United Future leader Peter Dunne claims having to resign his ministerial portfolios after he refused to comply with requests to hand over emails to a journalist means he’s “a bit of a victim”.
Speaking on TV3’s “The Nation” , Mr Dunne said the past two weeks had been tough on everyone around him.
“I think that this has been a most extreme form of muck raking,” he said.
“In terms of the particular situation I’m also a victim of my activities and actions, and I do feel regretful in some senses.”
He said he was unsure whether had been spied on during the period when he allegedly leaked the GCSB report to journalist Andrew Vance.
“I don’t know, and I suspect for a lot of New Zealanders the question that they will ask themselves in this whole debate is just how certain they can be of their freedom, how certain they can be that they aren't inadvertently caught up in something much wider,” he said.
ABOVE: Watch Peter Dunne's interview with Rachel Smalley on The Nation.
Consequently he was unwilling to give his support at this stage to the bills which would change the GCSB’s legislation.
“I think that while these things always operate in the shadows to some extent, the challenge is to give the greatest level of confidence you can to people that their circumstances are being protected and their rights and freedoms are not being abused.”
Despite resigning and having his party’s membership cancelled - a decision that he calls “absurd” - Mr Dunne said he was moving on and looking to the future.
“I’m looking forward to a different pace of life also, but also just getting on with things that I can focus on, that are important to me, to my party, and to my electorate.”
But Mr Dunne said he had not yet decided whether to run for his long-held electorate seat in Ohariu - he will be deciding whether to stand next year.
NBR staff
Sun, 23 Jun 2013
Sun, 23 Jun 2013
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