Agenda transcript: 5 08 2006 - BILL ENGLISH, RICHARD PREBBLE

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Transcript 5 August 2006 AGENDA

Presented by LISA OWEN

LISA	Deposed by Don Brash as Leader in 2003 Bill English is now ranked at number three on National's front bench. As spokesman on education he's been one of the opposition's standout performers landing a number of hits on the government over NCEA and tertiary funding and with Brash continuing to trail Helen Clark in the preferred leadership polls English is again being touted as a replacement, but he says he just wants to focus on his portfolios and party strategy. Bill English joins me now from Island Bay in Wellington. Good morning to you Mr English.

BILL ENGLISH – National MP
	Good morning.


LISA	Can you start off by telling us fundamentally what should the education system be delivering and who exactly should provide it?

BILL	Oh it should be delivering high and consistent standards that challenge every pupil who's in a school every student in a high school and it needs to have accountability so that the public who are paying for all this can see that they are getting results, we want to get the best out of our teachers because they're the ones in the classroom doing the teaching they're putting across the learning and the values but we need to know that it's working, but ultimately it's about challenging our young people, and giving them the basic competencies of citizenship so they must be able to read write and do maths, and they need to stretch their imagination, their innovation and their intelligence.

LISA	Read and write what? Should they be reading and writing Mandarin and French?

BILL	Well it would be nice if they could do a second language but we have to be practical about it, languages have been on the decline in New Zealand, the government has added it to the curriculum, it's a nice idea in principle but I don’t think they’ll be able to have any impact over the next four or five years because we just don’t have the teachers and there's a danger that it'll be a distraction from the vital push to get our literacy and numeracy levels up.

LISA	Alright well this week we've seen a draft curriculum that has included a number of values, eight values, should schools be teaching values?

BILL	I'm very suspicious of state schools setting out to teach particular values, but when I go into schools I see schools doing and excellent job of getting across to their students respect for authority, standards of behaviour, respect for others. I think the values that are taught in our schools come much more from the way the school sets down some standards and the way the staff behave and I'd have to say many schools do a good job of that, in fact I'd say in some of our schools they're setting higher standards than parents are expecting of their own children.

LISA	So with those values do you think I mean Labour has said that one its key planks coming up to the election will be nation building, is this values, is that Labour's nation building in disguise do you think slipping into the schools?

BILL	We should be very suspicious of the government trying to use the school system for as vague and as political a project as nation building, I don’t think parents will put up with it, I think the values part of the new curriculum document is pretty much irrelevant, good schools are putting across values to their children by the way they conduct themselves, parents are putting values into their children, I don’t want to see the state trying to do some kind of political exercise to get inside our kids' heads about how the nation should be.

LISA	Personality disputes aside are you heading do you think towards a consensus with Labour on the education system though, you yourself have said that NCEA keep it with some tweaks, is there a consensus on the horizon?

BILL	Oh there's consensus over some issues in education but the government doesn’t have near sharp enough a focus on standards, it doesn’t have sharp enough a focus on accountability and it is spending far too much money on strategies visions programmes plans and launches for ministerial photo opportunities that should be directed to schools, so no there will be some sharp differences in the run up to the election.

LISA	So where are those ideological differences, pinpoint them for us.

BILL	Nation's much keener on choice, we believe parents and students should have choice, we believe that to exercise that choice they should have information, the current government hides much of the information it has about schools from parents, we also believe that there should be a wider range of providers of education more integrated schools, more support for the private schools, we also believe there should be a sharp focus on standards and the current government is quite opposed to having national standards, we support them because it shows everyone where the goalposts are, the teachers know what they're teaching to, and we can see whether they're succeeding.

LISA	In terms of goalposts then if education is sposed to prepare our children for life in the real world why don’t we say these are the winners in the system and these children, you, you're failing, why don’t we tell some of our kids who are failing that they are failing.

