Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you Mr Speaker. Some of the comments that were made by the speaker who's just taken her seat Brooke van Velden I agree with. I think New Zealanders do expect high standards of their politicians and their Ministers particularly in a Government and they are rightly disappointed when those high standards are not upheld. This is a clear case of where that has occurred. The Minister concerned Stuart Nash most clearly breached the duty of confidence that he owed to his Cabinet in breach of the Cabinet Manual—although you don't really need a Cabinet manual to know what duties of confidence" mean—and that breach of that duty means that he breached the trust of the Cabinet and the Government and the Prime Minister and therefore the Prime Minister was quite right to dismiss him in his role. I heard David Seymour in an interview earlier in the week describe Stuart Nash as hapless and I thought it was quite a good adjective to use because it's almost unbelievable that one would do this. And it's also incredibly naive that if one was going to do this you'd do it in an email that left a written trail. Brooke van Velden's comments that he was boastful in respect of his errors of judgment in respect of the interference and criticism of the judiciary and contacting the Commissioner of Police it's of a similar vein and it is incredibly disappointing to me and I'm sure all of my ministerial and parliamentary colleagues actually across the House that he could be so cavalier and so obviously breached the standards that a Minister owes. I think that the standards that are expected by members of the public are being reflected in the Prime Minister's decision not just to dismiss Stuart Nash but to cause the Secretary of the Cabinet to inquire into his communications with his donors more broadly and see if there is a pattern of conduct broader than this individual event.In respect of the assertions that were made earlier in this week that it was Stuart Nash that somehow intervened to prevent there being a change to the law to provide relief to tenants during COVID I know that that is incorrect as the Hon Andrew Little has said using sources that are public quoting interviews with the Rt Hon Winston Peters. The change of position between the Cabinet committee that he reported on in his email exchange that was inappropriate and the eventual Cabinet decision—what happened was that the coalition partner within the then Government decided that from their point of view it wasn't a wise thing to do. As the Hon Andrew Little has said the reasoning that the Labour Party had applied to the situation was that although a lot of leases had a term—if they used the standard Auckland District Law Society form of lease that said that when you can't use the premises you don't have to pay rent and you couldn't use the premises during COVID because of lockdown rules. There were a number of lease arrangements on other terms that weren't using the Auckland District Law Society form of lease particularly quite a few of the malls where they had their own leases that didn't have that standard form clause. Now from the point of view of the Government a lot of the subsidies that were being paid—that were keeping people attached to their work—were in danger of not working because the money was having to be applied to pay 100 percent of a rental bill rather than there being some compromise with the landlord during that period when the premises couldn't be used and that's why we wanted to make a change.Indeed eventually post the change of Government we did make the change that was required to imply the term into leases similar to that of the Auckland District Law Society standard form of lease. So it is incorrect to say that it was Stuart Nash that caused that change of position. Indeed I know that Stuart Nash wanted there to be an intervention for the benefit of small-business owners who were facing unreasonable landlords in the context of COVID. That doesn't forgive in any way the poor practice the lapse of judgment the breach of the Cabinet Manual the breach of confidence and the loss of trust that follows that sort of egregious conduct from Stuart Nash.In respect of allegations from the National Party and other parties that this is somehow evidence of some broad conspiracy on the part of the Government and that we've got lower standards than prior Governments I would put on record a number of historical events that suggest otherwise. I'm actually not going to name individuals within the then National Government who were working in the National Party offices but you know a shameful period of the National Party's time in Government is recorded in the book Dirty Politics. I've got a copy of it here with me—Chris Bishop: Yeah it's fiction. It's largely fiction.Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh "It's largely fiction." says—Hon Kieran McAnulty: Chris Bishop.Hon DAVID PARKER: —Chris Bishop. There was a dump of emails of course that were obtained by Rawshark—who we don't know to this day—from the Cameron Slater computer which showed activities between the Prime Minister's office of the day and Cameron Slater doing very disreputable things—manipulating the Official Information Act—in order to avoid political controversies that were befalling the National Party absolutely proven by Dirty Politics and led to the resignation of the person in the Prime Minister's department. I'm not going to name them—sort of a little bit ancient history here—but at the time it led to his being forced out of that office and sent somewhere else for a job.There was also collusion between Cameron Slater and a then Minister of the National Party. Again I'm not going to name her—I don't need to be quite that personal. The same person that was involved in Oravida was providing confidential information to Cameron Slater in order to attack public servants who in the end received death threats. So a terrible thing happened. Then in respect of Oravida—terrible events that the Hon Grant Robertson actually prosecuted in this House and which led after a long period of time to the dismissal by John Key of the relevant Minister.I myself prosecuted for a number of years the Saudi sheep scandal. I was frustrated at every turn by refusals to make public information that should have been disclosed under the Official Information Act. There were also breaches of the Cabinet Manual by the relevant Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time who used misused conventions to stop old Cabinet papers being disclosed to the media. And those old Cabinet papers weren't disclosed to the media because they disproved the excuses that the Minister was using in order to deflect responsibility for that Saudi sheep farm that was paid for by New Zealand taxpayers—literally in a Saudi desert—in order to influence someone over there who was blocking a trade deal in New Zealand. It was a terrible unprincipled deal and it was frustrated—getting to the bottom of that—through misuses of the Official Information Act and other conventions relating to old Cabinet papers. In the end there was an inquiry by the Auditor-General but it took years for us to get to that point and of course that money was wasted. But more importantly that was an unprincipled thing to do and that same Minister through Cameron Slater again provided information on critics of his reforms to the Foreign Affairs department.None the less this is a shameful day for Stuart Nash."