Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
[Volume:669;Page:15934] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Aaron Gilmore has just given us verse not cleverly done and certainly not terse. The joke is on him for today’s speaking list are Cabinet wannabes who regrettably missed. 
The Prime Minister must refer the Pansy Wong issue to the Auditor-General for investigation and must do so soon. That is what the Prime Minister did with Phil Heatley it is what happened in the case of Bill English—after a period of delay I acknowledge—and it should happen in the case of Pansy Wong. Should the Prime Minister do that an investigation into an area of possible misuse of public moneys can be conducted by an office that is respected and exists to look into the use and misuse of public moneys. 
That is why we have an Auditor-General’s office. It is an office capable of measured judgments. In the case of Phil Heatley for example it was capable of giving him a rapid re-entry straight back into Cabinet. In the case of Pansy Wong that door was closed by the appointment earlier this week of Hekia Parata. But it does not close the door for ever. 
Indeed I think Pansy Wong would welcome an investigation for a couple of different reasons. The first is that she might find herself getting the Phil Heatley treatment where the matter was found to be minor. No instances beyond it were found in the McPhail report. There was nothing more to discover. It was a $500 job. The money has been paid back. It was not deliberate systemic systematic or anything like that. That is a possibility. 
Another reason she might be pleased for the Auditor-General to look at her case is that the information flow to us—certainly to me—will stop. It stopped when the McPhail report got under way. For 2 or 3 weeks the information that had been flowing in to me and that I had been putting into the public arena as it came to pass stopped. I stopped putting anything into the public arena; there was nothing to put in. 
On Friday the McPhail report came out and it was panned by Friday evening as being an inadequate report. It does not mean that it is wrong but it does not draw a line under the case because it does not have credibility. There is no significant certainty of its being right—so say the media and so say I. I do not think it is a thorough report. So of course as Friday evening turned into the weekend the information started to flow again. It just comes and it is time-consuming. Much of it has to be translated from Mandarin. I continue to put it in the public arena as I have done today and I may well do tomorrow. Who knows? I may well do it next week. Again who knows? Pansy Wong has to put up with that and I do not think it is fair on her. 
Of course I could stop but I am not going to because my job and my duty—there is no need to grin about it Mr Assistant Speaker Roy—is to hold the Government to account. That is the job of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. People can call me a muckraker but that is the reason why the Westminster system is set up as it is. I will continue to put this information into the public arena as long as I can prove using written evidence that it is true. I get an awful lot of rumour which does not go any further because I do not know whether it is true. But when I can show that something is true or very likely to be true I will put it into the public arena. I will continue to do so. 
It is not good for Pansy Wong. I think she would want it stopped and I think the Prime Minister can stop it by taking her case and ringing up the Auditor-General and asking just like with the Phil Heatley case that she please look at it.