BILL	Well I agree that we should do that where we know how to make a difference, a good example would be in NCEA where a large number of students turn up to the exams don’t sit them and go away, no one knows, they can not pass and that doesn’t appear anywhere on their record, we've now got 30% of our 15 year olds who can't pass their level one literacy standards when they're doing them for NCEA, that’s 30%, they need to know, we all need to know so that we can fix that problem because for those young people the knowledge economy's on another planet, they're not even getting to the starting line when it comes to further training in the trades and skills after they leave school.

LISA	Look I want to refer to a comment made by David Cameron the leader of the UK Conservative Party, it's a quote from him I'll just read it to you. He said 'we must embrace modern compassionate conservatism, compassionate because we understand that there's a we in politics as well as a me, that there is such a thing as society', do you agree with him, do you agree with that comment?

BILL	I do and I think traditional conservatism has always been compassionate. We support the civic institutions like the families, non government organisations, churches, other organisations, being part of a community that binds itself together, that is very much conscious of the common good and the current government unfortunately believe that it should all be big government and bureaucracy and that’s very expensive and ineffective. We've just seen in the last week or so the Christian Council of Social Services putting out a report panning the government's attempts to do about child abuse and about support for at risk families, now that’s a group who have been strongly supportive of the government and they are now telling them that the big government big bureaucracy approach just doesn’t work.

LISA	Well tell me though how much debate is there within National's ranks about the we me argument and weighing it up, where you should as a party be on the political spectrum, whether you should be moving more towards the centre, how much debate is there within National's ranks about that?

BILL	Well there's always debate but I don’t think – it's not in those terms about whether we're individualists or collectivists, it's about what is going to be effective, and National I think has become more pragmatic than it was say ten or 15 years ago, we're not setting out to prove a point about an ideology, we're setting out to demonstrate competent government and effective intervention. You can use up a lot of energy on what the philosophy is, the fact is there's a whole series of quite difficult problems to solve for New Zealand, we are going to take a long term view of solutions to those problems ranging from infrastructure to crime and dependency and other debates we're having and I'd have to say I feel very positive about the focus and the competence of the people around me in the National Party, I think we've got a chance to be a very good government.

LISA	How much do you think perhaps the perception that you're all about the economy has hurt the National Party?

BILL	I don’t think it hurts the National Party at all because people have a very good understanding these days of the fundamental importance of a growing economy for next week's income but also for the prospects of their children, so National's never going to move away from being the party that is in the best position to manage the economy and it is one of New Zealand's biggest challenges over the next ten years to be competitive to have the opportunities here that our young people want and can use.

LISA	Well you are involved in strategy so what should National be fighting the next election on, the key issue?

BILL	Well we'll just see – we'll see when we get closer to the election just what the key issue is going to be but it will be New Zealand's future and it will be around our economic prospects and around effective government, but what we need to do right now and we are doing quite successfully is to mould the team to get the unity and cohesion in the party that will allow us to show that we're a competent alternative government when people start thinking about the next election cos we've learnt some hard lessons over the last ten years about what puts the public off and I'm very pleased with the progress we're making.

LISA	Well you talk about unity and cohesion, will Don Brash be leading the party at the next election?

BILL	Yes I think he will, this seems to be an issue for the media but I can tell you from having been a Leader of the Opposition it's your supporters who are hardest on you and Don Brash undoubtedly has the support of the National voting base.

LISA	What about you and your own personal aspirations, do you at some point aspire to lead the National Party again at some point on the spectrum?

BILL	Well no not particularly, I've been there, I've had the job, I certainly enjoyed it, it's very challenging, I would love the opportunity to really get some urgency into our education system, some clarity about the standards and some challenges for our young New Zealanders and that’s what I'm putting my time into.

LISA	Could we take that as a yes, that at some point you might like to lead the party again?

BILL	Well this is just one of your guys' little games isn't it? Look I enjoy the job, I have no aspirations to be leader of the National Party, Don Brash will be the next Prime Minister of New Zealand.

