Shirley Ken: Voting — Correction; General Debates 
Shirley Ken: Voting — Correction; General Debates 
[Volume:608;Page:5701] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 I would like to stress the importance of veracity—old-fashioned truthfulness—from the executive wing of any Government. When Ministers or officials of any Government fail—in public interviews or in the Parliament of that particular country—to be fully truthful then that is the precursor to loss of trust and without trust there is no integrity. Without truth openness and transparency the very democracy we cherish is placed in danger. This week in the House that truthfulness has been brought into question. It appears that Ministers of the Crown under pressure do make it up. They are prepared to expand the truth or conversely to be very economic with the truth to the point where truth and the meaning of truth are lost. I put it to all members that when we face that situation democracy is undermined. 
The Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) was actually introduced by this Government. It did not go to a select committee. It was a conscious decision of the executive of Government to put it in this bill to introduce it into this Parliament under urgency and bypass the select committee process. What we had was the Prime Minister of this Government—the Prime Minister of the country actually but the head of this Government—telling the nation on an interview with Paul Holmes on Newstalk 1ZB that the references to “ancestral landscapes” and “spiritual resources” were inserted by the select committee. That just cannot be because that bill did not go to the select committee. It is true that the previous bill the Resource Management Amendment Bill contained those references—which I believe are very offensive—but that committee actually had a Government majority. It was a Labour majority so whichever way one wants to cut the mustard that was the policy decision of that Labour Government—to introduce nebulous terms like “ancestral landscapes” “ancestral lands” and “spiritual resources” into our planning laws. When challenged on that it is saying that various papers came over and did not make reference to them. 
Well I am sorry but the Prime Minister said that on Monday this week her department requested that the Ministry for Culture and Heritage supply her with all the papers relating to the definition of heritage in that Act. It was then told that the references to “ancestral landscapes” “spiritual resources” and “cultural landscapes” were not mentioned. They are contained in the definition in the Act. That is an extraordinary situation. Today I invited the Prime Minister to table those papers so that Opposition members could check the veracity of that statement. What did we get? We got obfuscation—“I’m sort of looking at the papers.” Having claimed that she had researched them thoroughly and no references were contained in them we are now told that they are sort of being examined and pored over and will be released in good time. Why were those papers not tabled today? That challenges the very veracity—and certainly the openness and transparency—of this Government. Government members are sneaky and deceitful. 
We have had numerous incidents when this Government in a corner has resorted to deceit and sneakiness to try to get off the hook. “Paintergate” was a classic example of that. That was a dishonest act by our Prime Minister—there is no question about it. Last week in the House the Prime Minister made a claim that “everyone”—in fact I have the words here—was looking at whether there was going to be “a Franco-German-Russian link-up with good links through to the Chinese.” She said “everyone” but she was challenged to name one. She avoided two questions to name one then when pushed said: “It’s perfectly clear to any student of the English language that ‘everyone’ is used in the generic sense.” So everyone becomes nobody.