Shamed Dalziel clings to her job

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Prime Minister Helen Clark's staff and a lawyer for a deported Sri Lankan teenager were at loggerheads last night over an animal sketch that almost cost Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel her job.

The embattled minister avoided being sacked yesterday, despite admitting that she misled the public over who leaked the "guinea pig" letter about the case to the media.

But the mystery deepened over how Helen Clark's Mt Albert electorate office came by the legally privileged letter with lawyer Carole Curtis' depiction of a guinea pig.

An electorate worker claimed the source was Ms Curtis herself.

Ms Curtis is adamant that she left the letter with her client, a sexually abused 16-year-old girl, at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre last June after breaking the news of a failed refugee status appeal.

"The idea that I would fax, as a lawyer, a drawing of a guinea pig to the Prime Minister is ludicrous," she said yesterday.

She insisted it could only have been obtained by Immigration Service officials searching the girl's belongings after her client was sent sobbing and screaming back to Sri Lanka last week.

The letter was a covering document from the Refugee Status Appeal Authority, and Ms Curtis says she drew the guinea pig on it to console the girl before adding handwritten notes outlining other ways to oppose her expulsion.

But late yesterday, after Lianne Dalziel was forced to apologise for making the letter public and for trying to cover this up, Helen Clark's Beehive staff distributed notes from a Mt Albert official who claimed Ms Curtis approached her for help last July.

That official, Therese Colgan, said she called Ms Curtis at the request of a receptionist at her law firm and agreed to look at the girl's case.

Ms Colgan said documents were requested and duly faxed, including "the covering letter with the handwritten notes", but the electorate office decided not to take up the case.

She said it was only this month, in reviewing the case in the light of publicity about the girl, that she noticed the notes and faxed a copy to an official in Ms Dalziel's parliamentary office.

Ms Curtis last night denied any contact with Ms Colgan, and said she made no copies of what was a privileged communication with her client.

Ms Curtis challenged the Government to produce any covering letter from her office or some other physical proof, such as fax machine imprints.

She did, however, acknowledge making contact with a leader of the Shakti Asian Women's Centre, whom she now suspected may have been working at Helen Clark's electorate office at the time.

Ms Dalziel, who has offered to resign should any of her officials be found to have leaked the letter to Helen Clark's office, acknowledged in Parliament that there were no fax header numbers on the document. She said she was advised that the Sri Lankan girl's belongings remained in her refugee centre room, which had been secured.

National's family issues spokeswoman, Judith Collins, said earlier that Ms Dalziel would have breached a professional legal privilege even if Ms Curtis had sent the document.

Mrs Collins has laid complaints against Ms Dalziel with the Solicitor General, the Privacy Commissioner and the Wellington District Law Society.

Asked by National MP Simon Power why anyone could have confidence in her after previous incidents including the "Lying in unison" affair, Ms Dalziel said: "I believe that I have been a very good Minister of Immigration. Yesterday was a lapse in judgment, it was a mistake, and I have fronted up and apologised for it."

Changing story

Lianne Dalziel has made contradictory comments on the letter given to TV3, and how it became public.

* Monday night, to NZPA, when asked if she knew how TV3 got the letter: "No, they didn't discuss that with me."

* Wednesday morning: National Radio's Morning Report: "So you hadn't put it in the public arena even though you had a copy of it?" Dalziel: "No."

* Wednesday afternoon, in Parliament: "I did not personally give the document to TV3 but I can confirm that a staff member of mine did."

* Thursday morning, on Morning Report: "I did arrange for my press secretary to give it to TV3. I myself gave a copy of it to the Dominion Post later in the evening after the TV3 programme had screened."

- additional reporting by Kevin Taylor

Refugee Status Appeals Authority letter of June 27, 2003 to Carole Curtis (the 'guinea pig letter') [PDF]
(This is the letter which Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel has been accused of leaking)