Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:644;Page:13519] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 If anyone has lost the plot it is John Key and it was in the House today. There slipped the nice guy mask there he exposed himself as a common or garden politician attacking people personally for their relationships and what they did. If Mr Key wants to talk about people appearing in court for assault then he should look to his left to Gerry Brownlee who lost a civil assault case in court and was convicted of that offence. Let us not have any of Mr Key’s double standards. If Mr Key and the National Party look a little angry at the moment and it has something to do with the Electoral Finance Bill it is because that party and Mr Key got caught out at the last election by having been supported by narrow sectoral religious groups and right-wing vested interests that did not have the guts to say publicly that they were supporting National. 
Mr Key knew there was $1 million coming from the Exclusive Brethren. He appeared on television talking to them. He was told about it—he was emailed. Here is the email Ron Hickmott sent to Mr Key headed “Urgent important and confidential” the email that Mr Key said he never read. What did it say? It said that the Exclusive Brethren sought to launch a “very extensive election campaign” using $1 million “with the sole goal of getting party votes for National”. Mr Key knew about the Exclusive Brethren. He knew about the $1 million. He went on television and he denied that. That was untrue; that was dishonest. Why did the National Party get hundreds of thousands of dollars through trust funds? It got hundreds of thousands of dollars through trust funds because the wealthy vested interests that were buying privileges in the hope that National would get elected were not prepared to be transparent about the fact they were giving that money to the National Party. So if the National Party is angry it is because it knows this bill restores democracy by stopping that sort of vote-buying tactic from narrow unrepresentative religious groups and narrow sectoral right-wing business interests. 
If Mr Key is angry it is because of his botch-up about the DVD where he breached copyright. That was bad enough but then he denied responsibility for it. Mr Key who approved the DVD saw the DVD and heard the DVD said it was the fault of his staff. Then he said it was the production company’s fault. We recall that last time when Mr Key last breached the Electoral Act by spending $100000 more on advertising than National had declared because he did not include GST he said it was the company’s fault. I say to Mr Key that it is always somebody else’s fault. Mr Key should listen to his own advice which he gave in May of this year: “The temptation is to blame anyone but yourself for your situation. That kind of attitude is self-defeating and it won’t solve your problems.” Mr Key should listen to his own advice. He said that he recalled the DVD immediately. The news about the DVD was out on Friday. Friday went by Saturday went by Sunday went by and on Monday Mr Key withdrew the DVDs not as he says because of his high standards but because he got a lawyer’s letter and the DVD was going to cost the National Party hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was dishonest too I say to Mr Key. He should have come clean. He should not have tried to cover it up. 
National members should be grateful that the DVD was withdrawn; it was such a shallow and vacuous piece of material. Here it is in my hand illegal though it is. What did John Armstrong say about this DVD? He said it “manages to make National’s leader look about as deep as one of ‘The Stepford Wives’.”—as deep as one of the Stepford wives! Then there is Fran O’Sullivan. Fran O’Sullivan is no enemy of the National Party—she largely speaks in favour of it. What did she say about this DVD? She said: “I downloaded it from the National Party website and I found myself cringing at the artificiality of 12 minutes of staged intimacy.” The National Party has egg all over its face.