"Our" Parliament is full of rich people, with inherent conflicts of interest around wealth, gifts, and property ownership. In an effort to mitigate this, Parliament established a register of pecuniary interests, requiring politicians to tell us what they owned and who had been bribing them. But despite clear rules, MPs keep "forgetting" to declare everything, and the house keeps refusing to sanction them for doing so - effectively permitting corruption to exist in our highest elected body. And now, it turns out that the person who is meant to enforce these rules, Speaker Gerry Brownlee, has been failing to declare his full interests for 20 years:
Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee has been incorrectly and incompletely declaring his property ownership to Parliament for 20 years.Brownlee says there was no intent to deceive - he just owns so many houses that he forgot some of them. Similarly, he "forgot" property he had an interest in through a trust. And if you believe that, I have an electorate office in Ilam to sell you.This includes new amendments that also contain errors and omissions. The details are outlined in the table below.
As Speaker, Brownlee is the person responsible for enforcing Parliament’s rules, including the requirement for all MPs to correctly declare their business, property and other legal interests for trust and transparency reasons.
Late last year, after questions and a story from the Herald, Brownlee amended 16 of the 20 annual declarations he has made since Parliament’s Pecuniary Register was introduced in 2005.
This is unacceptable - not just for a Speaker (who must have absolutely clean hands), but for an MP. If we are to accept that mere declaration - rather than divestment - is enough, then MPs can not under any circumstances be allowed to lie on them. Brownlee needs to go - not just from the Speaker's chair, but from Parliament. Until he does, we should regard it as a rotten, corrupt house, full of rotten, corrupt thieves.
