Hide Rodney: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hide Rodney: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Sitting date: 10 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6053. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
6.  
RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ) 
 to the  
Minister of Maori Affairs 
: Following his reply to question for written answer No. 1451 (2003) during his 20 February meeting this year when he first learnt about a Te Mangai Paho employee having sports trips paid by a company funded by Te Mangai Paho what facts were provided to him that left him “satisfied with the board chair and chief executive of Te Mangai Paho assurances that the matter had been handled by Te Mangai Paho” and what if any specific facts have changed? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Minister of Maori Affairs) 
: 
 Facts provided by the chair and the chief executive at that time provided assurances that action had been taken to address the matter. An external review of those matters which included a forensic examination of Mr Te Rangi’s computer has brought additional information to light. 
Rodney Hide 
: Has he compared the answers he provided to Parliament about Te Mangai Paho’s performance with the facts laid out in the Treasury-led review; if so why has he not apologised to Parliament and to the public of New Zealand for having so misled them? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: The advice given to me at that time was correct. I will apologise if need be. 
Mahara Okeroa 
: In the light of the external review reported to Te Mangai Paho is the Minister satisfied that the former chair and the chief executive acted decisively enough to address the conflict of interest? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: No. In reading the report I was disappointed that the management and the former board did not take decisive action to put an immediate stop to the conflict of interest when it was first brought to their attention. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Now that the Treasury report into Te Mangai Paho makes it clear that in answers to parliamentary questions the Minister failed to mention six grants totalling $174000 to Maori Sportscasting International why has he taken no steps to correct those answers as required by the Standing Order? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Following the release of the Hide-McCully report  
Litany of Lies in Parliament  
I instructed my officials to assess those parliamentary questions—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: A comment was made— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think you are about to punish the Minister for quoting the title of the report prepared by Mr Hide and Mr McCully. It was their claim that there was a litany of lies. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Well in that case I will allow the answer to be given. He may start again. I apologise. I heard a word that was out of order but as it was by the members themselves it can be used. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I instructed my officials to assess those parliamentary questions in the light of the external review report. My officials are also reviewing the other 200 parliamentary questions relevant to Te Mangai Paho since 2003 and if it is found that corrected replies are required then I will provide them. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. There is an important matter here about the process of parliamentary questions that Opposition MPs rely on for information. The Minister now seems to be saying that the Standing Order imposes no more of an obligation than that a third party report be provided that checks the accuracy of the answers to written questions. For you to accept that as a standard would be a major shift in precisely the wrong direction. The Minister has an obligation under the Standing Order to correct the information as soon as he is aware it is wrong. That is a longstanding century-old tradition in this Parliament. We will not sit here and listen to a Minister say that he will correct the answers only if the Treasury and Audit report state they are wrong. He has officials. He has a department. And he has a Standing Order that requires him to correct his answers now because he knows they are wrong. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: There is no change in any policy. If anything is proven and the Minister finds that an answer is incorrect then of course it is his responsibility to correct the answer as soon as he hears of that. However how he does it is his concern as long as he does it. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That standard is unacceptable to the Opposition. The fact is that the Minister knows now that some of the answers he has given are wrong. The information that a third party auditor gets will be the information given by the officials. If they can give it to Treasury and the Audit Office they can give it to the Minister. We must be able to rely on a Minister to act in good faith under the Standing Order—that if he knows the answers are wrong he will correct them as soon as possible. Otherwise we will end up waiting for months while third parties are called in to check every written answer. That is unacceptable to this Parliament and it is outside the spirit and the letter of the Standing Orders. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I agree with the member that if that were the case it would be and I would not resile from that at all. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 142/3 made by my predecessor Mr Kidd: “It is incumbent on persons who mistakenly give wrong information to the House or a committee—whether as members or witnesses—to clear it up as soon as they realise their error. If full information is not in the member’s or witness’s hands when the error is appreciated the House or the committee should still be alerted to the error with a promise of a full explanation when all of the information is available.” I understood that the Minister said that when all the information becomes available he will correct any answer and I hope he does so immediately on receiving it. As far as I am concerned the member rightly suggests that if it is proven that there is a wrong answer then it has to be corrected. There is no change at all in that and I am certainly not changing any policy in that respect. