Pettis Jill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Pettis Jill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:627;Page:22172] 
5.  
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
 to the  
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade 
: What reports if any has he received on changing New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy? 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
: 
 I have seen a report in which a senior National MP asked United States political leaders for the United States’ assistance to persuade New Zealanders to change our nuclear-free legislation. That senior National MP was Dr Lockwood Smith and that request was made to United States senators in the presence of the Leader of the Opposition Dr Don Brash in the same meeting in which Dr Brash promised the senators that New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy would be gone by lunchtime. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. We challenge the Minister to table that transcript. We have challenged him repeatedly to table the full transcript not just the little bits that his Labour Party lackeys passed on to him and that we are expected to take as gospel. Mr Goff should table the whole transcript. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: At the end of this question in response to that request I will table the precise words that were said by Dr Lockwood Smith and the response made by the United States senators. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Before we ask any question in this House we are expected to prove the veracity of the question being asked. Why has this Minister repeatedly been able to refer to comments provided to him by some little lackey from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade who has breached every protocol we might have in place yet the Minister is not willing to provide the entire transcript of that meeting? If you are going to allow the Minister to engage in that sort of activity I think the House will be in a dire state for many years to come because it will mean that Government Ministers can simply stand up lie through their back teeth back it up with some scrappy bit of paper concocted in their own office and expect the House to accept that. The whole transcript should be tabled. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: That bluster of course is merely trying to divert the attention of the House and the public away from the essence of the question and the answer. The Minister is perfectly prepared to table the exact comments made by the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith in seeking United States funding to try to persuade New Zealanders to abandon their antinuclear policy. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is it talking to the same point of order or a new point of order? 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: It is exactly the same point of order. This relates to the requirement for questions to be authenticated. Under the Official Information Act that Minister’s ministry has released to me transcripts of everything I said to the senators and there is nothing in what his ministry has released to me that indicates in any way what that Minister has claimed in the House. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Talking further to the point of order—and it was the point I was going to make before Dr Smith’s intervention—for 11 months Dr Smith has had the information from that meeting that Mr Brownlee wants. He has at no time indicated to me that he felt those comments were in any way inaccurate in terms of what he said at that meeting. He has the statement. Shortly when question time resumes I will tell the House precisely what he asked of the senators. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank members. We will go back to the original point of order. Ruling on the point of order I note that as members know answers do not need to be authenticated under our Standing Orders but questions do. 
Jill Pettis 
: Can the Minister advise what the nature of the request was and what the response to it was? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I will quote precisely what Dr Smith said. The transcript states: “Dr Smith asked whether it would be worthwhile for a United States think tank to assist with a public campaign in New Zealand following the National Party study review.” The National Party study review that he had been talking about was the review done by Wyatt Creech of the nuclear-free policy. The response from the leader of the delegation was: “… that it was an internal issue for New Zealand and as such it should be left to a New Zealand think tank. The United States should not involve itself in such a national issue.” The importance of that answer is that even the United States Senate delegation recognised that Dr Lockwood Smith was being entirely inappropriate in asking the United States to support them with the resources of a think tank on something that is an internal matter for New Zealand. Apparently not only do Dr Lockwood Smith and Dr Brash want the policy to be written in Washington but they want Washington to do their work for them in persuading public opinion in New Zealand as well. That is a disgrace. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. It might be helpful for the House if Mr Phil Goff could table the document now so we could see it in order to help with supplementary questions. It is plain that the ACT party has a clear policy on the visits of nuclear-powered warships but I am confused because the accusation from the Government was that Washington DC was writing the National Party policy and then funding it and now Phil Goff is getting up and contradicting Trevor Mallard and saying that it refuses to do so. That is why I think it would be best if Phil Goff just tabled this document now during the question rather than at the end of this sequence of questions. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member but it is not for me to rule on that. It is for the Minister to decide when and if he wishes to table a document. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am just following on from what Mr Hide said. It is your role to make sure that question time is conducted in a reasonably orderly fashion. That was a very very long answer from Phil Goff and it sounded very much like the beginning of the post-election leadership battle in the Labour Party. It is interesting—the front-benchers are laughing but the back-benchers look terrified. It is only fair that you constrain the Minister. You have now ruled that he can talk any garbage he likes when it comes to an answer does not have to verify anything can twist any statement he likes and can present the answer any way he likes. But he does not have carte blanche to give that sort of a lecture to the House. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member has also made a lengthy presentation and I appreciate him for that. But it is not for the Speaker to rule on the quality of answers although I do note that both questions and answers have been getting longer. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Is the Minister prepared to read out any disclaimer that came at that time from the Leader of the Opposition seeing as he would have heard the suggestion—a disclaimer as to the impropriety of such a suggestion or even that it had been conceived of as appropriate in a country that is a self-governing democracy and has been for a long time; could he please read out the disclaimer that surely must be in that transcript? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I regret to disappoint the member. I read right through the report for a disclaimer from Dr Brash. Dr Brash never made any disclaimer about that improper suggestion from his foreign affairs spokesperson unlike when he not only issued a disclaimer for but sacked Simon Power as the spokesperson on defence for his comments that New Zealand would do whatever Australia the United Kingdom or the United States wanted. As the member will appreciate the difference between those two comments is that Simon Power was honest enough to make them publicly and Dr Lockwood Smith was not. 
Jill Pettis 
: Has the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade made Dr Smith aware of his reported comments and has he disputed them? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Yes at the request of Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith his comments from the incident were written up for him and given to him and to the best of my knowledge he has never sought to correct anything I quoted from him in the report or any of his other comments. He had the opportunity but he never chose to do so—certainly not with me and I understand not with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I notice that Dr Lockwood Smith has been talking on his cellphone. I would just like an assurance that it was not an international call just a local call. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Can the Minister confirm that New Zealand’s so-called nuclear-free policy does not provide a legislative ban on nuclear electricity generation in New Zealand; and how does he reconcile our so-called comprehensive nuclear-free status with the fact that a mini nuclear reactor has been operating in a residential suburb in Upper Hutt—on the old Tasman Vaccine Laboratory site—since the 1960s and is still operating today? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: The nuclear-free legislation that was passed by this House some two decades ago deals with the question of nuclear-armed and nuclear-propelled warships. There is no legislation to the best of my knowledge that prohibits a nuclear power plant but no party in this House has ever been stupid enough to advocate that unless the ACT party is doing that now as its valedictory statement.