Bennett PaulaGENERAL DEBATEHon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business.So I've found one—I have found one person that supports the transport announcements that were made by the Government yesterday. [Interruption] No I've found one. I have found one that's celebrating it that's leaping up and is thinking it's fantastic and her name is Clare Curran. She is loving it. She is loving it—anything possible to take the headlines away.It has been a really busy week for the Government for the last couple of weeks—there's absolutely no two ways about it—and one of them must have been last week when they realised that actually what was going to happen was that we were going to have the chief executive and board members turning up to select committee tomorrow to correct it and possibly say all sorts of things about what's been going on for the last two or three weeks. Imagine how busy they've been trying to find somewhere for Clare Curran to be. Well they did it. They found somewhere. They have found some tenuous kind of link between TVNZ being at the Commonwealth Games and now the Minister needing to be—so kind of anything possible to get her out of the country so that they can possibly make sure that they can make their point well.That would all be kind of amusing if it actually wasn't so damned serious and it is serious because what we have is someone interfering with a State-owned broadcaster that actually prides themselves on their independence. What we have is someone that at very best did not give a full answer and has had to come back and correct it multiple times. What we now have every time questions are asked by the member Melissa Lee and others is that more and more comes out but it's not even forthcoming from the so-called Minister of open Government.So what we have now is someone who is saying I was so concerned that the record be corrected as soon as possible in select committee that I waited three weeks to make a phone call myself—that before then I had felt it would be enough for someone in my office to make some phone call to someone in Radio New Zealand's office." But now all of a sudden here we were on 29 March when Clare Curran thought it was so important that the record get fixed immediately and corrected immediately—this is what she would have us believe—that she made the phone call herself and left a voice message.I have a simple message to the Prime Minister: if that message is not as the Minister has actually told us and her that it is will she still be in her job yeah? Clare Curran's certainly spun this to everybody including the Prime Minister that it was a genuine question and a genuine request to the chief executive—that they simply write a letter to get the record corrected. But if in any way this is interfering with the independence of Parliament and how it actually runs and its members deserving to have the right information from people in front of them—if it's interfering with that at all as well as the interference to an independent State broadcaster then I do see that as being very very important.And I think it's disgraceful that we are having to squeeze every bit of information about this out of the Minister torturously and not with her being upfront and able to give the right information at the right time to the public of New Zealand that quite frankly deserve better. It simply beggars belief that a senior serious and well-respected broadcaster felt that they had to mislead their bosses about the meeting and how it occurred and what had happened at it and now we have a Minister that hides the facts gets the facts actually drawn out of her slowly and painfully and I think there is still more to come.So I ask the Prime Minister to stand up in leadership and show the standards that she told New Zealand that she would hold her and her Government to—to stand up and make that true and to make that real for the people of New Zealand so that they can have actually faith in the integrity of what is happening in this place for all members of Parliament. And it's time that that happened."