Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
[Volume:669;Page:15738] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. The Prime Minister has an instinct. When anything occurs that has anything to do with lawbreaking or rorts his instinct is to duck weave deflect cover abuse evade and play for time. We have seen that instinct again in the last week or two with Pansy Wong. We have been told that the Prime Minister has instructed his erstwhile Cabinet Minister to go away say nothing not show her face here this week or next week play it out reach out for Christmas and wait for some report that should take about 10 minutes to write but is seeming to take longer than that. She has been told not to front not to explain not to answer any of the questions that the media reasonably seek answers to. She has been told to keep everyone in the dark and hope it goes away. 
The Prime Minister has done this before. He did it with Richard Worth. He said that Richard Worth was not as bad as that and that Phil Goff was really mean to Richard Worth. He said absolutely nothing for a while then he sacked him. He did not give a reason. A guy was sacked with no reason given. It was a case of duck weave and give no answers—just make sure that plenty of ducking and weaving goes on. 
He has another trick. His other trick is to invent new rules. We saw that trick with Bill English. Bill English was caught with his fingers in the till. The Prime Minister did not say: “Bill you are naughty.”; the Prime Minister said that the rules were wrong. He said the rules were confusing. No other Minister was confused. No Minister in the previous Government or in the Government before that was confused. But Mr Key said that Mr English was dealing with confusing rules so Mr Key was going to change them and he would save taxpayers money while he did that. A year on we know that the taxpayers’ money was not saved. We know that ministerial houses cost more not less. He used deflection to try to get through another problem with a rort. 
So too with Pansy Wong. Pansy Wong went offshore broke international travel rules and confessed to doing so. Do members know what the Prime Minister said? He said the rules were wrong and therefore we needed to get rid of them. He said we need to gross up those travel perks into salaries and there would be no rules to break. Therefore Pansy really did not break any rules because we should not have had any! That is how the Prime Minister works. The Prime Minister has always worked that way. He always decides to rewrite the rules rather than front up to the fact that someone has broken them. 
In this case it is absolutely clear that they have been broken. How do we know? Pansy Wong said so—that is called a confession. There is also a bunch of website evidence—that is called irrefutable evidence. But Mr Key does not think that; Mr Key thinks that the thing to do is to go away sit down hide say nothing answer no questions wait for a report and reach for Christmas. It may be that Pansy Wong herself wanted to leave Parliament. That is certainly what a fellow called Whale Oil Beef Hooked thinks and he is the son of a former National Party president. It is certainly what a person who wrote to me anonymously yesterday said. He—or she—asked how long it took Pansy Wong to resign after she was asked about her husband’s rorting of the travel scheme and said that they believed it was 10 minutes. That is what that anonymous person said. 
Certainly at the top of her first press prelease she said she was resigning from Parliament. But then she said that she did not mean that; she was resigning just from Cabinet. I wonder whether the Prime Minister got to her and said that she could not resign from Parliament any time soon because he was going to have a holiday in Hawaii and he was not having it messed up by some by-election in Botany. I wonder whether he told her to go away say nothing play for time and reach for Christmas. There is an awful lot of holiday period and they should be able to get themselves well into the new year. He will come back from Hawaii and think about it then. 
That is what is going on. That is how the Prime Minister deals with his own rorts. When he said he had a certain number of Tranz Rail shares and it was then discovered that he had more and that he bought them while he was asking questions about Tranz Rail when he was in Opposition he said he was sorry. He said he forgot. When it is discovered that his blind trust has 20/20 vision he says that it has not. He says it is legally theoretically absolutely blind. In practice it is true that everyone can see straight through it but in theory it is blind so that is OK! Let us not worry about it! The Prime Minister has an instinct and the instinct is to not tell the truth.