Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
[Volume:634;Page:5431] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 The member who has just resumed his seat has become more and more shrill more and more strident more and more florid more and more repetitious and more and more wrong. Labour does not believe it is fair or proper or natural justice to change the rules after the event. We do not believe it is reasonable to change the rules retrospectively or to reinterpret the rules retrospectively. That is not OK in terms of legislation and it is not OK in terms of rule making. Furthermore the Labour Party—and every other political party in the House—undertook similar or exactly similar spending in 2002 as it did in 2005. That spending was validated by the Auditor-General. Indeed as it happened it was validated by the same Auditor-General who is the Auditor-General today. 
In 2002 Labour had a pledge card; in 2002 National had a pledge pamphlet. They were both deemed acceptable after the event by the Auditor-General. In 2005 Labour had another pledge card and the National Party made no such expenditure. The reasons for that I will explain in a minute. So the parliamentary funding that applied in 2002 and that was OK in 2005 was applied in an exactly similar way by the Labour Party yet the Auditor-General has a draft opinion which was that things are not as they should be—as if they were as they should be in 2002. You see there were rule changes between 2002 and 2005. 
My colleague Steve Maharey has pointed to one of the rule changes—that is the addition of a parliamentary crest. What he has not done is to point to the other rule change which was the more substantive change but it loosened the rules and did not tighten them. That is to say if the 2005 rules are to be interpreted as the draft Auditor-General’s report would have us interpret them then the 2002 rules must be even more tightly interpreted and National’s 2002 expenditure—and for that matter Labour’s 2002 expenditure—was even further outside the rules than the 2005 expenditure was. 
Why is this issue of rule-change such a confusion to the public? It is because the National Party wants it to be. Dr Brash who either did not read the rule changes or decided himself to interpret them according to how he wishes went on the attack saying that the changes to the rules made Labour’s 2005 expenditure illegal. It actually did the opposite. It loosened the rules for 2005 compared with those in 2002. 
Why has National decided to confuse the issue in other respects? Why is the National Party saying the Auditor-General sent a report to parties in June 2005 regarding a tightening-up of the rules before the election? 
 Actually the Auditor-General did no such thing. That report is public. The report is clear even at the bottom of the first page of the foreword that the Auditor-General did not intend that there be any changes for the 2005 election because he expressly asked that it be looked at after the election and that if there was to be a new framework it be developed after the election. So there is the National Party running confusion about rules and running confusion about the Auditor-General’s 2005 report. Why? It is because National wants to create confusion. 
This is the same National Party that voted for the 1993 Electoral Act provision that stated that if people donated under $10000 they could remain anonymous but if they donated above $10000 to any political party they must put their name into the public arena. National voted for that legislation in 1993—I was on the select committee that devised that legislation. National then set up trusts to frustrate that legislation so much so that 92 percent of its entire budget went through that laundering process. It is not OK to vote for legislation in the House then to set out actively to frustrate it in reality.