Winston “hundreds of thousands”

3 News reports:

Prime Minister John Key says he won’t close the door on Afghan interpreters who say their lives are at risk after working with New Zealand troops.

Twenty-six interpreters work with the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamiyan. They say the Taliban will target them as soon as the troops pull out.

When the PRT leaves Afghanistan in April next year, they are planning to leave behind the interpreters. But Mr Key wants to be certain the risk is as bad as has been presented before he welcomes them here.

“We just need to assess the risks – whether the risks are real and genuine to them,” says Mr Key. “We need to work through the issue and see what it might all mean. I’m not closing the door to them.”

If there is a genuine and significant risk, we should take them. Of course the claims may be exaggerated in order to be allowed to move to NZ, as even if there is no risk to their security – NZ is always going to be a far nicer place to live than Afghanistan.

But by opening the door at all, New Zealand First says it could be impossible to close again.

“Well they will have effectively jumped the UN queue for a start,” says Winston Peters. “The second thing is they will be bringing hundreds of thousands as well with them. That’s the previous model.”

So 26 interpreters will bring in hundreds of thousands of family members? Why do the media give such statements any credibility? If Shearer or even the Greens said such an obviously false thing, they’d be pummeled by the media. But as usual, there is a double standard when it comes to Peters, where lying is seen as just Winston being Winston.