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I thank you for your ruling but I think you should go slightly further. We have been given answers by the Minister that under the Standing Orders we all have to accept are correct. I am not raising a breach of privilege because I accept the Minister’s assurance that he gave what he thought were correct answers. We now have a Treasury report that came out at least 3 weeks ago and when we read it we see that it contradicts answers given in the House. I know that is the case because two MPs—namely Mr Hide and Mr McCully—have put out a press statement that points out the contradictions between written answers oral answers and statements made in the report. It appears to me from your statement that what should have happened today is that the Minister of Maori Affairs should have risen in the House and said that it appeared that answers had been given that were incorrect. At that point it may well be that he still does not know what the right answers are but he should give an assurance that when he does know he will let us know. However he has told us that even though he does know that the answers are wrong he is not prepared to admit that fact until the officials probably the same officials who misled him before have misled him again. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has raised a valid point of order to this extent: once there is a realisation that there are mistakes the Minister should admit that. However he has to be given an opportunity to get the correct answer and that he will do. I agree with the member that once mistakes are discovered they should be admitted as such and the Minister will undertake an investigation. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is a matter on which I would like your considered ruling. At issue here is the test of what can reasonably be expected of the Minister. In respect of some of the information the Minister has had over 1 month on full salary with an office of 13 people and a department of several hundred. We are talking here about a very small pool of potential information—that is half-a-dozen grants to a named person for a specified task. It is not as though we are looking for a fishing expedition across the whole range of Government activities. I suggest that the test of reasonableness in the mind of this Parliament when it passed that Standing Order— 
David Benson-Pope 
: Ah! 
Hon Bill English 
: The senior Government whip might think the matter is a joke but we regard it is as a serious issue. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Would the member please come to the point. 
Hon Bill English 
: I suggest that the test of reasonableness that this Parliament had in mind when it supported that Standing Order was that when a Minister becomes aware of information different from that given to the House or to an MP through written answers then he or she should correct it. We believe that the standard the Minister is suggesting—that he have 1 month 2 months or 3 months; that he have until a report is issued by a third party—is far far too low. He knows the information now and he should correct the answer now. That is the reasonable expectation that can be applied in respect of this Standing Order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has asked me for a considered ruling. That is a fair request and I will give him one. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have already said that I will give a considered ruling. 
Rodney Hide 
: I want to add to what you might consider. I understand that the Speaker’s ruling is “as soon as possible”. We have a situation here where a report has been produced. It has been accepted as correct by the Government. The chief executive officer of Te Puni Kokiri has apologised publicly for misleading the Minister who then misled the House. So he has accepted that the information he supplied to the Minister was incorrect. He has gone on the public record as saying the information was false but in this House we are in the difficult situation of having an answer that still stands. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has virtually just repeated what other people have said. I will give a considered ruling on this matter. 
Rodney Hide 
: Why has the Minister not called in the police to investigate Te Mangai Paho spending given that Maori Sportscasting International paid for Mr Tame Te Rangi to fly to Rotorua for games over Labour weekend 2001 while Te Mangai Paho paid him to drive his own car to Rotorua and back during that same weekend; or is it a case that his Government is simply too politically correct to have the police investigate what would appear to be an obvious fraud? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The first part of the question is certainly in order. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: As that member knows we have a review and I have moved swiftly to put Mr Gardiner in to ensure that things are tidied up. I also tell the member that out of 229 contracts let over the last 3 years three have fallen over. In addition in the case of Tame Te Rangi there are a whole lot of issues around that. 
Rodney Hide 
: What action was taken by Te Puni Kokiri and Te Mangai Paho over the email of Mr Hamana Waaka’s business partner Mr Sam Rahui to a worker explaining that he could not get paid because: “We are still running on empty because Mr Waaka still has his hands in the till.”; or are there two standards of accountability in this country—one for Maori and one for everyone else? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I answered that question earlier on when that member brought up the matter of the email. In the case of the partner it is an operational matter and I do not know the detail as well as the member does. He seems to be better informed than I am. 
Rodney Hide 
: I seek leave of the House to table an email dated 2 October 2002 explaining that Mr Waaka still has his hands in the till. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Given that his chief executive officer has publicly admitted to the media that answers supplied by his organisation to the Minister and supplied by the Minister to the House had been incorrect why will he not correct those statements and apologise as required under the Standing Order? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Along with the review that I have enacted it is important that we get the response right.