Twyford Phil: Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill — Third Reading 
Twyford Phil: Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15338] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 It is well established now that Labour would be supporting and voting for the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill were it not for the inclusion of Part 4 which grants to the Minister for the Rugby World Cup what are in our view excessive and unchecked powers to override the advice and recommendations of the Rugby World Cup Authority. We have said all the way through the process that we support all of the other parts and that the arrangements put in place to establish staff resource and govern the Rugby World Cup Authority along with the requirements in the bill for highly qualified and eminent personnel to make decisions on the issuing of resource consents and other approvals are entirely satisfactory. As my colleague Chris Hipkins said there was a good and largely non-partisan discussion at the select committee to improve this bill and iron out some of the problems. A number of improvements have been made and we would be supporting this legislation were it not for the continued presence of Part 4 which gives the Minister the Hon Murray McCully what we think are excessive and unjustified powers to override the advice of the officials on the authority. 
The Hon Trevor Mallard has described the efforts to which Labour has gone to propose a compromise. An amendment was put on the Table that would have made the system provided by this bill more democratic and it would have meant that Labour would be happy to support the legislation. Mr Mallard also made the point that we have conventions of accountable Government that are designed to keep Ministers at arm’s length and to ensure that Ministers are not making specific decisions that would affect for example the property rights of others. There is plenty of ministerial conduct that we can see in the career of the Hon Murray McCully that provides ample justification for that convention. We can go back to the Tourism Board affair in the late 1990s when that member of this House set up two rival boards to the Tourism Board to provide him with advice because he did not want to listen to the advice of the Tourism Board and $900000 was paid in hush money to people who were forced off the board because they were so unhappy with that state of affairs. 
There are plenty of other examples including the ramming through of the restructuring of NZAID last year against the advice of Treasury and other officials. The Minister did not want to listen to officials who provided reasoned substantiated advice and he rammed those changes through. More recently we saw the appointment without tender—which is highly unusual for a contract under foreign affairs—with a $78000 contract of the former National MP Mark Blumsky. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Well we know what it was. It was part of a 90-day arrangement for Mark in Niue. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Oh that is what it was—OK. That sort of unorthodox behaviour is par for the course for that Minister. We would be opposing Part 4 of this bill regardless but the fact that the Minister for the Rugby World Cup is Murray McCully is even more cause for this House to stop and think about what it is doing. That Minister routinely ignores the advice of his officials and I am told routinely abuses officials. He ignores their advice and manipulates the normal processes until he gets what he wants. That is precisely the reason that this bill should not be giving those kinds of unchecked powers to the Minister in this case because when this Minister has an agenda he is willing to routinely ignore the advice of officials until he gets what he wants. 
I understand he has contracted two officials from the private sector to provide an independent source of advice replacing the advice that he received from senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials. He did not like the advice he had from those officials so what has he done? He has gone out and hand-picked the advice from people he wants from outside the Public Service to give him the advice. That is exactly the kind of behaviour we should be trying to guard against because Murray McCully is a meddler and a manipulator and he will not respect the conventions of accountable Government. 
It emerged last week that an $8 million contract for the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup is being awarded to an Australian company and that ignores the fantastic track record of our creative arts in this country. That contract is being awarded to an Australian company which will have the job of staging the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup. The Rugby World Cup will have a television audience of approximately 4 billion people I understand and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase New Zealand’s creativity and to showcase New Zealand to the world. But what is this Minister doing? He is handing that contract to the Australians. I ask why that Minister would do that. Rahui Katene said that in order to reap the great benefit of the Rugby World Cup we need to ensure New Zealand gets the economic benefit of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What is this Minister doing? He is handing that opportunity over to the Australians and my information is that Murray McCully’s fingerprints are all over that decision. 
We heard from Martin Snedden last week that a decision had not been made and that New Zealand companies would be able to implement some of those activities but actually it is very clear because of the lack of any watertight denial that that decision has been made. Murray McCully’s fingerprints are all over it and if that is the standard of decision making that we can expect for the rest of this issue then there should be a lot to worry about and the New Zealand public should be very concerned. 
Trevor Mallard talked about keeping Ministers at arm’s length and I think I have given the House a catalogue of reasons why the Hon Murray McCully should be kept at arm’s length from the sorts of decisions that could be made in the granting of consents. Mr Mallard talked about the hypothetical scenario in which a building—someone’s house for example—could be a heritage building and could face the possibility of being knocked down. The Rugby World Cup Authority in this scenario could decide not to do that because it would not think that it was a reasonable thing to do and the Minister under this bill would have the power to ignore the advice of the authority. We on this side of the House think that that is unacceptable. It unnecessarily discards the conventions of accountable Government; and Murray McCully by his own parliamentary career has demonstrated time and time again—over a couple of decades—why the conventions of accountable Government are there. 
In this case those conventions are being thrown away unnecessarily and that is why Labour members simply cannot vote for this bill. We have argued that point from the beginning of the debate right through to the closing stages. We have offered compromises and we have put an amendment on the table that would have solved the problem and this Government has just refused to accept it. As my colleague said we will be voting against this bill more in sorrow than in anger because we accept that the Rugby World Cup is a fantastic event that New Zealand is looking forward to and that it offers huge opportunity for New Zealand in terms of economic benefit and of the celebration of the event itself. It is a shame that the debate had to end with this legislation.