Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): There's one message that's abundantly clear from that contribution and that is that it was probably the longest 15 minutes in Simon Bridges' life because having demanded the House set aside time for an urgent debate on a ministerial demotion he then struggled to string together more than two or three sentences on that particular issue before veering off into other things. In fact I would go so far as to say that contribution was two snappers short of a resignation. I've sat on that side of the House and I've watched the looks on the faces of the caucus. You could see as he went along that they were slumping further and further down in their chairs—been there before and seen that before. You've been there waiting for your leader to give a big rousing speech to rally the troops and stick it to the Government and they come up with that and you sit there and you think Oh no." That's exactly what Simon Bridges just did and you could see their morale sapping out of the Chamber and Simon Bridges went on and on in the longest 15 minutes of his life. But one thing that Simon Bridges did mention—which shows what's really on his mind—was 2 percent in the polls when he was referring to Shane Jones. Well if Shane Jones' preferred rating is 2 percent the one thing I'd say to Simon Bridges is that at least he's a net positive. That's a good thing. I've got to say that at least he's a net positive. But let's run through a few names here: Richard Worth Maurice Williamson Pansy Wong Judith Collins Phil Heatley Nick Smith—so let's talk about ministerial standards. How many of those people and in how many of those cases did that Prime Minister act as decisively and as quickly as Jacinda Ardern did? Not in any of those cases. In fact in some of those cases John Key had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do anything about them. I'm not going to bother wasting the House's time with 15 minutes on this because it doesn't actually require it. There's one message from the Government on this: the Prime Minister has set very high standards for her Ministers and if they don't meet them there will be consequences in that. Now Clare Curran—I like Clare. She's a good friend of mine and I believe that she's doing a good job. But she failed to meet those standards twice and she has faced the consequences of that failure and I think that it's a pretty tough one. I've got to say that if there were resignations from the previous Government every time a Minister failed to answer a written parliamentary question correctly more than once most of that Cabinet would have gone. In fact it's a very very high threshold. Ministers across all sides of the House including on this side of the House give wrong answers. It happens and I'll tell you what it's embarrassing when it happens. I have one—which I am just about to correct—because Crown Law gave me wrong advice. I relied on that advice in putting out a written parliamentary question answer and it was wrong and I have just literally as I've sat here signed the correction—because it was the first time I became aware that the answer was wrong—and that correction will be lodged immediately. But I've got to say that a very very high threshold has been set here and it's one that all of us on this side of the House will be very mindful of. There is a very high threshold for accuracy around written parliamentary questions as there should be and I think it's a message to everybody that we have to get this right. We have to get this right. And yes we need to do better on open government but at least we're aspiring to do so. Unlike the previous Government who didn't care about open government this Government is actually aspiring to make Government a more open and inclusive process and it's something that the members on the other side might like to actually think about—the principle at stake here which is that Government should be open and inclusive. And yes we've got a way to go because we've inherited a culture of secrecy from the last Government where information wasn't released where the Prime Minister at the very highest level—the Prime Minister encouraged his Ministers publicly to ignore the Official Information Act. He encouraged his Ministers to break the law when it came to releasing information under the Official Information Act. The Prime Minister on this side of the House Jacinda Ardern has been very clear that her criteria her standards are very high. And that's a message to all of us that we need to do better and we need to continue to strive to do better."