Power Simon: General Debate 
Power Simon: General Debate 
[Volume:634;Page:5430] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 Well one thing we do have to admire about Labour is its dexterity of explanation. In the last 3 weeks we have seen Labour shift position on this issue two three and four times. When Steve Maharey gets up—a week after launching a full-scale attack on the National Party—and starts offering explanations to the people of New Zealand then we know that Labour is on the downhill slide. More important Labour could at least have picked a Minister to give the explanation—that it was working within the rules—who did not go red and smile when he said it. 
Steve Maharey knows as does every intelligent member of the Labour Party front bench—so that is probably Steve Maharey—that Labour has broken the rules and is behaving like a Government that thinks it is above the law. The public of New Zealand just will not swallow it. At the end of the day the way these things are dealt with is to front up say one got it wrong repay the money save a shred of credibility and try to move on. But to offer up the explanation: “We’ll legislate because the Auditor-General got it wrong.” will not wash well during the selection process for the next UN Secretary-General. Organisations like that are not interested in explanations from Parliaments like ours in New Zealand that simply say they will not pay the money back. The remedy is to pay the money back. 
The Auditor-General has made it very clear that the National Party and the Maori Party have exercised that remedy in the appropriate way. At this point in the process that was quite an extraordinary statement for the Auditor-General to make. Effectively it signalled to the Labour Party that the way through the problem is just to pay the money back. That is a very straightforward and simple approach spelt out in black and white. 
The Labour Party was warned twice about the spending cap. On both occasions it chose to ignore that advice then when it got it wrong it took money from the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand—the workers; the very people out there whom Laila Harré is working for right now. Labour took their money and applied it—knowing that it could not do that under the law—to purchasing and distributing the pledge card. That is a practice that the electoral legislation describes as corrupt. The simple way to save face is to write out the cheque. Labour should just write out the cheque and let Parliament the country and the workers of New Zealand get on with it. 
Phil Goff and Annette King sit pained as this process draws out just as they sat pained through the Taito Phillip Field process as that drew out. All the while Phil Goff and his caravan in Mt Roskill are waiting waiting waiting for the appropriate moment when he and Annette King can finally realise their dream to run the Labour Party. Yet Annette King came to this House today and said that the police recruitment programme was working. Well when the height that a recruit has to scale has been dropped to 4 feet I am all for Lindsay Tisch joining the police! For her to say that that will work is not going to make it. I tell each member of the Labour Party to write out a cheque for $8600 each and be done with it. Be done with it! Labour should pay the money back let New Zealanders get on with living their lives and stop pretending that laws apply to everybody else in New Zealand except for those members of the Labour Party who are desperate to hang on to power. I say to Labour that the clock is ticking—pay the money back.