Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
[Volume:621;Page:16243] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 As the allegations about John Tamihere have unfolded over recent days I have tried to listen to them with a degree of dispassion. That has become increasingly difficult to do because of the way that so much of the fact as it appears has been mixed with the innuendo that is fuelling a lot of the allegations that are floating around. In the time I have available to me this afternoon I want to try to separate out some of the issues if I can and then to look at the likely consequences of the actions that relate to them. I want to do that against a background of making this observation: John Tamihere may well be a big loser from this whole saga but I suspect that an even bigger loser in terms of credibility confidence and certainty is this Parliament. Yet again we will have shown—and already this debate this afternoon has shown traces of it—that when faced with a situation of the magnitude and seriousness of this one we do not debate the issue but rather we very quickly descend into a “Who said what who did what” tit for tat back and forward “If you’ve got an allegation I’ve got a better one to top it.” sort of a debate. The people of New Zealand who want to get some answers and want to get to the truth simply say: “There they go again! I’m sick of the lot of them. Why don’t they all go away?”. 
Let us get back to the issues here. I think they come into two broad categories. There are the issues that relate to Mr Tamihere and there are the issues in a wider sense that relate to the Waipareira Trust. If we take the issues that relate to Mr Tamihere we find there are about three broad headings. There is the question of whether he accepted a golden handshake having said he would not do so. There is the issue of the tax status of that payment. There is the question of any subsequent expenses paid to him or expectations made of him in respect of any payment advanced. The issue of the golden handshake is in some senses the least important of the three. That comes down to whether he stuck by his word—and the implications of that are serious enough if he is shown not to have done so but it is actually not a criminal offence to change one’s mind. On the issue of taxation it is a much more clear-cut case: was there a tax liability and if so how was it met and what steps did Mr Tamihere take in respect of his responsibilities in that regard? The third question the question of expenses and the associated matter revealed on television last night—that any payments made to him were less of a severance or a redundancy and more of a recognition of services he was going to continue to provide to the trust while a member of Parliament—is I think the most serious allegation of the lot. 
The latter two questions and the question of the golden handshake deserve the full attention of an independent commission of inquiry such as the White inquiry because if there is an allegation arising from that that criminality is involved then that is a matter for the courts to proceed with separately. I think what is happening here and what concerns me not just in this particular case but as a general point of principle is that members seem to be expecting an inquiry of some description to be the judge jury and executioner. What an inquiry of the nature of the one that has been established will do is to determine whether there is a basis for any further action whether criminal or otherwise. It is very important in these types of instances not to put carts before horses but to move one step at a time in the interests of clarity in the interests of public decency and decorum and in the interests of Mr Tamihere. While Mr Tamihere may well be down at the moment and quite possibly out he has certain rights to represent himself to have his side of the story heard and to have his explanations proffered as well. 
Alongside those issues which the White inquiry will deal with is a set of wider matters that relate to the Waipareira Trust some of which have been rehearsed in the House this afternoon—allegations such as those made on TV3 last night and those repeated by Mr Peters just a few short moments ago. I concede that it is very difficult in the heat of the moment to separate some of those things out from the particular circumstances that affect Mr Tamihere. Indeed it may well be impossible to do so because there may be such a close link. However I think the point that my colleague Gordon Copeland attempted to allude to during question time today is also relevant here. Various accounting and auditing standards have not been well applied in relation to bodies of the type of the Waipareira Trust and many others—and we are not talking solely about Maori organisations here either. The Government has been aware of deficiencies in those bodies with regard to auditing practice for many years and the Audit Office has drawn attention to them as requiring to be rectified as a matter of some urgency. But they have not been yet addressed. I think that many of the circumstances in the second set of issues—those relating to the Waipareira Trust—come down to the adequacy of our control procedures and the need to move swiftly to rectify them. Any organisation that receives any form of public funding has to accept a measure of accountability. Our standards have been variable and lax in that respect for far too long. This will not be the last such case of its type to arouse the attention of this House. 
The issue that we then need to address is what all of that does for the integrity not just of Mr Tamihere—that is a matter he has to wrestle with and reach his own decisions on in due course—but for the wider integrity of our system of Government and for the role of this Parliament. People have a right to expect that the people who serve as members of Cabinet or as members of Parliament are to the greatest extent possible honourable and honest. That is a charge we value and protect very strongly in this House. One cannot impugn a member’s integrity and that is as it should be but it carries with it the expectation that a member’s integrity is straightforward completely honest and without blemish. When we engage in a debate in this House that if we are brutally honest is far less about John Tamihere and the rights and wrongs of his actions or his case and is much more about the respective political advantage to those who may be throwing rocks one way or the other we demean ourselves totally. I do not know about other members but since this case has been in the media a number of allegations have been made to me about a number of other members in this Chamber and all sorts of things that they may or may not have got up to. All sorts of people have said to me “This is absolutely fundamentally true. It cannot be denied.”. What it actually invites if we carry on down this path is for all those accusations however unsubstantiated they are to be tossed around here under the protection of parliamentary privilege in the hope that somewhere along the way just a little bit of the mud sticks and does damage. 
I am not saying that John Tamihere should not be held to account for his actions. He should be. I am not saying that there should not be a full and proper inquiry. There ought to be. I am not saying that if matters arise from that inquiry that require further action they should not be followed up. But I am saying to members of this House that we should deal with the issue here. Let us focus on what this issue is about. This is not an opportunity for all the dirty washing and all the dirty linen and the muck that people feel somehow compelled to throw to be tossed around. If we are really talking about integrity trust and honour then let us think of the trust and the honour of this place. It will suffer and with it will suffer the individual integrity of every member and the credibility of any Government—this Government or any succeeding one—to be able to act in the public interest. That is not a responsibility I want to have on my shoulders. I want to see this place work well and constructively and I think that most members do likewise. I simply make the plea that as we go through the process of the Tamihere case we recall the wider circumstances and do our best for this country.