Peters Winston: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
Peters Winston: Urgent Debates — Member for TamakiMakaurau—Standing Down as Minister 
[Volume:621;Page:16240] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 That photographer up there has a most important photograph. He just got Don Brash talking in the House. It will be an exclusive and its value will be immense. But this is a terribly sad day for the Maori people in this country an awfully sad day for New Zealand and an even sadder day for John Tamihere. I can recall the Tuku Morgan affair and an $89 pair of underpants that he bought with his pay after having left work one night. Helen Clark said anything and everything about that as did Mr Mallard. There were four full-scale inquiries and at the end there was no sin or crime found at all. There were four full-scale inquires and no crime at all. It is actually quite amusing in a very sad way but I was the Minister of Maori Affairs once and I was sacked for trying to expose corruption. I said that the Quality Inn deal was a fraud and I was fired for it. 
Dail Jones 
: By whom? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: By Jim Bolger of the National Party. It is really a matter of great interest to me that I have not heard one word from the National Party or from ACT about Fay Richwhite’s latest deal—not a murmur not a mutter not a syllable and not a sound. Back in the days of the wine-box inquiry Fay Richwhite was doing its best to shut it up. 
Along has come a member of Parliament who is clearly in my view a goner—and I am sad to say that because I have a certain view. But facts are facts and I want to go through them. We would not be having this discussion today were it not for the fact that some time ago in July 1999 the media of this country were alerted to the facts and decided “because they wanted their party in Government” that they would do nothing at all about them. They all know that. These allegations were made in this House on 27 July 1999 and that was followed up by further radio programmes outside Parliament in which no attempt was made by me to say things in a privileged environment. I have to ask myself about the spinelessness that overcomes the New Zealand media when it does not even report what is privileged in the House let alone what is said outside it. Let me tell members this. Back then on 27 July 1999 I alleged that there would be a golden handshake. Two days later John Tamihere said when he was asked whether that was usual for the Waipareira Trust and whether it was normal practice: “Oh it’s never happened before so I want to make a number of points clear. As of last night there won’t be any severance pay.” 
Dail Jones 
: Who said that? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: John Tamihere said that. 
Dail Jones 
: When? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: On 29 July 1999. He went on to say: “As I have indicated to you this morning as of this morning it’s no longer an issue for the whanau Waipareira Trust or John Tamihere.” 
Then John Tamihere went on to say this when he was asked whether he would mind the real world of politics of being a candidate and all that: “I don’t mind that but if you are going to accept these standards of so-called party politics you’ve got to get out of the gutter sooner or later. I don’t really want to debase myself by running around in a sewer with Winston Peters.” That is what he said. Then John Tamihere went on to say a whole lot of other things and they were believed of course by the media—beloved as he was by them. I remember telling Angela Gregory a  
New Zealand Herald  
correspondent about all that but she thought she knew better than me. Five years later we know just how irresponsible she was when she was given all the facts—the whole facts and all the facts. Mr Tamihere knew it was not true because there was a meeting at Taipa up in the far north on 17 April when the first proposal of $50000 was turned down. The later proposal was for $280000 and for a range of other issues as well. I am quoting from  
Hansard 
. He also knew it was not true on 27 and 29 July because on 3 May 1999 2 months earlier in the same year he had received this letter from the trust: “Tenakoa John re your pending resignation.” It is all here; it is all out there. 
Now let us examine what has happened today. Mr Cullen got up and acted very much like Jenny Shipley did back in July of 1999. 
Dail Jones 
: Who did that? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Jenny Shipley the former National Prime Minister did not want to know. She was asked about Government expenditure; she did not want to know. Today Mr Cullen said that there are four issues involved. He asked whether it was a golden handshake. The answer to that is of course it was. That is why back then Mr Tamihere was denying it. The second issue was about tax law—was it infringed? Of course it was. That is why the Government has Rob McLeod doing the work. That self-pronounced expert—John Tamihere—has got Rob McLeod on the case. The third issue concerns vehicle insurance and of course that is an undeclared benefit. The fourth issue that Dr Cullen raised was about election returns. Now that is serious because it is an incomplete return and it takes him way over the expenditure limit for a start. That as the RegBoorman case of 1987 will tell members is a corrupt practice. That is it; good night. One cent over the top and one is gone. Now there is a funny thing about that because back in 1987 when Roger McClay myself and a man called Brian Henry were handling the Wyatt Creech case we alleged a corrupt practice on the part of Mr Boorman. Members will not believe this but we got a phone call that night from the National Party which was paranoid that we had brought that allegation. We asked why that was when it was part of our pleadings. National said Labour and National had members who were over the top and National did not want us to complicate the matter for it. That is what the National Party told me—that it did not want us to complicate that matter for it. We said National could go and get stuffed. We said it was not helping Wyatt Creech and did not even believe in the case and that we would be carrying on regardless. That is a fact members do not know but I am telling them now—and it is true. 
Rodney Hide 
: It’s the best sort of fact. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: It is a fair sort of fact yeah. But talk about people throwing stones or throwing pipi in a whare—this is it. 
There is the issue of the payments by Mr Tolich and where they went. I think I have a clear eye as to where they went and it will not be above board in respect of the Waipareira Trust. There are all sorts of other things like scholarships to universities—to the Auckland University of Technology and what have you. It is all there. But I want to ask this question: why did Dr Cullen not raise the question of the falsification of application numbers to tax-paying bodies involved in training and health? So the trust overstates its application numbers and it underspends and that is why it has all the profits for the Westgate investment. It is as clear as daylight. The second issue is this: here is an outfit that declared an unrealised sale profit before the sale occurred as present income. That is illegal. It was over $800000 and it took the books from the red to the black. That is serious. Then of course there are the over 30 forged cheques which the Maori Affairs Committee heard all about in the year 2000 and did nothing about—and the committee heard about it from the former Waipareira Trust lawyer. It heard about the forging of cheques and the falsification of accounts. 
All I want to say is that this is a very sad for John Tamihere and I believe for the Labour Party and for the Maori people in particular. But those are the facts—except that I would like sometime for the people on the Opposition side of the House to have the same keen interest when people who are not brown commit those sorts of sins. When they do it the sin is magnified a million times over and I sit here and I hear not a sound not a syllable. I have to ask myself— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s not true. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: It is true and I more than anybody else know it. [ 
Interruption 
] I know it for a fact. That member has a colleague over there who was prepared to defame me yet last Friday in the High Court in Auckland he said that whatever he had said about Winston Peters was not true. 
That is what he said but that member did not raise a finger about all the other serious offences that go on in the name of this country and this Parliament. If there is going to be one law for everybody then let us make sure that there is.