Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:633;Page:5211] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 I want to talk about election funding today; and I want to talk about the dishonesty the deceitfulness and the double standards that the National Party has portrayed right through this debate. Yesterday in the House we heard Don Brash say that the National Party did not get a dime from the Exclusive Brethren—not a dime. He was right about that—it was not a dime; it was $1.2 million which increased National Party election spending by 50 percent. And the National Party knew right through the campaign where the money had come from and what it was there for. It is set out in a letter from the Exclusive Brethren to the Chief Electoral Office in which the Exclusive Brethren said it wanted to put together an election programme with a budget of $1.2 million with the goal of getting party votes for National. 
Don Brash met with the Exclusive Brethren at least three times before the election campaign. When asked by the media whether he knew who was behind these pamphlets he said no. Not once not twice but three times he deceived the public by saying he did not know who was behind the pamphlets and where the money had come from. Finally he had to own up to lying to the country and to knowing all along where the money had come from. 
That money was from a narrow-minded intolerant religious sect the same sect greased up to by Chris Finlayson in the House the other night notwithstanding the fact that the members of the Exclusive Brethren in their narrow-minded way think that member is an abomination because of his sexual orientation. I say to Mr Finlayson that I cannot understand his double standards on that. I have no problem with who that member is and what he is. That is not a problem for me but it is for the members of the Exclusive Brethren and still we get the double standards of that member talking to them—they were in the gallery wearing their scarves—and saying that this Government is unchristian. 
The amount was $1.2 million and I have here an example of the sort of pamphlet I am talking about. This one went out in my electorate. It was authorised as the law requires by Mr Powell of 30 Stephen Lysnar Place. We checked the telephone book and the electoral roll and we went around to the house only to find that no such person ever lived there. That happened up and down the country. The National Party is saying it knew nothing about the Exclusive Brethren and is standing behind the lies and the dishonesty shown by the Exclusive Brethren all the way through. 
While we are on dishonesty let us talk about Mr English. Mr English has been remarkably quiet but he has gone along with the accusations by the National Party that the Labour Party and other parties in the House broke the rules. We put out a commitment card. That was within the rules as interpreted by the Parliamentary Service and every other party in this House. What about this piece of paper I ask Mr English. It states: “My commitment.” This came out during the election campaign in 2002—exactly as Labour had done. Why the dishonesty? Why the double standards of saying that Labour broke the rules when the National Party had been doing that year after year from 1989? Double standards dishonesty—that is what we have had from the National Party. 
Then there is another thing from Don Brash. He admitted on radio the other day that 90 percent of the funds used by the National Party went through a secret trust fund. We do not know who gave the money and we do not know what was promised by the National Party to those who gave the money. What we do know most certainly was that it was “cash for policy”. The National Party was allowing itself to be bribed by outside groups that would give it money only anonymously—people like the multinational insurance companies that had millions of dollars to gain if that party once in Government privatised accident compensation. One of those members opposite should get up and deny that the insurance companies were not major funders of the National Party in return for that promise—a promise that would have seen tens of millions of dollars going into private pockets. That is corruption that is dishonesty and that is double standards. The very thing that those people have the audacity to accuse Phillip Field of doing they were doing for the corporates. They were selling out their souls. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I apologise to my colleague but in the interests of consistency and given that I have objected to members opposite describing members on this side in those terms I ask the member to abide by the higher standards of the House and not to use that term again. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Absolutely. Let us use another example. Lockwood Smith asked for foreign funds so that the National Government could sell out this country’s non-nuclear policy.