Ardern Shane: General Debate 
Ardern Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:643;Page:13103] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 It is a sad day indeed for the New Zealand Parliament when one Opposition member after another has to rise and raise the issue of the employment by a Government department of a person who has no political aspirations to the best of my knowledge and who is totally neutral in regard to her political involvement. We have to rise in defence of the process that should be in place and that has been in place for a long time. But it is even worse when we are doing that with a Labour Government in power. 
Labour campaigned up and down the country prior to the 1999 election about how it would put in place law that protected the employment of individuals. The very foundations the Labour Party is built on are around protecting and looking after those who serve the public and who work in the public sector. 
I do not want to canvass everything that my senior colleagues have already canvassed but we saw today in the select committee a senior bureaucrat a senior public servant with over 30 years’ experience in the Public Service skipping and jumping across the top of pinheads because of the intimidation that has seeped through this Government—intimidation that has now been placed on public servants in this country. The only place we can look to blame for that is right at the head of the Government. We can go right to the top to the Prime Minister of New Zealand and the senior Ministers involved in the process. 
We have a woman Madeleine Setchell who was headhunted—we found out today—for a position. She declared her involvement with or link to the National Party—tenuous though it is. We should look at the facts around that link. Her partner is a former  
New Zealand Herald  
reporter who came to work for the National Party. I do not have a clue what his politics are but I would suggest to members that prior to his appointment to that position he probably favoured the Labour Party. I would not mind putting money on it that he has probably voted for Labour at least once twice or three times in his life until he saw the light and changed sides. 
He came to work for the National Party. He has no influence over what his partner’s politics might be and I defy members in this House to stand up and hand on heart tell us today that they all know exactly which way their partners have always voted right from the time they first voted. 
Jill Pettis 
: Shane you’ve been sniffing those tractor fumes too much. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: I would ask the members interjecting from the other side of the House whether it is right that a Government department goes out and headhunts somebody employs that person and then that person is down the road because the Minister says that he or she cannot work with that person and to get rid of that person and send him or her off. I ask whether that is right. 
You see it goes right to the heart of democracy. If we have a Government department that cannot give its Ministers information or advice without fear or favour then we have corruption. I have visited Nigeria along with a recently promoted Minister in the Labour Government. I tell members to look at what happens there. Because there is such a high level of Government control or fear in that country there is corruption. 
I say to Government members opposite that they should be ashamed of what has been reported today in the Hunn report. They should take immediate action to make sure that something similar to this incident never happens again. 
Let us look at some of the facts. Madeleine Setchell lost her job so she applied for another job with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. We would imagine that that would be a sensible thing to do given that she was headhunted initially. That is where she thought her best career opportunity lay. But Minister Anderton stepped in. He is not a member of the Labour Party—we all know that—but he has certainly had a long history with the Labour Government. He has been a member of the Labour Government and he has certainly been someone who has campaigned up and down the country to protect workers from the evil excesses of those to the right of centre. 
The report states that Mr Anderton told his chief executive that he did not think Ms Setchell was suitable for the job. I say that that it is wrong and that the Government is rotten to the core.