Allegation a strain for Tamiheres

By Bernard Orsman

John Tamihere's family are feeling the strain of the rape allegation against the high-flying election prospect for Labour.

Reg Tamihere, John's younger brother, said the family were being unjustly tarred as sex deviants.

He said the family was getting hounded by television to do a programme on how the conviction for the murder of two Swedish tourists in 1990 of another brother, David, was affecting the family.

"Now this one with John, it has the same kind of connotations that my whole family are sexual deviants," Mr Tamihere said.

Reg Tamihere, a construction foreman from Papatoetoe, said he heard about the allegation concerning John some time ago "but I thought it was dead and buried."

John Tamihere, Labour's election prospect for Hauraki, confirmed this week that he had been accused of rape two years ago.

He said the claim had never been substantiated and the woman - a daughter of a cousin of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters - had not referred it to the police for investigation, despite being advised to do so by himself and by leaders of his whanau.

The Waipareira Trust Board chief executive said a rumour campaign had obliged him to "throw all my skeletons out of my cupboard."

Reg Tamihere said his family and the extended Tamihere family were being affected by the smear campaign.

The Labour Party is trying not to be distracted by the rumour campaign ahead of a New Zealand Council meeting on February 12 to decide the Hauraki candidacy between Mr Tamihere and Maurice Davis, a unionist with the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union.

Meanwhile, Labour's Hauraki electorate chairman, Barney Manaia, has backed away from his suggestion that Mr Tamihere should reconsider his candidacy for the new Maori seat.

Mr Manaia said on Thursday that he would ask Mr Tamihere to look really hard at what he wanted, only to say later he hoped Mr Tamihere's skills would not be lost to politics.