English Bill: Urgent Debates — Environment Ministry—State Services Commission Briefing 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
English Bill: Urgent Debates — Environment Ministry—State Services Commission Briefing 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2007. Volume:640;Page:10626. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Here is a simple question for the Labour Party to answer: who is responsible? Who is responsible? You see in order to maintain the principles that the Hon Peter Dunne has just talked about and which he articulated so ably someone needs to take responsibility for enforcing promoting and maintaining those principles. I thank God someone has articulated those principles because none of the people who should have has done so. The Prime Minister has not articulated them. The paranoia starts at the top. It is utterly believable that the Prime Minister’s office was involved in this disgraceful episode.  
I will tell the House a little story about that. It shows how paranoid the Prime Minister is. Meridian Energy which owns large assets in my electorate came to open a wind farm in my local area. I can see the wind farm from my kitchen window; it is on my hill. The Prime Minister and her cronies had it that Meridian Energy could not invite me to be part of the official party. Instead the failed candidate for Clutha-Southland who is now a list MP whom no one has heard of was paraded up the front. Do members know what one of my locals said to me? It was: “She thinks it matters.” It did not matter a damn to me but it mattered to Helen Clark. That is why it mattered that Madeleine Setchell who has a partner who works professionally for another party was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So the Prime Minister is not going to do anything about it!  
Does that not sound just like what happened in the Liam Ashley case? In that case of course the tragedy was much greater. It happened but no one was there. No one who spent public money or who had a public obligation was anywhere near that death. Even as of today no one has been held accountable for that death.  
In this case the most blatant case of a civil servant being sacked for political reasons no one was there. It is like the ad on TV where the people use their elbows not their hands. People are saying they did not touch it did not know the details and only read the report. That is the disgrace. You see the Labour Party has become so paranoid and so politicised in its relationship with the Civil Service that it does not even know how wrong this sacking is.  
I will tell members how right the relationship can be. When I worked for Roger Douglas as a junior official on his flat-tax package on the Monday I had been knocking on doors as a National Party branch chairman on the Saturday out in Lyall Bay. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: And your brother worked for me. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He did—and I will not go into that because I should not. That is how matters should be. I sat in a Minister’s office—that of Roger Douglas—when a Labour candidate an almost-selected candidate Verna Smith came in and out and up to 6 weeks before the election was giving and taking policy advice and listening to Ministers. And that is how it should be. We would have thought then and we did think as Ministers that no Prime Minister would let us break the rules.  
But Helen Clark “Mrs Paranoia” “Mrs Detail” is driving down on everything and making sure that the local MP for Clutha-Southland does not sit in the wrong seat at the opening of a wind farm on top of a hill covered in snow. Well she knows and they know—those Labour Ministers know—that that is how she runs the Government. That is why David Benson-Pope and his offsider did what they did and now are getting away with it. The Prime Minister will not take responsibility for it. She never has taken responsibility and she never will do so. “Nothing wrong. Move on.” is her chorus. Will the Minister take responsibility? Absolutely no! We should ask Peter Coleman how that man takes responsibility. Maybe Peter Coleman is available for the job Madeleine Setchell has lost. He lost his job in David Benson-Pope’s office because that Minister lied to the public about a police report. David Benson-Pope denied releasing it. Then it turned out that he had authorised his staff to release it—after the staff member had been disciplined. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated. The member knows very well that he cannot accuse a member in this House of lying. He will withdraw and apologise. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I withdraw and apologise. And that is what is happening now. Mr Hurring is so close to Labour that he probably will not be disciplined. So nothing will happen.  
What about the State Services Commission? Well the problem in this kind of environment is that decent competent people behave at a level that is below the standards that they should have. I was very disappointed to see Mark Prebble try to construct a defence of this disgraceful action in the newspaper. He did not have to do that. He could have by his silence condemned what happened and he did not. I think that is a shame. I really think it is a shame that the State Services Commissioner went out of his way to condemn something that every civil servant knows is wrong. Every civil servant knows it is wrong. That is why Peter Dunne got up in this House. He wants to support the Government but he cannot do that on this matter. The reason is that civil servants are his voters and they now know that there is no one to defend them. The State Services Commission is not defending the Civil Service against politicians terminating people’s employment on the basis of presumptions about their politics. No one knows what Ms Setchell’s political views are. Maybe even her partner does not know. She is not being kicked out because of her views; she is being kicked out because of an assumption about the political views of the person she lives with.  
What about those people who are much closer to the National Party? Are they next? The answer Helen Clark has is to not apply for the job. That is what she told  
Morning Report 
. When Sean Plunket asked her she agreed that Madeleine Setchell should not have applied for the job. So there is the new rule of the proud Labour Party: if people have a relation who has anything to do with the National Party then they should not apply for the job and actually they will have to declare the relationship as a conflict of interest. Is that being promulgated now through the Civil Service? That is what Labour has said today—that it is a conflict of interest to apply for a Civil Service job if one has a relation who has anything to do with the National Party. That is a conflict of interest? What a load of rubbish! What a disgrace! What a disgrace it is that a Minister can stand up in the New Zealand Parliament and maintain that that is a conflict of interest.  
I just want to say to the Public Service Association that it will have to crank up its effort. It has come out and said that its membership is uncomfortable about this matter. My gosh if National did what Labour has done there would be a riot on the front steps of Parliament—if we fired a woman because she was in a household with someone who worked for the Labour Party. I think I personally know about 25 people in a situation like that within the Civil Service; I am sure Mr Blumsky can name 200. The message is that when Helen Clark comes after people there is no one to defend them. Members should remember that.  
The nub of the issue is that today a person is without a job because of Labour’s views about that person’s political views and no one is accountable for that—no one. No one was there as usual; it is as though it never happened. The woman was just a casual victim of Labour’s glorious path to power. Labour is taking over the Civil Service. It will use the electoral law to make sure that no one else can spend money while it spends millions. It is a disgrace. I have been around the Civil Service for 25 years and I have never seen anything like this. Steve Maharey who lectured all those students about Labour’s wonderful principles should be ashamed and so should Pete Hodgson.  
David Benson-Pope should be ashamed that with such a bad reputation he is still willing to hold a ministerial warrant. If Helen Clark does not have the honour to sack him why does he not walk? No one believes what he says. He took a job from someone and that is political persecution. David Benson-Pope is in charge of sustainability and the Ministry for the Environment put an ad in the paper that stated basically that anyone who wanted to run the Government’s campaign next year should apply for the job. Labour will use sustainability and the Ministry for the Environment as the front end of its political campaign from hereon in. I say to those civil servants: “Don’t do it. Tell Government members to get stuffed. They cannot shoot you.”