Tied vote allows PM to stay out of spotlight

By KEVIN TAYLOR

Prime Minister Helen Clark will not give evidence at the Corngate parliamentary inquiry after Labour and United Future MPs on the committee blocked the move yesterday.

The six-all vote defeating a motion from the National members on the committee left party leader Bill English demanding to know why Helen Clark would not front at the inquiry if she had nothing to hide.

The tied vote meant she did not have to appear.

Mr English said Helen Clark won a broadcasting standards complaint against TV3 for "ambushing" her during last year's election but had turned down a "polite" invitation to appear at the inquiry.

"This is a matter of high public interest because right now, as the moratorium on GM is about to be lifted, there is a real desire in the public to know whether or not the regulation system is going to have sufficient integrity."

Last night on television Helen Clark said that she was only involved as "chair of the board" and had not driven the corn issue in late 2000.

"A lot of lies were told about me in the course of the campaign, a lot of lies are being told now. I think my reputation and integrity will stand on its own merits."

Corngate has come back to haunt Helen Clark and the Government after revelations that the chief executive of the Prime Minister's Department, Mark Prebble, withheld what opposition MPs claim was a "key memo" on the affair.

That was despite Helen Clark ordering full disclosure of all relevant documents during last year's election campaign after the publication of Nicky Hager's book Seeds of Distrust.

On Wednesday National MP Nick Smith tabled a memo in Parliament by former departmental policy adviser Ruth Wilkie to Helen Clark on December 8, 2000, which discussed the outcome of testing on corn suspected of being contaminated with genetically modified material.

He claimed it was the smoking gun showing the Prime Minister had been "donkey-deep" in managing the issue in late 2000.

Mr English said yesterday if the memo had come out in the last 10 days of the election campaign, it would have been "bad, bad news" for Labour.

Opposition MPs say Helen Clark tried to distance herself from Corngate in the middle of the campaign, citing TV3's now famous interview with her when she accused the channel of an "ambush" and presenter John Campbell of being a "little creep".

Dr Prebble told the Herald that it was wrong to claim the memos he held back from public release during the campaign had demonstrated close management of the issue by Helen Clark.

However, he accepted he made a mistake not releasing the memos when Helen Clark had told the public during the campaign all relevant documents would be. "If I had thought at the time they were election-breaking issues, of course that would have made me more likely to release them," he said.

He said Helen Clark first learned in November last year he had failed to release the departmental memos after a request under the Official Information Act from a journalist.

"That's when I told the Prime Minister. She was not happy about it ... what I had done."

But Dr Prebble said he had been acting on a long-standing "convention" that departmental advice to the Prime Minister should be withheld.

The vote to call Helen Clark

FOR

Jeanette Fitzsimons, Green (chairwoman)

Nick Smith, Nat

Paul Hutchison, Nat

Shane Ardern, Nat

Jim Peters, NZ First

Ken Shirley, Act

AGAINST

David Parker, Lab

Rick Barker, Lab

Ashraf Choudhary, Lab

Nanaia Mahuta, Lab

Ann Hartley, Lab

Larry Baldock, United Future