Brownlee Gerry: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Brownlee Gerry: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:5832] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 This is the part of the proceedings when the bill is discussed part by part. Really I am imploring you Mr Chairman to ensure that the part by part debate is a genuine clause by clause analysis of this bill. I say at the outset that the National Party has put a considerable amount of time into the preparation of amendments which will be tabled first thing in the morning for consideration by the Committee. We thought we might supply those amendments ahead of time in order that the Labour Party might be able to consider them but then we thought that if the Labour Party was not considerate enough to give us the bill ahead of time then why would we be particularly concerned about doing that? Having said that I point out that a large bundle of papers has just been put on the Table. They are some of the amendments that will be delivered to the Table as we proceed through this bill over the next short while because this bill is one that needs a great deal of work. 
The first part of that work must surely start in the purposes clause. It is interesting to read that the purposes of the bill include doing everything that the Labour Party has been saying we should do such as validate the appropriation and follow the instructions of the Auditor-General except that the Labour Party with one hand tied behind its back has limped into the House today having to follow this particular course of action. We know that the purpose of the bill is to validate illegal activity done by the Government. The purpose of this bill is on the one hand to make legitimate the extreme over-expenditure of the Labour Party last year and on the other hand to make legitimate the dipping into of the taxpayers’ fund—the Parliamentary Service fund—to fund the pledge card and it would seem a great deal of advertising in the electorates of sitting Labour members. So we must amend the purposes to reflect just that. 
This is the “Get the Government Supporters Out of Trouble Bill”. This is the bill that New Zealand First members sit smugly over there happily awaiting because they know that their leader Winston Peters—who is running up and down the country saying: “I’m going to court to sort this matter out.”—is going to shove up his hand at the third reading to vote for the bill knowing that he then will not have to go anywhere near a court because of the actions he took having been made legal. I am not sure exactly how the Committee will end up wording the purposes clause to this extent but the National Party most certainly will be giving people an opportunity to amend it. 
The next bit in this part of the bill is clause 4 “Interpretation” containing the interpretations. Here we can see some extremely creative work from the Government. A number of things are described one of them being “expenditure”. “Expenditure” in this bill is very very tightly defined. The clause states that expenditure “(a) includes the spending of public money and the incurring of any expense or cost; but (b) excludes any expenses incurred on or after the day on which this Act comes into force.” 
At some stage the Minister of Finance will explain to us what that means. He laughs but you see we are aware of the Tamihere warning which is that Michael Cullen with just the slight shift of a word here and there is able to pull the wool over the eyes of the New Zealand people. Everyone would have to agree now that that is absolutely right because that is what Labour members did at the time of the last election. It is what they did in 2002. It is what they did in 1999. The former Labour Party president who ran those campaigns stood up here today and said: “It wasn’t a problem in the past so why should it be a problem now?”. Well in case that new member did not notice this bill actually goes way back. It recognises that there was a problem way back in those years—in fact all the way back some 17 years from the time that Sir Geoffrey Palmer first introduced the legislation to put the Parliamentary Service into effect. 
I know that a large number of National Party members want to have a say on this bill. They have been denied a say on the Parliamentary Service Commission so far therefore they have every right to speak.