and that’s how we were raised. That’s a tikanga that we understand and we know, and we don’t have to justify to any member of Parliament from the Opposition who has absolutely no idea around tikanga Māori, no idea around kaupapa Māori. She has absolutely no—and yet she’s standing there in judgment of us.

Quite frankly, as Māori, we’re sick of people like herself standing up and judging us for the way we do things. We don’t have to justify our tikanga and the way we operate to anybody, least of all Amy Adams.

💬 Hon Member: Arrogant.

Oh, arrogant? So now being Māori is being arrogant. You know, just trying to be ourselves and operate in our space and the way we do things according to our customs, to our tikanga—all of a sudden it’s arrogant. Well, that shows what the National Party—the way they think about Māoridom. That’s the way the Māori who live in Hamilton—that’s how they’re treated by their members over there.

💬 Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. That member made a reference to Hamilton and I never even made the comment that the member was talking about, so I ask him to withdraw and apologise.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, he didn’t actually—

💬 Hon David Bennett: He mentioned Hamilton and pointed at me.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. I was about to refer the member back to the topic of his speech, but, in fairness, he did not refer to the actual member by name. But I would ask the Hon Kelvin Davis to stick to the topic. It has nothing to do with Hamilton and what Māori people who live in Hamilton might think.

There was a reference to the Labour Māori caucus and the way that Amy Adams portrayed something—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, it’s the Hon Amy Adams.

The Hon Amy Adams portrayed something that she knows nothing about, and then there was a comment made that talking about Māori issues and talking about the way that we as the Māori caucus support our people is arrogant. As soon as we stand up and start explaining our cultural norm, our cultural perspectives, and how we like to do things, how we like to support our people, how we supported Meka Whaitiri in her conversations with the Prime Minister, all of a sudden it’s called arrogance.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: What about the victim? What about the Māori victim?

Well, there’s the most Māori person in the National Party caucus, who, I believe, was a woodwork teacher, and now he’s lecturing us and telling us how Māori have to operate.

So, as I’ve said, the National Party again are barking at every car—and there’s the Hon Gerry Brownlee barking. There are more barks over there than at your average Crufts dog show, barking at every car. They have absolutely no idea about the way we operate in the Labour Party and the support that we gave to Meka Whaitiri as a Māori member of Parliament, because our caucus, our Māori caucus, bases the way we act on tikanga, and that tikanga that we displayed there was just to go and support her in a time of need, and that’s a very Māori way to do things.

The topic of the conversation—in fact, in terms of us talking with the Prime Minister about Meka’s situation, we were basically there to say “We are there to support Meka Whaitiri as a person.”, and there’s nothing dishonourable and nothing to hide around that. We were just there simply to support her as a colleague and as a person, in a very, very stressful time, and that’s something that we are very, very proud of. For them to characterise it as anything else other than us being there to support a colleague is outrageous at the very least, but, again, it just goes to show how little they know about the Māori things, and we as Māori shouldn’t have to justify the way we operate.

As I’ve said, the Prime Minister has been firm, she has been fair, and she has been decisive in dealing with our colleague Meka Whaitiri. She wanted Meka Whaitiri to be able to have her say, which is natural justice. She wanted to see what the independent investigator had to say, and then she made her decision based on the evidence that was put in front of her. There were some things that were contested; there were some things that were not contested. On the things that were not contested, the Prime Minister made her decision to stand down Meka Whaitiri.

Just as a final thought, I’d just like to acknowledge—and I’ll just quickly spin into Māori here: E mihi whānui atu ki te whānau o Meka Whaitiri, mōhio ana mātou ngā taimahatanga kei runga i ōna pokowhiwhi, ngā pokowhiwhi o te whānau. Ka tuku atu mātou ō mātou aroha ki a rātou i tēnei tāima taumaha, nā reira huri rauna tēnā koutou katoa.

[I broadly acknowledge the family of Meka Whaitiri, we know of the burdens that she is shouldering, that the family is shouldering. We send our love to them at this difficult time; therefore greetings to all of you here.]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, I’m going to start by thanking the Speaker himself for his ruling earlier on in this debate, because having listened to some of the debate, one can only say “How rich! How bizarre!” To launch a debate from that side, the Hon Amy Adams, criticising the Prime Minister, judging and condemning this Government, using words such as “deceive”, “deception”, “diving”, “ducking”, “obfuscating”, “dodging”, to preach, to start this debate off from that side of the House, leading that party on a question of values—I just want to thank the Speaker for saying that those questions need and deserve to be addressed by this side of the House. How bizarre!

