National MP Erica Stanford says Labour's Kiri Allan reading the wrong speech during a session of Parliament shows signs of a sinking Government.
Allan, a Cabinet minister, read the 8-minute-long speech through to the end on Tuesday after accidentally being given the wrong text by Labour's whips.
"I take responsibility for that, I would point out that this is not solely something that has happened in this Government - it has happened under a National Government as well," chief Labour whip Tangi Utikere told AM on Friday.
"It is very rare, that is the good news - but it just means we need to reflect on these and make sure that it doesn't happen again."
The wrong speech Allan delivered was for the third reading of Tourism Minister Peeni Henare's Freedom Camping Bill. Henare was absent from Parliament on Tuesday and Allan was asked to read the speech on his behalf.
Stanford said her fellow Opposition MPs immediately noticed Allan was delivering the wrong address.
"It was a bit unusual because it was the wrong reading of a speech, so we were at [the] third reading and so she was giving a second reading speech - we picked it up very quickly because she was talking about things that were very clearly from a second reading speech which she should have picked up," Stanford told AM co-host Laura Tupou, appearing alongside Utikere.
"I don't want to be too hard on her because, look, I have to agree with Tangi - it has happened before. But I think, in the broader scheme of things, what this highlights [is] just another wobbly Government move."
Stanford said the Labour Party's "wheels are well and truly falling off".
Utikere rejected Stanford's comments.
"Administratively, things do go wrong," he said. "Recently, we've had the National Party who failed to cast most of their proxy votes on their own member's Bill around alcohol reform, so these things do happen.
"The key thing is that we fess up, we get on with it and reflect on it, and how we can do things differently next time."
Despite the mess-up, the Bill passed with 65 in favour and 54 against.
