Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Volume:632;Page:4208] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Yesterday this country learnt that there is no bound to the extent of corruption Helen Clark will allow in her Government in order to remain Prime Minister. The public of New Zealand was presented with a report into the activities of Mr Phillip Field and his relationship with other Ministers in getting preferment for his immigration cases so that he might benefit personally from those decisions. 
We know that the report could have come to no other conclusion than the one it came to. In other words the report by Dr Noel Ingram QC is very cleverly written because he was extremely constrained by the terms of reference under which he had to work. He could not call people to give witness under oath he could not seek documents as any other inquiry may be able to do and he could not subpoena people to appear before him and tell the truth. He had to weave his way through hearsay and try to stay one step ahead of Mr Field and his fellows who were warning people off and telling them not to speak to the Queen’s Counsel in order to prevent and minimise the effect of this report. 
When we look at the terms of reference as Dr Ingram so clearly invites us to do at the start of the report we see that it is quite obvious that those terms of reference—put together by the Prime Minister—were designed to get exactly the result that came out. It is the Prime Minister who set the terms of reference. It is the Prime Minister who no matter what knew that at the end of this process she would be able to say that Mr Field was in the clear—a bit of bad judgment apparently but in the clear. And it is the Prime Minister who in response to allegations of corruption against Mr Field is able to stand in the House today and say that the report could find no direct evidence of that. 
 What that tells us what that tells the whole country and what that confirms is that Dr Ingram in this very cleverly written report calls us to read the subtext and note that indeed wholesale corruption was going on in the office of Phillip Field—let alone the idea that into his office comes some little refugee who at the end of the line after 7 years in New Zealand and with no Minister being prepared to let him in suddenly lets the cat out of the bag that he is a tiler. Something went off in Mr Field’s head and he said: “Hello can I cook up a scheme here?”. The next minute he had the guy on the plane using air points. He got his ministerial secretary to arrange the travel banishing him to Samoa and paying him a lousy $90 a week to do a $15000 job on the promise that he would get him a work visa back into New Zealand if the job was satisfactory—and just to make sure that the job was satisfactory he rounded up some of his other loose mates around the community and set them to work in his various houses around the countryside. 
It has been said—and there is nothing untoward in this—that Mr Field bought one of those houses from a constituent who was in trouble then flicked it off a short time later for a $136000 profit. The question is: why did those Thai painting pixies come into that house and apparently anonymously paint it for Mr Field? 
The real point here though is that although the Prime Minister says there was no direct evidence of corruption there never could be any direct evidence of corruption as long as Mr Ingram was denied the powers to properly inquire into this matter. That is the essence of it. The Prime Minister knew at the start that she had a political problem. Just a couple of weeks before the election it was all turning to custard. Then after the election we have this idea that Mr Field was somehow stood down from a ministry. Was he or was he not? Is he or is he not a Minister who has been stood down? He has paid no price whatsoever. He is out there now saying he has been vindicated. Well he is not vindicated. We would like some answers to questions about the various lafo collected in his office.