English Bill: Estimates Debate —  
English Bill: Estimates Debate —  
[Volume:610;Page:7150] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I rise to address page 1040 of the Estimates volume II—vote Prime Minister and Cabinet. I wonder what value we are getting for the $7.104 million for the purchase of “free and frank advice”. After all this is the money that pays for the idiots who make up the excuses the Prime Minister always makes when she gets into trouble. This $7 million is being spent on the people who “weren’t conscious” to quote their Prime Minister—the people she blamed for the debacle over ancestral landscapes appearing in the resource management legislation. 
These are the officials who were blamed for the Government’s reversal of its economic goal of achieving a place in the top half of the OECD by 2011. We spent $7 million on people who believed the Prime Minister when she said that that was what she wanted to achieve. We spent $7 million on people who wrote a foreword including that goal which the Prime Minister signed but did not read. So why do we waste $7 million on people who sit around listening to what the Prime Minister says when by now they should have learnt two things: first she never really means it and secondly if she is caught out they get it in the neck? 
Simon Power 
: It’s someone else’s fault. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It is someone else’s fault. I ask the Prime Minister this question. Are these the people who advised her to tell the New Zealand public that her Government would confirm that title to the seabed and foreshore belonged with the Government? And are they the people who gave her advice today to sidestep exactly the same question? I think they probably are and I think the blame will now be worn by them. People who work for hours and hours every day providing high-quality “free and frank advice” will now get it in the neck because the Prime Minister has backtracked on the most important commitment she has given to the New Zealand public in this term of Government and probably in the last term as well. 
What advice has the Prime Minister had from these “free and frank” advisers that has made her change her mind about the seabed and the foreshore? Will we now hear from her that she never really said it in the first place? With the economic goal she ended up saying: “Other people said it. We just adopted it.” Well I am willing to take the credit; I think all the Opposition parties are willing to take the credit for saying that first which the Prime Minister then picked up. Are we going to hear that she never really said it? Or will she say that officials lied to her that they gave her only some of the papers not all of the papers and that that is why she made an undertaking to the public which she has now backed down on and will not keep? Is that what she is going to say? Or is she going to say that no one was really “conscious” of the implications when that was agreed to and she made that remark to the public? It was all very careful. Are these the people who give the advice about the “Helenisms”—one-third truth two-thirds spin? Actually the Prime Minister of New Zealand has said only about two things on the seabed and the foreshore. She has been trying to be very careful. It is that vacuum of leadership that has made this issue so divisive. 
Are these the people who advised her not to say anything about Maori issues or the treaty? Why are we paying $7 million for “free and frank advice” on the treaty when the Prime Minister never says anything on it? She is the first Prime Minister in living memory to refuse to take up the challenge of speaking to New Zealand about treaty and Maori issues. Well I think the $7 million for advice on the treaty consists of officials saying to the Prime Minister: “Don’t say anything because it’s politically risky for you.” Every other Prime Minister in New Zealand has had that advice but every other one has taken his or her own counsel that this matter matters so much to New Zealand that its leader must speak on behalf of the unity of the nation. But this Prime Minister does not. She has taken the advice that the best thing to do is to go around the country providing $90-a-plate dinners for as many people as can be invited for free and then be offended when Maori expectations are raised. Did she get advice from officials that the Government’s habit of feeding Maori expectations on every matter in the civil service would mean that Maori did not expect anything from this Government over the foreshore claim? Of course she did not. She should have got that advice from experienced civil servants who know their way around these issues because they have served successive Governments with “free and frank advice”. 
I am asking the Prime Minister what advice on the treaty we are paying for. Just what advice on the seabed and the foreshore are we paying for if the Prime Minister has so little to say about them? Or is it the case that officials know that they should serve up only what will be palatable? Is that the case? Is it actually “free and frank advice”? If that were the case it would be quite exceptional in the civil service or in the wider community. Many people feel they cannot give this Government or this Prime Minister “free and frank advice” because they are likely to get it in the neck if the advice is something that this Government or this Prime Minister does not like—and a trail of wrecked careers stands as proof of that. 
I am asking the Prime Minister to tell us what advice she has got on those issues and how she has acted on them. I am asking her to tell us whether the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has advised her not to legislate to secure the Crown’s title to the seabed and the beaches. That is what she said she would do—unambiguously. That is unusual. Usually these things are done very ambiguously with a sort of slightly slippery statement in a press release then a background briefing about what it means so that the Prime Minister does not have to take full responsibility for everything that is said or so that the Minister of Finance the Deputy Prime Minister can get up here and say the press always gets it wrong. Every time we ask a question here that is what he says; we cannot rely on the reported comments of the Government on anything because the journalists are always wrong. 
Are these the same people who advise the Prime Minister not to answer parliamentary questions? Someone is giving her that advice; if not she must have thought of it herself. New Zealand has never had a Prime Minister less accountable to this Parliament. We saw that practice again today. Occasionally I am sure Prime Ministers have transferred questions they did not want to answer but they knew that if they kept doing that it would come to be seen as a sign of weakness. Because they could not keep doing it they faced the music. This Prime Minister has made a habit and an art form of not answering questions in Parliament—firstly by not accepting them but instead ducking for cover and allocating them to other Ministers so that they have to answer them; and secondly by the rigmarole we always have to go through such as happened today. I asked the Prime Minister a direct question about whether she will legislate to secure Crown title to the beaches and the seabed. We got no answer. Apparently it was good enough a month ago to tell a  
New Zealand Herald 
 reporter that the Government would do that but now that matter has to be kept secret from Parliament. 
Did the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet give her that advice? Did it say to her: “Actually you can’t meet that commitment. When you go to Parliament don’t answer the question.”? I do not think it did. I think the Prime Minister Helen Clark has adopted that strategy all on her own. That strategy will fail her.