SpeechNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition: I move That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. There they are ducking for cover yet again. They don't want Prime Minister Hipkins here to hear this debate do they? They don't want him associated with the stench swirling around the Government. It is a stench that is swirling around the Labour Party the Prime Minister's office and the conventions of our democracy. New Zealand is very proud of our reputation as a country that is consistently ranked as one of the least corrupt in the world. The international transparency index puts us at number two because of our perceived levels of lack of public sector corruption and we must guard that very carefully. What we have experienced in recent days with a series of revelations reminds us that there is a grey area that Governments can stray into too easily that could put that reputation at risk. The grey bits matter.I want to step through for the House what has actually gone on here because this is not a matter about one man Stuart Nash. This is not a matter about one decision. This is about Ministers in a Government being part of a culture that thinks that if you don't want the public to know you work out how to cover it up. We have witnessed an egregious breach of Cabinet confidentiality in which a Minister shared information with his personal donors for reasons that have not been explained but reasons that leave us all wondering. We have one group of privileged New Zealanders accessing information that is never available to everyday people. We now know for sure that it wasn't just Minister Nash and his staff who knew about this; the Prime Minister's office knew all about it too. They knew about it last year. They were actively consulted about how it should be managed and they were complicit in the decision to cover it up.So let's go through what happened. What we know is that back in June last year there was argy-bargy about how landlords and tenants should deal with commercial lease issues—Hon Andrew Little: The member's got her dates completely wrong.Hon Grant Robertson: In 2020; that is not last year.NICOLA WILLIS: —resulting from COVID-19. The members opposite including Minister Andrew Little and Minister Grant Robertson—sorry in 2020; the Minister is correct. In 2020 they decided that they would take action and there was a Cabinet decision. It was a decision that was made with power to act from Cabinet by the committee. They decided that they would intervene they would change the law to change the obligations of commercial landlords. Now we learn that Stuart Nash did not like that decision so two days after—two days after—Cabinet made that decision he got into his email and he wrote an email to two of his mates and he gave them the low-down on what had happened. He gave the low-down on David Parker's views. He gave the low-down on why the decision had been made and why it was a bad decision.So we ask what happened next. Well the interesting thing is that actually that law never got written. That law never got introduced. That law never got passed. Actually the Cabinet resiled from the positions held in that Cabinet paper. At the time they explained it saying Oh well that's because New Zealand First don't support it." Well we now have a very real question to ask: why was that? Who was involved in that? What we need to understand is: was there improper influence of Cabinet deliberations? Because what is at stake here is not simply the breaking of the rule that you don't talk about what happens in Cabinet with your donor mates. The other thing at stake here is the integrity of the decision-making process of Cabinet something that is set out in great detail in the Cabinet Manual. What that involves is a high level of personal conduct for Ministers and them identifying personal interests that may be seen to influence their decision making. Here we have a case where decisions were changed and where it certainly seems that something influenced their decision making. We cannot be clear whether or not that was proper. But then let's take us to the next bit because this is where it gets incredibly stinky. Stuart Nash's office received an Official Information Act request on 8 June asking for all written correspondence between him and his donors. Now clearly the alarm bells went off in his office. They went "Uh oh! We've got a really bad stinky one here that now we're going to have to release." So what did they do? They thought "We better kick this upstairs." They rang the Prime Minister's office not once; three times they engaged with the Prime Minister's office about this Official Information Act request so seriously were they taking it.The Prime Minister's office at that moment had a choice. They had a choice where they could look at that email and they could say "We need to do the right thing here. There has been an egregious breach of the Cabinet Manual. This Minister is acting defiantly and arrogantly outside of the rules. We're kicking it up to the Prime Minister. Action must be taken." That's what they should have done. That's what a National Party Prime Minister's office would have done. That's what actually successive Prime Ministers' offices would have done because we respect the Official Information Act. What is actually clear is that over on the other side of the House the promises of transparency have eroded into a reality of contempt for the Official Information Act. So what did the Prime Minister's office do next? They said "Oh yeah you've said it's out of scope."—Clever! That's pretty clever isn't it?