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Winston Peters' senior MPs are distancing themselves from his dealings with a controversial lobbyist, after new allegations of donations in return for policy concessions.
Parliament's longest-serving MP is reported to have taken donations from a wealthy business family who had an insider within the party helping to frame its fishing, racing and tax policies.
The New Zealand First leader repeatedly demanded the Vela family provide him with a helicopter to use for campaigning during the 1999 election, according to leaked documents. "Tell those bastards I need a helicopter," Peters is alleged to have said.
The Velas, worth an estimated $180 million, are involved in the fishing and horse racing industries. Using former National MP Ross Meurant as an intermediary, Vela interests gave Peters $20,000, with a promise of $30,000 more to come, the Dominion Post reported.
On the campaign trail yesterday, only Prime Minister Helen Clark was still openly standing by the NZ First leader. She refused to retract previous expressions of confidence in Peters, saying the allegations were a matter for NZ First.
National and Act have already ruled out sharing the Government benches with NZ First. And yesterday, Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said she would have great difficulty sitting around the Cabinet table with Peters, unless he was cleared of the new and serious accusations.
But Peters, arriving in Auckland last night, said the allegations were fabricated.
"I've proved it to the SFO, I've proved it to the Electoral Office, I'll prove it with the police, and still they go on with their tissue of lies," he told the Herald on Sunday. "Did you see me flying round in a helicopter? Who would try and campaign out of a helicopter?"
Peters has previously denied any wrongdoing in taking Vela money, saying the party's racing policy was written in 1993.
Meurant worked with the Vela family on fishing issues before taking a taxpayer-funded job as an adviser to NZ First and Peters between 2000 and 2004.
In one leaked memo, Meurant warned businessman Philip Vela about Peters: "Don't trust the tricky Maori boy," he wrote. "Without someone from your side in his tent driving the policy and cajoling his bunch of demonstrably lazy bastards, a guaranteed outcome is an impossibility."
He described MP Ron Mark - touted as a potential successor to Peters _ as a "loose cannon" who "needs to be kept in a cage or he will do you harm".
Yesterday, Ron Mark said he had warned Peters about his involvement with Meurant: "I have no relationship with Ross, other than advising Winston he should have nothing to do with him."
Peter Brown, the party's deputy leader, said Meurant's comments were "bullshit" and he was playing up his own importance.
Brown, too, had expressed concerns about working with the lobbyist. "I went to Winston privately," Brown said. "I just said to him, `I don't know what's wrong with the guy, all I know is that something adverse will happen _ it's not a question of if, but when'. But the boss knew him from old and got on quite well with him."
Dail Jones, another NZ First MP, described Meurant as "irrelevant" and criticised his work.
Helen Clark did not comment on the allegations, but 24 hours earlier she told the Herald on Sunday that she would have no difficulty working with Peters as a senior minister in a future government.
