We guess that if anyone would know about "underhanded, behind the scenes, crooked deals" (which the Government's agreement with SkyCity is not), it's Winston Peters. After all, he was involved in one not all that long ago, that Russel Norman paraphrases:
There were two principles around this, to my mind. One was the public’s right to know. The whole idea of pecuniary interest and what goes around it—and it is kind of paralleled with electoral law—is the public’s right to know who is giving money to politicians, and who is giving money to political parties. On the other side we had the basic right of Mr Peters to have a fair go. He had to have a fair go to present his side of the story to the committee. So basically we had to try to meet both of those principles—that the public had a right to know that the pecuniary interest register was being applied properly, and that we also had to give Mr Peters a fair go—and I believe we actually went through that.In terms of the evidence, I can tell members that in my mind it was difficult to try to put the witnesses’ words one against the other. We heard numerous stories. It was very difficult to know which was the right story when one was sitting there listening to them all. So I think one of the key issues for me was the events around 14 December. That was one of the key bits of evidence, because regardless of who rang whom before 14 December, something very important happened on that day. There were two phone calls and an email. The first phone call was from the billionaire to the politician—if we want to take people’s names out of it—and they talked about something. We do not know what they talked about; there are different stories. The politician rang the politician’s lawyer immediately after, and they talked about something. Then the lawyer sent an email back to the billionaire and said: “Further to your conversation with the politician, here are my bank account details.” This series of phone calls and the email were compelling evidence—they were strong evidence. The thing about them is that nobody denied this evidence. Nobody said “Actually, this didn’t happen.” Those three pieces of evidence and the way they are connected together are a central part of why, I think, the majority of the committee came to the conclusion it did. There is a lot else around this, but we know that those three pieces of evidence were extremely strong, and nobody denied those three pieces of evidence.
Winston Peters continues to deny that he was guilty of his own underhanded, behind the scenes deal in 2008, but his peers on the Privileges Committee and in the 48th Parliament did not believe him. They passed a motion to censure him for "knowingly providing false or misleading information on a return of pecuniary interests".
If the Owen Glenn donation to Winston Peters wasn't an "underhanded, behind the scenes, crooked" deal, we don't know quite what would be.
If the Owen Glenn donation to Winston Peters wasn't an "underhanded, behind the scenes, crooked" deal, we don't know quite what would be.
