Brown vs Hooton

Russell Brown attempted the impossible today – a defence of the PM. To be fair to Russell, he did praise Phil Kitchin and Audrey Young for bringing this all too light, but he offers an explanation for why Clark did nothing:

Perhaps we should deal with that first. Why on earth would Helen Clark have decided not to implicitly trust Owen Glenn when he told her that? One reason is simpler than you might think: Glenn had recently given interviews in which his recollection of the timing and purpose of his donations to her own party was demonstrably off the planet.

Shortly before Glenn told Clark that he had made a donation directly to New Zealand First, he gave an interview to the Dominion Post’s Kim Ruscoe in which he said he had donated his $500,000 to Labour’s 2005 campaign because he was concerned about the “sneaky” influence of the Exclusive Brethren on the election.

This simply could not have been true: the Brethren flap blew up only weeks before polling day 2005. Glenn’s donation was made — and properly declared — in two chunks in 2003 and 2004. It was all cheerily reported in the Herald in June 2005 — four months before anyone outside the Brethren and some people in the National Party knew that the Brethren was involved in the campaign at all.

And yet here he was, in February 2008, giving an account that seemed to have sprung entirely from his imagination. In the same interview, Glenn also made the unlikely claim that Clark had seriously suggested he could be her Minister of Transport if he would but return to New Zealand. Glenn subsequently admitted he’d been big-noting to a lady reporter.

So if you’d been wondering — as Messrs Farrar and Hooton have been doing very loudly — how Clark could possibly have doubted the recollection of a prominent party donor over the word of her foreign minister, that’s it. Glenn, successful businessman and excellent philanthropist that he is, had been demonstrating that he was not necessarily a reliable witness. Clark did, we now know, take the matter seriously enough to place an urgent call to Peters in South Africa. But we can perhaps understand her reluctance to pull the pin by calling her minister a liar.

I was going to do a detailed response to this but Matthew Hooton has done it for me in the comments.

I have wondered no such thing. What I wonder about is why, when Clark was told by Peters that he received no such money, she didn’t go back to Glenn (or get someone else to) and say, “Hey, Owen, Winston says you didn’t give him money. What’s the story here?’

And when Peters held up his “No” sign and said someone was fabricating emails and that Audrey Young was making up stories and should resign, along with her editor, Clark (or one of her staff) never went and said: “Ah, Winston, this is getting a bit hot. Are you sure that he never gave you money?”

Again, when the matter came up again in July, it seems incredible Clark (or her staff) didn’t say: “Come on Winston, what’s the story here, because Owen is adament he did give you money.”

And, Russell, your claim that Glenn was not necessarily a reliable witness should surely be balanced by the fact that the Foreign Minister is hardly a reliable witness either. Remember the Russian submarines he reckoned were operating off Great Barrier Island in the 1980s? Or the ferry that scraped its bottom in Tory Channel. Or that Selwyn Cushing tried to bribe him? Or that the SFO and the IRD were involved in a criminal conspiracy to cover up the winebox issue? Or that he would never serve in a Cabinet with Birch and Shipley?

When it comes to reliable witnesses, it is not obvious to me why you would back one over the other perhaps, but to back Peters over Glenn after a single phone call, and then stay silent for six months while Peters was making such strong attacks on people like Audrey Young seems to me to be an extreme case of “see no evil”. Helen Clark is hardly someone who does not gossip and exchange information very widely.

Also, I have noticed an extraordinary trend by so-called liberals to almost go on the defence for Peters. As usual, the people at thestandard.org.nz are the worst offenders, but I understand from one genuine liberal who attended Drinking Liberally this week that there was alarming levels of support for one of the most reactionary, illiberal and racist MPs we have seen in recent times, and one who has done tremendous harm to the integrity of our political system (and continues to do so this very day).

When are Labour-leaning people going to say no to Peters in the way many National-leaning people, particularly those of us on the socially liberal wing of the party, did some years ago?

I would add on an extra point to what Matthew said.

There is a world of difference between someone being wrong on minor details like dates, exact conversations etc and being wrong on whether or not you wrote out a cheque for $100,000. It defies credibility that Helen Clark could have had a good faith belief that Owen Glenn would not know he had written out a cheque for $100,000. Exactly who it went to he may be unsure on – but not the fact it was made, and who solicited it.

As Matthew says, all Helen had to do was make one extra phone call.

UPDATE: Another key point is this was not a situation where one had to try and work out who was telling the truth, because the truth was a matter of provable fact – was a donation made, and to whom? If Peters and Glenn were disagreeing over who said what at the races, then the PM could well be in the position of not being able to resolve it. But this was a disagreement over a factual event – a donation. Facts are easy to establish – again it would have taken on more phone call. The simple truth is Clark knew Glenn was telling the truth, but did not want to have it proven. She was happy for her Foreign Minister to keep telling lies for six months, when she could have established the facts in a phone call.