Mallard Trevor: Member Vacancy — Epsom Electoral District—Hon John BanksText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Member Vacancy — Epsom Electoral District—Hon John Banks[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18648. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I am going to slightly divert at the start from what I was going to say to answer the allegations that the Hon Anne Tolley has made with regard to the role of the police in this matter. The police got it wrong. The police have accepted they got it wrong. David Carruthers is investigating it. The Minister of Police has got to stop defending the indefensible. This is not a general criticism of the police but I think there is a specific criticism in this case—they did not do what they should have done where there is a marginal case of this sort as they thought. They did not refer it to the Crown Law Office in the way that was appropriate and in the way that would have been an appropriate protection for them. But that matter is now being investigated by David Carruthers.I do want to make some comments about John Banks and say that frankly I have found over the years John Banks to be a mixed bag. In the mid-1980s when I was advocating for homosexual law reform there was not one more rabid person in the House on that issue than John Banks. He was absolutely awful. He was shocking. He was rude. He was obscene. He was offensive in this House and outside the House. But what I want to say is that over the years after that he grew. He began to understand the issues. He began to have some compassion and understanding in the area to the point where he voted for the marriage equality legislation last year.I just want to say that I admire him. It is sometimes easier for those of us who generally have been liberal on issues to stay being liberal than it is for people who have had deep convictions to move from those convictions to what he considered in the end was a point of principle. I also want to say that I very much appreciate the leadership he has taken in the last year or so around the awful legislation that the Hon Peter Dunne was in charge of around legal highs and in particular the leadership he has taken with regard to the position of animals being experimented on. I think that without his support we would not have been able to make the changes that we have and I want to acknowledge Mr Banks for that and to say thank you.I also want to say that his judgment has never been brilliant and in this particular area he made a very fundamental error in that he trusted Michelle Boag. Michelle Boag designed for him a system to cut donations into $25000 chunks and thereby pretend that they were anonymous. The Dotcom one is one where there has been a lot of publicity but those were not the only two $25000 cheques that were donated into this campaign. That system was designed by a fund-raiser with enormous experience in fund-raising for the National Party and hiding that money—Michelle Boag.One of the questions that I think David Carruthers and other people who are reviewing this case should look at is whether a case should be reopened in this area whether in fact Michelle Boag is an accessory to John Banks’ electoral fraud and whether she has herself committed a crime. That is something that I hope is covered in one of the reports that are going to be considered.I also say that although John Banks has moved from very conservative to quite liberal in a number of areas I just think it is awful that he is leaving the ACT Party to a leader who is promoting incest. I mean it is just awful that John Banks having come to a point of principle is leaving a party that will have “Duelling Banjos” as its theme tune for the next election. I think the idea that a deal will be done whereby Paul Goldsmith continues not to run in Epsom and we will have the third failure—we have had Rodney Hide we have had John Banks and we now have a new ACT person who I am sure will be a failure as well in that area—is very sad.I do want to make clear that I have an interest in this matter. It was my letter of 23 April 2012 to Bruce Thomas who was the electoral officer at the Auckland Council that kicked off the series of investigations into John Banks. The original complaint contrasted the comment from Skycity that it had donated to both campaigns with the fact that Mr Banks did not declare. I did that on 23 April 2012 and I followed it up on 30 April because following the publicity around it which flowed from my letter Kim Dotcom made some public comments which I then added and Mr Thomas made a quick and a proper decision to refer the matter to the police.The police for reasons that I cannot work out decided that instead of getting one of their legal experts or one of their leading investigators from head office to deal with it or even from Auckland they would get a Canterbury police officer a detective superintendent based in Christchurch to investigate this matter. That to me was I think to say the least surprising. Peter Read who was at the time Detective Superintendent Southern was the person who was responsible for the egregious error in this case. I think it is quite sad that that occurred.The Labour Party will not force a by-election in the Epsom electorate. It is just not in the public interest to have someone elected to Parliament when the first time that they could come to the Parliament would be after the Parliament has dissolved. That is something that is just silly. It is senseless and it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. We will not support that.What has come out of this though is a lot of focus on the manipulation of the system that is occurring on the part of the National Party with regard to MMP. I just want to say to members opposite that in the end the public will get sick of it. They will get sick of the National Party saying that it does not matter whether Peter Dunne leaks State secrets—vote for him anyway—and it does not matter in Epsom.It appears that someone is sharpening the rusty screwdriver for Murray McCully so that he cuts his arm off because that is what he said he would do before he gave up the seat to Colin Craig. The point I make is that I want to see people with integrity people like Kelvin Davis who say they are not match fixers. They are not going to rort the system. When the Labour Party runs in a seat it runs in a seat. It does not run in a seat and say “Don’t vote for me.” Although I will say as a final comment that I hope that Holly Walker when she comes to speak in Hutt South says the party vote is the most important. Thank you very much.