Brash Don: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
Brash Don: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
[Volume:621;Page:16239] 
Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 We are debating a very serious issue today and a series of very serious allegations. The first one is that Mr John Tamihere flagrantly misled the public. That is accusation No. 1. He had said that he would not take a golden handshake but at the same time he accepted a golden handshake that was at least $195000 and may have been closer to $300000. It was a blatant misleading of the public. That in itself should be sufficient to have this man resign from Cabinet and indeed resign from Parliament. 
The second accusation is that he may not have paid tax on this very substantial amount—an amount that if it was a gross pre-tax figure was about five times the average wage and if it was a net figure after tax it was about six or seven times the average wage. That is a huge amount of money on which he may not have paid tax. This is a very serious matter that in itself would suggest that Mr Tamihere should be out of Cabinet and probably out of Parliament. Then thirdly it is alleged that he failed to correctly file his electoral expenses return. If that is the case and if it is established that he has spent more than his statutory limit his election to the House is invalid. 
Each one of these three accusations is sufficient to have Mr Tamihere resign from Cabinet and indeed resign from Parliament. So first we have three very serious allegations made against a Minister of this Government. Then we have the matter of quite different standards being applied by the Prime Minister. This Prime Minister is someone who required Lianne Dalziel to resign from a ministerial position immediately it was established that she had misled the public. The Prime Minister said: “Off with her head!”. Now we have a Minister who on the face of it has transgressed in three serious matters and the Prime Minister seems to be saying that that is OK. 
It is the most flagrant example of this Government applying different standards to Maori Ministers than to non-Maori Ministers. That is a serious matter that I think this House should reflect on very carefully. Lianne Dalziel was out on her ear because she misled the public. John Tamihere has been asked to stand down while continuing to draw a salary and just to lie low for a time despite the fact that he may have misled the public may have failed to pay tax on a very large lump-sum amount and may have falsified his electoral expenses return. Those are very serious accusations. 
This is also the same Prime Minister who in 1999 said—when she was in Opposition of course—that Labour if in Government would apply new standards to the performance of Government and the performance of bureaucracy. Well we have new standards all right—a new low standard that exceeds anything that we saw in the previous decade. Indeed I cannot think of any case that is more serious than the one we are currently facing. It is a very serious accusation even leaving aside the fact that he may have been paid this money for doing things when he was in Parliament. 
The chairman of the Waipareira Trust has suggested that that was a misunderstanding and he was not really being paid to do things in the House and for the moment at least I accept that comment. But even without that comment there are three things any one of which would require him to resign if the Prime Minister had any sense of what was decent and appropriate for a Minister in a New Zealand Government. 
The next issue that worries me greatly is the nature of the inquiry established. I am not going to call into question the integrity of Douglas White QC but he has been asked to undertake an inquiry with very limited powers. Indeed we have the words of Sir Geoffrey Palmer a former Labour Prime Minister to confirm that. He said this morning on television: “I think it is also important to say that this is not a commission of inquiry. This is not a body that will hold public hearings. It does not have the power to compel evidence and to cross-examine people; it relies on the voluntary cooperation of the people about whom the inquiry has been launched.” 
What kind of inquiry is that? What kind of confidence can we have in the conclusions of that inquiry? Mr Douglas White QC has absolutely no statutory authority. He has absolutely no ability to subpoena witnesses or to subpoena documents or files; he has absolutely no ability to cross-examine witnesses; and he cannot look into any matter without the express permission of those being inquired into. Who does he report to? He reports to the Prime Minister and only to the Prime Minister. 
 The inquiry is effectively powerless and it is toothless. These allegations are so serious that we should have a proper commission of inquiry with the power to subpoena witnesses subpoena documents and subpoena files. This is a very serious matter. We run the risk that in 6 weeks’ time by late November we will have the results of this so-called inquiry and unfortunately we can have no confidence in the results of that inquiry at all. We need a proper commission of inquiry which has the appropriate authority to look into this very serious accusation. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Mallard may not regard this as a serious matter but it is one of the most serious accusations ever made against any Minister in this House. We have a QC who has no powers to investigate and no powers to subpoena. All he does is look at things that witnesses are willing to contribute; he has no power to subpoena at all. 
My final point is this. In response to a question I asked in the House earlier this afternoon about Mr Tamihere providing a written guarantee to the Prime Minister the Acting Prime Minister said that there had not been a written guarantee it was simply an oral guarantee that the Minister had given to the Prime Minister a few days ago. Let me quote from page 147 of Mr Tamihere’s own recently published autobiography. He states: “I gave the Prime Minister a written guarantee that I had done nothing at Waipareira that would embarrass her the party and most importantly my family. I gave her my Wanganui computer printout showing her my police record and gave her written authority to access any of my financial or employment records.” 
That is a written guarantee in anyone’s language and either Mr Tamihere was not quite fully accurate in his autobiography or the Acting Prime Minister was not quite accurate in his response to my question. On the face of it Mr Tamihere has given the Prime Minister a written guarantee that he has done nothing to embarrass the Government and it looks as if that is nothing like the truth. The public expects the Prime Minister to be consistent in her treatment of seriously offending Ministers and so far the public is seriously disappointed.