Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 11 May 2011. Volume:672;Page:18569. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 The National members do not like it. Each of the three National speakers has got up and said they think Labour should not be dealing with minutiae and they have then spent a big part of their speech dealing with Labour’s dealings with National over minutiae. It seems that the National members do not like it and the reason that Labour will continue to deal with minutiae is as follows. What National really wants is for Labour to stop concentrating on National which is one of the key roles of her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. National should not expect any forgiveness in that direction.  
Yes I do admit that an $800000 overspend in the context of the entire police budget is small. In the context of the entire budget of the Government $800000 is small but in the context of the expenditure on one man the Prime Minister it is large. It is twice the amount of money that we think his salary is worth. We think that a person should not be responsible for causing an $800000 overspend on the basis of his own proclivities. Only this Prime Minister takes bodyguards to the gym. Only this Prime Minister takes bodyguards as far as the debating chamber to 10 metres from where I am sitting because it suits him. Only this Prime Minister takes bodyguards on private holidays to Hawaii and Italy. Only this Prime Minister pretends that he cannot have any say in the matter. We know that is bunkum; he is the Prime Minister after all.  
We will continue to focus on National and if National thinks that spending $800000 on the well-being of one man is minutiae then I say we will continue to focus on it and we will see what the people of New Zealand say. The National members say the $800000 is trivial; we say it is indulgent. They call it small; we call it wrong. They say it does not fix the economy; we say that tomorrow National will make the lives of many New Zealanders worse and if the National members continue to keep their own noses in the trough then they lack the moral authority to ensure that they do not do harm to other New Zealanders while they do themselves everlasting good.  
Do members remember the ministerial housing debate? Do members remember that? It was long ago. It was the first one. The Prime Minister said we should not worry and National would fix it. He said the rules were a mess. Bill English the Minister of Finance was double-dipping so the Prime Minister said he would fix that and make ministerial housing cheaper. [ 
Interruption 
] The National members do not like it. There is a continual response from the rabble during my few minutes here on the stage. But National said it would make ministerial housing cheaper. Well we have been following that and National has not made it cheaper. Ministerial housing is now more expensive after the fix than it was before the fix. What is more and this is important an unknown amount of taxpayers’ money goes into Ministers’ pockets—an unknown amount of taxpayers’ money.  
So the anatomy of this self-deception is starting to become clear. National announces changes like those to ministerial housing saying it will fix the matter but it does not fix it. The National members hide behind the word “security”. We saw that in the House yesterday. We saw it last week with the Vela brothers and their $2000 helicopter ride. At the end of last week we learnt for the first time that the Prime Minister is facing threats but there was no ability to tell us where those threats are coming from or what they are because that is a security matter as well. 
The third trick they pull is that they bet on not getting caught out with their inconsistencies. We heard Chris Hipkins today ask the Prime Minister how it was that he aggressively reviewed Ministerial Services line by line but he missed the BMWs in their entirety. Which part of that do we believe? They keep forgetting; that is another trick. We have the Prime Minister’s chief of staff already forgetting his meeting with other officials on BMW matters—forgetting because it suits. We have the idea that it does not matter what Ministers do—that there is no conflict of interest. We are told by Ministers that there is no conflict of interest and that they have had advice to that effect. They never however release the advice. The anatomy of the deception is becoming clearer.