Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7552. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 Last week politics in this country witnessed one of the most tragic things that I think we could ever witness. We saw a Prime Minister who has for 18 months been prepared to tolerate behaviour from one of her members of Parliament that in my view was disgusting. She is the Prime Minister who would never have tolerated that behaviour from other Ministers in the past. When a Minister was caught drink-driving she was gone that day. When two Ministers were caught not even knowing at what address their house was they were both gone—Phillida Bunkle and Marian Hobbs were gone by lunchtime. When Lianne Dalziel was caught lying she was gone. When Dover Samuels had even an accusation made about him he was gone. What was the difference? In every one of those cases Helen Clark could afford just to boot them out and show she was in charge because they were not her majority. 
But then along came Taito Phillip Field and he was this Government’s majority. So what did Helen Clark do? When all of the revelations started emerging about 18 months ago she said Mr Field had done nothing wrong. Members should listen to this quote from the  
New Zealand Herald  
of 14 September 2005 as it is a purler: “I think the only thing he is probably guilty of is trying to be helpful to someone.” Yeah right! None of the things Mr Field had done had accumulated on him; it was just from 18 July when the Ingram report was released that things began to change. 
Members should remember this quote because I know they will forget some of this. Here is a heading from the  
New Zealand Herald  
dated 22 September: “Field inquiry gets nine days to complete report”. The Prime Minister wanted a real whitewash; she wanted a cracker of a whitewash. Instead of giving Noel Ingram a reasonable period she gave him 9 days to investigate a very complex matter. 
Well as we all know Noel Ingram did not take 9 days; he took 9 months to report. But he still had all sorts of limits put on him. He was not given the powers to call witnesses and to interrogate in a proper fashion. He came up with what I think is a partial whitewash. But how did Helen Clark respond to that? Helen Clark stated: “While the report does not find wrongdoing by Mr Field it does imply errors of judgment.” She said Mr Field had some matters to work through with the Labour leadership and the Labour whips and Michael Cullen stated: “But he works incredibly hard on behalf of his constituents. He has people coming to him from all over Auckland for assistance”—I bet he did! I bet he had people coming from all over Auckland for the sort of assistance he was offering—“not just in immigration cases but in many other cases.” I think we should start to inquire into some of those “other cases” as well. Dr Cullen stated: “He works harder on those matters than I suspect the entire National Party …”. I have to say that if it comes to using constituents to tile one’s house for almost subsistence level pay—if not for no pay at all—I agree that he does more of that than does the entire National Party. There is no doubt about it. Michael Cullen said in the urgent debate that he suspected that Mr Field was guilty only of working hard for his constituents. 
But then things started to change. It was not that Taito Phillip Field had done anything more or less or anything bad; we are still working with stuff he had done. But last Tuesday when Helen Clark gave her major speech to the House Taito Phillip Field somehow cut across it and somehow rained on her parade. It was not a problem that he had been corrupt had been doing things with constituents that were just unconscionable had not been paying minimum wages or had been doing all of the other things that Labour goes on and on about. All of that was all right. Helen Clark had excused all of that over and over again for 18 months. But then he did the unconscionable thing. He cut across her parade last Tuesday—and he was gone by lunchtime. “I am not having that” she said. In fact she actually stated: “You cannot have a situation where someone appears in the media cutting across my statement to Parliament as Prime Minister …”. There we go—it does not matter whether one is a crook one is corrupt or one is whatever else one is but one does not cut across her statement as Prime Minister. 
It gets better. On 13 February after all that had happened she stated: “I’ve made it clear for quite a long time that the behaviour was unacceptable”—