Cullen Michael: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
Cullen Michael: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
[Volume:608;Page:5716] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 What a load of rubbish that was. Let us start off with a very few simple facts. This report is a unanimous report of the Privileges Committee. When the member suggested that somehow or other the committee was engaged in covering up the facts about this case he was accusing his own party’s senior whip— 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. At no stage did I say that the committee was involved in covering up the facts. In fact I said that the chairman of the committee had laid out the facts in a way that we regarded as even-handed. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is a debating point. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: What the member did say was that the committee should have concluded presumably that Mr Toime had lied. But the committee did not conclude that. If the member had bothered to read the report he would have found that it unanimously concluded that that was not the case. Mr Toime was almost hounded out of this country by the Opposition and Mr Bolger the former leader of the National Party condemned the National Party for that action. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: No he didn’t. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh yes he did and he did so in my hearing. Mr English cannot even read a simple report that states very clearly not that Mr Toime had lied but that the answers were less than full and frank. 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Ha ha! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The giggling from the member of the Opposition—I wonder who has been tickling her this time—shows a misunderstanding of how loosely the National Party uses the word “lie”. On that basis I can only assume that it must be the most frequently used word in its caucus. I suppose therefore that losing one’s pretzels in the election is a form of a lie if that is the way that one uses the word. So it is assumed that Mr Carter and Dr Mapp were part of an attempt to mislead this House because this report is unanimous and it does not state that Mr Toime had lied. That is not what this report states. 
Who else did Mr English then choose to attack? He chose to attack his former leader Jim Bolger and implied that Mr Bolger had not made an adequate apology to the Privileges Committee. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: That’s right. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: That is right says Mr McCully. Well Mr McCully has a lot more to apologise to Mr Bolger for than Mr Bolger has to apologise to Mr McCully for. There is no knife sticking in Mr McCully’s back with Mr Bolger’s fingerprints on it but there sure was one in Jim Bolger’s back with Mr McCully’s fingerprints on it—just as there was in Jenny Shipley’s back and as he keeps lining up Mr English for. As we read weekly in the  
Listener 
 Mr McCully is involved in that. 
Then of course the other criminal is a former divisional chairman of the National Party Mr Ross Armstrong who did not put his integrity at question in the service of Ministers—he put the Ministers’ integrity at question in his own service. That is why Mr Armstrong had to leave—not because he was protecting our integrity but because he was impugning our integrity by his own actions. He had to go as a consequence of that. 
What has this enormous storm in a teacup been all about? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: It’s a cover-up. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Well why did Dr Mapp at the Privileges Committee not say that this was a cover-up? Why did Dr Mapp who is as brave as a lion in the House not raise with Mr Bolger at the select committee the question of why his predecessor and New Zealand Post’s former chief executive had covered up the facts? Dr Mapp did not raise that question in the select committee and nor did John Carter. They were satisfied with Mr Bolger’s apology and they were disappointed that Mr McCully and Mr Hide did not take up the invitation to meet with Mr Bolger to receive a personal apology from New Zealand Post delivered by Mr Bolger. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Absolute fiction. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh yes that is true as well. Recollections seem to fade amongst many people at times with regard to political issues. Or perhaps the member was not conscious at the time that he did those particular things. So we find out that the National Party is not perfect either. 
So what in fact is this issue all about? When asked whether he had a report Mr Toime said no. Did he have the Kroll report? No he did not. The Kroll report was never delivered to New Zealand Post. 
Hon Bill English 
: Ha ha! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Well that is true. The select committee accepted that that was true. Dr Mapp John Carter and Mr Prebble accepted that that was true—all on the Privileges Committee at the time. 
Hon Bill English 
: What did it have? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: New Zealand Post had a preliminary draft of that report. So in giving that answer the Privileges Committee concluded that New Zealand Post was less than full and frank and that the Finance and Expenditure Committee could have drawn a forced conclusion from that answer—a perfectly reasonable conclusion for the select committee to draw and therefore misleading of the select committee in that respect. But that is not a lie. It is not a lie to have failed to give that information. If Mr McCully from the vast and lofty height of full-and-frankness that he has occupied throughout his political career tells us that that is a lie I suggest that that will be less than a full and frank statement to this House when he gets up and makes it as he no doubt will with the synthetic anger that the National Party is trained in day after day. 
Mr English has come here to the House to try to rescue his leadership through getting angry about whether a preliminary draft report is a report. That is the basis now on which the once-proud National Party lives and in order to try to survive and to do that it has to pour nasty stuff all over its former leader who I thought gave a very frank apology to the Privileges Committee. It was above and beyond what Mr Bolger had to do since he had no role to play in the original event at all. Mr Bolger was completely clean of any involvement in that respect. But even Mr Bolger had to be dragged in and attacked by Mr English in order to try to save himself. It is no wonder that so many former senior members of the National Party have given up hope on the National Party at this particular time.