Cosgrove Clayton: General Debate 
Cosgrove Clayton: General Debate 
[Volume:621;Page:16332] 
CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I say to that member: better a pocket rocket than a big lump of lard! Somebody accused me of being a bulldog. Well I say: better a bulldog than the sausage dog or lapdog as that member is. I say that if we are going to characterise Mr Tamihere if we are going to assassinate his character—not after the evidence is examined but before—and if we are going to pre-empt an inquiry then I believe that it is only fair to examine the integrity and credibility of the mud-slinger. 
John Key 
: Where are the others in Labour? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: It is OK Mr Speaker. I do not mind his interjections; I love them because it shows what a plonker he is. As Mr John Armstrong—a pretty eminent journalist I must say—said in the  
New Zealand Herald  
this morning— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I know that you are from times slightly before ours but I want to bring some decorum into the House. Calling Mr John Key a plonker I think is probably not appropriate. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I withdraw and apologise. It is not actually a matter of what John Armstrong said in the paper this morning—“saying that anything naughty Mr Tamihere was found to have done would somehow be mitigated by the naughty things Opposition MPs are supposed to have done.”—although I know the point he is trying to make; but it is only fair in order to examine the veracity or lack of veracity of the evidence put forward to also examine the character or lack of character of the mud-slinger to ascertain the quality of the mud. 
I say to Mr Hide that getting him to reveal his history is about as tough as asking Dracula to give blood—it just ain’t gonna happen! I have raised questions as Dr Cullen has—and we have an admission in the media from Mr Hide—about his business payments from his surrogate father Mr Gibbs. It is not an offence or against the Standing Orders as we have said for a member of this Parliament on exit from a job to say: “Hey 120 or 150 grand just ain’t enough. I can’t buy too many pies with that.” It is not an offence for a member of the public to say: “Look we want you to go to Parliament because we think you’re a good joker. We’ll give you 50 grand a year extra.” It would be an offence of course only if the member took the money and then—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am rather enjoying this but I do not think that it is acceptable for the Hon Trevor Mallard to call out that a member is on the take. I think he should be asked to withdraw and apologise and I am surprised that you did not act Mr Speaker given that you must have heard it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Let me put it this way: I choose sometimes not to hear interjections because then they do not get put into  
Hansard 
. But now that attention has been drawn to it the member will withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: It would be an offence only if the money were tagged to an action. Mr Hide has been asked on many occasions whether he is receiving extra payments but he will not disclose that. That is the character of the man. If we look at the character of Mr Hide we see that he will not disclose to this day—I ask him to spell “Fiji”—why he has not come clean and assisted the authorities in terms of who paid air fares and accommodation and who arranged invitations to a dodgy investment conference run by an American felon. That is not an accusation to say that Mr Hide is corrupt. It may be an accusation to say that he was duped. That is OK; we all get duped—he does more than most. But to this day there have been no answers from Mr Hide on the subject of Fiji or on pecuniary interests. There are no answers as to why he voted for the Government Administration Committee’s 1998 recommendation for MPs to declare their pecuniary interests—and then voted against it. 
We have a wonderful quote—one that again goes to the character of the person. In the  
North and South  
issue of May 2002 Mr Hide talked about the kind of friends he has. I know that Mr Henderson’s name has already been used. Mr Hide in illustrating the kinds of friends he likes to be with says: “I liked the guys”—this is interesting—“all of them drunks crooks thieves wife-beaters and fighters but I enjoyed them immensely.” So I have a question for Mr Hide. I would be grateful to know which of the preceding five categories his close friend Mr David Henderson fits into. I would be grateful if he would elucidate and tell us. Then he went on to say—and this goes to the character of the person throwing the mud—again talking about the friends those wife-beaters crooks thieves fighters and drunks: “If this is the way the game goes then I’ll play it …”.