Expelled girl's role yet to be decided

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Auckland QC Kit Toogood has yet to decide how or even whether to contact the expelled Sri Lankan girl for his inquiry into her lawyer's guinea-pig notes.

Mr Toogood was reluctant yesterday to discuss the inquiry, which the State Services Commission has asked him to conduct into how the notes reached Prime Minister Helen Clark's electorate office and were then sent to Lianne Dalziel.

Asked how he would obtain statements from the 16-year-old teenager and her grandmother, who are being harboured from abusive male relatives at a Sri Lankan convent, he said: "I haven't decided whether it's going to be necessary.

"I haven't decided who I'm going to speak to yet."

However, he indicated confidence in completing the inquiry by his deadline of March 19.

Lawyer Carole Curtis, who drew a sketch of a guinea pig and wrote strategy notes on a Refugee Status Appeals Authority letter rejecting the girl's bid to stay in New Zealand, says she is willing to co-operate fully with the inquiry.

But she believes evidence from the girl and her grandmother will be crucial to discovering how the notes were removed from the youngster's room at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre.

Lianne Dalziel, who was effectively sacked from her ministerial portfolios last week after admitting she lied about releasing the usually confidential documents, has offered contradictory versions.


Ms Curtis wants the pair returned to New Zealand to clear up the issue, but says it pales in importance against "the real tragedy, which is that this child has been abandoned".

Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor has meanwhile refused an invitation from Green Party MP Keith Locke to reconsider his decision not to let the girl stay here.

Immigration Minister Paul Swain said in Parliament yesterday that Mr O'Connor had told him he would not review the case.

He was also asked if officials had contacted any "safe" members of the girl's family in Sri Lanka to assist their purported preparation of a care and protection plan.

Mr Swain said he had no details other than that the girl was in a convent and could stay there "for some time".