Shearer David: Urgent Debates — Diplomatic Incident Malaysian Official—Negotiations Regarding Waiver of Diplomatic ImmunityText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Urgent Debates — Diplomatic Incident Malaysian Official—Negotiations Regarding Waiver of Diplomatic Immunity[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19130. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour - Mt Albert):I move That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. Today we heard from Murray McCully that he is not even going to guarantee that he will extradite or ask for the extradition of a Malaysian diplomat to come back to New Zealand and face the charges that have been levelled against him. He has let New Zealand down.Today Mr McCully apologised to John Key for his bungling of this case. He has apologised to the wrong person. He should be apologising to the woman concerned who is not getting justice in this case. She is the person who has allegedly suffered an attempted rape and burglary of her home. She was followed home and suffered that indignation. He should apologise to her because his Government failed to stand by her when she most needed that. He did not stand up for her rights. He did not listen to the advice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He did not seek clarification about what had happened to her and the case of this Malaysian diplomat. He stood up only when the media finally got hold of the story. What sort of confidence can the New Zealand public have in a Government that stands up only when a story gets into the media and it says “Oh sorry we’ve made a mistake. We’ve screwed up.”? That is not good enough. That is not what we expect from our Government.Mr Speaker I want to thank you for allowing this debate to go ahead because it is a debate that cuts right to the heart of what New Zealanders expect from their Government. They have not got what they wanted. They have not got what they have deserved. Instead we have seen a lot of shilly-shallying about and that is not the end of it. Not only has this Minister failed to stand up for this New Zealander this young woman concerned but the bungling and ineptitude continues. It continues on and on and on.Let me just explain. The Malaysian diplomat in question was brought before the courts on 9 May—9 May; not the end of May as the Prime Minister spoke of today. He has not even been aware of the full account.Hon Phil Goff: He doesn’t care.DAVID SHEARER: He does not. I do not believe he does. I think Mr Goff is right. I think he is completely indifferent to what has been going on.But what do we know? Let us set out the case. A Malaysian diplomat as I said was brought before our courts on 9 May facing serious charges against a woman in Wellington. That diplomat allegedly committed a crime but he left and went back to Malaysia on 22 May. Nothing was said. Nothing was said about this alleged crime until last Sunday when it finally broke out in the New Zealand Herald. It finally broke out in the New Zealand Herald and then the Government started talking tough. The Government started talking tough. Mr Key said he wanted that diplomat brought to justice. Oh good on you Mr Key! What happened in the 6 weeks before that? What happened from the very time that he learnt about it on 10 May? Nothing. Nothing happened. It is a little bit like a tree falling over in the forest—if you do not hear about it it never existed. That is exactly what this Government wanted to have happen: for it to not exist.Then the Government started talking tough and John Key said he wanted that diplomat returned to New Zealand. He said it was wrong for the Malaysian Government to invoke diplomatic immunity. Mr McCully himself jumped in on the chorus. He jumped in on the chorus and started talking about the fact that he does not believe that this diplomat—at that stage nobody knew who the diplomat was and where he came from. He did not want that diplomat to have name suppression. He thought that name suppression should be lifted.Well what we find out is that the Foreign Minister of Malaysia quite rightly stood up as a point of principle—we have a good relationship with the Foreign Minister of Malaysia—and he did the right thing and fronted the issue at a press conference in front of the world’s media. The entire world’s media was watching. I know because I have been following this on the internet. This was reported right across the world. What did that Foreign Minister say? He said that his officials had been told by the New Zealand Government that it was willing to accept the fact that the Malaysian Government had offered a waiver of immunity. So the Malaysian Government was actually quite prepared—quite prepared—to have that diplomat charged here in New Zealand. The Foreign Minister went on. He said that he thought that the New Zealand justice system was a little bit like their own that our justice system was a fair and good one and that the man would get a fair trial.That is not what Mr McCully then came out and said about what the Foreign Minister had said. Straight after that press conference Mr McCully came out and showed us two documents. One document on 10 May straight after the man was charged asked for the Malaysians to waive diplomatic immunity and allow this man to be charged in New Zealand. The next document was a document from the Malaysian High Commission back to New Zealand saying that it wanted to invoke diplomatic immunity and that the man would leave on 22 May. Between that time however some discussions had gone on.But those two documents—think about this. The Malaysian Foreign Minister has just come out and said that they were prepared to waive diplomatic immunity and had been told by the New Zealand Government that that was not necessary and so therefore they had brought the diplomat home. The Foreign Minister had said that in front of the world’s media in front of everybody in the world. Then Mr McCully comes out and says: “Oh no the Foreign Minister’s actually wrong. We asked for them to waive diplomatic immunity and the Malaysian Government refused it.” He contradicted the Malaysian Foreign Minister in front of the world’s media—an incredible embarrassment.Three hours later—this was last night—Mr McCully came out again and said that what actually happened in the interim period between those two letters was that in fact there were some discussions that went on between our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Malaysian foreign ministry and that may have led to some ambiguity. This is an outrage. Murray McCully wanted to show that he was right and was prepared to put everything else at risk including our relationship with Malaysia. Now we are on the back foot. Now we are on the back foot having to accept that actually Malaysia and the Malaysian Foreign Minister were right and we were actually in the wrong.But is this not typical of Mr McCully? Is this not typical of Mr McCully? First of all his first reaction his modus operandi is to not front. Do not go out do not say anything. So journalists last night were wondering what had gone on but Mr McCully would not front. Secondly the second thing he does is selectively put out some documents. So he put out these two letters that contradicted the Malaysian Foreign Minister and made the situation ten times worse than it was. Then finally the third part of Mr McCully’s modus operandi is that when you finally do front blame the officials. It is never your fault; it is always the officials’ fault. Now we are tunnelling down to the deputy head of protocol whom Mr McCully is scraping the bottom of the barrel to blame for the mistake. Well it is about time that Mr McCully stood up and accepted responsibility for the bungling that his ministry has inflicted on New Zealand.A young New Zealander has been overlooked to cover up Mr McCully’s butt. That is what has happened here. We have sacrificed somebody who has every right to expect justice from this Government and has been deprived of it. The final point is he does not even want to go out and ask for that diplomat to be brought back to New Zealand to face charges. This is unacceptable—completely unacceptable. We have a person a New Zealander a young woman who deserves justice. We have a foreign Minister who is not willing to stand up but instead is trying to butt-shove and get documents out of the way as quick as he can and blame everybody else except himself. Thirdly when he does try to cover up with those documents he brings the Malaysian Foreign Minister’s integrity into question and we have a diplomatic situation on top of that.It is an absolute disgrace that New Zealand has not stood up for its own people. The Government has not done right by our own citizens. We should always—always—stand up for New Zealanders no matter if the issue is in the public arena in front of the public spotlight or not. In this case the Government has demonstrably failed.