Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I move That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. So here we have Shane Jones saying it's all a beat-up. He's like Mr Schultz: I see nothing. I see nothing. I went into the room. I was part of the debate. I gave reassurances to the Minister of Finance. But I had my fingers in my ears and I didn't hear a word I was saying." That's the approach that he is taking. He cannot seem to fathom the basic idea that if he is given responsibility for spending $3 billion of taxpayers' money around the country including $100 million in the Northland electorate—where he is based; where he claims to know everybody to have deep connections across the community—he should be absolutely focused on ensuring that there is no perceived conflict of interest in the way that he hands out that money. What we've seen in that response—in his answers today in the House and in the press—is he has no concept of what a conflict of interest actually is and how to manage it and that is why it is important that this House considers this fully. So let's go back by way of background to what we're talking about here. So in November 2007 Shane Jones declared a conflict of interest with the Cabinet Office relating to a proposed cultural centre in Ōpōnoni called Manea Footprints of Kupe. The nature of the conflict wasn't publicly disclosed at the time. We weren't quite sure what it was. So what is this project? It's a proposed cultural centre and museum in Ōpōnoni north of Auckland to tell stories about the Māori ancestors of Northland. It's a worthwhile thing wonderful to see. A charitable limited liability company Manea Footprints of Kupe Ltd was established to own and run the centre and that company is owned by Te Hua O Te Kawariki Trust. Now following this on 23 February 2018 that project received $4.6 million of funding from the Provincial Growth Fund. Now when we asked the Minister a question in the House on 5 April about it Minister Jones stated that he had delegated responsibility to Minister Davis where the project was concerned but written questions further confirmed that Minister Jones had withdrawn fully from the decision-making process and he further stated he had not attended any meeting at any point in relation to the project. Then in reply to the question which I quoted into the House he said "I raised my conflict of interest with the Cabinet Office in November 2018 and indicated I would not be involved in any decision to grant funding to the project under the Provincial Growth Fund." Well—and then to our great shock and surprise and horror we discovered in Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) documents released to the Sunday Star-Times this weekend that Minister Jones had indeed attended a meeting relating to the project and he had reassured Minister Robertson the Minister of Finance and the other Ministers on matters relating to the project to the point that the funding was approved. Now obviously this doesn't align with the answer that he's given. We don't know the details of the conflict and we don't know the extent to which the Minister was involved in the funding decisions and just saying that "I didn't sign the document and hand over the money" is no answer. Being in the room—it is a reasonable question to assume that if the Minister wasn't there and hadn't given the reassurances to the Minister of Finance and the others in the room that the project wouldn't have got the funding.What would have happened if he hadn't have been there? The likelihood is that—the briefing from Treasury and the advice from Treasury was not to fund it because it didn't stack up for a whole host of reasons. So if he wasn't in the room providing that reassurance it probably wouldn't have been funded.Darroch Ball: Stop guessing. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well we don't know and it will be interesting to know. But the point is: he was there. Darroch Ball: You're making it up.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: So there are two key issues here—SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. Darroch Ball: I withdraw and apologise.SPEAKER: Well the member will do it when I sit down and he will do it clearly and it's a ruling that I want to reinforce to members in the House. Members cannot use that expression. Darroch Ball: I withdraw and apologise.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you Mr Speaker. So there are two key issues that I wanted to traverse this afternoon. One is the nature of conflicts of interests and how Mr Jones manages the perceived or actual conflicts of interests in doling out $3 billion especially $100 million in Northland where as he's said so many times he has deep connections knows everybody and also has political goals. How does he do that while maintaining the confidence of New Zealanders that he is not acting in a way that is conflicted? Secondly the second issue is about his truthfulness to this Parliament when he answers a question saying he wasn't involved wasn't there and we find out that he was. So let's go through the first. Ministers should always of course be careful when they're spending taxpayers' money. When you're spending $3 billion you have a great burden of responsibility on your shoulders that you're going to spend that money wisely. But the first burden that you have is that you're going to spend it more usefully than the people of New Zealand would have spent it themselves if they had not had that money taken from them in the first place. So he has a burden of responsibility to ensure that it's going to be spent wisely. He said that four or five years ago he once met the chief of Waimamaku Whetū Naera and he has since died. That is his explanation for the conflict of interest that we are supposed to be talking about here and that's what the Prime Minister explained as well. So an interesting question that I'd love to hear some more detail from the Minister himself is: well is that the extent of his conflict of interest? Because we don't know. We know that there was a meeting in the Ōpōnoni pub where the whole thing was discussed. That was back three or four years ago and we'd be interested to know who was there. Was it any of the people that have subsequently become directors of the company that will now run the Manea Footprints of Kupe museum or institution that will be established? Two of them are very well-known. We know for example that Anton Haagh the co-owner of the Duke of Marlborough is now one of the directors. Was he at that meeting at the Ōpōnoni pub? I don't know. Or Shane Lloyd the owner through a trust of the land that was sold for the project and now also a director of Manea Footprints of Kupe Ltd—was he also at the Ōpōnoni pub meeting? I don't know. We need to get to the bottom of the extent to which the nature of the Minister's conflict is fully understood. So we want to get to the bottom of that. What exactly was his involvement in the formation of the project? He says that it's all been made up by Wayne Hutchinson presumably when he wrote to MBIE in January 2015 saying "Te Hua O Te Kawariki trustees and the proposed directors of Manea Footprints of Kupe Ltd under the chairmanship of Hon Shane Jones have met and discussed the funding application over the Christmas period giving guidance to your response to your letter on 22 December 2014." So in black and white Wayne Hutchinson who is now also I believe a director of the company has said that they all met they all got together Shane Jones was the chair and "We discussed