National has again tried to tease out more from the Government about an unreleased coalition document and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has explained why it's gone down from 38 pages to 33.
The New Zealand First leader was being grilled by National's deputy leader Paula Bennett on his statement that the 38 or 33 page document will be released at some point, and whether he had been talking as deputy PM or NZ First leader.
"I did say when I was deputy prime minister that it was 38 pages. But of course, under a different font it got down to 33," Mr Peters said to laughter around the debating chamber.
Asked by Ms Bennett who has abbreviated the 38 page document down to 33 pages, Mr Peters said: "A staff member aware of modern technology changed the font".
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's office has refused an Official Information Act request on the document, claiming it is not an official document, rather a collection of policy ideas that may never come to fruition.
Pressed by Ms Bennett on whether the staff member who changed the font works for Ministerial Services, Mr Peters said the person was at the time working for New Zealand First when it was yet to be in the new coalition government.
National leader Bill English earlier demanded to know "is there a 33-page documented draft arrangement between Labour and New Zealand First which the Government is working from when determining the Government programme?"
Ms Ardern said the Government has released an eight page coalition document it's working to and other documents from the negotiations would be released if the government wanted to pursue the things in them.
National's Steven Joyce says refusing to release 33 pages of notes suggests the Government is worried about what the document contains.
"All we can say is there was obviously something in that document that they didn't want to put in the public document," Mr Joyce said.
"I think to any man or woman on the street, if there's a six or seven page document and you're told there's another 32 or 33 page document behind that, I think people are going to be interested to know what was in those 32 or 33 pages given these people are going to be governing the country for the next three years," he said.
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