English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Volume:611;Page:8247] 
9.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: How does she reconcile her statements on TV3 on Wednesday 10 July 2002 that “we really went back and sought further information as to whether there was a threshold level that had been breached. That’s my recollection.” and “my recollection was that on testing and sampling it was determined that it didn’t pass a sufficient threshold level to be considered a problem.” with the statement by her Minister for the Environment that the “Government never deviated from its policy of zero tolerance for GM contamination in seed imports.”? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Easily. There was and still is a legal requirement for zero tolerance and no reliable evidence of contamination was found. The threshold the Government adhered to throughout was zero. 
Hon Bill English 
: Did she receive read and understand a memo from Ruth Wilkie on 28 May 2001 alerting her personally to the fact that the Government had been operating a policy “inconsistent with existing legislation” or did she regard that memo as just another fantasy on the part of Ruth Wilkie who apparently can make up memos about meetings that never happened and in this case made up a memo about a policy that never operated? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Yes I have seen that memo and that memo did not alert me to any change of Government policy. What it alerted me to—and the member for Nelson has referred to this in an earlier question—was debate going on between officials as to whether as the National spokesperson on science believes there should have been a permissible level of GM contamination. That was never the position Ministers adopted. 
Hon Bill English 
: How is it that in making those quotes the Prime Minister seemed to have a detailed recollection of the details of testing procedures when she has maintained all along that she never took much interest in the issue? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The problem with that interview without notice was that the Prime Minister was being asked to recall things that had happened a year and 9 months before and in which she had not had any central part in driving at all. 
Stephen Franks 
: Does the Prime Minister still want the Broadcasting Standards Authority to force TV3 to pay $25000 and apologise for not in the authority’s terms “achieving balance in regard to the issue of Government accountability and trustworthiness”; if so what does the Prime Minister think that that says about abuse of power in high office to compel TV3 to apologise for tackling her with what is now shown to have been the truth however viciously she denied it at the time? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: It is a matter of record that a Broadcasting Standards Authority decision stated that the Prime Minister had been treated unfairly that the programme was unbalanced and that it lacked objectivity and impartiality. On the basis of those findings the parties were asked to make submissions on what actions should follow and my lawyer did. We made a submission on the basis that costs should be paid in the light of those findings. 
Hon Bill English 
: In the light of the Prime Minister’s deep concern about whether she is treated fairly or is a victim of her own success—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I ask that you enforce the requirements you indicated earlier that there would be no interjections during questions. There were at least three including one from Nick Smith. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I want the member to carry on with his question. 
Hon Bill English 
: In light of the Prime Minister’s deep concern that she is treated fairly and not as a victim of her own success does she believe she is treating Ruth Wilkie fairly with her allegations today that Ms Wilkie manufactured the story about a meeting between the Prime Minister and Mary Anne Thompson where they discussed what documents were going to be released and what documents were going to be held back and is that fair to Ruth Wilkie? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I have made no such allegation. What I will say is that no leader of the National Party has been less successful than that one. He would not know what success was if he fell over it. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In answering that question the Prime Minister effectively denied what she has already said in question time which was that the meeting referred to in the Wilkie memo never happened. As I understand it the record of the House shows that the Prime Minister said the memo never happened—she said that the meeting never happened; of course the memo did and that is unfortunate for her. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is a matter of debate; it is not a matter of whether the answer addressed the question. If the member thinks the House has been misled he has a proper process to follow. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister climbed to her feet gave her denial then launched into an attack on the questioner. How is that possibly within the Standing Orders  
Speakers’ Rulings 
 or the proper conduct of the affairs of this House? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member is perfectly correct the Prime Minister should not have had that last part of the answer but she certainly addressed the question. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: What did the Prime Minister understand to be the change of approach referred to in Ruth Wilkie’s memo of 28 May 2001 in which she appears to contrast the previous position of “a defined level of tolerance” with the new standard “any positive result will mean that the seed lot will be rejected”? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: My analysis of these papers would suggest that Ms Wilkie was referring to a matter that the member for Nelson brought to the attention of the House earlier in question time today and that was paragraph 24 of a memo to the Minister for Biosecurity and the Minister for the Environment which referred to an initial approach proposed by officials. That was never an approach that the Ministers adopted but as the member will know if she has conscientiously been through 1800-plus pages of evidence there seemed to be a great debate going on between officials as to whether they were talking about probability statistical levels of confidence or against permissible levels of contamination as advocated by Dr Paul Hutchison National’s spokesperson on science.