English Bill: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
English Bill: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
[Volume:608;Page:5714] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It may assist proceedings if we can perhaps get some direction from you. This report is essentially about the dishonesty of New Zealand Post when it came in front of a select committee. It will be difficult for the House to discuss that without reference to the larger context in which those events happened and I am keen to know just what can be said. This will be a very difficult debate if it is ruled out when I refer to a culture of dishonesty and if references to any general context of for instance half-truths and evasions are also ruled out as inappropriate. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Let me say quite specifically that in commenting about New Zealand Post a member can say whatsoever he or she likes provided that it is within the Standing Orders in terms of taste etc. but as far as members of Parliament are concerned there is a higher standard. This debate is about whether the House should receive the Privilege’s Committee’s report and in fact the actual motion is that the House take note of the report of the Privileges Committee. I would suggest we stick to the report itself and to what is in it. The member has to be a lot more careful about comments that reflect on matters outside the report and comments involving members of Parliament. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I believe it is the obligation of the Privileges Committee to call things what they are. The chair of the committee has laid out the facts of the matter in quite a satisfactory manner. The fact is that New Zealand Post was not brief in its reply. It did not make some kind of technically correct statement that was actually wrong. New Zealand Post said to a select committee that it did not have a document that it had. New Zealand Post actually had the document and said it did not have it. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: And it knew it. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: And it knew it. Does that matter? Yes because that deprived Parliament of a document that at the time was of enormous political significance. It is very difficult to come to the conclusion that that action was not taken deliberately. 
We need to send a very clear signal to our public institutions—and New Zealand Post needs to hear this today too—that they should not take part in the Government’s efforts to cover its own mistakes. Any bureaucrat—and I have been one—has a duty to assist the Government but there is no obligation to compromise one’s integrity or one’s honesty in order to help one’s political masters. All those who have tried to help our Prime Minister have paid a price and this report shows that. Elmar Toime is not in the country; his position became untenable. The disgraced chairman of New Zealand Post has long gone because in any number of the opportunities that he had he did compromise his integrity in order to assist his political masters. I say to other civil servants that they should stop and think very carefully when they get requests from Ministers’ officers—the Prime Minister’s department the Minister of Finance the Minister of Education or any of those ministers who are part of a culture of deception when they get into any political trouble. 
The bit in this report that got me particularly irritated was the apology because we now have a new paradigm for regret. It is a “Helenism” and it goes like this. No one is to acknowledge that he or she did something wrong. Instead that person apologises for people thinking he or she did something wrong. Members should listen to this apology: “I had no intention of misleading the House and apologise if that was the effect of my answers.” No one owns up to the fact of doing something wrong. The fact that the House was misled and almost certainly deliberately misled has no bearing on this— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In referring in that quotation to an answer given by the Prime Minister the member cannot accuse another member of deliberately misleading the House. There are other mechanisms for doing that. He should be required to withdraw and apologise. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I was not clear as to whether the member was referring to New Zealand Post’s answer or to a person in this House. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I was referring to an apology read by the Prime Minister in the House. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will now withdraw and apologise for that comment. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Which one? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Any suggestion that she deliberately misled the House. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I withdraw and apologise. There is a similarity in the report to that apology given in the House. This is the Hon Jim Bolger: “ … I apologise on behalf of New Zealand Post to the Committee if there was a perception that the Finance and Expenditure Committee and in turn Parliament and the New Zealand Public have been misled.” That is not an apology. That is not the standard that this House should accept from a public body that has lied to a select committee. 
New Zealand Post had the report but said that it did not and Parliament was deprived of the accountability that would have gone with the possession of that report. Even worse New Zealand Post is a publicly owned body. I believe that even if Parliament accepts this report the Privileges Committee is charged by Parliament to set a higher standard in the views it takes of people who mislead select committees and Parliament. Otherwise we are left with that standard. Mr Toime has apologised for any perception that he misled the committee. He apologised for the brevity of his reply. Does that not have echoes of “They weren’t conscious when they made the decision. I don’t recollect. I wasn’t there. It’s not my responsibility. The reply was brief”? The reply was a lie. Let us not call it anything else. 
We are spared that language in the House because we are not allowed to use it about MPs—and you Mr Speaker can feel the pressure that is building up in the House because we are not allowed to use that language about activities that very closely approximate it from people who are at the top of the Government and are setting the tone for the running of public life in New Zealand. Will the Government get up and argue that the actions of the Prime Minister and the way that she deals with questions of accountability and responsibility have no linkage to the events around New Zealand Post which involved her best friend who finally got caught out as the chair? Of course they do. Of course the tone set by those at the top of the Government influences the civil service and public bodies. On behalf of this Parliament if the Government is not willing to say this—and it is not—I say to the civil service and to public bodies that they should be honest. They should not take part in the spin and should have the integrity—as they have the experience—to know the difference between assisting the Government as they are obliged to do and compromising their honesty and integrity. To do the latter is a blot on any civil servant and any organisation that civil servants work for. 
At the time I guess the Kroll report did not seem very significant but in the light of the recent conduct of the Prime Minister and of the documents that regularly appear in this Parliament contradicting statements that have been made it is timely that we debate this report—and debate it thoroughly not just as a matter of form. I say to you Mr Speaker that members of Parliament do have the right of access to the Privileges Committee. We do not want to see that right compromised by the slowness of the process and the officers of this Parliament have the capacity to make that process fast or slow. I say that if it takes another 15 or 18 months to deal with this kind of complaint then the officers of this Parliament are letting down the members of Parliament and therefore the public. We want a better performance than that.