Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Nick Smith’s Speech to Parliament

"Mr Speaker, this afternoon I have tendered my resignation in all of my portfolios to the prime minister.

The prime minister has quite properly accepted my resignation. To my portfolios that is, not to my position as an MP. I trust however that if I use the word resignation enough people won’t catch on that I will still remain in parliament cashing in a $140,000 salary.

Mr Speaker I do so because I got caught. Only once, but I suspect now that the media is sniffing around they’ll find out about the other letter floating about so I might as well come clean about that now as well.  It was an error of judgment brought about by a temptress who lured me to the dark side with her constant nagging for me to help her. What a bitch.  

The first error I made was in July last year, when she said to me that there were concerns to her status prior to the accident and I believed her, the simple soul that I am.

I sent the letter in the role of being her friend even though I stated in the letter that obviously I wasn’t because it would be inappropriate. Am I contradicting myself? Only because of the constant lady nagging that occurred.

It was an error of judgment, firstly in doing the letter, but more so in being on ministerial letterhead but it was so pretty and I had run out of my own personal supply. I’ve been stealing office supplies for years, this too I admit.

Yesterday, I asked ACC to cover my ass and check all the correspondence that I had over my three years as Minister, and there was quite a lot, with this particular person. Mostly love letters, though I’m unsure why ACC had that particular bundle.

Out of that large amount of correspondence I have two examples here where I stated the conflict of interest. So there. But now let me outline the second reason why I must stand down from Cabinet even though they should cancel each other out.

The second instance that brings me to the point that it is the proper thing for me to do and to resign is that there was a letter in March in 2010, where a member of parliament was advocating for this person to the associate minister of ACC, who was then Pansy Wong.

Pansy Wong quite properly said this was a friend of hers too, she was on the campaign committee and a conflict of interest and referred that letter back to myself.

ACC (not I!) prepared a formal response to that letter, I signed out that error back to that constituent, without acknowledging that I too had a conflict of interest.

It was that second letter in which not having erred once, but erred twice has brought about my resignation this morning.

Mr Speaker, I do want to put on the public record that I did not in my view interfere in anyway in the judgment calls that ACC made about that particular person's claim because nobody at ACC likes me or listens to me ever. But I do accept that the signing of those two letters is not up to the standard this parliament can rightly expect of its ministers which is pretty low.

I firstly want to again apologise to the prime minister, to my caucus colleagues, to my family and staff and to the Pope. It is my intention to serve out this term's parliament because Key only makes public servants redundant, not his mates.

I love the money and the perks, I'm disappointed I'm not going to be able to continue my work in some of those areas I have a passion such as making underground deals, but I apologise to all my fellow representatives for getting caught.

Mr Speaker, I seek the leave of the house to table the four letters, all be it, one letter does have some personal information and I assure the house the only information that has been removed is personal information that is not proper before the house, so that it is quite clear to the events that have occurred. It’s pretty damn raunchy, that’s all I’m saying.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is just brilliant and so accurate! thanks so much for filling in the blanks. It is not just the inappropriate actions of Nick Smith which are so wrong, it is the extreme cronyism and lack of action and acknowledment by Key that this matter was at all important. Cronyism and conflict of interest lie at the heart of corruption. Hence abuses of influence and conflict of interest are serious and important matters. As a public servant for many years such an "error of judgement" or rather "risk taking for your mates benefit" would have been swiftly dealt with by disaplinary action and probably dimissal. Certainly it would have been considered highly important. There really is no other appropriate avenue for the Government except to have an inquiry into the matter. But of course, cronyism means looking after your mates so that they in turn look after you. The last thing Key wants is to some independent review to turn up the rest of the dirt which is so obviously there. It is instead so much easier for Key to wear the tide of tsk tsk public opinion until the whole thing blows over. He learnt that over a cup of tea.