Key John: Urgent Debates — Environment Ministry—State Services Commission Briefing 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Key John: Urgent Debates — Environment Ministry—State Services Commission Briefing 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2007. Volume:640;Page:10610. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. It would be easy for people to dismiss this case as one of a young woman Madeleine Setchell who applied for a job at the Ministry for the Environment and for reasons that may not have been made public except for the two degrees of separation that limit all New Zealanders I think lost her job and it was time to move on. That is the position that Helen Clark and David Benson-Pope want to adopt. They want this situation to move on.  
Helen Clark in Parliament’s question time today gave David Benson-Pope a small slap on the hand with a wet bus ticket and she now thinks it is all OK—she thinks it is all OK. She does not want to have this issue debated in public because she knows what the ramifications will be. This is from a Prime Minister who went on the campaign trail and argued about higher levels of accountability and standards. What this story is really about is— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Get off the cloud. 
JOHN KEY 
: I tell Trevor that he was 18th man in Valencia and after the reshuffle he will not even be 18th man in Cabinet so sit down son and move on. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I was actually replaced by 100 kilograms of lead; I was never 18th man. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: That is not a point of order. 
JOHN KEY 
: The Prime Minister wants this all to go away because it is a little bit annoying and it shows Labour up for what it is—a Labour Government that is arrogant and does not care about the little people any more. The party that was once formed on workers’ rights does not care about them any more. The bit that the Labour Party— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member cannot continue a constant barracking of interjections. The member will listen to me. 
JOHN KEY 
: Trevor Mallard wants to keep commentating through my speech because he does not want the facts exposed for what they are. There are 55000 public servants looking on and they know that under Labour the rules of the game have changed. So it is no wonder Trevor Mallard wants to create a few diversions. He wants the facts not to come out.  
This goes a lot further than a young woman who lost her job. This goes to the heart of the neutrality of the public service in New Zealand. It is a public service that has served us well from Government to Government. It has been able to draw on people irrelevant of what their partners did and irrelevant of what their siblings did. It has been a public service that has been well and truly up and beyond anything that can come from a Labour Party.  
The second thing that the Labour Party does not want people to know is that this is part of a plan to move to get greater exercise of influence in ministerial departments. That is what is happening here. The Labour Party no longer wants a neutral public service. It wants a public service that has Labour Party lackeys in it operating under its rules and singing to its tune because it does not like the neutrality of the public service. On Friday the Government made something very unusual happen. The State Services Commissioner actually had to write an op-ed piece in the  
Dominion Post 
 about why it does not mean the end of the neutrality of the public service because he knew that was the case.  
The last thing that Labour members do not want exposed is that once again David Benson-Pope has been caught being economical with the truth. It is not the first time Labour has found David Benson-Pope being a little economical with the truth and it is not the second time it has found him out; it is the third time that he has been found being economical with the truth and they are the only times on the public record that we know about.  
So let us get a few facts on the table. Madeleine Setchell was hired by the Ministry for the Environment because she was good at her job. The ministry knew she would be good at her job because the funny thing is this was not the first time Madeleine Setchell had been hired by a Government department. This was the third time she had been employed by a Government department. The ministry knew her track record. When Mark Prebble said that she was a person of personal integrity that was not a warm platitude rolled out for a  
Dominion Post 
 op-ed; he knew because there was a proven track record. She had worked there time and time again and the ministry knew she was good. The ministry knew she was trustworthy and she was a person of integrity; it knew that. The Prime Minister wants New Zealanders to believe that when the ministry interviewed her her relationship with Kevin Taylor my press secretary was somehow glossed over and a little vague.  
Well here are the facts. The ministry raised the issue of whether there was a conflict of interest and she answered those questions. She was asked directly how she would handle matters of conflict of interest and she answered them because for the entire time that she has had a relationship with Kevin Taylor he has had positions where conflicts of interest could have been an issue. She answered those questions honestly and she answered them clearly and there was no ambiguity and no vagueness. The Prime Minister knows that and that is just another red herring that has been put up to try to protect David Benson-Pope because she knows that he is in the gun for something that had gone on.  
