Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
[Volume:658;Page:7023] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 It has been a bad year thus far for the good and honourable Dr Jonathan Coleman. He is a junior member of Cabinet and when junior members of Cabinet have a bad year then they are likely to be earmarked for the reserve bench at the next reshuffle. I do not think Dr Jonathan Coleman will be a Minister of anything for very much longer. It began much much earlier in the year. I can remember a situation in about March or April where allegations had been made against one of Dr Jonathan Coleman’s colleagues Mr Bakshi in respect of a fake jobs-for-cash offer. The investigation by immigration officials turned up nothing. The immigration report said as much when around about March or April it was made public under the Official Information Act. So incensed and distressed was the good Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman that he had a bit of a hissy fit and got a three-person inquiry to work out precisely why New Zealand’s officialdom had obeyed the law. 
Then it turned out that things got worse. You see soon after that there was the resignation of the Rt Hon Helen Clark and an inevitable by-election occurred. “The Maestro” from Mt Albert the minder of Ms Melissa then had a meltdown. His candidate almost came third. But in the middle of it allegations were raised against his preferred and popular hand-picked candidate the aforementioned Ms Melissa Lee and those allegations concerned his portfolio. Did he say that he had a conflict of interest? Not on your nelly! Did he say that he needed to distance himself from one thing or the other? No he did not. He just marched on gravely and gravelly saying that he thought that National would do well. Then the “not guilty” finding came out before polling day. It came out broadly and widely. Almost every letterbox got a copy of it. But what did not come out any time soon was that the “not guilty” call was wrong and that the aforementioned candidate had been inflating her invoices to the tune of a little over $100000. That came out only in very recent weeks. 
What did the good Dr Jonathan Coleman say about that? In a very careful and gravelly manner he said that he did not learn about that until August. I see so we are to believe that—OK. Then in August he did nothing about it; actually he almost forgot about it. At some point credibility gets beggared and I would have thought that credibility and therefore perhaps the Minister is beggared by now but worse is to come. It happened this afternoon with the Maori Television Service debacle in this Government. Ministers were behaving conceitedly and deceitfully towards one another so the Prime Minister finally stepped in this afternoon and said that Maori Television can have it after all. That is a bit of a shame for the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman because he spent the past few days being the one Minister who was really in charge of this and the one who as the Minister of Broadcasting was really promoting the Television New Zealand bid and now he has been cut off at the ankles by his Prime Minister. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Knees! 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: He has been cut off at the knees and that may be why he is currently on urgent public business in some other part of the country even though his own bill the Immigration Bill is due up in a few minutes. I do not know whether the Minister the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman will be able to rush back excitedly to the House to see his own bill through. After all it has taken a year and he did have it written for him when we were in Government. He has taken his time over it. He might be able to get himself back to the House today but he has had a terribly terribly tough afternoon. He who was in charge of fixing this has himself been fixed. He has been fixed by his boss. He also as the Hon Shane Jones pointed out needs to consider an apology to the Hon Pita Sharples as does the Hon Murray McCully whose contribution to this thing so far as I can work out has been to lose his temper on a repeated basis.