LISA	Before the break Mr English we were discussing leadership, well we did an interview earlier in the year with the Leader of the Maori Party, Tariana Turia, and you were her favourite for the National Party leadership, let's have a listen to what she had to say. 'Well I always like Bill English, I like his style, I like his manner, I think that had National bit the bullet that in fact he would have made a great leader'. Do you think you could work with the Maori Party and how would that relationship work?

BILL	Well I think it's prejudging it a bit to be guessing too much about relationships with other parties, the electorate is going to deal us a hand in the next election, National will have a clear direction and parties who want to be in the government will be coming to deal with us. Now the Maori Party may be in the queue, if so of course it'll be a bit tricky trying to deal with them because we have some fundamental differences.

LISA	Alright we're going to bring our panel in now Mr English going first to John Roughan from the New Zealand Herald.

JOHN ROUGHAN – Columnist, NZ Herald
	Mr English history under MMP would suggest that the electorate likes to see the potential coalition partners and the party that they're considering for government, can National show us any likely coalitions that it could form?

BILL	I think it's too early for that yet John, at the moment National's been focusing on its own unity and cohesion and also on getting depth into the policies that we want to be putting in place when we're in government, perhaps next year and getting into election year there'll be more focus on it because I agree that the voter wants to see a competent and viable alternative.

LISA	Mr English can I just ask you, you're involved in strategy now, Don Brash has acknowledged the fact that you're having problems with the women voters and image there and you're wanting to appeal to Pacific Island, Maori, lower income people, what's the strategy, how are you going to do that?

BILL	Look I think all the voter groups that you can think of respond to some pretty key issues, they're going to want to see sound economic prospects in a party that knows how to lift New Zealand's performance, get it to step up, many of them of course have a strong interest in the non economic issues and there the focus I think will increasingly be on effectiveness of delivery, I mean you’ve got a government that can speed but it can't deliver and whether you're a woman voter or a male voter or a Pacific Islander or a pakeha you still have the same attitude about whether your grandmother can get her operation, whether your child's getting a decent education in school, so I think going after particular groups and targeting them is less effective than actually having good policy with broad appeal. Now of course as a party we need to reflect the openness and diversity of the New Zealand community and I think increasingly we are, we need to be seen to be reaching out to groups who haven’t traditionally been voting for us, because that’s how you get up to the 50% you need in MMP. Those are challenges but the fundamental has to be the good policy that works for people and all those groups have similar needs.

LISA	Alright we're bringing in Bryce Johns from the Waikato Times.

BRYCE JOHNS – Editor, Waikato Times
	Mr English isn't the big thing over the next year going to have to be point of difference because while clearly all the parties will be working on policy building up to the next election, isn't the electorate's view that things are very squished in the central ground and you’ve got to differentiate somehow?

BILL	Well I think one of the big differences is going to be that National will look increasingly like a competent alternative government and Labour will look increasingly as it is already like a decaying long term government that’s losing its grip, and that is going to be really important to the electorate. Of course there's a bit of a squash in the centre because MMP mathematics tell you you have to have the support of 50% of the voters so you are competing in there and I think you'll see something of a tactical battle, but National's direction I think will be clearly different, I mean we are going to be the party of lower taxes, we're going to be the party of smaller and effective government, we're going to be the party that won't entertain separatist ideas about the future of New Zealand, so those directions will be clear.

LISA	But Mr English how do you present that diversity, that difference from Labour without ostracising those very groups that you’ve named as the ones that you need, where is the balance in that?

BILL	Well look I don’t think they're mutually exclusive at all, every voter wants competent and effective government, I think every government wants a government that’s careful with their taxes, doesn’t take more than they need and uses it effectively when they do take it, so I don’t see them as mutually exclusive, I think it's a myth that if you're a Pacific Islander you're not interested in economic prospects, in fact it's a growing economy that is transforming the future of groups like that because they can now have a much better chance of getting a job, they want their children to have a good education, that’s certainly what they're telling me and clarity about standards, measuring the progress of their children against those standards is something that every Pacific Island parent will respond to. Our challenge is not so much to change policy for particular groups but to get the core message about those policies across to those groups.

