Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Volume:628;Page:634] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I begin this afternoon by offering my condolences to the New Zealand First Party. I have never seen a more pathetic effort in this House in all the 9 years that I have been here. The Hon Winston Peters stood up and in a most Uriah Heep - like way began to justify his position as Minister of Foreign Affairs. That tells me that he knows that he has set himself up as a joke and that his days as Minister in that portfolio are not going to be marked with great success. 
Mr Swain the speaker who preceded me made a suggestion that attacks this afternoon concerning the issues surrounding Mr Benson-Pope were about character assassination. They are not because this issue has now moved to a point where the question has to be whether anything this Government says or does can be believed. My colleagues have given a very lengthy list of Ministers who have gone west for so-called indiscretions and in some cases for misleading the public. Here is a perfect situation of a Minister trying to manipulate the media—trying to create an impression that was untrue and then denying it—of the Prime Minister then turning round and saying that it was a staff member who did it and of the poor old staff member being dragged before Ministerial Services to take the rap. 
We should not be surprised at the particular style of this exercise. Members will remember that shortly after the Prime Minister’s motorcade was sprung for speeding at 160-odd kilometres an hour across the Canterbury plains—a speeding motorcade that the Prime Minister although she was sitting in the back seat of one of the cars said she did not notice—one of her press secretaries went to a media outlet and tried to put across the story that the drivers had to speed because there were death threats against the Prime Minister. When the media outlet decided to check that out it discovered that the particular nutter who had made that threat had been arrested many hours before the convoy left Geraldine and that there was no need to speed for that reason. But that account is what Helen Clark’s office tried to put across. That is what David Lewis the press secretary tried to get out there. 
Was David Lewis punished for that? 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Was he? 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: No he was promoted. For doing the Prime Minister’s bidding he was promoted to become her illustrious speech-writer and the person who constructed the words that she used throughout the last campaign. What is more it is rumoured that that fellow who did the Prime Minister’s bidding in lying to the media will become the next senior press secretary on the ninth floor as the replacement for the outgoing Mike Munro. 
So there is an interesting situation here. One press secretary who goes off and lies on behalf of the Prime Minister to the media is promoted but another press secretary told by Mr Benson-Pope to put this spin out all over the place ends up getting hung out to dry. I think that Mr Coleman needs to take some advice from someone like David Lewis in order to work out how to get on the better side of the Prime Minister and not have to take the rap for Mr Benson-Pope. 
Much has been said this afternoon by Labour members about how good they are how clever they are and how fantastic they are. The reality of course is that they are members of a party that is in extreme disarray. The party is suffering extreme disunity and severe embarrassment as was witnessed during question No. 11 today when the Rt Hon Winston Peters Government poodle Government lapdog would-be Minister of Foreign Affairs and recipient of all sorts of emails embarrassed it to bits.