Ministry staff knew all the facts and guess what? They hired Madeleine Setchell. They were satisfied that the neutrality of the public service would be maintained they were satisfied that she knew how to deal with matters with integrity and they were satisfied with the way things would be carried out. So can members imagine her shock when after 3 days on the job her employment was terminated. It was not because she was not good at her job she could not manage a situation involving a conflict of interests or she did not have a proven track record with three Government departments. It was because David Benson-Pope did not like her and did not want her in that office—and he knows it.  
David Benson-Pope was not asked just a vague question. Duncan Garner asked David Benson-Pope on behalf of TV3 whether he knew the details of this case and David Benson-Pope said: “No.” We now know from the State Services Commission that that is not right. When Duncan Garner asked David Benson-Pope: “Are you sure about these matters?” he said: “Duncan I have been very clear with you. No I do not know the details of this case.” But unfortunately for David Benson-Pope that is not the way the State Services Commissioner saw it and that is not factually correct. You see David Benson-Pope did know because otherwise what would be the probability of Steve Hurring a political adviser in David Benson-Pope’s office making a phone call off his own bat to the Ministry for the Environment? 
Hon Member 
: Zero. 
JOHN KEY 
: That is right—zero. Why do we know that it is zero? It is because the Prime Minister’s office advised staff in David Benson-Pope’s office not to make that phone call. No political advisers go and do that off their own bat because they will get the boot if they cross the ninth floor unless someone is protecting them. That is why we know that it is not correct. It is because the ninth floor said not to do it and Steve Hurring did it anyway because he was just the messenger for David Benson-Pope.  
David Benson-Pope should get on his feet and stop talking about the things that Steve Hurring has done when he knows that he is the man who issued the riding instructions. If he does not have anything to cover up then maybe just maybe David Benson-Pope should explain to the public of New Zealand why he did not answer factually the question that Duncan Garner asked him. If he had nothing to hide and if he was not worried about the situation then he would have answered that question directly but he did not. He said: “No. I do not understand that situation.” And it is not just the ninth floor that did not agree with it. Last night we saw on Television One that other ministerial staff have made it clear to journalists that that is not the action they expected from that office.  
So we can draw only a few conclusions here. Steve Hurring was not acting alone or if he was David Benson-Pope’s office is running so amok that he does not have a clue what is going on and he is not fit to be a Minister on that account let alone for any other reason. When the Prime Minister came back into the country with the mess erupting around her do members think she rang Hugh Logan and asked him what went on? Did she make inquiries of the State Services Commissioner or the deputy commissioner who undertook the report Iain Rennie? No she looked at David Benson-Pope and she said that she took his word. He is someone who has twice before been caught being economical with the truth but on this occasion for some reason she decided that he was not doing that.  
Well why was that the case? Because as my colleague Bill English quite correctly pointed out today there is a small thing going through the House at the moment called electoral law reform. What it will mean if it passes—Labour Government legislation—is that the only people who will be able to advertise in the 2008 election year will be political parties up to their cap which starts from 1 January not 3 months out from the election and of course Government department communication units spending taxpayer funds like the one at the Ministry for the Environment. The showcase will be carbon neutrality and that will be coming from David Benson-Pope’s office. So one can imagine how inconvenient it would be to have a neutral public servant in charge of communications not a Labour Party lackey. 
Hon Member 
: Who’s going to get the job? 
JOHN KEY 
: Who will get the job and replace Madeleine Setchell who was fired not because she was not good but because— 
Hon Members 
: Steve Hurring. 
JOHN KEY 
: Steve Hurring will probably be the person who gets the job not Madeleine Setchell. So we now understand why this is all happening. It is because the Labour Party thinks the Public Service is an extension of its organisation and that is why Helen Clark has turned a blind eye to this incident.  
The Public Service has served us well. Its employees deserve to know that they are safe in their jobs. We do not live under a regime where all of a sudden there is a change or where people live in fear because their brother sister or partner happens to be somehow associated with a political party that the Labour Party does not like. Now we have a Government in its dark and dying hours that is changing the electoral rules because it cannot win under the current ones. It is changing the public service so that somehow it can do what it wants and all along the way one young woman has lost her job. And nothing has happened about it!  
The Prime Minister who campaigned on accountability does not care and the Minister who has misled her three times now on the record keeps his job. Well I tell members that the Minister is welcome to his job for the next 12 months because when the next election comes around the public of New Zealand will take his job from him they will take the Prime Minister’s job from her and they will take the jobs of all the other Labour Ministers from them because those members are not fit to be running this country.