JOHN	Mr English back to education too, you talked about integrated schools encouraging them and allowing more of them in contrast to the present government, what prospect do you think you may have of constituting all state schools as more independent schools along the lines of integrated schools?

BILL	Well I want to explore that prospect but we'd have to think of it as a spectrum, at one end some schools have the capability through their governance through their boards, through their principals to run fairly independently, other struggle and the students in them are missing out on learning because they're not well run, so I think we'd have to be careful about any wholesale shift in the way state schools are organised but certainly those who show they have the capability should be allowed more independence, those who are failing or are simply not doing a good enough job of running themselves need closer supervision and I've been talking about this idea to principals and boards around the country. A lot of them want to get out from under the heavy hand of central bureaucracy and an increasing trend towards direction from Wellington about how to teach children how to learn, so they want the opportunities, we'll be a government that can provide them those.

BRYCE	Mr English you’ve answered the questions on leadership pretty definitively today but what's the difference with you now, do you think – cos you certainly appear to be relating to the electorate a lot better now than you ever did as leader, is that the case do you think and what's changed?

BILL	Huh, well you live and learn don’t you Bryce? It's now five or six years since I became the Leader of the National Party, I've seen a lot of politics in that time, the best and a fair bit of the worst of it, so I've learned some lessons from that. I think you learn to back your own judgement when you’ve been through the political tests that I've been through and that’s what I'm enjoying about my current job, the ability to get to know it and then back my own judgement about what will work for the politics as well as for the learning of our students.

BRYCE	So are you a bit more carefree than you were back then?

BILL	Oh I've learned to worry less about all the possibilities, make a judgement and back it.

LISA	Alright, thank you very much for joining us this morning, that’s the National Party Spokesperson on Education, Bill English.


LISA	Welcome back, the fate of Labour MP, Taito Phillip Field continued to be debated in the House this week as the Green Party blocked National's move for a Select Committee inquiry into his dealings with Thai migrants. Arguing that the inquiry would be toothless they asked instead the Field be forced to apologise in the House a moved that was in turn blocked by National. Former Act Leader and Labour MP Richard Prebble has been following these events with interest, a 30 year political veteran Prebble knows parliament standing orders so well that he once put his name forward for Speaker. Richard Prebble joins me now from Tauranga. Good morning Mr Prebble, National is considering having another crack at getting this before a privileges committee. Once and for all do you think the Speaker – the ruling was right that not to go there was the right decision?

RICHARD PREBBLE – Former MP
	Oh the ruling was definitely right, when people say you know it's technically right but morally wrong that’s nonsense, the Speaker's got to follow the standing orders and this is not a breach of privilege, a breach of privilege is interfering with the running of parliament, that doesn’t mean to say that the Privileges Committee shouldn’t look at it and the matter could be referred by the House, Sir Robert Muldoon once referred me to the Privileges Committee just by a resolution of the House and if I was the National Party I would have put down a different motion that the House refer Mr Field to the Privileges Committee, that can be blocked by the government but it would be very embarrassing for Labour to continue to block investigating one of their own MPs who has clearly been very very naughty, very naughty.

LISA	Well when the government does have the power to block that I mean is there really an appropriate place for this kind of issue to be discussed, MPs' behaviour outside of the House, where should it go and is there enough of a system in place to deal with it?

RICHARD	On yes in fact what he was doing related to a number of different departments, an obvious one is the Immigration Department but others is the Labour Department because working on his house, and this is a matter that the QC has established were these overstayers who we're working below the minimum wage. Now that’s a matter that a number of select committees could look into and if I was the National Party I would be raising it at those select committees, it's a very dangerous thing for the Green Party now to be seen to be blocking the investigation.

LISA	Mr Prebble you mentioned the select committees and they can take it there but they require a majority vote so then you have a situation there you’ve got a bit of hog trading going on don’t you and you're asking to look into who stole the cheese.

