Prime Minister John Key has defended his decision to go to Hollywood to meet top studio executives immediately after being dragged into the controversy around the US bid to extradite Kim Dotcom to face copyright violation charges.
Mr Key leaves tomorrow on the four-day visit, days after apologising to Dotcom for the Government Communications Security Bureau's unlawful spying on him.
The GCSB's bungle has also now prompted Mr Key to send a senior official from his own department to oversee a review of the bureau's operations.
Dotcom's now defunct Megaupload business is alleged by US authorities to have been a hotbed of illegal filesharing including illicit movie downloads which cost the film industry hundreds of millions of dollars.
But Mr Key yesterday dismissed suggestions that his call on industry executives who may have made the original complaint about Dotcom was untimely.
"I'd say it's excellent timing insomuch that this is an industry that's worth $3 billion to New Zealand ... Yep, there will always be conspiracy theorists out there but I'm interested in jobs, not people who live in fantasy land and want to make things up."
Mr Key will also meet the Motion Picture Association of America which has described Dotcom as "a career criminal". He did not believe the Dotcom affair would come up in those meetings.