Jul 30, 2008

Has Winston Put Everything To Rest?

Not according to the Editorial in today's NZ Herald

The odour around Winston Peters' mysterious "Spencer Trust" grew worse yesterday when the Prime Minister met him and appears not to have pressed him for an explanation of the trust and its purpose. She was unable to give Parliament anything more than the word of her Foreign Minister that he has done nothing illegal. Either she did not ask for an explanation or, if she got one, it was not an explanation she wanted to relay to the country.
Either way, it leaves this affair more deeply disturbing. If Helen Clark does not want to inquire into her governing partner's financial arrangements it can only suggest she has no confidence that she might hear an explanation she could defend in public.
It is bad enough that her governing partner is treating the public with such contempt - Mr Peters has offered to brief the Opposition leader, too, but only in private - now the Prime Minister is playing the same silly evasive politics that are the Peters trademark. Yesterday she was reduced to echoing his attempt to deflect attention on to National's anonymous fund-raising trusts.