You know, it is one thing to preach leadership skills. It’s one thing to criticise someone else for not displaying the character, the traits of leadership that oneself aspires to achieve, but it’s totally ridiculous when one has demonstrated, in the short term that one has been the leader of a party, that one actually can’t live up to those very things themselves. What do I point to, to justify that comment? Mr Bridges is famous now for saying in this House, when he was challenging the Prime Minister about her leadership skills, that he would simply look people in the eye and ask them the question. Well, it begs the obvious question: Mr Bridges, have you demonstrated that—given the criticisms here today in this debate—by fronting every one of your 50-plus MPs, looking them in the eye and asking them the question, “Did you leak that information on me?” The clear answer is no, he hasn’t, and he won’t, because he doesn’t want to know the answer. In fact, we could save everybody a whole lot of time if we just gave him the answer that we know already as to who actually leaked that information on him.

If it’s about leadership, if it’s about challenging the Prime Minister, I have a couple of things to say. The Prime Minister has disproven already the criticisms that were levelled at her when she took this office and took this post of leading the coalition Government. She has proven herself to be considered, she has proven herself to be fair, and she has proven that at the end of the day she will be decisive. Having got to know her, I would say that she is also human, and she understands the price that people pay when a final decision has to be made. I take my hat off to the Prime Minister, and I would say the Prime Minister has done precisely what is expected of her. She’s had a complaint levelled; true. She’s had an investigation done. She’s received a report, noted clearly that facts presented are disputed. She understands the concept of natural justice. She’s made a decision and Meka Whaitiri has accepted it.

I guess one of the things that we will take heart from is that the door is still open. Now, I’ve already heard some criticism from the Opposition side as to why the door should still be open. Well, I’m waiting to hear from the Hon Dr Nick Smith: why was the door open for him when he was accused and sacked for abusing his office to help a close friend? Why was the door left open for people like Maurice Williamson? And if John Key in those days found it necessary to sack Mr Smith, why did he consider it appropriate to bring Mr Smith back? I guess some people, some leaders, have some skills that some people have yet to aspire to achieve, and that’s quite demonstrable in the House right now, given the behaviour of the Leader of the Opposition and his erstwhile colleague the Hon Amy Adams.

From the New Zealand First side, this is a sad time. We have come to know Meka Whaitiri—and I know Meka Whaitiri—as a very honourable person. I have to make a declaration of a conflict of extended interest, in that I am extended whanaunga by virtue of the fact that I am Ngati Porou, by virtue of the fact that I am Whakatōhea, and by virtue of the fact that I am Ngāti Kahungunu. But let me tell the members of this House: I heard nothing but high praise for Meka Whaitiri in all the years that I was involved with Treaty settlements, because she was also a lead negotiator in a Treaty settlement, just like I was. I have heard nothing but positivity and praise for her as a leader when she was a CEO.

There are many of us in the Wairarapa, in the Tararua—Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Rangitāne, Ngati Porou, Whakatōhea—who have nothing but high praise for Meka Whaitiri. We are thinking right now of her family. We think right now of her children. We think right now of the difficult time that she’s gone through and what she will go through, but we look forward to that day when some consideration is given to potentially reinstating her, because she has far too much to offer to let that slide. Things happen. Incidents happen. They’re challenged. That side of the House knows more than any other political party in the Chamber right now how frequently that can happen. In fact, there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 names—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Helps to be innocent—it helps to be innocent.

—that can be dragged out, and sometimes that’s the way things go here. And I acknowledge the Hon Judith Collins right now, who knows. There are some members on that side of the Chamber who know well, and they probably won’t say a great deal over time. There are other members who will seek to make political gain. Good—that’s the way this House rolls, that’s the way politics rolls, but I would just like people to ponder and consider for a while two simple things: the facts around the assertions are disputed. There are families on both sides of this issue. Meka Whaitiri is probably paying the heaviest price one could pay, particularly when you consider how we all aspire, from the Opposition benches, to finally get to this side of the House and have a ministerial warrant to be able to do the things we truly believe need to be done. Well, Meka has paid a price. Our sympathies go out to her.

