Deputy Prime Minister Bill English: the allegations against Judith Collins are serious
Deputy Prime Minister Bill English told TV1’s Q+A programme that the allegations against Judith Collins are serious and
that’s why an inquiry is needed.
He said investors should have confidence in the Serious Fraud Office and Financial Markets Authority:
“Well look you're talking about some campaign through the media by people who seem to have a capacity to believe they
can have a lot of influence. If there's law breaking there someone will have to investigate it, but in terms of the
looking ahead with the Financial Markets Authority and the SFO, we have every confidence in them, the market has high
confidence in them, in fact probably more than they’ve had for a long time, because they’ve all been reframed and
re-regulated.”
Labour’s Finance spokesperson David Parker said Labour wants a Commission of Inquiry into the allegations:
“We believe there should be a full commission of inquiry chaired by a High Court Judge, so that you’ve got judicial
independence. They need wide ranging powers, and they need to see how far this goes through government. It now appears
that the Hager book was the tip of the iceberg, not everything.”
“This is absolutely unprecedented in New Zealand. The Minister of Justice asserted to be undermining one of the arms of
justice. This is very serious. The Prime Minister's office having been involved in earlier abuses of the Official
Information Act. The Prime Minister misrepresenting advice from the Cabinet Office, that he said cleared Judith Collins
when she was tied up in that Oravida business where she had a plain conflict of interest in China. This goes to the
heart of government. I'm sure this never happened when Bill English was in charge. This is about ethics not rules.”
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