Dean Jacqui: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
Dean Jacqui: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5873] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 I do not buy a word of what MP Steve Chadwick has just said. I do not buy a word of what the Deputy Prime Minister said today. I do not buy a single solitary word that has come from any member on that side of the Chamber on this issue and I will tell members why. When I look at the Order Paper that we should have been addressing this week I see the heading “Business before the House” and I see a number of bills under that heading that should have—and would have—been debated in this House this week or the next were we not in urgency. What are those bills? We have bills like the Sports Anti-Doping Bill a disabled persons bill a bill to do with children young persons and their families the Criminal Procedure Bill and the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill—and what do all these bills have in common? They have come before the House to benefit the people of New Zealand. The fact that we may or may not support them and vote for them is irrelevant because the intent behind the bills is to benefit the people of New Zealand. 
I turn to the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill which we are debating today and I ask who it is designed to benefit. Is it designed to benefit as those other bills are the people of New Zealand? No it is not. Of course it is not. It is designed to benefit the Government of the day. There is the difference. This bill is designed purely to get the Government out of a very very tight spot and I do not buy a single solitary word of it. 
The then Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the Labour Party and told it that if it put out the pledge card then it would breach the spending cap. Let us just leave aside the fact that the Labour Party used taxpayers’ money and our money. Labour was warned that the use of the pledge card would be regarded as election spending. We badly need to know—and I would love an MP from the Government to take a call on this question—whether Labour had been informed in advance that the use of the pledge card would be regarded as election spending. If Labour had been informed of that then it knowingly exceeded the spending cap. 
Bob Clarkson was challenged about exceeding the spending cap. Bob Clarkson spent a considerable amount of time and money to prove that he had not exceeded the spending cap. Had Mr Clarkson exceeded the spending cap he would have lost his seat—but not the Government because the laws of the land obviously do not apply to the Government. The laws of the land that apply to me my colleagues and my party do not apply to the Government. 
So we have Government members sitting in the Chamber with a worthless piece of paper hoping they will get away with it and hoping the people of New Zealand will have forgotten about it by the time of the next election. But we will not have forgotten about it. We have a Government that knowingly and willingly breaks the law. So what did the Government do about that? How did it put that right? It introduced a shonky piece of legislation called the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill which is just a whole collection of words designed to make legal what is illegal.