the funding application and we've worked away on it." So Shane Jones says that Wayne Hutchinson was wrong presumably in saying that. He'd misunderstood and he's likened himself to Sonny Bill Williams—as being so famous that everybody wants to have him involved. Well let's find out about that. But what is his exact involvement in the formation of this project and who does he know and how is he connected to it—these are the questions so that we can get a full understanding of why indeed. He seems genuinely confused in the House. He seemed genuinely confused at question time as to why on earth he declared this conflict of interest. He seems to think that there isn't actually one; he's not sure: "Is there a conflict? I don't know. I don't know what all the fuss is about." So that's a legitimate question for us to get to the bottom of. I don't sort of imply that any of the other people involved are doing anything improper in any way shape or form. I'm sure they're all publicly minded people but it is a question of perception and it comes to others. The Provincial Growth Fund has also handed out millions of dollars—$6 million to Ngāti Hine's forestry works. The ones that weren't mulched are still going to be owned by that Ngāti Hine trust and the acting CEO of that trust is none other than Pita Paraone a former New Zealand First MP and on their list. Now again I'm sure he's got the best motivations of heart and he's doing a great job and I don't have any complaints about his efforts but it's about perceptions. How is this money being spent and how is the Minister managing perceptions around conflicts of interest?Again we can think of the roundabout: there are roundabouts just down the road from Shane Jones the $11 million roundabout. Now there are roundabouts all around the country; there's a country full of worthy roundabout projects. I've been to many of them. I go around a roundabout just about every day myself in Greenlane and I'm sure it could be better. So if the whole country—SPEAKER: Order! Order! I feel like the member's on a roundabout now. I think it would be good to get back to the matter which he put before the House.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you Mr Speaker. The point I was making about the roundabout was that the nature of spending $100 million of taxpayers' money in one region—the Northland region where the Minister says he has deep connections throughout the community—is a challenging matter in terms of maintaining integrity in the system and Kiwis' belief in the robustness and appropriateness of that spending. That is the point that the Minister doesn't seem to be able to grasp when he thinks it's all a beat-up and he doesn't really know why—he indicated that—he should be making some kind of reference to a conflict of interest. So how we manage the conflict of interest is a question. There are serious questions to answer and we need to know how he's actually going to manage those conflicts going forward. The other point is in relation to political ambitions and that's slightly unrelated but he has made no bones about the fact that he's interested in winning the seat—and good luck to him on that score—but when you talk about spending—[Interruption]Matt King: Don't like the way he does it.SPEAKER: Order! Mr King can have a call later.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —$100 million in a particular region then again you have to be able to justify that this is what we're getting. So the first point is: what is the nature of the conflict of interest exactly and why did he think that it's appropriate to be in the room part of the discussion reassuring and essentially advocating for the project having made that conflict of interest?Then secondly: why was he so misleading in his answers to Parliament? I'm sure he might come up with some sort of explanation but it's very difficult to explain how you can say "I raised the conflict of interest and indicated I would not be involved in any decision to grant funding to the project". Now we took him at his word when he made that response. Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was just reflecting for a moment on the comment the member just made about deliberately misleading the Parliament.SPEAKER: No I don't think he did say "deliberately". Hon Chris Hipkins: Well he said the Minister had given answers to the Parliament that were misleading.SPEAKER: That's right and that's different. It's a question of deliberately or accidentally and it is quite an important question. If the member had said "deliberately misleading" I would have pulled him up.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: There you go. So he was misleading and the question that we have that he has to answer is: what was going on in his mind when that misleading answer came through to me in response to my trying to understand his involvement in this case?The final point I wanted to make is the way that the Minister has conducted himself throughout this whole process because he has been prepared to answer trickily and "slipperyly" in the way that he's responded to what his involvement was. So the slow trickle of detail coming out of MBIE—and it has been slow and it has taken an enormous amount of work from my office. We get abused on a regular basis by Shane Jones for asking too many questions. Well this is what happens when you finally start to put the pressure on for people to be actually open and transparent: eventually the details come out and they point out where the Minister has not been full in his explanation and open and transparent about how he's been engaging in this process. But the other way that he's responded of course is to go out on full attack with the media. I don't know why he thinks it's appropriate to go around attacking journalists and calling a well-respected journalist Hamish Rutherford a "bunny boiler". I'm not quite sure what he's referring to but it's a shocking way to talk about people who are trying to ask basic questions. The only assumption that you can draw from that kind of response from the Minister is that he's trying to intimidate and bully the press gallery as he tries to intimidate my office and me in terms of asking questions to try and get us off the—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. The member is making a serious accusation of a breach of privilege. He is not raising it in the proper way. Any attempt to intimidate a member with regard to questions is a clear breach of privilege and it is to be raised properly at the time. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Perhaps that was not quite the right word then. Bullying is another word I suppose and if you're always saying "Don't trouble me and irritate me by asking all these questions." then the clear message is to shove off. That has been the approach that he has taken with the media. To go—in such a personal way—attacking a member of the media over them just doing their job trying to ask some basic questions around conflicts of interest and calling them a "bunny boiler" I think is a new low for New Zealand politics frankly. So this Minister has a lot of explaining to do. He needs to take it seriously and the broader point is that he needs to take the basic issues around conflicts of interest particularly in Northland much much more seriously than he is at the moment. Only time will tell whether he comes up with some reasonable explanations but he hasn't shown a good start to it today in the House. Rest assured we'll be asking more questions over this week to come. Thank you Mr Speaker."