KEY POINTS:
I was horrified to hear someone say in the last few days "who cares whether Owen Glenn gave New Zealand First $100,000 anonymously last December? It wasn't illegal."
No one is saying the donation was unlawful, but it is both of public interest and in the public interest to
know the facts, the facts and not just denials.
To recap, New Zealand First president Dail Jones said last week he found a large anonymous sum in the NZ First bank account last December but Peters insists Jones is wrong.
It has also been suggested to me by several people that Glenn may not have been the source of the dosh - and that it was probably those rich friends of Winston's in the racing industry and that they were trying to get a big donation in before the new Electoral Finance Act [that Peters supported] limited anonymous donations a party could receive - the one part of the law for which we can genuinely thank the Greens.
Another suggested it might have come from a particular millionaire among many that call Peters a friend. No one has suggested the party did not actually receive a windfall.
The issue of donations and New Zealand First has been a great curiosity. Of all parliamentary parties, it declares the least in donations. None whatsoever in 2005, election year, according to the Electoral Commission. And almost zilch in every year before that except 1996. That was the year of the only recorded trust donation to New Zealand First, through the Whakaue Trust run out of the Rotorua law firm of Richard Charters, an old friend of Peters.
New Zealand First has either no wealthy donors or it organises its finanaces extremely well so that they always come in under the declarable limits.
The reason for the interest is two-fold: naturally there is an interest in whether Peters' party has benefited from a person seeking the title of Honary Consul to Monaco, espcially when the candidate for the job won't say whether he gave the party money.
And secondly Peters and his party have led the parliamentary attacks on trusts and secret donations and to political parties, well before Labour joined the bandwagon post 2005 election campaign.
On the case in the Electoral Finance Bill debate Peters reminded us why he and public are suspicious of trusts and secret donations."No one pays $1 million to a political party without asking for something," he said about the National Party. Presumably we can say the same about a donation to NZ First.
NZ First MP Doug Woolerton in the same debate talking about submitters on the bill: "They were concerned and I guess they had a right to be - about who donated to political parties, who were the real backers of political parties, what they stood for and what they expected when their party of choice was elected to Parliament."
Peters' detour to South Korea for the presidential inauguration means we will have to wait a few more days before we can seek further clarification.
And when he does agree to talk, denials won't be enough.
There is a huge credibility issue at stake - his and Jones' and his party's
As it stands at present, Peters' view that Jones is wrong about having discovered a large anonymous payment in the party's bank account last December raises far more questions than it answers.
My colleague Claire Trevett made a valiant effort yesterday to get Peters to clarify what he actually believes is wrong. But his answers force us into guesswork.
Does Peters say it is wrong because it did not happen or because he knows the reason it happened?
Does Peters say it is wrong because he knows the donor, meaning it can't be called anonymous.
Does Peters say it is wrong because it came from a named trust account?
Is it wrong because it is not a donation but a loan?
Does Peters say it is wrong because the donor, if there is a donor, calls it a donation to Starship Foundation rather than to the party (it formed a large part of the party's $158,000 cheque to the charity - which has since been rejected - as the part's substitute for repaying Parliament the money it unlawfully spent last election).
May be that is the reasons Owen Glenn won't confirm or deny whether he gave money to New Zealand First when he is willing to be unequivocal about other parties. Maybe Glenn thinks he gave a donation to Starship via NZ First.
Maybe someone asked Glenn for confidentiality. Glenn did himself nor New Zealand First any favours by declining to be upfront over a donation to the party.
Whatever the answers to the questions, $100,000 is a helluva lot to be "wrong" about.
The public has a right to know whether Peters is adhering to the same high standards of transparency he has advocated for other parties.