MP's $1000 gift 'to help' Thai

Phillip Field

Taito Phillip Field gave $1000 to Sunan Siriwan because the Thai tiler needed it, the MP's lawyer said yesterday.

Mr Field's "gift" is the latest twist in the saga involving the MP's handling of immigration cases, which have been under police investigation since August 31.

The MP's lawyer, Simativa Perese, said Mr Field ran into Mr Siriwan in Samoa last Thursday when he was dropping his daughter Dorothy at her home, where Mr Siriwan, his partner and son were staying.

"Siriwan said to him that he was having problems with his debtors - one was not paying," Mr Perese said.

"He had his boy's school fees due the following week. He was down to his last $200 or $300. So he asked Phillip for some money to help tide him over.

"Phillip had some money on him and he gave him $1000."

But Mr Siriwan's lawyer, Olinda Woodroffe, said Mr Siriwan had signed an affidavit giving a different version of how the MP came to give him the money.

"It's quite a serious allegation relating to that money," she said.

She was trying to get the affidavit to the New Zealand police in charge of the investigation yesterday.

Mr Perese said Mr Field's gift was made a day before he learned that Mr Siriwan had been to see Mrs Woodroffe and changed his story.

The tiler now claims that Mr Field promised New Zealand work visas for him and his partner in exchange for tiling Mr Field's house in Samoa - contradicting what Mr Siriwan told an inquiry by Auckland QC Noel Ingram.

Mrs Woodroffe met the first secretary at the New Zealand High Commission in Apia, Rod Tyson, yesterday to seek protection for herself and the Siriwans' NZ-born son Henry after she said she received a threatening phone call on Monday.

A man woke her with a call to her house in Apia at 6.30am and asked her where she lived and who was living with her.

Mr Tyson said New Zealand diplomatic posts did not have their own military staff, so the normal procedure for NZ citizens seeking protection was to arrange this with the local Samoan police.

Mrs Woodroffe said she was satisfied that New Zealand officials were doing all they could to protect Henry.

She was returning to Auckland last night.

She was afraid the Siriwans would be deported to Thailand if the Field family withdrew support for them. Mr Siriwan's permit to work in Samoa was granted on the basis that he would work for the Fields.

She urged New Zealand police to interview them before they left - preferably in New Zealand where they would not feel beholden to the Fields.

"We need to have this couple in New Zealand urgently. They are willing to speak to police in an environment where there is fairness and they are given an opportunity to speak," she said.

New Zealand police spokesman Jon Neilson said police planned to interview Mr Siriwan, but had no authority to bring him back to NZ.