Goff Phil: Urgent Debates — Rugby World Cup—Broadcasting 
Goff Phil: Urgent Debates — Rugby World Cup—Broadcasting 
[Volume:658;Page:7183] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. It is symbolic of the absolute shambles with which the rights to the broadcasting of the Rugby World Cup were allocated that the Minister opposite the Leader of the House did not know that the Government had made a decision on broadcasting rights with regard to the Rugby World Cup. Mr Brownlee must have been asleep at the time which would not be unusual from what his colleagues have told me. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was not asleep but I was in the country. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I accept that that is in good humour but the member should not interrupt another member’s debate in that manner. That is not acceptable. I apologise to the Leader of the Opposition. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Although not challenging your ruling and I note that you accept Mr Brownlee’s intervention as being good humoured I simply ask you to reflect latterly on what happened last week when you made certain rulings and rendered certain sanctions. Again last week that member transgressed eight times and you dealt with him in exactly the way you did today. There was no penalty and no remedy. I ask you to reflect on balance. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Could I politely suggest to the honourable member that I do not think his point of order is that helpful. I have just pointed out that the member should not interrupt the Leader of the Opposition like that. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I should point out to people around the country who are listening to this debate that Mr Brownlee is the Associate Minister for the Rugby World Cup and he did not know that his Government had made a decision about broadcasting rights. But I will say in defence of Gerry Brownlee that I am not surprised as there was so much confusion and so much chaos. This was an absolute fiasco which was admitted even by the Prime Minister when he said: “We could have done it better.” That must be the understatement of the year. 
The absolute shambles that has marked the Government’s handling of this issue not to mention the issue of accident compensation and the situation with the emissions trading scheme shows that this Government lacks leadership lacks any coherence and lacks management of what its Ministers are doing. No less than a third—a third—of the National Cabinet was involved in this decision: the Prime Minister the Minister of Finance Gerry Brownlee as Associate Minister for the Rugby World Cup Mr McCully as Minister for the Rugby World Cup the Minister of Broadcasting Georgina te Heuheu and Dr Pita Sharples. There were seven of them a third of the Cabinet and they could not get their act together. They were not listening to each other they were not talking to each other and they did not agree with each other about how to secure the broadcasting rights for free-to-air television viewing for the Rugby World Cup. 
Instead the Government ended up with a very sorry saga of Ministers attacking each other in public Ministers launching personal attacks on the heads of Government departments and Ministers attacking the broadcasting agencies and saying things to the public that people like Jim Mather said were absolutely untrue. This debate has been requested to hold the Government to account for its absolutely incompetent handling of this affair. 
I am worried that with an event like this which will be one of the biggest in the sporting history of this country we have seen the initial handling of the event by the National Government as being so incompetent. It makes us wonder how safe the investment of $300 million of taxpayer funds in this event will be. We worry even more when the losses expected from ticket sales have gone up by $9 million in the last couple of weeks. When we see the saga of incompetence in handling the broadcasting issues we wonder how this Government will deliver in a successful way something that the eyes of the world will be on. 
We ended up with the absolute farce of taxpayer-funded agencies using public money to outbid each other to fill the pockets of the International Rugby Board. How can that make sense? I ask how it can make sense to have two different Government agencies using taxpayer money to enrich the International Rugby Board when this Government keeps saying that it is cutting adult and community education because it cannot afford it. It could afford it if it showed some competence in the way it was running these issues. 
If we are talking about money and the emissions trading scheme there is the $30 billion which Dr Nick Smith never told the country about that it will cost New Zealand taxpayers by 2050 to subsidise polluters. It is another example of a shambles and of absolute incompetence. This Government cannot even run a select committee to hear the evidence. There were 300 submissions and the Government wanted to hear them in 1 day. How much notice— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The specific debate sought was to do with broadcasting arrangements for the Rugby World Cup. I apologise for interrupting the honourable Leader of the Opposition but I was listening for quite a while to the member debating other issues. This is not a general debate; this is specifically on the urgent debate requested. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Speaking to the point of order I was simply drawing out the fact that the shambles in the management of the broadcasting rights for the Rugby World Cup was not isolated to one event. There is a pattern and it involves several different policy issues— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am happy for the member to refer in passing to other matters that may be causing concern but I stress that the bulk of the debate seemed to be moving away from the matter sought in this urgent debate. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Some serious questions need to be answered by Mr Brownlee when he takes his call. The first question relates to the fact that under statute the broadcasting agencies are meant to be independent of Government direction. What happened to those statutory provisions? The Government was donkey deep in telling the respective agencies what they should be doing. This Government is ignoring the rule of law. This Government is meant to be acting under a statutory provision but it has ignored it. Secondly there is the serious question of why I say to Mr Brownlee we are using taxpayers’ money at all to fund those broadcasting free-to-air rights when this should be a commercial decision made by those who are bidding for them. 
The International Rugby Board is laughing all the way to the bank because it knows that every extra million dollars that the Government uses to subsidise this bid for broadcasting rights is the amount by which it can up the price to the New Zealand taxpayer. This decision ought to have been a commercial decision. It was not and the only thing that has been achieved is to play into the hands of the International Rugby Board and the amount of money that will have to be paid for the free-to air rights. The net impact of Government money has been simply to raise the price expectations of the International Rugby Board. The net impact of ministerial involvement in this area seems to have been only to increase the confusion rather than facilitate a resolution. 
