Mahuta Nanaia: General Debate 
Mahuta Nanaia: General Debate 
[Volume:633;Page:5218] 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Customs) 
: 
 The only thing that brings this House into disrepute is a party like National that is prepared to sell its policy for money. Once a party starts heading down that track it is a very long road for New Zealanders to gain any sense of transparency about what drives this country. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Hon Mark Burton 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I apologise to my colleague but it simply is not good enough for the Hon Dr Nick Smith to keep bringing you into the debate and demand of you where your proof is. Why you should have to prove anything is beyond me but in any event it is against the Standing Orders. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I thank the honourable member for his contribution. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was listening to the interjections very carefully because they were of great merit. There is some sort of delusion I think on the part of the member that the word “your” was used. That is not correct. In fact it was “the”. So you were never brought into the issue. There simply was no valid point of order. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I say to members that an interchange was going on between two members and that in itself was what I was just about to rise on and call a breach against Speakers’ rulings because the rules permitting interjections are predicated on the assumption that the person being interjected against has the call. What we saw was an interchange between two members one on each side of the House. Interjections are not permitted at all when they are directed at a member who does not have the call. 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA 
: I say again that the only thing that brings this House into disrepute is “cash for policy” tactics which are practised by members of the Opposition. 
We have seen invisible threads that pull the Opposition into line when it needs to be pulled into line but that is not what the public wants to see. The public wants to see accountable transparent processes. National members have spent quite a long time focusing on a couple of issues which I will address. The first issue is in regard to our colleague Taito Phillip Field. When National members brought these issues into the House they called for an inquiry. An inquiry was held decisions were made the public judged and Taito Phillip Field lost his ministerial portfolio. What more does National want? Those members want to publicly castrate him even though a public process of inquiry has been undertaken the public have judged the Minister has lost his portfolio and the issues that need to be addressed will be. 
However what is not so public is the way in which the Opposition clouds issues. Opposition members cloud issues in terms of the level of accountability they are prepared to face up to. It is interesting that as shown in previous contributions made by my colleague Trevor Mallard in 2002 National was operating by the exact same rules that we were operating by. But National members are not talking about the exact same rules that we were all operating under in the 2002 election. No they want to focus on this last election. Let me ask a question because I think the public would want to know. What did the National Party spend on the election campaign before the 3-month period? Are National members prepared to stand up in the House and tell the public of New Zealand what they spent? Ah no. They are quite happy to let the Auditor-General’s opinion rest on just the 3-month period. We were all judged by the same rules certainly but how much money did the National Party spend outside of the 3-month period on their campaign? 
Every New Zealander around the country saw the big billboards throughout the country 4 or 5 months out from the election. At 3 months out there was a different scene. How much did the National Party spend 5 months out from the election? Are they prepared to tell the public where they got the money from? Which secret trust funds did they get the money from to fund their campaign? How much was spent? That is a level of transparency that the National Party will not front up to yet it is committed to focusing on a 3-month period about which the rules were unclear. That is all it was. They were unclear. 
The Auditor-General has certainly offered an opinion which is a draft opinion not a final opinion. National does not talk about the fact that Bill English used the same rules as the Labour Party operated by to fund a campaign of over $500000. It is an interesting time but accountability and transparency are values that should be applied to everybody. The National Party does not want to uphold its level of accountability in the same way. That is actually not the type of country we want to live in. 
In terms of the issues before us and the issues raised by the Opposition we know there are some very serious issues that we want to address going forward. If we had the situation where secret parties were paying for our campaigns and running our Governments nobody would know what we would end up with in terms of policies. That is not the kind of country we want to live in but it would have been the kind of country we would be living in if National had won the election. We cannot have that. We are not going that way. There are no secret strings pulling this Government even though they continue to pull the Opposition. Kia ora.