Clark DavidDr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): That Government is so out of touch. That is what this report shows. It is so out of touch that it thinks it can thumb its nose at transparency at common ethics and at public concern. This is not a report that exonerates the Government. This is a report that examines the evidence provides narrow definitions of corruption" and "facilitation payment" and finds that the bar which is set very high is not one that can be proven to have been met. There is so much surrounding evidence that is incredibly damning and there is a finding that Ministers have severely lacked in their duties. They have not carried out their duties as they should. That is abundantly clear in this report. The definitions used as I have said were narrow. The report shows that it cannot be proven beyond doubt that a Minister was involved in corrupt activities but the central claim of the Government that a cash payment resolved a legal dispute is shown to be absolute hogwash—absolute hogwash. No legal advice was sought by the Minister. Mr McCully himself wrote the Cabinet paper. Mr McCully wrote the Cabinet paper. The Auditor-General lays that bare. Mr McCully claimed there was a legal dispute that was being resolved by this cash payment yet he sought no legal advice whatsoever. There is no evidence that a legal dispute was in train or ever would be in train. These are the findings in the Auditor-General's inquiry into the Saudi sheep scandal. The Auditor-General openly says that she shares the concerns of many New Zealanders about this arrangement. I quote from the report: "I found significant shortcomings in the paper put to Cabinet in support of the decision to enter into the Saudi Arabia Food Security Partnership. The contract's benefits to New Zealand were unclear in the Cabinet paper the business case and its subsequent implementation. It is not clear on what basis the amounts paid to the Saudi Arabian investor's company under the contract were arrived at. A key objective of the Saudi Arabia Food Security Partnership was to remove a perceived obstacle to a free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council. That agreement remains unsigned"—i.e. if that were the impediment you would have thought that the agreement would have been signed by now. The Auditor-General goes on to raise further concerns about transparency about the effectiveness of the arrangement and about shoddy practices. I would encourage members in the House and outside the House to read this report in full as Mr McCully did. Mr McCully did it under the guise that it gets him off the hook. I am doing it because it shows a shoddy Government with weak practices that is not observing the rules of common decency and is failing to be transparent in its dealings with the public. It is out of touch. It is arrogant to think that a proper process should not be followed with the spending of Government money. In so far I agree with the previous speaker David Seymour. The Auditor-General also says in this report that there is a range of questions that remain unanswered. She has an expectation that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise will assess and report on the value of the whole spend once the partnership money has been spent. That is something she is yet anticipating. She says she is unsure about the value of this spend. There is nothing in here that convinces her that this was money well spent and indeed right up front she says that the parameters of her investigation were very narrow. I think there will be more questions to come on this. This does not put an end to the discussion. It is a report that does not exonerate the Government. In fact it opens more questions about the Government's failed and shoddy deal the Saudi sheep scandal. It also says in here that the Auditor-General found mixed messages and a general lack of transparency and this is a pattern. It has to be said that this is a pattern that is growing and the Auditor-General refers to a growing number of accusations of corruption over her time in the office. "Accusations of corruption and bribery should be of concern to us all." she says. That is her final conclusion in the overview at the start of the report. She concentrates too on the mixed messages that have been sent and that is Ministers not being straight. That is Ministers not being principled. They are saying one thing to one party another to the next and a third thing to the media and they are not releasing the documents in a timely fashion to cover up a scandal. We have seen it with child poverty. Ministers do not admit that happens. We have seen that they do not think there is a housing crisis when people are sleeping in cars and we have seen it in Skycity which the Auditor-General said was a deal that was neither transparent nor even-handed. We have got another one here. There are plenty more questions to come on the Saudi sheep scandal."