Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8709. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 Hands up all the members of this House who have realised in the last 48 hours that they are in possession of a foreign bank account with $100000 in it—in fact they had forgotten about it and they have just suddenly remembered they had it stashed away. David Shearer is the only member of the House who could put his hand up. The offence here is not that he has a foreign bank account and not that he has $100000 or more in that bank account but that he flagrantly disregarded the Standing Orders of this House and disrespected this House for 4 years by not declaring it on his pecuniary interest register. The question has to be why because the “forgot” answer does not wash. It is astonishing that the leader of a political party that pillories people for their wealth and pillories people for their memory lapses is able to say he just forgot at the same time that he is telling John Banks he should exit Parliament for receiving a $500 gift basket. That is typical of the double standard that we have come to know from the Labour Party and that is now sanctioned it would seem by the leader himself. 
What would you be more likely to do: remember that you had $100000 in a foreign bank account or remember a small picture on the corner of a laptop screen at the start of a briefing? Because what David Shearer has said is that the Prime Minister should have—in fact he called him a liar when he said he could not remember that small picture. Well what we are seeing here today and have seen over the last couple of days actually is the extreme deception of David Shearer in not declaring that particular asset. Although his party members over there might like to sit there shaking their heads sort of smiling I do not think they have understood how offensive it will be to New Zealanders that someone is trying to hide a foreign asset. That is completely wrong and somewhat inexplicable. 
So as I said earlier it does not matter that he has a foreign bank account. It does not matter that he has a large sum of money in it. But it does matter that he forgot about it. It does matter that he decided year after year after year not to tell the Parliament that he had it. For someone to take the wrong turn on the motorway once is forgetful; to do it four times is plain stupid. That is the class that Mr Shearer has now put himself into. It is interesting though that he has this I guess you would say habit of being forgetful. He forgot who the painter was on the roof who had a benefit who he said should have been off the roof and doing something else. He forgot about that. He forgot about the video that he told everyone existed but did not exist. So this forgetfulness has been a sort of hallmark of him but I do not think it is a forgivable thing. 
It is also interesting to note that when Mr Shearer who sets such high standards received the Auditor-General’s report on the—what is it called here— 
Inquiry into 
decision by Hon Shane Jones to grant citizenship to Mr Yang Liu 
 he actually by the time he got to the end of it decided there was nothing in here to worry about and that he would go out to the public and say that it all showed nothing. I think he forgot the most important part of that report right at the start where the Auditor-General says that they were not able to investigate any of the accusations or allegations made against Mr Liu and therefore they were not able to investigate all of those suggestions that there was something untoward in the way in which this particular case was dealt with and that they could not look into why it was that just 4 hours after receiving an Official Information Act request Mr Jones had the officials in his office the information on the table and the information in the hands of Mr Liu the following day. A short time after that Mr Jones made a decision that despite the advice from his officials he was going to grant the citizenship and then a day later Mr Liu is dragged into Parliament—