Cullen Michael: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Cullen Michael: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:5808] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I move  
That the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill be now read a second time 
. There has been an enormous amount of huff bluster and nonsense this afternoon. I want to start with the most obvious—Mr Hide. Only a few weeks ago Mr Hide was complaining to me privately about the stupidity of the National Party and the line it was taking on the Auditor-General’s draft report and threatening to expose the Auditor-General to serious examination in front of a select committee. Today of course it is a totally different story in public from Mr Hide. There is a word for that. 
But let us come to National Party spending. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: It is not as bad as the dishonesty of Labour. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh here goes the so-called lawyer from the north who has become the prosecutor on immigration cases. Let us ask some questions of the National Party. What did the National Party spend its leader’s vote on before the last election? There was no accounting and no scrutiny. Was it spent on staff on Brian Sinclair on campaigning? But because it was not communications it was not studied by the Auditor-General who declined to look beyond at what might have implicated the National Party. The Auditor-General also declined to look at 2002 and the National Party’s pledge advertising at that point. I invite a National Party MP to get up and tell us what those members spent their leader’s budget on because it was all spent. No of course they will not. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: We didn’t break the law. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: If they spent any of it on anything to do with electioneering as defined by the Auditor-General then they broke the law and it was unlawful. 
But in terms of breaking the law we know the one party that did break the law by overspending on its broadcasting expenditure. What happened when the police investigated? Steven Joyce general manager New Zealand National Party told the advertising agency named Rainmakers—what a wonderful name—that it was GST inclusive but the Rainmakers person said it was GST exclusive. The police cannot attribute responsibility for the GST overexpenditure to either the New Zealand National Party or Rainmakers and are not therefore in a position to charge either person. How convenient for the National Party! 
What did that party want this House to do? It wanted this House to retrospectively validate its overexpenditure on the GST not so it could pay it back—the party could pay the broadcasters any day—but to avoid a conviction and a fine for overspending on its broadcasting. That is why National wanted leave of this House for retrospective validation. No wonder Mr McCully the Peter Mandelson of the National Party does not want to listen to these particular facts. 
What about the money spent on travel by the National Party? Was none of that to do with electioneering in the 3-month period? Are we to assume that what we thought about Dr Brash was true—that he wandered around the country in a daze for those 3 months and did not spend a single period of time electioneering on the public expense? But the Solicitor-General’s opinion means that if any of his time was spent electioneering then I am afraid all that expenditure was unlawful. 
Poor Katherine Rich who sent out a letter that was absolutely legitimate within any previous understanding of Vote Parliamentary Service took the pratfall for the rest of her colleagues. I respect loyalty and therefore I respect Katherine Rich in that regard. Murray McCully of course has always been the first in any coup developing in the National Party. He is telling everybody that Don Brash is gone. 
What about the National Party’s involvement with the Exclusive Brethren? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: So what? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: So what? This is the man who accused the Exclusive Brethren of breaking up families for religious purposes. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: That’s right. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: “That’s right.” he says. Well what was Dr Don Brash doing in bed with the Exclusive Brethren to the tune of $1.2 million payment to Don Brash for his services in trying to get rid of a Labour-led Government? What was happening in Napier and Hastings when schoolchildren were being used for push-polling in conjunction with the National Party? How come Craig Foss was paying for pamphlets that the Exclusive Brethren could not deliver to be delivered? Did he declare it in his election expenses? What was going on in terms of that relationship with a small extreme group? This is a group that does not believe in defending New Zealand but it condemned the Labour Government for not spending enough on defence that does not believe in voting but says it should have the right to choose who the Government is and that is so strange that it does not believe in joining up sewerage pipes until they reach the city council sewer if it is running across a neighbour’s property. What was the National Party doing in bed with a bunch of fruitcakes like that when in fact it was receiving vast sums of money to do whatever it was the Exclusive Brethren expected of them? That is the reality. 
We heard from Mr English. I have to say that Mr English gave the only decent speech on behalf of the National Party this afternoon. I disagreed with it but by God it was a powerful speech compared with “Dr Magoo” at the start and then the bully rant and rave— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I draw the member’s attention to the fact that he must refer to members by their correct name. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Dr Brash at the start was not quite clear why he was in the House and of course Mr Brownlee has tried just to bluff and bluster his way through without any understanding of the legal issues involved. But we heard from Mr English about respect for the law. The Labour Party disagrees fundamentally with the Auditor-General’s conclusions but because he has provided that ruling we are refunding that money. 
What happens when the National Party does not like the referee’s decision? Mr McCully got up only 10 minutes ago and said: “No cooperation with the referee. We don’t like the decision. That’s it. We won’t obey the referee any longer.” That is National Party members on the rule of law. They are all for the rule of law when they are the rulers and they are the law but when the law disagrees with them they do not have any respect for the rule of law at all. We however disagree fundamentally. 
Then we had the big king-hit from Mr McCully who said that the bill is not going to a select committee. I invite Mr McCully to look at the bill; it is an appropriation bill. I invite him to read the Standing Orders. An appropriation bill does not have to go to a select committee whether or not there is urgency. If we had simply had the first reading today the bill would have been set down for second reading tomorrow without going to a select committee. [ 
Interruption 
] That is right Mr Power—an appropriation bill does not have to go to a select committee. But this is a party whose members complained in the House this afternoon that they had not yet seen the bill when I had sent one over to them this morning. The problem was that Mr Brownlee does not know where a photocopier is so he could not run off any copies for any of his colleagues. Yet strangely by the time the National members got to the House they said they had already drafted amendments to the bill even though they had not seen it. That is National Party logic for us. 
Finally I ask why the National members hate the pledge card. I do not believe Mr McCully at all when he says that National members did not know it came out of Parliamentary Service funding in 2002; they have complained about that for a long period of time. What they hate about the pledge card is really very very simple—it breaks the rules as they understand them. In the pledge card we say what we are going to do and we have done it three times in a row. The National Party will never forgive Labour—not for being the Government but for much much worse. We have ratted on the National Party principles. In Government we have done what we said we would do. 
I draw a conclusion that the National Party will never have a pledge card. We can guarantee that whatever promises its members make they will not keep them—like that of Dr Smith who was going to remove the toll gate on the road to knowledge by removing student fees and instead made them much bigger; or like that of getting rid of the surcharge “no ifs no buts no maybes” and so on. 
Well bad luck the Labour Party will carry on keeping its promises standing for the rule of law and despite my own somewhat low instincts making sure that the Parliamentary Service’s appropriation is able to support the National Party for the coming year or so—which without this bill it would not be able to do.