NZ First leader Winston Peters is backing away from any suggestion of an improper relationship involving National minister Nick Smith and party official Bronwyn Pullar. Dr Smith calls press conference at 1.45 today.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is backing away from any suggestion of an improper relationship involving National minister Nick Smith and party official Bronwyn Pullar.
He did not mean what everyone seems to have assumed he meant, Mr Peters told NBR Online.
Dr Smith has called an unscheduled press conference at parliament at 1.45 today.
The row, which blew up when Ms Pullar was accidentally sent a spreadsheet containing sensitive ACC claims data, and when it subsequently emerged that Dr Smith had written a letter supporting Ms Pullar against the corporation, was the subject of an urgent debate in Parliament yesterday.
Mr Peters described the affair as "a shabby little case involving blackmail, sex, a minister with a conflict of interest'' during that debate.
Dr Smith has subsequently declined all comment on the issue, saying only "I'm just not commenting on my private life."
Yet Mr Peters now says he was not suggesting, for even a second, anything about Dr Smith's private life.
The "sex" reference was only to the fact that some of the information accidentally leaked to Ms Pullar was about people who were claiming accident compensation for sexual assault, he says.
The confusion arose, Mr Peters insisted this morning, because he had omitted a paragraph in his prepared speech because he was running out of time.
"I'm glad I kept this," he says about the notes he prepared for the speech, which he happened to have on him when contacted on his cellphone by NBR Online.
He was to have said, about the private information, that "this included data which identified some as making sensitive claims for injuries resulting from rape or other forms of sexual assault.
"So there it is: a scandal from a government which holds itself as cleaner than the driven snow, a shabby little case involving blackmail, sex, a minister with a conflict of interest. He should go now. "
He was not trying to suggest any improper relationship between Dr Smith and Ms Pullar at all, he says, but, "unfortunately, in the time I had available, I don't think I got to deal with the third to last paragraph of my speech."
The issue of Dr Smith and Ms Pullar is to feature further in question time at Parliament later today.
