Mapp Wayne: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5890] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This will be the last debate in the Committee stage. It is a shame is it not that this Government using its majority is ruthlessly putting through validating legislation. Government members seem to think that this legislation is absolutely vital for the health of the nation and indeed for the lawfulness of this Government. What arrant nonsense that is I have to say. Government members have come in here with the completely facetious argument that everything that has been done back to 1989 urgently needs validation—so urgently that no member of the public can make a submission. That is a completely outrageous lie that is being perpetrated on the voters of New Zealand. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member cannot use the word “lie”. He knows that is out of order. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I certainly know that one cannot accuse any member or indeed any party of a lie but it has certainly never been the case that one could not describe legislation or something of that nature in those terms. The rule about the use of the word “lie” relates to individuals and parties and to their personal and party motives not to legislation. 
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Dr Mapp the previous Chairman Mr Robertson has advised me that the Committee was in the middle of a point of order before the lunch break and that you had been asked to withdraw and apologise for the word you had used. So could you do that please? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: I did not withdraw and apologise because I did not accuse anyone or any party of a lie. I simply said that the legislation was a lie. My understanding of the Standing Orders and the rules of this House is that that could not be a breach of the Standing Orders. Therefore I have nothing to apologise for. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The word was not used against a person or a party? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: No it was not and indeed the Deputy Prime Minister knows that to be the case. 
This is a tawdry little bill. It is unneeded and it is unwanted. I say to those parties that are going to vote for it the Labour Party the New Zealand First Party and United Future that they will be forever stained with it. They will be judged in the court of public opinion and they will be judged at the next election. There will be an accounting. That accounting will be in the ballot box and it will not be favourable. 
I want to say this. When a party deliberately uses taxpayers’ money towards its election expenses in excess of the spending limits that is judged to be a corrupt practice under the Electoral Act. That is the case and that assertion has been made many times in this Chamber and has never been denied by the Government. The Labour Party ought to live with its guilt. If one speeds one pays the fine. That does not obviate the crime; the fact is that the record of one’s guilt remains. Someone who had done that does not come to Parliament and try to change the law saying: “I never sped. At all stages I was within the law.” But that is what this Government is trying to do now. 
The Labour members say there has been validation legislation in the past. But it has never been for a political party in relation to its own malfeasance. That is what this bill is actually about—the deliberate use of taxpayers’ money to Labour members’ advantage in order to turn the election in their favour. Now they want this Parliament to say that is OK—that it is permissible and that the public of New Zealand ought to forgive them. Well the public will not. 
I say this very very clearly to the Labour Party. It has committed a corrupt practice under the Electoral Act. Labour members should not be asking this Parliament to let them obviate the consequences of doing that and pretend that the unlawful is now legal. That is a fiction and a patent fiction at that and the public know that. That is why on talkback radio and in letters to the editor the Government is being judged very harshly. People see naked self-interest. That is the difference between this form of validating legislation and any other validating legislation in New Zealand’s history. This Parliament has never passed law for the naked self-interest of members of Parliament; that has never happened before in the history of our land. That is why this bill is such a travesty of fundamental democratic constitutional principles. 
The Labour members do not care about that. They are just riding completely roughshod over the foundations of our democracy and they expect the public to understand that. Well the public will not and Labour will be judged accordingly.