RICHARD	Sure but you’ve gotta recognise that this is a minority Labour government, it doesn’t have a majority on any select committee, so that those select committees whose terms of reference enable them to look at the sorts of things that Mr Field was getting up to, and I think that there's at least three select committees who could set up an inquiry, what the Labour Party is now requiring is for the Greens or the Maori Party or the United Party to decide to block a select committee from looking. I'm surprised that the Greens are doing that, in fact I think they're missing Rod Donald because I'm sure the Rod Donald would have been saying to them look we shouldn’t be covering up for the Labour Party this is a matter that a select committee could look at and this could be one example – the person who actually raised the first objection to Mr Field was actually a New Zealander, a builder who found out what was going on and wrote to the Immigration Department saying look this can't be right, now he's never appeared in front of Mr Ingram and the reason he didn’t is because his lawyer said to him quite correctly that he wouldn’t be protected if he did so, but of course he said look I'm quite prepared to give my evidence as to what Mr Field was up to with regard to these overstayers and having overstayers working for him both in New Zealand and in Samoa in front of a select committee, and of course if he did so witnesses who appear in front of select committees are totally covered by parliamentary privilege…

LISA	But why not avoid this problem entirely and perhaps have a code of conduct like in the UK, not one that talks about whether it's right or not to flip the bird in the House, one that deals with serious issues like integrity, bringing the House into disrepute and things like that, why not avoid all of this to-ing and fro-ing and have a system like the Brits do?

RICHARD	Well one of the difficulties you have with that is that New Zealand members of parliament are entitled to do other things and we've always had the rule that if a member of parliament does something not as an MP then that should be dealt with by the courts and the like and there have been examples of that, I don’t know if you remember there was the remarkable Mr Ross Mourant who perfectly legally but was engaged in the gun trade selling former military weapons into Africa. Now most members of parliament didn’t think that was a good thing for an MP to be doing but we also looked at it and saw well he's not actually doing it as an MP we're not gonna go there and in some ways in Britain I think now they wish they hadn’t actually set up that code because they're catching people doing things which have nothing to do with being a member of parliament and it's taking up a lot of parliamentary time. But let me make this distinction for you, what Mr Field was doing was as part of his role as an MP and that’s why I think parliament should actually be investigating him, I think that Mr Ingram of course should have had proper powers of investigation, but let me make this point and I understand Mr Roughan's here on the panel. The real problem, the judgement that Helen Clark and now the Greens are making is they're assuming the Field is a fairly obscure MP we'll all forget about it, but what if the Herald decides to have an investigating reporter and decides to go and investigate and puts it all on the front page, that’s how Donna Awatere Huata, that’s how she was actually brought down, the Dominion newspaper had a very good reporter who investigated her for a month and it appeared on the front page of the paper.

LISA	Alright Mr Prebble let's bring John Roughan in here. Should parliament be relying on the watchdog of the Press to keep it in line?

JOHN	It shouldn’t be relying, the Press should do its role properly so should parliament, and the question I want to ask Mr Prebble is this proposal for a code of conduct suggests to me and I'm sure most of the public that what Mr Field did wasn’t all that uncommon that parliamentarians all think they need to actually define what sort of favours they can exchange in the course of their constituent work. Now am I right is the thing that Mr Field did a grey area that lots of MPs worry about?

RICHARD	MPs most certainly do have to tackle that issue and when I was first a member of parliament Auckland Central had the largest number of Pacific Islanders within it and yes I did have people coming and making what I considered to be completely inappropriate donations and we have some very strict rules which I understand in fact I thought all MPs followed, you don’t collect money in your own electorate office, you don’t have any party literature there, and you make it abundantly clear that you're paid for by the taxpayer and you're not expecting any money favours or the like from people who are coming to see you. When Mr Field says that his constituents expected to do that, rubbish, I found that the Samoan community grasp very quickly that a New Zealand member of parliament did not expect to get any favours and indeed I made it quite clear that if such favours were offered I would not help the person I would show them out the door.

