Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I want to begin by noting that obviously the dismissal of a Minister by the Prime Minister is indeed an extremely serious matter. As the Prime Minister indicated when he did dismiss Minister Nash from Cabinet what had happened—his behaviour—was utterly unacceptable. None of us take any pleasure I imagine in any part of the House in fact with this happening to a member of this House but it is clear that the behaviour involved was completely unacceptable. As the Prime Minister said at the time this was not a matter that was a three-strikes matter in terms of the other two things that the Minister had been brought forward for. This on its own was the reason that Minister Nash was dismissed because what had happened was completely unacceptable. Minister Nash's actions were a clear breach of collective responsibility and Cabinet confidentiality. He fundamentally breached the trust of his Cabinet colleagues and his conduct was wrong and that is why the Prime Minister acted in the way that he did. The principles within the Cabinet Manual are well understood by Ministers. Ministers understand that the decisions we are making are serious ones. They are ones that we do hold collective responsibility for; and our ability to work together requires us to have the level of trust that one would expect in a Cabinet. That is not what occurred here. Mr Nash himself has spoken of how remorseful he is about this but he has paid the ultimate price in terms of his career as a Minister in losing his role. In terms of the actions that the Prime Minister has taken in response to this he has of course dismissed the Minister. In addition to that he has asked the Cabinet secretary to conduct a review into communications between Stuart Nash and his donors. That review will take place over the next two months. The review will look at whether there have been any other breaches of Cabinet collective responsibility or confidentiality where there has been perceived or actual conflicts of interest in the communications that Stuart Nash has had with those donors. The scope of this review is focused around the emails texts and other messages between Stuart Nash and any declared donor to his campaign. We do expect a high level of conduct from Ministers and MPs and the Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear to his colleagues—and indeed to New Zealanders—that he does not accept what has happened here that he believes we must uphold standards far higher than those that Minister Nash exhibited and as a result Minister Nash is no longer with us. In terms of the issues around whether or not—oh sorry. I should also just say it is actually important to note that Minister Nash has said he will cooperate fully with the inquiry and we will certainly be able to have an outcome that will be released to the public prior to the election. I do want to turn to the other matters that have been raised in the speech from the member Nicola Willis who moved the motion and that is around the issue of the email that was put into the media and then has subsequently now obviously been released to the public. I want to note two things at the outset. The first of those is that both the member who has just spoken and myself have worked in offices—the Prime Minister's office in particular but other offices in the building. Once upon a time I was the person in the Prime Minister's office who had responsibility for looking at Official Information Act (OIA) requests. What the member knows and what I know is that that has been a feature of the work of the Beehive under administrations of all shades—that the Prime Minister's office is involved with Official Information Act requests. It's called a no-surprises policy. It's exactly the kind of thing that we would expect and it is no different in terms of how we're dealing with it as to how it has been dealt with in the past—that is part of the way it works. Once upon a time Official Information Act requests actually never went to agencies. They all came into ministerial offices. Over time the practice changed and particularly Opposition members—again of both shades—have gone ahead and made requests directly to departments. As a result of that there are now no-surprises policies between departments and ministerial offices and there are no-surprises policies within the ministerial offices up to the Prime Minister's office. It is simply a part of the system that we now have.In terms of the time line of what happened that's been publicly released today by the Prime Minister's office to make sure that people are absolutely clear about what occurred. If I can just work my way through that chronologically and pick up a number of the points that were made by the member the first of those is that it is true that Cabinet committee agreed to amend the Property Law Act to imply a clause into leases with criteria including businesses having 20 or fewer fulltime-equivalents for the lease site and also to agree to Government support for arbitration. It is also true that obviously—as the member said—that law never went ahead. Now at the risk of doing the very thing that Minister Nash did I have to limit my comments. But at the time it was made public by members of the coalition that we were in that there was a difference of view between coalition partners around that matter. For those who've been in coalition Governments—and there's not probably any left from the other side of the House who were in one; or maybe a few who were there—they will know that coalition Governments have to operate on the basis that it is relatively flexible because coalition partners don't always agree on matters. Equally something changing between a Cabinet committee and Cabinet is actually not that unusual more generally but particularly so when one is dealing with coalition arrangements. So obviously we take that into account and I believe that yesterday the Minister of Justice ran through a large amount of advice that was provided to the then Minister of Justice around this particular matter. So it was a creature of the particular situation and the particular time that we were in. I know that the member who gave the speech offered us earlier on today a definition of conspiracy" which she said was people getting together to work on something. Now the member's got a lot of experience in conspiracies to roll Opposition leaders so I understand that she simply sees it as a plan where two or three people get together but actually the member is jumping at shadows in that regard with this particular issue. Then we come to the matter of the email and its arrival in the Prime Minister's office. As I've said earlier today the Prime Minister has been absolutely clear that he does not find acceptable what occurred here. The staff members in question have apologised. They acknowledged that this was an error of judgment in not recognising the significance