New Zealand Parliamentary Debate

General Debate [4427]

Hon PHIL GOFF

: I add the invitation to Mr Brownlee that if he wants to make any implication or allegation about my character, he should make it outside the House, if he has the courage to do so.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER( H V Ross Robertson)

: I just say to the member that to imply that someone lacks courage is a personal reflection and outside the Standing Orders. The member will desist and continue.

Hon PHIL GOFF

: I was saying that Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith PhD-that is how he signs his letters-went up and down this country promising to repeal student fees. We have a photo of him signing a document at a student union that stated he would resign if he did not repeal the fees. He broke the first promise and he broke the second, so a man of that sort of integrity ought to be careful about challenging the integrity of others.

Then there is the Dr Lockwood Smith who begged a group of visiting American congressmen to provide the funding to run a political campaign against a nuclear-free New Zealand. He did not own up to it, and when the evidence was tabled in the House he still did not own up to it. Let the country make its own judgment about Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith PhD's integrity. It will come to the same conclusion that I have-he has none.

These National Party members are upset. They have come to the House today fresh from the public relations disaster of the National Party's annual conference in Christchurch last weekend. We remember the saying of John Cleese: Don't mention the war. Well, the saying at the National Party conference was parallel to that, but it was: Don't mention the leadership challenge. It dominated the whole conference. But Dr Brash broke the rule. On Friday I heard Dr Brash say on Radio New Zealand that three or four malcontents in his caucus were undermining his leadership. That was said by the leader! He owned up to the country that three or four malcontents in the caucus were undermining his leadership. What he did not tell us was that three out of the four were the people sitting closest to him on the front Opposition bench. They all want a go.

The National Party was not taking any chances at its conference. Let us see what the media said about it. Vernon Small wrote in the Dominion Post that it was the most buttoned-down conference in the National Party's history. He wrote that the workshops and remit sessions were closed to the media. The National Party was not prepared to have the media looking at what it was doing. This is the party that talks about openness and transparency! Even when it is in Opposition it will not let the country know what it is doing. What is more, it did not have faith in its own membership, because, as Vernon Small wrote, members were allowed scarcely any input into the conference debate from the floor.

That was capped off by Dr Brash's speech. As soon as he had given the speech he did a runner. Normally a leader will front up to the media and answer their questions. When challenged, the spokesman for the leader said Dr Brash had a pressing engagement. The media made some inquiries, and do members know what the pressing engagement was? It was lunch! Is it any wonder that John Armstrong wrote in the New Zealand Herald: it was also a massive vote of no confidence in Dr Brash's ability to front to the media. It was a massive vote of no confidence in the ability of the leader, who is never here for this debate, to front up and answer. It was a massive vote of no confidence in that leader. In another independent aspect of the media, the Press stated that no matter how much self-congratulation was going on, it did not change the reality.

Dr WAYNE MAPP( National-North Shore):

One issue stands out in the Ingram report, and it is this: did Mr Field tell the truth to Dr Ingram? That is the reason why the report took so long. There are always two approaches to any inquiry. If one is upfront