Joyce Steven: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Joyce Steven: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8711. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 If that was not so sad it would be funny. I mean that really was an appalling attempt to pull out the old leaf of the Labour Party playbook which is that when you are in desperate trouble when your leader is in a bit of a difficulty then you reheat an old allegation from months ago drag it out and pretend it is new stuff—new stuff from Mr Robertson but only because his leader is in trouble of his own. That is the reality of it because the Labour Party has got a problem. It is a shrill out-of-touch Opposition party and it has decided that what it needed after getting a trouncing in the 2011 election was a fresh public face to speed it back into office in 2014. It wanted a short cut. It did not want to change any of its policies. In fact it did not want to change any of its long-standing members. What it wanted was a short cut back to the Treasury benches so Labour members cast around the caucus. They found a guy. He could not actually string several words together but they found him and they said: “He can be the modern face of the party. Send him out there.” They got him to talk about the fact that he was not a politician that he was an anti-politician and that he would not play gotcha politics and would actually just talk about what New Zealanders wanted. And it did not work. He did not say anything. He did not do anything. He was a rabbit that they could not get to run. 
So very quickly the old Labour Party reasserted itself and started getting him to say some things that were palpably going to be contradicted and this one is the one that has caught him this week. On Thursday 26 July last year he said in regards to John Banks that because he had forgotten something: “On the basis of his memory lapse alone John Banks is not fit to serve as a Minister.” That is the standard that this Mr Shearer set. Then of course we have the issue of the last few days when quite palpably he cannot meet that standard himself because he has had to go out there and correct his pecuniary register. There is no problem with that. Members do make mistakes with their pecuniary register and they have to go and fix it but this member has made the mistake 4 years in a row. For 4 years in a row he has not actually got around to doing it and weirdly he was able to tell the Inland Revenue Department he had this offshore bank account for each of those 4 years as he filed his tax return. So he did not remember it for his pecuniary register but he remembered it for the Inland Revenue Department. And that I am sorry is very hard to believe. 
But OK maybe he is the sort of person who has a lazy $50k lying around somewhere—maybe he is—but if that is the case then why will he not tell us the amount that is in the account? That would actually help us understand whether he was just forgetful. Maybe it is OK to forget $50k but is it OK to forget let us say over $100k as he sort of admitted last night on Radio Live? Or is it maybe $200k or $300k? He is saying it is between him and his family. What he is saying is that it is embarrassing and he does not want to talk about it any more. So his problem is he is hoist by his own petard. Nobody is saying it is the world’s worst thing except he was the guy who turned round last year and said of John Banks that on a memory lapse alone he should not be in Parliament. He also said by the way that John Key was in trouble because he had a brain fade. Well this is the biggest brain fade I have seen in 4 years in this Parliament because it is not once; it is twice it is three times it is four times. 
But that is not so bad because the other attempt of the Leader of the Opposition has been to play gotcha politics on Office of the Auditor-General reports and has that not ended badly—has that not ended badly? He has been spending his time harrumphing away about the convention centre report and going on about how it is terrible. Then weirdly—not the same issues—another report came out that sort of suggests that actually there was a “hear no evil see no evil speak no evil” former associate immigration Minister who did not ask why it was that he disagreed with officials who did not want to know and who did not ask the questions. He was sent in to do one citizenship application which weirdly was for a donor of the Labour Party. Then that person miraculously got his citizenship and the next day was presented with a citizenship ceremony at Parliament. And somehow that is OK—that is just fine—whereas compared with the convention centre that is a million miles off being fine. That is absolute rubbish and it is—