Peters WinstonRt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I just say that what's astonishing about this debate today is two things. First the National Party will not tell us who its informant is or should we tell the country now? That's number one.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I'm not quite sure that that is to the subject that is on the floor at the moment.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I know what the subject is. The subject is—DEPUTY SPEAKER: The subject—the matter of public urgent debate—is the Minister's decision.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That's right—about Mr Sroubek being allowed to stay and now having that order reversed.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I am positive what I'm talking about and I've only opened my mouth for the first sentence.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well I would like you to address the issue of public importance.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well you will Madam Deputy Speaker in the fullness of time. But I will not be browbeaten into conducting the debate the way you want it. Now—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well actually you will because I'm the Speaker. And I am asking—Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: You've got to have a reason.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's exactly right. I've explained that to you. If you would like to elaborate then do so. But relate it to the matter of public importance.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I'll elaborate because I need time to do that. I can't get it out in the one sentence. What's interesting about this debate is two-fold two things. One is: who is the informant behind the information that's coming out in the debate today which is a perfectly reasonable question; and the second one is: was there any evidence ever given to the Minister of Immigration of the person in the case before him having travelled back to the Czech Republic? And the answer to that is no. At no point did he get the critical piece of information.And here's the other thing—here's the other thing. This man lied from the time he first came to New Zealand because had he confessed of that application in its honesty and not come in under an assumed name then he wouldn't have ever been here in the first place. What we've got here of course though is a fascinating argument by the National Party whose Minister after 2014 never made one of those decisions by himself. He left it to the bureaucracy. And guess what the Minister on this side of the House inherited? The very bureaucracy that saw a number of people get into this country who had the following aspects about their behaviour. What's astonishing about this here is that you had all sorts of people coming to this country left here by for example the then Minister Mr Woodhouse and they had these following features: sex offenders; rapists; serial sex offenders again; a woman who killed her husband; a man who killed—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would ask the member to come to the point of the urgent debate.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: My point is to lay out the background of the decision-making process which the Minister today has said is unsatisfactory and he's going to fix it.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah I accept that but that is a minor point. Would the member come to—Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well it might be in your—look if you're not a lawyer you might think that but you're not.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The cheek of it.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah I do have the cheek because I am in the Speaker's chair. Now I am being very tolerant and I am asking the member to come and debate here—I've stopped the clock—the matter of public urgent debate which is the Minister's decision. Now you can refer to the process—I accept that—but that is a minor part of the debate on the floor.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. This is a 10-minute response from this side of the House. That means one has the full 10 minutes to go at the various aspects of this case which led to this decision which has now been reviewed—over those full 10 minutes. For you to say it's a minor matter—with the greatest respect what are your qualifications or more importantly the Standing Orders or Speakers' rulings which give you evidence to say that?DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is really testing the role of the Speaker in this case. I have stopped the clock. I informed the member of that. In this debate the Minister has the right of response to layout the case as he has done. I'm merely asking you sir to stick to the debate on the floor.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well I've just ruled on that point of order. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes I know.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are you challenging it?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: But I want—point of clarification. I'm not challenging you. I'm asking you now to lay out what would be the areas that one could cover in a debate of this kind because this debate is about the propriety of a Minister's decision and that Minister's been asked to resign. I'm putting up a defence and over the next 10 minutes I intend to lay it out as to how we got there in the first place. What matters to me of course is how did this man get to New Zealand in—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well that's no longer part of the point of order. Is your point of order finished?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No no—I want you to lay it out. If you're going to give that judgment you describe—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —what the criteria might be.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down. I don't have to. I don't have to. I have ruled. You now have seven minutes and if you wish to take advantage of that I would suggest you get on with it.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I have got on with it and I'm getting on with it and I'll carry on getting on with it. For example if you've got—Hon Maggie Barry: Make sense then. Try and make sense.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well no one could make sense to you because you haven't got the intelligence or the background.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well don't bring me into it.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: You've had a grandfather killed in a road rage attack and several rapists and Mr Woodhouse from 2014 never handled one case. So here you've got the preparation of a case going before the Minister. It's part of how the decision was made and how it was erroneously made at the Minister's own confession. The reality of the matter is that he never ever saw any evidence.Hon Dr Nick Smith: He never read the file.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Look the file did not have it on it. That's what the Minister just said. [Interruption] No the Minister said that nothing in the ministerial file had any reference with respect to going back to the Czech Republic. He did say it was a part of the court documentation which had not been prepared by the ministry officials. Those are the facts so here comes the Minister—and look I was the Acting Prime Minister at the time who said that the Minister had rightly put caveats on his decision. He had put caveats on his decision but the biggest caveat on this decision has always been that if you lie to New Zealand's officialdom in a passport or a residency case then your long-term permission to be here is always open to question. The moment a discovery like that is made the original decision to allow someone to stay can be rescinded. That's in our law. That's the betting matter that I want to put in front of the House today and we are not going to be browbeaten out of putting the facts out there just because it doesn't suit somebody's ill-formed narrative.Chris Penk: What about—maybe he filled out the forms wrong like you do.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can I just say to that member that there is a court case coming up in November next year and we'll find out who's right or wrong. Mr Penk you know so little about these matters. The best thing that member could do would be to hold his mouth shut breathe through his nose for at least three more terms and he might do something. Here and now nobody knows what he's doing in the first place here. Now back to my point.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's it. I'm sorry. The member's time has expired. Now I have given plenty of warnings but that is nothing to do with the topic.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I just say that you made a ruling at the beginning. You were asked to give some clarity as to how you were making it. You regard the parts of the debate which go to the very core of this decision-making as being irrelevant. I think that's a darned disgrace.DEPUTY SPEAKER: And on that note I'll ask the member to leave the House.Rt Hon Winston Peters withdrew from the Chamber.