LISA	Mr Prebble let's bring in Bryce Johns to the conversation.

BRYCE	I think you're right it's about right and wrong isn't it, you know MPs have to know morally what's right and wrong. Can you put this into context for us for Joe Average out there, how smelly is this one because I don’t think the general public out there are aware of how dodgy this one is?

RICHARD	Oh look this is absolutely outrageous. The most vulnerable people in the community are actually overstayers you know anybody can exploit them and they often are and for a member of parliament to exploit them, have somebody come and see you and often they're absolutely desperate and then say look I can help you go and work on my house and I'll pay you below the minimum wage to work on it. Go and work on my house in Samoa, how outrageous can that be, he was exploiting those people that’s a sweat shop, the Labour Party would normally hammer anyone in that position, I have spoken to other Labour MPs, the South Auckland Labour MPs they are horrified by what Field did and why is the Labour Party not taking action – Helen Clark is scared that Phillip Field will stand as an Independent and if he becomes an Independent he might start a Pacific Island party, she's already got a Maori Party that’s taken seats off the Labour Party and this is a straight out political calculation and I say to Helen Clark shame on you and you're also not having enough faith in the people in Mangere. She should actually be saying to Phillip Field you go and stand in the bi-election and we'll stand against you and I think the people of Mangere would actually throw Phillip Field out, what he has done is just outrageous.

BRYCE	So if that’s the case are we not being very risky just relying on some select committees that may or may not have the numbers because of the way parliament's fallen right now, it seems a very very ad hoc way of dealing with something you think's so serious.

RICHARD	Oh of course it is what should have happened is we should have had a proper independent inquiry by someone who had the power to subpoena and that’s what Noel Ingram has said should happen, of course that’s what ought to happen and I think the other reason it hasn’t happened is that a lot of New Zealanders or Helen Clark's thinking that a lot of New Zealanders are just saying look that’s South Auckland that’s a different country, but it isn't, it's part of New Zealand and we ought to be giving the same rights to those people who went to see Phillip Field in Mangere as they'd get to see a member of parliament in Timaru.

LISA	Alright thank you very much for joining us this morning, Richard Prebble live from Tauranga.


LISA	The people up and down the country are facing rate rises and they're nothing new but reaction from Auckland ratepayers has been such that Auckland's Mayor Dick Hubbard was prompted to pay for a full page advertisement out of his own pocket to explain why the increase was necessary. Simon Pound with this report.

SIMON POUND	Thursday morning saw a surprise in Auckland's Herald, Auckland City Mayor and cereal king Dick Hubbard had personally funded a full page advertisement to attempt to stem protest over a 13.4% residential rate rise. In his cereal past Hubbard had a similar approach, he used leaflets inside his cereals to form a personal connection with his customers. This latest ad outlined his vision for the city and stated that without rate rises they simply won't have the resources we need to create the city you want. Why resort to this – Mayor Hubbard.

	'I wanted to paint a picture of vision and where Auckland was going, I mean I realise and understand that people are suffering out there, that rate increases do hurt, I fully understand that and I felt that I owed it to the people of Auckland to paint that bigger picture'.

	It is not just an Auckland issue either, the Council's provisioned for 60 million dollars of spending for the nationally significant Rugby World Cup in 2011. Whatever, Auckland's rise at 13.4% is far greater than the 8.2% in Christchurch, the 6.2% in Hamilton, the 6.1% in the capital and in boom town Queenstown the rise was only 0.8%. The Mayor self funded the ad to tell his story, it didn’t come cheap.


	'Twenty two, twenty three thousand dollars, no deals, full commercial rates.'

	His 23 thousand dollars has sent his message all over the news, Campbell Live, Close Up and the front page of the Herald, was this exercise a PR stunt.

	'No no, I mean through Auckland's history there's a huge number of people that have made donations to Auckland City, my contribution is not a physical structure it's words.'

	Words that Mayor Hubbard hopes will start actions. This here is Auckland's Cornwall Park, it was a gift to the city from Sir Logan Campbell, only time will tell if Mayor Hubbard's gift will be as enduring.


