McCully Murray: General Debate 
McCully Murray: General Debate 
[Volume:641;Page:10918] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 On behalf of the members on this side of the House I urge the Minister of Defence to find himself the opportunity for a lie-down and a nice cup of tea because he was very close to doing himself a serious mischief there and members on this side were getting quite concerned about him. 
I am not going to respond to the details of the attacks that have come from members opposite today aimed at the Leader of the Opposition. All I want to say to members opposite and to the public is this: at a time when New Zealanders are fearful about their ability to own houses because of rising inflation rates and rising interest rates at a time when businesses involved in the export sector are concerned about their ability to continue to do business and at a time when each and every week 737 New Zealanders pack up and move permanently to Australia New Zealanders look to the people who have the LTDs and the flash offices—the Ministers of the Crown—and they ask what the Ministers will do to put matters right for our country. Those Ministers are charging around emptying every rubbish bin they can find and checking through ancient back copies of the  
Rodney and Waitemata Times 
 to try to find out what John Key might have said when he was in the seventh form. That is what those members opposite are up to. They are a disgrace to the warrants they hold. 
I want to spend just a minute on the issue that really should trouble members of this House and that is whether they can continue to have confidence in the most senior public servant who holds office in this country Dr Prebble. I say that for two reasons. Firstly he has abandoned a long-accepted concept of neutrality within the Public Service and we have yet to find out what will replace that longstanding rule. Secondly there are grave questions now about the integrity the honesty and indeed the competence of some of those involved who hold senior Public Service offices. 
What we do know first of all is that a senior Ministry for the Environment employee was sacked because some people did not like the politics of her partner. That is not something that has ever happened in this country. Right through the 1990s Ministers of the National Government accepted that people who were personally close with those on the other side of politics could provide professional service. Now we find that Dr Prebble the State Services Commissioner has said it is OK to dispatch senior public servants for the reason that senior officials do not like their personal lives. That is something we have not accepted in this country and members on this side now want to know what the new rules are because when we find out what Dr Prebble’s new rules are we will make up our minds whether we have confidence in him as the State Services Commissioner in this country. 
There are also some serious issues that require explanation and the means by which we will get those explanations is important to us. An issue is the credibility of the leadership of the State sector. Many questions need to be answered first of all about Mr Logan the head of the Ministry for the Environment. There are questions to be answered as to why he did not tell the Acting State Services Commissioner what he should have about his conversation with the Minister. There were questions for Mr Benson-Pope to answer but they have now been answered and we know what his fate was. There were questions—and those questions remain—about the State Services Commissioner Dr Prebble because he advised Mr Logan on the steps that are at the heart of the enquiry that is now under way and he is the person who was also told by Mr Logan about the information that is potentially fatal to Mr Logan’s future in the public service. Arguably he should share the same fate. 
We have had two explanations from Dr Prebble. Firstly we were told he forgot the information then on radio the other day we heard him say that he did not tell anyone because he did not think it was important. Well both of those two explanations cannot be true. At least one of them has to be an untruth and members of this House will want to hear a further explanation or rationalisation of those two before we can make up our minds as to whether we should have confidence in Dr Prebble. 
We also want Dr Prebble to stand aside from this inquiry. He is the wrong person to conduct it. We will not have confidence in the results of the inquiry as long as he is a participant in it and we will not have confidence in any decision that is made if he is there.