Our respect to the Prime Minister is 100 percent behind her. Those of us who have, on occasion, been subject to some pretty vicious attacks, and I can put my hand up as being one of those people—not from the Government benches, actually, in those days. It was actually from officials behind the scenes who played dirty pool, dirty politics, and I landed up in hospital with a heart attack. That’s something I’m terribly embarrassed about, because I considered my body was tougher than that, but sometimes these things get to you in ways that one does not imagine. I know right now how Meka Whaitiri is feeling, I know how her family is feeling, I know how her caucus is feeling, and I know how the Government and my side are feeling. Our sympathies go to her. Our support is unreserved.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: What about a word for the victim?

We look forward to going—the victim? Like we say, the alleged victim, as far as we know—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Alleged?

—and I have not seen—well, Mr Brownlee, lots of allegations have been thrown at many of us in this House over the years, and until they are proven, as Mr Brownlee knows himself from charges that have been levelled against him, then they are simply allegations. If they are then disputed in the court, there are two sides of the story.

So the Prime Minister has seen a situation that had to be dealt with. She has done so. She has the unreserved support of New Zealand First, and we will move forward. Meka Whaitiri has paid a price. She has our undying love and support, and we will move forward. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

What a very nice contribution from the Hon Ron Mark. I think it is a good time to think about Meka Whaitiri and her family, but I also think it’s a good time to think about the victim in this matter—as has been noted, an alleged victim. Well, actually, if this was a Minister on this side of the House, there would be no way that the Labour Party or anyone on the other side of the House would say that was an alleged victim.

I think it would’ve been nice if the Labour Party and their friends had thought about Todd Barclay as they hounded him out of Parliament. He was not a Minister, he did not have a ministerial warrant; he was a kid in his 20s, and whatever the alleged mistake was, none of it involved assault.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Bill English knew—Bill knew!

No one alleged assault. And the Hon Shane Jones, who has now piped up—well, I think he knows, but of course, he was, in fact, the person who had done something he shouldn’t do.

I’ve heard today a lot of names dished about by the Hon Kelvin Davis—and I say “honourable” with some trepidation.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: All members are honourable.

This is the deputy leader of the Labour Party. All he can do is throw mud.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Is he?

He apparently is the deputy leader of the Labour Party. So he throws mud, and when there is no mud, he makes mud and then he throws it. He would have to be the most incompetent deputy leader even the Labour Party’s ever had—even worse than Andrew Little was when he was the leader of the Labour Party—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: What a hilarious speech!

No, “Mr 23 Percent”. So when we look at this particular sacking of Meka Whaitiri, why did it take so long? It took so long because the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern was not capable of making the decision on it.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: How was Shanghai? Tell us about that. How was Shanghai?

You know, we’ve got a Minister of Justice, in the Hon Andrew Little, who—all he wants to do is, again, throw mud. See, that’s the problem for the Labour Party: they’re so used to being in Opposition, they got themselves so into that point, that they cannot possibly come back to what’s important. In this case, what’s important is the victim.

So we’ve got a staff member, supposedly seconded into Meka Whaitiri’s office, and who gets to investigate? Well, Ministerial Services. So Ministerial Services are investigating a Cabinet Minister. I’m not sure how that works. How does Ministerial Services investigate a Cabinet Minister? Ministerial Services do not actually appoint a Minister—they do not appoint a Minister. They’re not there to check what the Minister is doing. They’re there to serve the Minister. So we’ve got a Cabinet Minister being investigated by Ministerial Services. There’s something entirely wrong with this. If this is an assault, this matter should have been referred to the New Zealand Police. If the victim did not want to give evidence to the police, because she did not want Meka Whaitiri to end up with a conviction or to go through that stress, you have to wonder why. Why? What else has been said to this victim? What has happened to her?

Now, the Hon Kris Faafoi, who, many people know, I’ve been pushing for some time to be a Cabinet Minister—me and many other people. He still needs to do something to show why he shouldn’t be. What he said on The AM Show on Friday, on TV3, was that we should be careful about this—we should be careful about this assault. And I said, “Well, what’s there to be careful about?” And he said, and I thought this was stunning, “There’s another person involved.” So there’s a victim involved—an alleged victim, he said. Well, actually, how come we’re not standing up, as a Parliament, for this victim? People don’t get bruising because they were spoken to harshly. They don’t get shoved out a door or assaulted in an office because they were spoken to nastily. And how can anybody possibly think that that’s OK behaviour?

