Brownlee Gerry: Member Vacancy — Epsom Electoral District—Hon John BanksText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrownlee Gerry: Member Vacancy — Epsom Electoral District—Hon John Banks[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18634. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House):I move That pursuant to section 131(b) of the Electoral Act 1993a vacancy in the Epsom Electoral District having arisen and the House having been informed that a general election is to be held within six months of the occurrence of the vacancy no writ be issued for the election of a member of Parliament for that Electoral District to supply the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of John Archibald Banks. What an irony it is that we are here today debating as a House and most likely agreeing that there should be no by-election in the Epsom electorate—a by-election that is caused by the resignation of the Hon John Archibald Banks subsequent to the findings of the court that his memory of donations around an election campaign were to say the least hazy.I will speak more of John Archibald Banks in a few minutes but the irony is that we are debating this today when there are so many rumours swirling about undeclared donations by the Labour Party—donations that can total we believe if all is to be revealed some tens of thousands of dollars. Today we have the allegation out there that a $15000 donation has been made to the Labour Party and not declared. What we hear is that the Labour members have no record of it they have no memory of it and there is no possibility that the donation was made.Well there is more to come on that but the real point here is that the Hon David Cunliffe used that same set of excuses in the last couple of days. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am merely pointing out that the House has dealt with matters today—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Members on my left have been here a long time and they know the Standing Orders. A point of order is to be put tersely and there are to be no interjections whatsoever.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I was in the middle of a point of order I believe.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Yes you were.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It was that you were giving the well-known Ross Robertson signal for “Come back to the topic”. I was accepting that you were actually signalling a wide scope at that point—I assume that it was not to get me in scope of your view—but it was in fact worth recognising that many of the matters—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Is this a point of order?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yes I am in the middle of it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you. Look can I just say to the honourable members on my left whom I have known for many years that you are well versed in the Standing Orders. All members are well versed in the Standing Orders. I call the Hon Gerry Brownlee.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: To continue my point of order I assume.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Continue your point of order.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: My point of order is that the matters I was discussing and that you were suggesting might be slightly out of scope are incredibly relevant to the circumstances that have caused the House to have this debate today and I think it is not unreasonable that they are at least in passing rehearsed.Hon Trevor Mallard: I am standing up to agree with the member but to say that comments on Speakers’ rulings even if they are descriptions of width are something that you should not be doing in a point of order. If you are giving the member signals and making rulings in a sign-language way then it would be most disorderly for the member to comment on it by way of a point of order.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Speaking to the point of order it is just that I am used to all sorts of hand signals and other gestures from the Labour Party.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order. That can actually lead to disorder.Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! We have a point of order on the floor.Tracey Martin: This is a plea for clarification. Mr Brownlee is saying that the debate should be wide because there is some stuff in the paper about the Labour Party but my understanding is that this debate is because Mr Banks has been found guilty of fraud. I do not understand how there is this wide debate when actually it is about a person who has resigned because he has been found guilty of fraud.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The issue is actually sub judice. Members have to be careful what they say in this debate because it can lead to disorder. I just ask members to be conscious of that for when we throw mud we lose ground.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is important that we get the parameters of this right but the fact that the member has been found guilty of electoral fraud is not sub judice; that is a matter of fact and recorded by the court.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That it is Mr Mallard but it is still sub judice in the sense that there has been no sentence as yet so I am just cautioning members that we need to be careful how we couch this debate.Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I hear that and I do not disagree with the ruling but we are able to say things about the Hon John Banks who is no longer a member. The protections that exist for members do not exist for former members.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Well can I just say to members that matters that are sub judice are subject to the discretion of the Speaker. Members are to be cautioned as to the use of parliamentary privilege to circumvent the judicial process as it can undermine public confidence when standards falter or appear to falter. We live in a democracy and although we enjoy freedom of speech it comes with the responsibility to the common good. So I am just cautioning members about the issue.