Collins Judith: General Debate 
Collins Judith: General Debate 
[Volume:648;Page:17336] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 The people of New Zealand would like a Government that actually is interested in governing. People are dealing with price rises for petrol. They are dealing with inflation at 4 percent and going up. They are dealing with double the interest rates for the mortgages that they had when Labour came into office. They are dealing with house prices that have tumbled—in some areas of my electorate by over $100000. All the equity has been wiped off people’s homes. That is what they are dealing with and instead what they have from this Government and this Prime Minister is a Government that is intent to do nothing else except cling on to power. Michael Cullen summed it up the other week when he said that this is all about power and by goodness that showed exactly what this Government is all about. 
What we have now is a Prime Minister who in the last few days has spent all of question time trying to get around the obvious. She has answered question after question—patsy questions—from New Zealand First about the wonderful statements about Winston Peters. It sounded like a eulogy frankly. What we have now is a Prime Minister who will not deal with this issue decisively. She dealt with Lianne Dalziel decisively once she was found to have misled the media. She dealt with that eventually. She dealt with David Parker decisively. He resigned as Attorney-General. She dealt with Ruth Dyson decisively when she was picked up on a drink-driving charge. But she did not deal with Taito Phillip Field decisively. In fact Taito Phillip Field must be wondering why it is while he is facing corruption charges that we are now talking about this matter in the House. She did not deal with David Benson-Pope decisively. His career is now over. 
That is one of the awful things. While she is going around saying: “I want to cling to power. I need to do everything I can to support Mr Peters.” what she is actually doing is destroying any hope for his career. In fact one of the things I heard yesterday from the Prime Minister was that this money was paid into the trust account—this account for Mr Henry—and that it was collected as a fighting fund for legal fees. That is not Mr Henry’s version. The reason it is not Mr Henry’s version is that Mr Henry does not have a trust account. I understand that members of the House might not understand this but he is a barrister sole. One of the things about barristers is that they do not have trust accounts. They are not audited. They are not subject to Law Society rules about trust accounts. The reason is that they do not hold other people’s money. They simply render an account and it gets paid. 
I have never in my 20-odd years as a lawyer and in my time with the Auckland District Law Society and the New Zealand Law Society once come across a situation where a barrister’s job is to ring up people in Monaco and ask them to pay $100000 into a fee’s account. I have never once heard anything like that. I have never once had that happen or heard of it—and I have sat for years on the complaints committee of the Auckland District Law Society. I can tell those members opposite that not once did we ever hear anything about barristers ringing up trying to solicit money for their clients’ fees. Never have I heard of barristers ringing up soliciting money for their clients’ grocery accounts or the car loan. Nor have I ever heard about them ringing up bank managers and asking them whether they would like to pay off a loan. It just does not happen in the real world. 
The people in my electorate will be wondering how come it is that they have had $100000 wiped off the value of their $400000 house which is now worth $300000 and is all taken up with a mortgage while we have a Government more concerned with clinging to power than what is happening for those ordinary good Kiwis who pay the taxes that pay for Winston Peters’ travel and that pay for those people there on the Government benches. The people in my electorate wonder about that. 
What we have now from this Government is the so-called new standard of performance. That is what Helen Clark promised in 1999. She said that we would have a new standard of accountability under a Labour Government. My goodness have we seen that? We certainly have. We have seen a new standard—a new low standard. Today we had Helen Clark stand up here in Parliament and tell us that the  
Cabinet Manual 
 which is there to stop any sense or implication of corruption was just a guide. They are not actually rules apparently even though they are talked about as rules. No they are not really rules; they are now a guide. That is the new depth that this Government has sunk to.