Now, we’ve heard that, yes, there are always two sides to everything. Every abuser says that, actually. Everyone says, “I was upset that day; therefore I hit my spouse.” or “I hit somebody else.” They all say that. But let’s just think about this again. This is a person who—we don’t know what’s happened to the victim. We don’t know if anyone’s looked after the victim. What we know is that Meka Whaitiri had a series of staff members who came into her office in those relatively short months she was a Minister—about nine or 10 months—and they all left. We’ve heard that seven staff members left. It’s really hard to get sacked in a Minister’s office. Most of us who have been Ministers know that it’s so good to have good staff always trying their best and, actually, the last thing you want is to have that sort of disruption. Also, you don’t want to ruin people’s careers, because we know that if a staff member gets sacked from a Minister’s office or shoved out of a Minister’s office in some way, it could affect their career.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: You should have thought about that when you were sacking public officials in your time.

And it’s all very well for Andrew Little to shout out, but name one public official who I—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Oh, don’t worry; they’ll be asked. Don’t worry.

Name one. And the answer is: none. Because, actually, that’s one of the reasons why Ministers who actually have good reputations with their staff protect them.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: That member’s conduct was a disgrace.

When I think about Andrew Little and what he’s saying—he is somebody who had to apologise to me in court for defaming me. So everything that Andrew Little says now, I’ve noticed, is always under parliamentary privilege, because he’s had to do that. And he didn’t even pay his own legal fees. Did you know that? He didn’t. He got his caucus to do it. Couldn’t even front up with his own legal fees to defend himself.

So I’m not going to talk too much about some of the people who have exited from the Labour Party. I’m not going to talk much about some of them—I’ve got a whole list of them here—because, actually, that is only falling into the trap of attacking people like Darren Hughes and David Benson-Pope and Lianne Dalziel—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Tell us about Shanghai!

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Can I just remind—[Interruption] Excuse me, but I’d just remind the Minister of Justice that a barrage of constantly repeating the same thing—I’ve said the same to the Hon Shane Jones—is not acceptable interventions.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s ironic, isn’t it, the Minister of Justice?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. That’s not helpful.

We’re not going to go down the track of going on about why they were sacked or left or whatever, because, actually, it’s not about them; it’s about this particular instance.

What was it that was so important around Meka Whaitiri? And we’ve heard it today. It was, essentially, the Māori caucus of the Labour Party who went to see Jacinda Ardern to say, “You know, we like Meka.” Actually, that is a matter of weakness in many ways, because if you have to go down that path of saying “Well, we like Meka Whaitiri.”, that’s actually not good enough. It’s not about that. It’s about: did she physically assault a staff member in her office to the point that this person—(1) did it happen? (2) Did she bully people? Did she bully staff members? Seven people leaving within a year probably suggests that there wasn’t a happy life going on there.

So let’s hear from Meka Whaitiri about this. We haven’t heard a thing from Meka Whaitiri. She was taken out from Parliament, avoided Parliament, and was apparently paid on full ministerial salary while this was all going on. We’re told she was busy in her electorate. Well, I don’t know what she was doing in her electorate, because it certainly wasn’t getting any coverage. But, actually, why can’t we hear from Meka Whaitiri about this? If she wants to come forward and tell us all what happened, why she feels she’s been badly treated, let’s hear from her, because if she was still a Minister, we should be able to ask those questions. But, actually, we haven’t been able to, because she was taken away out of question time and out of Parliament for weeks while this was all ongoing, and yet she was paid on full salary.

When we think about how the Prime Minister has handled this—well, we all know that she got tremendously criticised about the slackness and the months that it took over Clare Curran. It took months and months and months, and finally she had to do something, and then instantly we see Meka Whaitiri suddenly on the chopping block. That was obvious, that she would have to be dealt with, because of the criticism in the media and in the public about these constant non-turnings up, not answering, like Clare Curran. The Prime Minister has made decisions. It’s her ministry; she gets to make those decisions, not us. But what she’s saying now is that if there’s an allegation of assault, she’ll investigate it. If the investigation says, yes, it did happen, and the former Minister or Minister says, “I’m not sure about that.” or “It didn’t happen.”, well, she’ll still just open the door, let them come back, and who knows what else she’s going to accept.

Debate interrupted.