Bill English will be mighty glad that Parliament is not sitting today as Derek Cheng’s story in the New Zealand Herald today paints an ugly picture of the way the decision was made to fund the Pacific Economic Development Agency. As Derek says
The trail of emails suggest Mr English approved the money without telling the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs or the Treasury.
In essence it was a complete by-passing of the proper process for Budget decisions. No cabinet paper, no scruitiny from officials. It was the kind of thing the Minister of Finance would never stand for from another Minister.
The person who does come out of the episode with credit is Pacific Island Affairs Chief Executive Colin Tukuitonga. He was prepared to raise concerns about PEDA’s lack of suitability and the weakness of what they were proposing. It is his Ministry that has now done the work to run the tender process, and PEDA has missed out.
There are many questions for Bill English to answer as to why he did this, what his links were with the people involved. He showed little interest in answering those sort of questions in Parliament earlier this year. He did give one interesting answer that we will follow up next year to an oral question from Phil Goff
Hon Phil Goff: Why does the Minister not simply come clean and acknowledge that he, rather than Mrs te Heuheu, negotiated this deal, and that it was done without the normal standards of transparency, accountability, and due diligence that should have been followed before he included the commitment to a specific untested agency in the Budget?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: Because that is simply not correct.
Oh really…..
First Brownlee gets proved to be a liar, and now English.
Shoddy lot these senior nat ministers.
Good luck getting some media coverage, though, Grant.
Honestly, using a football analogy, these are open goals begging to be scored, but the ref just isn’t interested in the game take place.
Actually his answer was:
“Hon BILL ENGLISH: Because that is simply not correct. The Government will not allow party politics and conspiracy theories to get in the way of using that money to help people whom the Labour Party has clearly given up caring about: Pacific Island youth who have no jobs and no skills. Labour spent all of last year saying the Government was not doing enough; now it says we are doing too much.”
It is disgusting that you are deliberately editing his reply to try and score points.
I hope that there is media coverage on this also – More about editing replies to questions to mis inform and spin.
Shame on you Grant.
{Hilarious Chris. Can you point me to anywhere in the full answer that in any way refutes the allegations in Phil’s question (which we now know to be true)? I included the bit of Bill’s answer that was a direct answer to the question, the rest was just obfuscation, Grant}
Refer back to the AG report on the Donna Huata affair , English was doing the same process for her .
Our media will send journos to Hawaii to camp outside Hotchins home but wont do the same to the PM to answer on some pretty important integrity issues?
Tracey they would, except Key would invite them in to share Xmas dinner and we would end up with another Key ‘barbecue’ story
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
These frakin NATs. English has to be held to account and made to explain. However his hamfisted allocation of the PEDA monies – without first smoothing the way with Ministeries involved – seems like amatuer hour/first term minister fumbles.
My pick – either English is slipping or he just doesn’t care any more.
This story to be followed up in the New Year.
Tracey – yes LOLz indeed, followed by
The real question is who promised the money – and why English thought he should/was expected to just deliver on the promise, without bothering to go through the proper channels (because they might not have delivered the same result?).
Bill English misleading the House again. Bill English misleading NZ again. Bill English still misleading the House. Bill English still misleading NZ.
We can be cheered by the knowledge that for Simon William English hubris is inevitably followed by nemesis- just ask Ruth Richardson
interesting link at Media7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfp27GzjFXE&feature=player_embedded
often puzzled, great link. it’s heartening to know investigative journalism still exists even if we are largely robbed of it.
Nice piece in granny H today on this
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10698055
bumped for Sean