of the email and escalating it at the time. As the Deputy Prime Minister has said today answering on behalf of the Prime Minister errors of judgment—human error—are a fact of life. They are a fact of life in every workplace in every building around New Zealand and I want to take a moment to acknowledge the staff who work for us in these buildings here. They work in one of the most stressful environments that it is possible to work in. They provide extraordinary service to all of us. We've just been in a period of urgency and I have no doubt that in the Opposition as much as in the Government there were staff who were here until midnight last night working to make sure that they support us. This particular exercise all happened during the COVID period when people were under a huge amount of stress where they were working from home more often than not. None of that is an excuse; it's simply a reason for why errors of judgment get made. But more than that I felt today in question time possibly the angriest I've felt in the whole time I have been in Government. To have the deputy leader of the National Party call into question the integrity of staff members who have no ability to defend themselves—and for many years in this House it has been a strong convention that we would not do that. We would not drag those staff members in. I think it's appalling behaviour from the deputy leader of the National Party to do that—and Mr Speaker I want to actually apologise to you because I was one of the members yelling out and you were on your feet and I don't think that's right. But there comes a time in this House when I think we go beyond things that are about political debate or political theatre—Chris Bishop: Andrew Campbell named them. Andrew Campbell fed their names to the media. Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: So Mr Bishop is saying that Andrew Campbell fed their names to the media. Mr Bishop is correct about that and we've been transparent about this. What Andrew Campbell didn't do Mr Bishop was accuse those people of being unethical or indulging in a conspiracy Mr Bishop. That's not what Andrew Campbell did; that's what Nicola Willis did. Nicola Willis stood up in this House and impugned the integrity of people who cannot answer back. Mr Bishop that is a disgrace. In terms of the way in which this situation then rolled out there is as I've noted a long history of the Prime Minister's office being involved with the Ministers' offices in the way that Official Information Act requests get handled. We've gone through the process that happened. Those in the Prime Minister's office have acknowledged their error of judgment. What then happens is that an Official Information Act release goes back to a Minister's office and it is a Minister who signs that out. At that point—and it's something that we all as Ministers know and understand—it's up to us. At that point we are the ones who take responsibility for what goes out. Now I'm not sure what the processes were in Minister Nash's office but I can tell colleagues in the House what the processes are in my office and that is that I do spend a significant amount of time usually on a Sunday afternoon going through numerous OIA requests to make sure that I'm confident about what I am putting my name to. That is true and I am sure that if Minister Nash were here today he would also acknowledge exactly that point—that he is the person who signed out that OIA request. He is the person who is ultimately responsible for that. So while I know that the Opposition over there are intent on hanging out to dry staff members who cannot answer back the reality is that they themselves have acknowledged an error of judgment and that is why we are in the position that we are. It is quite true that on this side of the House we have been through a situation here that none of us are happy about in terms of both Minister Nash having to be dismissed and indeed with the process around this email which the Prime Minister has declared is unacceptable and certainly he does not want it to happen again. But I've been here a while and I've seen a lot and some of the things that I have heard in this House today just beggar belief. I'm only going to give a handful of things as examples here. I sat over there I think possibly in the chair that Mr Bishop is in right now when we were discussing what happened with the deal around the SkyCity convention centre. To summarise that for members there was an open tender process about who was going to deliver the SkyCity convention centre Steven Joyce had dinner with them and then all of a sudden the process changed and it was a direct deal with them. Is that upholding the highest ethical standards Mr Bishop? Then we've got the issues around the Saudi sheep deal which are in fact so many it's almost impossible to mention but the Auditor-General had a good look at that. Chris Bishop: Steven never had dinner with them. You're going to have to correct this—it's wrong. Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well Mr Bishop might be right: it mightn't have been Steven Joyce who had the dinner but it was certainly a Government Minister. Then I do want to mention in addition to that the issues around Oravida and they're ones that I am extremely familiar with. In those situations be it the Saudi sheep deal be it the SkyCity convention centre deal be it the Oravida situation there is a long history on the other side of the House of behaviour that I don't believe met ethical standards. It does not make right what Minister Nash did by any means but what it does point to is the fact that getting up on their high horses over there and telling us that they're the ones who understand what it means to have ethical standards I believe is absolutely outrageous. So where does this leave us now? It leaves us in a situation where Stuart Nash a member of Parliament who came in in 2008 at the same time that I did who around the House has many people on all sides of the House who would regard him as a friend and somebody that they like is gone. He's lost his political career as a Minister. He's no longer exercising the warrant that I know made him so proud and unfortunately that's the right decision. The decision taken by the Prime Minister—which is the subject of this motion—to dismiss Stuart Nash is the right decision. It gives me absolutely no joy that that decision had to be taken but it was undoubtedly the right one. The conduct was utterly unacceptable. We now have a situation where the Opposition are determined to carry on and prosecute—as the member opposite said—an issue around the email. That is entirely their right to do that. But from the perspective of the Government and the perspective indeed of the motion that's been moved here the dismissal of Stuart Nash has occurred as a result of the Prime Minister's decision. It was the right one but it is not something I take any comfort or joy in."