KEY POINTS:
The last refuge of a politician in serious trouble is to blame the media. Not so in Winston Peters' case. Blaming the media is not sufficient. When Peters strikes problems, they are deemed the product of a vast media conspiracy against him.
No one should be fooled by
last night's television bulletins. If you're creating a diversion to avoid answering questions about your party's handling of some large cash donations, then you need pictures to show everyone the direction you are trying to take them.
Thus witness Peters delivering a series of public tellings-off to reporters who dared cross his path.
Meanwhile - for the third time in a week - he fronted only to deliver something other than what had been advertised. Instead of answers to allegations, Parliament was treated to readings from Alice in Wonderland, a suitable text for conspiracy theorists.
This time, Peters' behaviour may be too obviously self-serving for such charades to be convincing. Nevertheless, there is an old political maxim that he or she who defines what the argument is about is halfway to winning it.
So it makes political sense for him to try to turn the argument about political donations into one about being victimised by the "brainless meerkats"' in the news media acting on behalf of the Establishment.
It is a tactic he has used often enough before, though never with such venom. The Great Survivor may yet turn what looked a week ago to be a dreadful mess which might have cost him his job as Foreign Minister into yet another back-from-the-dead recovery.
How much credibility he has lost in the process with those who might have contemplated voting for NZ First is a moot point.
But Peters will continue the diversionary tactics until (he hopes) the pressure for answers to the questions over his party's funding in general - and the mysterious Spencer Trust in particular - abates. His refusal to give answers is driven by at least four factors, the first being that any explanation of exactly what happened to Sir Robert Jones' $25,000 donation to the party risks highlighting the fiction that NZ First is morally superior to other parties and does not accept money from big business interests or deliberately hide such donations.
That pretence has already been exposed as a sham. But because it is the essence of NZ First's brand, the fiction must be perpetuated in the hope that enough voters will still buy it.
The second reason is that offering some insight into what happened to Sir Robert's donation would only invite more scrutiny just when the story appears to be (slowly) running out of steam.
Then there is the reluctance of all parties to open their financial books for inspection. The only one which regularly publishes its accounts in any detail is Labour.
The fourth reason is that Winston Peters is Winston Peters. He does not come in safe, diluted versions. When you buy the package - as Labour has discovered late in the parliamentary term - you get the full package.
Peters has been helped considerably by the uncritical stance adopted by Labour and the relatively lenient treatment National has been giving him - effectively Tweedledee and Tweedledum to Peters' Cheshire Cat.
One very real character is Rodney Hide. Even if his attempt to get the Serious Fraud Office to investigate the allegations is a long shot - there is yet no evidence of criminal wrongdoing - the Act leader's pursuit of Peters is sure doing wonders for Hide's profile.