—"We'll just say it's out of scope." And they replied to the Official Information Act request without releasing that letter. They knew about it. They did nothing. They are complicit in a cover-up.Now where does this lead us? Because my concern here is about longstanding conventions in New Zealand about the standards we have about how Cabinet runs about how Governments run and about who has influence.And it seems to me that there are clear implications here not only for Minister Nash but for the Prime Minister today. In order to clear the stench that is now swirling around the Government we need assurances that they actually understand their obligations under the Official Information Act that they actually read the Cabinet Manual and that they think those rules matter.The other thing I want to highlight here is that the former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has said "Hey this isn't a big deal this went on all the time. This went on all the time when I was in that Cabinet. Members of that Cabinet were constantly leaking about Cabinet discussions." Well if that is the case then that is a severe corrosion of standards in our Government. And if that is the case the Prime Minister needs to take action to ensure that we actually return to standards that mean that Ministers don't do that sort of thing.But the other issue that we have here is that we have a Minister who says "Oh look I stuffed up a little bit." and he's resigned but we have had no action taken by the Prime Minister's office who were completely complicit in this action. They knew about it. They didn't act on it. And then they worked with him to withhold the email.So National's view is this: New Zealand's reputation as a country known for its transparency for its good ethics and for its freedom from corruption is one that is too important to put at risk. We uphold that reputation by maintaining and enforcing high standards. There are several things that need to happen now. There needs to be a full investigation not just into Minister Nash's correspondence during this period but into exactly what influence he was having and the donors were having over him if at all; there needs to be an investigation into how many times he leaked from the Cabinet. There needs to be clarity around whether this is as Winston Peters has suggested accepted practice under Labour. There needs to be an urgent investigation by the Ombudsman. I understand that the Ombudsman previously received a redacted version of the email in question and I wonder whether that has influenced the attitude of that office to this. There needs to be a coming to transparency by the Prime Minister's office. They must release not only all of the correspondence relating to this Official Information Act request but actually document how many times they were consulting with Minister Nash's office about what he should withhold from Official Information Act requests.National will continue to prosecute what has gone on here. I fear that there may be a lot more to this. I have been very careful today not to make allegations that can't yet be proved but we will be examining the evidence very carefully. And Ministers opposite can ask themselves this: when you take your ministerial oath—and every day when we stand in this House and we make that prayer and commit to put aside personal interests we must uphold it and we must uphold it not just by walking past bad behaviour. And if it is the case that staff in the Prime Minister's office were so ignorant of the Cabinet Manual and the Official Information Act that they made an error and didn't release this information then ask yourself what sort of ethical standards exist within your staff and set some. I don't blame the individual staff members; I blame a culture in the Beehive that comes straight from the top. They are only acting on the guidance and culture that has been set from the very top down to the very bottom. That culture is one where if you don't want the public to know you cover it up—until of course the media ask questions. When the media ask questions you better do some performative ethical behaviour. But that's actually not good enough. You need to act in advance of those queries. You need to enforce the standards at all times.It's a sad day—it is a sad day—because New Zealand is a country that should be free from this sort of stench it should be free from this sort of erosion of clear standards and it should be a country where the Prime Minister's office doesn't make excuses in the way that we saw today. There is an urgent need for this Government to clear the rot to make it clear that they will be instructing not only Ministers but their staff on what the Cabinet Manual requires of them on what the Official Information Act requires of them and that they will be acting with the integrity that New Zealanders expect.This is not a matter just about Minister Nash. It's about what has become acceptable under this Labour-led administration—an administration more influenced by lobbyists than any I can recall in previous history an administration which has loosened the rules around Cabinet to a worrying extent an administration that has been party to a significant cover-up. It is a day of disgrace for the Ministers opposite and National has one job to do and that is to make it clear to the New Zealand public that if they vote for us in October and we enter that Beehive we will come in and we will clean it up. We will enforce the Cabinet Manual. We will enforce the Official Information Act. We will bring standards and ethics back to the heart of Government where they belong. We will protect New Zealand's international reputation and we won't sit back and make excuses when such egregious actions are taken. They should bow their heads in shame."