Mr Brownlee should answer a third question in the absence of John Key being prepared to do so. It is about ministerial ethics. I ask the question directly of Gerry Brownlee: did a Government Minister leak details of the Maori Television Service’s bid to Television New Zealand (TVNZ)? It is a simple question but a very important question because it comes down to a matter of ethics. How could any commercial organisation ever trust the National Government to deal with commercially sensitive material in an appropriate and ethical way if this is the lesson of what happens to commercial bids when they are passed across to a Minister? 
Pita Sharples has been reasonably clear about this. He said that the handling of the bidding process by other Ministers was “not squeaky clean”. That was the other master of understatements that was made. Then Jonathan Coleman was asked on TV3 whether he leaked that material. Members should listen to the answer; I am sure it will persuade everybody. He said: “I cannot recall giving them specific information.” Jonathan Coleman knows the truth—that is Government Ministers did leak that information. That is not just poor ethics. That is not just bad commercial practice. It shows absolutely bad faith between Ministers. One Minister gives information to another Minister only to find that that information is leaked to a third party bidding against the first organisation. 
Where was the leadership of John Key on this matter? What did he say? Let me quote it to the House: “The process was far from perfect and National ministers need to take their fair share of responsibility for that.” What about the John Key who promised this country earlier this year that he expected high standards from his Ministers. I ask Mr Brownlee where the high standards were when it came to Ministers leaking commercially sensitive information. Then Mr Key said about his MPs and his Cabinet that there would be a no-surprises policy. Well the National Ministers claimed that Pita Sharples dumped the surprise on them. Pita Sharples contributed to that by apologising for it. 
But what do we find out when we see the information about the time lines? We find out that Bill English knew back in June about this bid. He knew in June about the Te Puni Kokiri money that had been put up. When we look through the sorry saga of it Mr Sharples met with Mr English to talk about the plan. Georgina te Heuheu was in the room when it happened. The Maori Television Service bid stayed on the table. Bill English said he was going to give some thought to it. He gave some thought to it! Pita Sharples found out when TVNZ came in with a rival bid informed by the leaked information which absolutely surprised Pita Sharples. I do not think it is good enough for Mr Key to say that he did not know whether any of his Ministers had leaked commercially sensitive information to TVNZ and that he did not plan to ask them. 
Hon Members 
: What! 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Here it is: the Prime Minister talks about high standards and sees an absolute example of low standards—unacceptable unethical and non-collegial behaviour—and says he will not ask and will not tell. That is John Key’s definition of transparency. He instead blamed confusion among “a lot of Ministers engaged on our side with different responsibilities”. A lot of Ministers involved with different responsibilities! I served for 9 years under Helen Clark. She never made excuses about not fulfilling the role of leadership when different Ministers were involved with cross-portfolio issues. The chairman of Cabinet manages that process. 
This Government’s management has been an absolute shambles and it brings into real doubt whether it is competent to manage the process of the Rugby World Cup which the previous Labour Government secured for this country working in collaboration with the New Zealand Rugby Union board. This event if properly managed promises to be a huge success for New Zealand but what confidence will New Zealanders have about the competency of this Government to manage the process when it has begun in this way? 
I will finish by raising a conflict between Jonathan Coleman and Jim Mather the Chief Executive of Maori Television. I ask Gerry Brownlee another question: who is telling the truth? Jonathan Coleman said that the Government made it clear to the Maori Television Service in the week before the bids went in. He said that that is what it was going to do. Jim Mather said that Dr Coleman was incorrect in his statement that the Government contacted Maori Television prior to the bid being submitted. One of those men is not telling the truth I say to Mr Brownlee. I want him to tell the truth about which one of those men is telling a lie about what he did. Here is another comment from Mr Coleman. He said the Maori Television Service had decided it wanted to go it alone. Jim Mather says that Maori Television did not decide to go it alone as stated by Dr Coleman. Is Dr Coleman ignorant of what was happening or was he being deliberately misleading in the statements he made? 
Here is a Government where the Ministers are blaming and attacking each other. The Ministers are blaming their heads of departments and speaking to them in unprofessional language. Here is a Government whose Ministers are out attacking the chief executives of the broadcasting agencies in a way that reveals that it is they the Ministers who do not know what is happening or do not want to know. This is a Government that does not take responsibility for itself; it is a Government that seeks to blame everybody else. But there is only one body of people responsible for this fiasco—this shambles. That is the National Cabinet which did not get its act together despite the fact that seven of its Ministers were working on the broadcasting rights. It did not come out with a coherent policy and it interfered where it should not have interfered. It used taxpayers’ money in a way that will up the cost to the taxpayer without lowering the cost of getting those broadcasting rights. 
No wonder this is a Government that has a Leader of the House who did not want to debate this issue today. He did not want to debate this issue today because he knows that this is a Government that does not have a leg to stand on when it comes to its utter incompetence in managing the shambles over the broadcasting rights.