A bizarre conspiracy rant under privilege

Today in the House’s General Debate, Winston Peters said:

Today, I am going to outline the truth about the leak of my superannuation. There have been news reports about the case. The matter is not sub judice. But a source totally connected to both the ACT Party and the National Party has revealed that the leak was one Rachel Morton.

Morton heard about the case because she was present when former Minister Anne Tolley told her ministerial colleague Paula Bennett about it—not outside by the lifts, but in a ministerial office. Ms Morton then, thinking it would be kept in confidence, told ACT Party leader, David Seymour, but, desperate for any sort of attention, Mr Seymour contacted Jordan Williams of the wage subsidy – receiving taxpayer union fame. Williams—no stranger to dirty politics—told John Bishop, father of National MP Chris Bishop, and the details were then leaked to Newsroom’s Tim Murphy.

Williams also told another dirty politics practitioner, National Party pollster David Farrar. Farrar tried to shut it down, seeing the risk it exposed to the National Party, but then went along anyway, although he later tried to steer the story away from National’s guilt, which is its usual modus operandi.

So this bizarre conspiracy theory is that Rachel heard it from Anne, and Rachel told David S and David S told Jordan and Jordan told John and John told Tim, and somehow I’m involved also.

The allegation is of course completely false. I was totally unaware of the issues around Winston’s superannuation until I read about them in the media. It is impossible for me to have leaked anything about them, because I simply didn’t know squat.

I suspect the real target of this bizarre story is David Seymour, because NZ First voters have defected to ACT in huge numbers.

Winston of course has absolute privilege for what he says in the House, which might explain why he refuses to repeat it outside the House.

I actually laughed out loud when I heard the allegation, as it is so batshit crazy. It is as if Winston came up with a list of people he doesn’t like much, and put them all together in the story.

Anyway this is all a giant distraction from the real story of the day, which is why Winston arranged for close personal friends to travel to Antarctica.