McCully Murray: General Debate 
McCully Murray: General Debate 
[Volume:634;Page:5648] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 People who are listening in to this afternoon’s debate on the radio and listening in particular to the contributions from the Government side of the House will no doubt have formed the conclusion that the Government speakers are new back-benchers unencumbered by any form of public office or responsibility and without any ministerial warrants to concern themselves with—individuals with nothing better to do than to sit down and invent insults about members on the opposite side of the House. Well I have very bad news indeed for the New Zealanders who have listened to those contributions and the torrents of personal abuse and invective coming from the other side of House. I say to those ladies and gentlemen that that was their Government. 
Time after time we have listened to Ministers from this Government—people who hold warrants and with portfolios and responsibilities to discharge—who had the opportunity to come to this House today to tell us about the good work they were doing for New Zealand and New Zealanders. One after the other they have done nothing more than stand up and hurl abuse at members of the Opposition. I want to say how pleased I am that New Zealanders can see through all of that. As poll after poll shows us at the moment New Zealanders can see that the members opposite are worthless and have no vision and no policies. They have no intention of doing good for their country. All they come to do in Parliament is to throw mud and insults. The New Zealand public are on to them and I am very pleased to see that. 
Tomorrow we are to see from the Controller and Auditor-General an independent Officer of Parliament the report that Helen Clark never wanted to see. It is the report that Helen Clark has worked tirelessly for months to intimidate the Auditor-General into having changed. That report tells us two very important things. First it tells us that the $460000 Labour Party pledge card involved the unlawful use of taxpayers’ money. That will be the key finding of the report. But the report will leave hanging an even bigger conclusion that we will invite New Zealanders to consider in the days subsequent to its release. It will tell us that if the pledge card expenditure was not a lawful use of parliamentary funds it could be only one other thing and that is the expenditure of funds on an election expense within the meaning of the Electoral Act. 
Tomorrow’s report from the Auditor-General will mean not just that the $460000 pledge card expenditure was unlawful but also as a consequence of that ruling that the money spent by the Labour Party in the last 2 weeks of the campaign involved a breach of section 214B of the Electoral Act which describes the nature of a corrupt practice. That is the news Helen Clark has tried for months to ensure that we would not hear in this House. That is the news that the Labour Party fears hearing. 
And what have we seen from our Prime Minister over the last few weeks? We have seen a naked attempt to intimidate an Officer of Parliament—the Controller and Auditor-General—into changing his point of view. I will quote the Prime Minister. She said that the Auditor-General should “go back to the drawing board”. She said that “he has a serious credibility problem”. This is not a case of the Prime Minister talking about a member on the Opposition side of the House; this is our Prime Minister telling the Controller and Auditor-General an independent Officer of Parliament that he has “a serious credibility problem” and he should “go back to the drawing board”. I cannot imagine a more obvious and naked attempt to intimidate an independent Officer of Parliament. The Prime Minister went further and said to him that he should report to Parliament as Auditor-General only and not use his powers as Controller. She said: “We are saying to him that this is an inappropriate use of the Controller’s power.”—a clear edict from the Prime Minister to the Auditor-General.