Cullen Michael: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
Cullen Michael: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
[Volume:621;Page:16236] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Acting Prime Minister) 
: 
 As the member rightly said: “If you don’t go looking you won’t find anything.” and I think that one or two of my colleagues might be starting to take that advice just a bit seriously about one or two other people in the House. There might be some interesting issues around a few million shares that somebody happened to have only a short time after leaving Parliament having been here for many years. 
I do not anticipate taking my full 15 minutes today but I do want to say that if that was the best that counsel for the prosecution can do acting on behalf of the ACT party in cohorts with the Maori Party then I do not think John Tamihere has an awful lot to be afraid of arising out of this particular affair. That was one of the weakest attacks I have ever seen in these kinds of circumstances. Even Dr Brash could have done better than that and that is about as low as one can go in that regard. He rested almost his entire case apart from dredging up ancient history and reading it out in great amounts on misrepresenting almost everything said by the Prime Minister or me or the Minister of Maori Affairs. What we did learn was that the statesman role has been cast aside—well and truly. The ACT party is 2 percent in the polls. It is clear that there is only one way up—and this is the way to go because there are certain kinds of animals that go up only in that particular way. What we certainly do know is that Dr Jekyll has disappeared and the real Mr Hide has reappeared as of this afternoon. 
This Government did indeed set new standards and that is why Mr Tamihere has stood aside. Can members imagine this happening under the National Government—Minister after Minister after Minister guilty of serious offences and serious breaches of public faith not standing aside but carrying on with every excuse made about their actions? Serious allegations have been made against Mr Tamihere and they are serious allegations taken seriously by the Government but it behoves— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Aw! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I will come back to that member in a minute because unfortunately I now have the documentation on him. I will come to him a little later on. The allegations are taken seriously by the Government and it has therefore set up an inquiry. The first move by the Opposition was to try to slander Douglas White QC. I am looking at the face of the once-hopeful leader of the ACT party. He knows Mr Douglas White very well. Any notion that Mr Douglas White is in the pocket of a Labour-led Government is really so farcical as to be absolutely absurd. I just wish those members would say that kind of thing outside the House but of course they will not do that because they lack the unparliamentary word to make that possible. 
There are issues in front of the inquiry. First: what was the nature of the payment? Members are loving the term “golden handshake”. Well they should read the Waipareira Trust press statement today. It came from Mr EynonDelamere and he is not a stooge of the Labour Party. He is part of the other group within the Waipareira Trust and he has no love for Mr John Tamihere. He does not say it was a golden handshake. He does not say that. 
Hon Bill English 
: It was. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh! It was because Mr English knows better. That is why he is sitting where he is instead of over there. The second issue is: what was the responsibility for the payment of tax? That is as much a technical issue as any other. It is obvious that members opposite do not understand what the law is. They do not understand what derivation of income is and what year it applies to. They do not understand any of those issues. That is why we have a QC conducting the inquiry not one of the members opposite. There is the issue of the vehicle and the insurance thereon and when the payment ended in that particular respect. There is the issue of the election return. I did notice with amusement that TV3 said that the law on election returns was very clear. That could be said only by somebody who has never done one in the past. There is also the issue of payments being made by Mr Tolich and what those payments went to. Mr Tamihere assures me that he has answers on those questions. 
Rodney Hide 
: Oh you trust him? Where is he then? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I would not trust the member further than I could throw him—and despite the fact that I go to the gym five times a week I could not throw him very far. In fact when the member was speaking and I had this vision of him in boxer shorts I was inclined to leave the House and not try to speak at all in the debate. Our view is that these accusations are not to be dismissed lightly and are not to be taken as proven before all the evidence and the explanations are to hand. The Tory parties do not take that view on natural justice because there is nothing natural and nothing just about either the National Party or the ACT party. All matters will be fully considered— 
Katherine Rich 
: What about Tuku Morgan? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Well that member managed to lose her mother a job. All matters will be fully considered and independently reported on and that report will be published. 
What I hear in this House and outside is the sound of crackling glasshouses all over the place. Which party has deeply opposed the Members of Parliament (Pecuniary Interests) Bill which would require MPs to make a declaration of their other assets and income? The ACT party. Why? We know why its members do not want to declare their pecuniary interests—they have far too many of them and they do not want people to look at them. Look at Mr Hide. He was asked a straight question today and gave a curly answer. He was asked whether he had received payments from businessmen outside Parliament and he said in response: “To do anything in Parliament?”—a little innocent qualification to the question. Once the qualification was in he said: “No I haven’t.” Of course that leads to the obvious answer that he has received payment from businessmen outside Parliament. He had payments from business people outside this House while he was an MP—and this is the counsel for the prosecution! He should be the expert witness for the prosecution on these sorts of matters because that is about where he is in that regard. And would Mr Shirley care to assure us that nobody in the forest industry has given him any kind of remuneration benefit interest or anything since he has become a member of Parliament? What a stunning silence. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I remind members that points of order will be heard in silence. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I draw your attention to Speaker’s ruling 119/4 which was given by Speaker Hunt in 2000: “As long as the member who made a personal statement remains a member of the House the member’s personal explanation may not be debated or otherwise challenged even where it was given in a previous Parliament.” I have given a personal statement and stated categorically to this House that I have received no remuneration for the work I did for the international forestry sector. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That statement will be respected because the member gave that in this House. I stand by my previous ruling. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Absolutely I respect that statement that no payments were made by the international forestry sector. I ask again: did he receive any payments any remuneration or any interest from any aspect of the forestry industry since he became a member of Parliament? And he is silent on that. 
We then had Mr Hide on tax. Mr Hide’s allegation against Mr Tamihere is that he avoided tax. This man went to Fiji to instruct people on how to avoid tax. He made a crusade of defending one of the biggest and nastiest tax evaders in this country Mr David Henderson—“Hendo” to the leader of the ACT party; one of his closest mates—who ran the sex industry in Christchurch and avoided tax thereon although I am sure he got no freebies out of that. 
Then we had the issue of Dr Nick Smith. It is so terrible when people do things that get them into trouble with the law. What did happen to Dr Nick Smith? He was found to have committed contempt of court. That means that the court did not believe what he told the court. The court found that Dr Smith had not told the court what were shall we say the facts. That was the reality. Did he get pushed off the front bench? Did he move anywhere? Was he stood down? No he was praised by the leader and the rest of the National Party for his actions. There really are two rules in this country for the National Party—one rule for National Party members and one rule for the rest of the country. If people in the rest of the country are guilty they get punished but if they are in the National Party they get praised. 
How has this all come about? Mr Hide has been working for some months trawling through the records of the trust and working with individuals within it who are closely connected with the Maori Party working on behalf of the interests of those who are seeking to replace Mr Tamihere with a Maori Party MP in his electorate at the next election. The ACT party is working on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” in this particular case. So what are the realities— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: What about public accountability? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Dr Nick Smith asks about public accountability. He is the man who was found to have committed contempt of court and who was not believed by the court. He asks where the accountability is from the luxury of the Opposition front bench. 
Finally I make one gentle point to every member of this House. Before everyone in this House waxes so eloquent about severance payments whatever they may be I invite members to look at their own salary’s determination because even Dr Nick Smith should he go down at the next election—pray God that he does—will collect 3 months’ salary for doing nothing but then he has been collecting a salary for doing nothing for the last couple of years in any case.