Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
[Volume:653;Page:2549] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 My strong instinct is to spend the next 10 minutes refuting the falsehoods of the gentleman who has just resumed his seat. He believes that if he repeats something that is wrong often enough he will turn it into something that is right. But I have other things to do. I have to list the mistakes of the Hon Dr Richard Worth and that will take all of the time I have available to me. I will go through them one by one and see how far I get. 
I think that going to India as a private individual and then after getting there making a big noise about being a Government Minister was probably Dr Worth’s first mistake and it was highlighted in particular by one newspaper with the largest circulation in northern India which described him as a senior Minister. I think that shows poor judgment and I think that is gilding the lily. 
But the second mistake was having a shareholding and a directorship in New Zealand Aviation which was going into a joint venture with the Southern Institute of Technology to train Indian aviation pilots in New Zealand. Indeed that was one purpose of the gentleman’s trip. He claimed that New Zealand Aviation was non-trading—true—but he went to India to try to correct that inactivity. He claimed that he would not be part of the joint venture which I think is sophistry because the joint venture would have had as its underlying ownership New Zealand Aviation of which the gentleman was a shareholder and director. 
Dr Worth’s third mistake was that he forgot to tell the Prime Minister. He embarrassed the Prime Minister. Dr Worth told him that he was going to India on a general trade mission. He did not tell the Prime Minister about his shareholding in that company and therefore having caused the Prime Minister embarrassment he was labelled by the Prime Minister as “unwise and stupid” and he received a bollocking. He then arrived in Parliament duly bollocked and made a mess of question time. The first Tuesday the next Thursday the day after that today—this guy cannot answer questions straight in Parliament and that I think is his fourth mistake. 
Dr Worth’s fifth mistake was made on Monday of last week when he told the Prime Minister he would immediately get out of his shareholdings and on Tuesday of last week when he told the media he had already done so. He was wrong; he had not. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: He was building up to April Fool’s Day. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: It was not an April Fool’s Day joke. He meant it. He said he meant it and he was on the front page of the  
New Zealand Herald 
 on Wednesday saying he was out. But he was not. He still had a shareholding in companies—Indian-focused companies. By Thursday he still had shareholdings in WSD Global Markets and the Indian Overseas Group. Therefore he got another bollocking. 
Dr Worth’s sixth mistake was that he told the chief executive of the Southern Institute of Technology last September that he would get himself out of his interests in New Zealand Aviation and then when she reported that in the  
Southland Times 
 he said she must have misunderstood him. Well Mr Assistant Speaker Roy you and I both know the chief executive of the Southern Institute of Technology and she is not someone who easily misunderstands people. 
Dr Worth’s seventh mistake was that he told Radio New Zealand including on yesterday morning that he had dropped his directorship of WSD Global Markets because he learnt that it was going to be listed. That is wrong again. WSD Global Markets has been going to be listed for months. If one asks anyone in Tasman Capital one will be told it has been an ongoing feature of that company yet Dr Worth first became a director of it only a few months ago. 
 So he must have known when he did his due diligence at the time of becoming a director that the company was going to be listed but on Radio New Zealand he gave as his excuse for stopping being a director the reason that the company was going to be listed. The real reason he got out of the job as a director and shifted his shares from a personal holding into a family trust was that he knew that WSD Global Markets had come to the attention of the Serious Fraud Office. In fact he was told that over a cocktail party in Auckland in September by an Auckland business person. 
Mistake No. 8 was that Dr Worth helped himself to facilitation services at Auckland Airport that he was not entitled to. One of his travelling companions could not stop bragging that he was facilitated too although in more recent days that travelling companion now denies it. 
Dr Worth fiddled his own Wikipedia entry—this is interesting—was caught and was told off by Wikipedia. That was done instead of doing proper housework like going to the Brookers website for the nation’s law directory and correcting his own entry which even today says Dr Worth is a consultant for Simpson Grierson—as he holds the job of a Minister of the Crown! 
A tenth mistake is that Dr Worth claims to have met all his own costs on that trip to India but will not table his receipts instead demanding to be taken at his word.