Winston Peters: Dinner sniping way off target

Winston Peters.

Re: Mark Dawson, Expect more dinner dates.

Fact: Last year Minister of Trade Hon Todd McClay asked me to join a trade mission to Europe in early December.

Despite this being a last-minute invitation and a difficult time of year to be away from Parliament and the electorate, these are not matters that can be discussed in "little old New Zealand over a flat white and a potato top".

To suggest that would be a substitute for understanding and persuading European trade interests is simply naive and ridiculous.

And only an arrogant twit would make such a suggestion.

Mr Dawson then mentions hotels and "top" Paris restaurants.

To explain the nearest restaurant in walking distance from an ordinary hotel as being a top Paris restaurant is modern proof of the old English adage, "the malady of the ignorant is to be ignorant without knowing it".

For his information I didn't eat foie gras, didn't order it and told one of his journalist colleagues exactly that.

If anyone goes through New Zealand First MPs' expense accounts they will see we are frugal by comparison.

I notice Mr Dawson arrived here in 2000, saw me on TV once and then decided he was qualified to psychologically analyse what he was seeing, and that he was already back then an expert on immigration into this country.

Mr McClay thought the trip had serious value and has said so. But if you have a penchant to try to make a one-sided personal attack on a politician, using envy as your modus operandi, why would the facts concern you?

What I do know is that had I refused the trip this same sort of media attack would have criticised me for refusing to go abroad to help my country.

As for his statement about "MPs living it large at our expense", precisely what fact did he have to back that up?

This country has more than its share of jaundiced journalists so why did we allow one more through our immigration system?