David Shearer : Did he or anyone in his office ever contact the Labour Party to obtain broader support for the bill?Rt Hon JOHN KEY : I cannot believe the member is asking that question. If he wants me to answer it, I will get on my feet and do so.David Shearer : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that was a question. Did he or anyone in his office ever contact the Labour Party to obtain broader support for the bill—did you contact me?Rt Hon JOHN KEY : OK—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER : Order! I want to hear the answer.Rt Hon JOHN KEY : OK. Yes, Mr Speaker. After one of the Intelligence and Security Committee meetings, I asked Mr Shearer whether he would like to come to my office to have a discussion. We sat down and had about a 30-minute discussion where Mr Shearer said: “Keep this confidential. If you come out and say we’ve done it, that won’t look good and I don’t want you shouting it out about the House.” My deputy chief of staff went to see Mr Goff and also went to see Mr Robertson. On numerous occasions we reached out and at one point—Grant Robertson : No, no, no. Don’t make stuff up.Rt Hon JOHN KEY : If the member really wants to get down and dirty, members of the Labour Party said they did not understand the law.Mr SPEAKER : Order! The Bledisloe Cup was on Saturday.David Shearer : So he is saying that he initiated contact with me after the—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER : Order! The member has every right to have his supplementary question heard.David Shearer : Is he saying that he made contact with me after the Intelligence and Security Committee meeting and that it was my request that he should remember that?Rt Hon JOHN KEY : I am afraid the member is wrong. I went up to the member after the Intelligence and Security Committee meeting and said “Do you want to come to my office?”, to which the member said yes, and I said that we would probably take the stairs to avoid the other guys. We actually waited for the other members, in particular, Dr Norman, to leave so that he did not see the member coming up to my office.Mr SPEAKER : Order! If members on the right-hand side wish to see the balance of question time, they should respect the position I take when I stand and call for order.David Shearer : In the course of that discussion, did he say to me that he did not really care whether we supported it or not because he already had Peter Dunne over the line?Rt Hon JOHN KEY : I did not say exactly that I did not care. What I—[Interruption ] No. I will paraphrase the words roughly. What I said was that we had the numbers to pass the legislation and I knew that if for political reasons he was just going to carry on the way he was going because Grant Robertson was calling the shots, fair enough—we would just get on and do it. The member also said he wanted a sunset clause, and I said you have got to have rocks in your head if you want to have that, because if you ever want to be the Prime Minister, you will never get the Greens over the line.
That David Shearer asked the question in the first place was astounding enough, given that he had asked the PM for it to be kept confidential. That he ignored John Key's suggestion that he think hard about whether he really wanted the question answered and went ahead and asked the question anyway was just absolute stupidity.
But it does suggest one thing. Labour's next leader is sitting among the group described by Trevor Mallard yesterday as the "Labour B team"; one of Grant Robertson, David Cunliffe (the people's choice) or Andrew Little. The symbolism of Mallard's photograph has just become crystal clear.
