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.”

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1. Repeated Sunday evening at 11:35pm. Streamed live at www.tvnz.co.nz

Thanks to the support from NZ On Air.

Q+A is on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/NZQandA#!/NZQandA and on Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/NZQandA

ends

© Scoop Media