KEY POINTS:
The trouble with occupying the moral high ground is that the only way out is down. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has spent the weekend of his party's 15th-anniversary conference trying to finesse his late, lame admission that expatriate billionaire Owen Glenn did, in fact, make a
$100,000 payment, the existence of which Peters has so vehemently denied.
But what is plain is that he did not tell the whole truth about the matter.
He says he did not know what the whole truth was - that the funds were lodged in an account for paying legal bills, the details of which were known only to his lawyer. But this does not begin to deal with the isssue.
Peters described as scandalous and lazy the work of reporters who have asked him about this matter. He challenged the editor and political editor of the New Zealand Herald to "apologise to the public and resign".
Now the existence of the Glenn contribution has been revealed and the leader has blandly commented that he has "cause to be very grateful" to Glenn. But more questions have been raised than have been answered by the revelation.
In February, when president Dail Jones spoke of a mysterious $100,000 that had materialised in the party's accounts, Peters was asked at a press conference if Glenn was the source of the money.
Looking like nothing so much as a Play School presenter, he held aloft a card with the single word "No" on it. Then, last week, an email surfaced from Glenn to his PR adviser Steve Fisher: "Are you saying," Glenn wrote, "I should deny giving a donation to NZ First?? When I did??"
With his characteristic mix of pugnacious obfuscation and abrasive bluster, Peters sought to tough it out. His response to Glenn's "When I did??" was an unadorned "He did not", which raised the question of how Glenn, an international freight magnate, managed to become a billionaire if he is apt to get confused about who he gives $100,000 to.
Peters presumably wants the public to accept that it did not occur to him at any time to wonder whether the money ended up in another account. Such an omission would be scandalous and lazy in a journalist; in a politician under fire, the most charitable explanation for it is carelessness. It certainly does not accord with the high standards of accounting he expects - indeed demands - from others.
Glenn's money ended up in a fighting fund for Peters' personal legal expenses and not in party coffers, which makes Peters' earlier claims technically correct.
But why should he know nothing of contributors to funds that assist his personal legal battles? If a Chinese wall is to be erected at all, it would be much more logical that it be around the party accounts, with which Peters appears to have been more familiar than his erstwhile president. And in any case, Glenn's email makes it plain that he thought he had contributed "to NZ First".
Peters, who is lauded on the party website for his tenacious pursuit of fairness and accountability, may like to explain who decided - and when - that the money should go into the legal fund. Barely three months out from an election in which he looks very unlikely to take Tauranga and with his party vote languishing below the threshhold, he would be wrong to hope that this matter will go away.
Whether an unequivocal explanation would be enough to save Peters' political bacon is a moot point. He has gained and maintained political power by resort on the hustings to a crude populism that has tended to appeal to ignorance and prejudice or rely on meaningless gimmickry like the SuperGold card for senior citizens.
He may be past his use-by date in any case. But now, more than ever, the man who has campaigned on his commitment to keeping the big players honest, cannot afford to be - or even to seem to be - evasive.