FINAL THOUGHTS – GUEST COMMENTATORS

LISA	Turning to our panel again for their final thoughts from today, the Nats, we heard from Bill English there, I mean they're talking about broadening their appeal how can they do that when some of the groups that they're probably wanting to appeal to that some of their policies would ostracise?

JOHN	Yes well Bill's them was that they will be the point of difference because they will offer lower taxes and essentially that, and the other side of that coin is what happens to spending and public services and Labour would sort of raise fears on that quarter, so that is shaping up to be the sort of battleground of the next election as it was the last really and I think probably National, I think the lower taxes is enough to get National over the top next time.

BRYCE	They're not gonna get there by concentrating on sectors like Pacific Island and Maori, they're unwinnable sectors from my point of view for National, so they're gonna have to have to find other ways, they’ve gotta concentrate on where they can actually win the vote.

LISA	Bit of lip service do you think there saying that they're wanting those people to come over.

BRYCE	Definitely, definitely, they're not gonna put a lot of resource and focus on to that, they'd be silly if they did.

LISA	I'm interested in some of the comments from Richard Prebble and particularly his one about the Press should be getting into the Taito Phillip Field issue and we should be the monitor, I mean how much responsibility is on the Press versus the system that they’ve got that doesn’t seem to be working?

JOHN	Well in fact the Press has done a good job, I would argue on that and I would say that the Herald helped push this in the very early stages when Simon Collins did an excellent series of investigations into Phillip Field's arrangements out in Mangere and everything he discovered was endorsed by the inquiry.

BRYCE	And various media streams are continuing to work away at that but it would be a pretty sad society if we have to rely on media outlets to try and right the wrongs of the country.

LISA	Can we rely on the politicians as a collective to push this thing through to a committee, or should there be a system where complaints are just referred there automatically like the British system?

JOHN	I don’t think we can at the moment because I thought Richard Prebble was very soft on Margaret Wilson you know on the Privileges Committee question. I think that if a Speaker had really wanted to get to the bottom of this and to prove that parliament won't stand for this sort of behaviour she could have found a way to refer the Privileges Committee, I'm sure of it.

BRYCE	It wasn’t really her job though.

JOHN	No it's not her job to be the moral ruler that would be the party leader surely.

BRYCE	It should have been Helen Clark's job, if she wanted to find out really what had gone on you'd expect the PM to be leading the charge.

JOHN	You'd hope so but if she won't parliament should, parliament you know should be standing up for its own standards and there should be a way and the Speaker should be standing up for parliament not the government or the party.

LISA	Stories of the week here, I mean rates is one that obviously caught your eye John, happy about the 13.4% increase and the full page ad?

JOHN	Well I'm not in Auckland City fortunately but it's pretty bad all over the Auckland region, all councils are announcing not just rate increases for this year but ten year projections which are quite extraordinary and I think in Auckland City's case it's about 10% per year and I think it's 13% this coming year, I mean no company could do this, no company could put its prices up 10% every year and just announce it's going to and be quite comfortable and that’s the problem, local governments can and we rely on the strength of elected people like Mr Hubbard to watch every penny of spending and make sure it's necessary and I'm not sure he's doing that.

LISA	Alright Bryce the Western Bay Finance company that collapsed or was in difficulty this week, what do you make of that, is that a sign that we're the soft landing and the economic situation is not as we've been told it would be?

BRYCE	Oh I think overall in the general economy the soft landing is here and it is soft and it's probably getting harder by the day but the finance companies are a completely different kettle of fish, when you’ve got three go down as we've had now it just becomes a self perpetuating circle, they don’t have the money go round, no one's gonna be putting money into finance companies right now because they're feeling insecure. You’ve got tens of thousands of New Zealanders right now sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for their term investments with Geneva or Hanover or whoever to come good and while the money isn't going on the chances of them surviving gets worse.

LISA	Thank you very much this morning to our panel.