KEY POINTS:
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters reacted angrily yesterday to suggestions his party had received donations from Simunovich Fisheries.
"You establish your own lies," he said outside Parliament when asked if he had received donations from the company.
Asked to clarify later, a spokesman said he declined to
comment.
Questions over whether the party had received donations from the company have arisen in the past but been denied.
Mr Peters was repeatedly challenged by Act leader Rodney Hide in Parliament on Wednesday to say whether he received donations from Simunovich, after speculation of a donation re-emerged in the Dominion Post newspaper.
Mr Peters would not confirm or deny the claims in the House. Yesterday he seemed to dismiss the claim outside the House, implying that it was "lies".
He has previously emphatically rejected similar claims, telling the Herald in 2004 that the company had not given to his party.
"I'm saying no," he said at the time.
The head of the company, Peter Simunovich, has been unavailable for comment this week and made no comment in 2004. The company has since been sold.
His former company director Vaughan Wilkinson did not want to comment yesterday or expand on previous comments.
In 2003, Mr Wilkinson told the select committee inquiry into the scampi fishery that the company had not funded Mr Peters.
"If the implication is, as others have put it, did Simunovich provide campaign funds to Winston Peters, no it did not," he said.
The committee unanimously cleared Simunovich Fisheries of any wrongdoing in the allocation of scampi fishing rights.
On another donation issue involving Mr Peters, Mr Hide yesterday indirectly criticised the privileges committee looking at the status of the $100,000 donation from Owen Glenn towards Mr Peters' legal bills.
Mr Peters has said he could not have declared it because he found out about it only on July 18 from his lawyer, Brian Henry.
The committee at its first meeting yesterday resolved to initially invite just Mr Peters and Mr Henry to give evidence - and not Mr Glenn. Mr Hide said it was early days yet, "but the worry is that they apply the Helen Clark standard of inquiry, which is to seek an assurance from Winston and his lawyer that they have not done wrong and be satisfied with that".
Speaker Margaret Wilson had asked the committee to find the facts.
The committee will meet again during the two-week parliamentary recess on August 18.