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Thank you for your very wise words Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate them. The point is that no doubt when other members stand up this afternoon they are going to engage in some sort of reasonably severe character assassination on the Hon John Archibald Banks. I am making the point quite simply that although he was in fact dragged into the courts over a local body electoral issue and although it was pointed out to him that his recollections of events were not found to be as the court would like them we also have a situation here in this Parliament right now where there are allegations about donations to a political party the Labour Party—tens of thousands of donations from a Mr Bill Liu. We have got a party that knows that all that is there and it has a leader who has been found out to be someone who is to say the very least reckless with the truth and it is going to put the boot into John Banks. Well Mr Banks did the right thing. He resigned from Parliament.Hon Annette King: He had to!Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: He has not been convicted. He has resigned from Parliament. He did not have to. He has not at this point been convicted. But he is an honourable man. He is a friend of mine and he will remain that. The point that is made in this debate is about setting aside the need for a very very expensive by-election and it could be simply made by everyone agreeing in one or two sentences that spending up to $1 million on a by-election so close to a general election would be a waste of time. But I know that you are going to get the fake sanctimony from the other side of the House as the members all roll out trying to protect a beleaguered and besieged leader who has got a huge job to convince anybody that anything he says is worth listening to let alone believing. Now we are going to see a character assassination of John Banks. I am wanting to pre-empt that by making it clear that it is not appropriate in this House for the pot to call the kettle black which is effectively what I am sure we are going to see this afternoon.I am aware that Grant Robertson the shadow Leader of the House has said “Well all bets are off. This is an unlimited debate and so we’re just going to go at it hard and the Government will be here all the way to 31 July debating this particular motion.” Well I want to make the point that that is not going to happen because there is no confidence on that side of the House in the situation that Mr Cunliffe finds himself in today. There is no comfort in the House over the undisclosed donations. There is no acceptance that there is some sort of a blunder inside the Labour Party that has meant that a donation that should have been recorded and should have been made available to the Electoral Commission has not been declared.I think it is going to be very very interesting to see the positions that are taken today by our opponents. We do not think an election is a good idea at this point because it could end up being on the Saturday of the general election the Saturday before or—even worse if the days are extrapolated—the weekend after the general election when the public would be asked to vote for a member for a Parliament that no longer exists. In any event on 14 August this Parliament ceases to exist so unless that by-election were held before that date everyone would be trotting off to the polls to vote for someone for a Parliament that no longer exists. So I think there is in actual fact quite a hole in the electoral law that deals with all of these circumstances. I do not think the clauses in the Electoral Act have actually got us to a point where we can—Rt Hon Winston Peters: What happened?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member over there Mr Peters asks what happened. Mr Peters is one of those members in the House who is probably more singularly responsible for the rewrite in electoral law than anybody else here. I say that not because he has been here forever but simply because of his other interactions at various times.We are really having a debate because the law requires us to but it is a nonsense because there is no way that someone could be elected to sit in Parliament for a Parliament that no longer exists. I just look forward to the contributions from those over there who are amassing circling the wagons around David Cunliffe. I note that as the Leader of the Opposition he would normally have something to say about the setting aside of a by-election.That is unlikely this afternoon and that is largely because of the contradiction in circumstances that we find here today—a member having gone all the way through the courts and having been found to have not appropriately declared donations; and a member today found to have misled the media and all sorts of other people over his knowledge of Donghua Liu. And it gets worse than that. I will read from his letter in a minute—and some of the Labour Party members should do so too. Also that member is not prepared to deal with or acknowledge the fact that there was at least one donation—and we know there were more–from Donghua Liu. If anybody is under any doubt about whether or not it is fair for Mr Cunliffe to say “I had a brain fade. I don’t remember.” this letter—Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is a pretty broad debate that we are engaged in here but really David Cunliffe is not the subject of the debate under any interpretation of the Standing Orders.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): This is a robust debate a robust Parliament and it is within the Standing Orders.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: So here we have across the House a little bit of interplay saying that my comments have so upset the Labour Party that it is going to make this a rough one. Well let us see how good it is because in the end it is on the back foot big time. Mr Cunliffe in his letter said “It would be very helpful to Mr Liu to be advised”—in others words for him to be advised—“of an estimated period of time in which he could expect a decision.” That isthe sort of letter that you write if the person who is being written about is well known to you. So any suggestion that it was some sort of formal thing is absolute rubbish.It is going to be interesting to see how the Labour Party positions itself this afternoon. I think there are matters that it will be aware of that are going to come to light in the next few days which I think is going to be to say the least interesting. Although the Labour Party thinks that we might have come down the Yangtze River on a cabbage boat let me suggest that there are far more plush vessels that have travelled down the Yangtze River than a cabbage boat and we will see in the next couple of days just who was on board.