Peters accuses Key of Dotcom lies

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says Prime Minister John Key is lying about two key points in the Kim Dotcom affair: whether he discussed the accused pirate during a dinner with Warner Brothers executives in Los Angeles, and whether he knew about the GCSB's illegal surveillance before September 17.

"The prime minister pretends not to have known this person [Kim Dotcom], excepting he – a full seven months after Kim Dotcom got his residency and was starting in to his business – stopped off deliberately in LA for a dinner with the senior executives of Warner Brothers, an interest which, like others in Hollywood, we’re standing to lose hundreds of millions and possibly billions of dollars. Don’t tell me they never raised Kim Dotcom and the threat to them at those meetings. It’s incredible to believe," Mr Peters said on TV ONE's Q+A programme yesterday.

Later in the interview, when it was put to him that John Key said he wasn’t told about the GCSB's unlawful Kim Dotcom wiretaps until September 17, Mr Peters said, "I don’t believe that. Unless he said, ‘Look, my deal with you, Mr English, is better you don’t tell me'."

No Robin Hood
Mr Peters stressed that although he was pressing the government over the Megaupload case, he was no fan of Kim Dotcom.

"Kim Dotcom, I think, is going to be lining up the New Zealand taxpayer for a lot of money [with a compensation claim], and we’re all gonna pay to someone who should never have been allowed to get into this country in the first place, who bought his way in, who didn’t survive, for example, the body-mass fat index.

"All that was ignored just because he was someone with money. It’s revolting. And it’s made us look like a joke. I know a lot of people out there think that he’s a hero. But here’s another bit. If you were a writer or a song writer and he stole your property, would you think him such a Robin Hood now?"

Mickey Mouse image
The NZ First leader maintained the Megaupload case had dented New Zealand's international image.

"Let me tell you this. Offshore we’re regarded as a Mickey Mouse joke now by the United States, and I believe Australia as well, and the other fallout from that is that those countries to whom we used to say ‘Look, we can’t be heavied,’ and I won’t name those countries, who want us to do things, will now say ‘yes, you can’," Mr Peters said.

Speaking on the same show, Foreign Minister Murray McCully, speaking live via satellite, said the case had not come up during his current trip to the US.

"I haven’t heard a single word about the issue since I got to the United States. That’s the honest answer," Mr McCully said.

Watch the full interview here.