National accused over job for Peters

Winston Peters

The National Party made a deal two months before the September election to make Winston Peters Foreign Minister, Acting Prime Minister Michael Cullen claimed yesterday.

Dr Cullen, speaking in Parliament, said that National finance spokesman John Key boasted at a meeting in Wellington about the deal with the New Zealand First leader.

Mr Key last night denied saying any such thing. He said he would not have made such a statement because Mr Peters would not have been foreign minister under National.

But there is other evidence that National was planning to give him the post were it to form the government.

Two months before the election, the Herald published a report based on senior party sources that National had earmarked the portfolio for Mr Peters.

Leader Don Brash has denied offering Mr Peters the post but it is understood that other senior party figures knew that would be the price of Mr Peters' support and that the party would be prepared to give it, especially given that foreign affairs spokesman Lockwood Smith was his main competition.

Whether National did earmark it is important now because the party is expending much time and moral outrage in Parliament attacking Mr Peters in his new role as Foreign Minister outside the Cabinet.

The attacks continued yesterday with two questions on the apparent conflict between comments Mr Peters and his Labour predecessor Phil Goff made last week in South Korea.

Despite being thousands of miles away in Malta at ministerial meetings leading up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, Mr Peters is not far from many other questions outside his responsibility.

National MP Jonathan Coleman wondered whether as a minister outside the Cabinet, Mr Peters would "fail to qualify for the special reserve of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu because by the Ministry of Health's criteria, he would be regarded as neither a key decision-maker nor an essential service".

A spokesman for Mr Peters told reporters in Malta that he would no longer take questions about the arrangements for Government.