English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:650;Page:18700] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 That speech shows why the public wants the rot swept out of the Beehive. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I just make the point that that member broke up the previous speech seven times; he is going to get it back. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That was close to a point of order because it was procedural—yes. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Mr Deputy Speaker you just heard a threat. It was a threat to a member and a threat to the Speaker and that is certainly out of order. I raised a series of points of order. No one here contested that they were valid points. Perhaps the last one could have been construed as a debating point but the rest of them were dealing directly with breaches of the Standing Orders. It is absolutely outside the order of this House for Mr Mallard—who may want to take me out and punch me but who actually has to stick to the rules here—to threaten the Chair and threaten a member with disruptive behaviour. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: It would have been out of order certainly if the member had in any way threatened physical harm to another member. That was not the case. It was a threat but in my view the threat was to use only what any member is entitled to use—that is a point of order when the member thinks there has been a breach. Points of order have to be points of order. I know that the last point you raised was not a point of order just as Trevor Mallard’s was not either so let us go on. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: That is another even better reason why the public wants the rot swept out of the Beehive. Why do I say “the rot”? It is because the chain of events around the Owen Glenn donation now makes it pretty clear that an arrangement over party funding at the heart of the coalition between New Zealand First and Labour was deliberately kept secret from the public. 
You see Helen Clark who is apparently the world’s most competent Prime Minister has made an enormous mess out of what should have been a straightforward issue. The fact is that she does not know what to do and I will tell members why she does not know what to do. She cannot sack Mr Peters for taking the donation because the Labour Party jacked it up. She cannot sack him for keeping it secret because she kept it secret. She cannot sack him for misleading the public because she has misled the public. The fact is that the person who has set herself up as the judge is a participant in the crime. That is why no one believes that she can hold herself at arm’s length from this process say that someone else will sort it out and say that it is nothing to do with her. 
Let us go back to how all of this came to public light. I can tell members that none of it came to public light because of honesty on the part of the Labour Party—none. In fact it has come to public light only because of the honesty of Owen Glenn a man whom the Prime Minister of New Zealand has systematically tried to defame for the last 3 months in order to try to undermine the credibility of what he disclosed yesterday. Yes Labour kept saying that he was a drunk who was losing his mind but he is not. Let us understand how this came to light. Labour gave Owen Glenn an Order of New Zealand; Labour gave him a Queen’s honour. That was fair enough; he is a philanthropic Kiwi who has done a lot for his country. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: You rubbished it at the time. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: No we did not rubbish it. Mike Williams the president of the Labour Party was asked: “Did Owen Glenn give Labour money in the last 12 months?” and “Honest Mike” said no. What happened next? “Honest Owen” said yes. Is that not a funny pattern? Whoever says no is wrong whether it is Mike Williams Helen Clark or Winston Peters; whoever says yes—who is always Owen Glenn—turns out to be right. Mike Williams denied the $100000 loan but then he had to say yes. That is how we found out. It was because Owen Glenn told us. 
What was the next thing we found out? It was that the Prime Minister under pressure had to own up to the fact that she had always known. We saw a systematic and calculated set of mistruths in the media and in the House from the Prime Minister of New Zealand that were designed to hide a $100000 donation and her knowledge of it. That is the raw truth at the core of the rot in the Beehive. The Prime Minister of New Zealand misled the House and misled the media for a $100000 pecuniary gain to her coalition—full stop! She has never denied it. She has never denied she misled the public. She has used a calculated mistruth. I—and I think John Key—had asked her in the House whether Mike Williams was any part of this transaction. We knew he was because his name was in emails and Owen Glenn said he had spoken to him and checked it out with him. But what did Helen Clark say? She said Mike Williams was on the public record as denying it. She knew he was part of it she knew his name was in emails—we must get a fresh start.