KEY POINTS:
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will not be required to pay back the $100,000 he received from Owen Glenn to pay legal expenses, Prime Minister Helen Clark said today.
The NZ First leader, who is also Minister of Racing and Foreign Affairs, is facing intense scrutiny after a series of revelations regarding party donors.
The Dominion Post reported yesterday the party received multiple donations from the Vela family's fishing and thoroughbred companies between 1999 and 2003.
Mr Peters is also facing a possible inquiry into whether he should have declared Mr Glenn's donation.
Under Cabinet rules, it is up to the prime minister whether ministers can keep gifts of more than $500.
National leader John Key asked Miss Clark whether Mr Peters could keep the money.
Helen Clark replied that even if it was declared to be a gift, the Cabinet Office believed he could keep the money because it had been used to fight the Tauranga electoral petition.
"The Cabinet Office advises me that there would be no reason to require the minister to relinquish it, given the considerable public interest in the court case for which that money was paying," Helen Clark said.
Helen Clark said it was up to the registrar of MPs' pecuniary interests - Dame Margaret Bazley - to decide whether Mr Peters should have registered the legal fund, donations into it or the debt he carried.
Helen Clark noted that National MP Nick Smith had declared an interest in a legal trust fund, but not the debt or who had paid it.
Dr Smith told Parliament that he followed the advice of the registrar.
Helen Clark said if this was correct then Mr Peters did not have to declare his debt or gifts either.
Many questions in the House - under the protection of parliamentary privilege - centred on the Vela family's donations.
Green Party MPs implied that Mr Peters had favoured the interests of those who made donations.
"Does she have any sense, as some in the racing industry do, that his actions (as racing minister) tend to favour at the high end of the industry, incidentally the same end as NZ First has received substantial donations?" Green MP Sue Bradford asked.
Helen Clark said there was no suggestion that this had happened.
Mr Peters has said donations from the Vela family had no bearing on New Zealand First's racing policy, which was written years earlier.
Another Green MP Metiria Turei asked whether Mr Peters' "relationship" with fishing interests had potentially influenced NZ First from opposing sustainable fisheries legislation.
Helen Clark said if she was going to accept that suggestion, she would have to accept that from all parties who opposed the move which included National.
NZ First's treasurer at the time of the donations, Kay Urlich, told Radio New Zealand she had not disclosed donors' identities to Mr Peters.
Allegations the party had packaged the Velas' money into smaller parcels to avoid disclosure laws were untrue, she said.
On Friday he admitted a $100,000 donation from Mr Glenn towards his legal challenge of the 2005 Tauranga result, despite previously denying receiving any money from Mr Glenn.
ACT leader Rodney Hide has laid a complaint with Parliament's Speaker Margaret Wilson asking her to refer to the privileges committee Mr Peters' failure to disclose the donation to the register of MPs pecuniary interests.
Mr Peters said he was confident NZ First had met the rules in relation to both matters.
Earlier, the New Zealand First party president vowed to get to the bottom of claims that the Vela family made large donations to the party.
George Groombridge this morning told Radio New Zealand that it was his job to have "the whole thing cleared up".
He was asked if he would be concerned if the party had received a large amount of money from the racing industry in parcels under $10,000.
"Of course I would be concerned. Any right thinking New Zealander would feel the same way and that's why I'm concerned to find out about these facts," Mr Groombridge said.
Helen Clark referred to a statement released by Mr Peters' office in which the NZ First leader attacked the story as a "smear campaign of unsubstantiated allegations" and said all donations received were lawful.
Mr Groombridge said today that he had been a member of the party for 13 years and on the board for eight. He said if there had been donations to the party then he would have expected to know about them.
"The natural assumption would have been that the treasurer would have made it very, very clear to the board in the monthly statements of how the finances were going. I would have been informed had there been such a situation but I have not been informed," Mr Groombridge said.
Former treasurer Kay Urlich told National Radio that she would not reveal who had donated money to the party or how much.
"When I was a treasurer in the National Party in the late eighties and early nineties, I was told never to disclose where the money comes from, never to disclose how much and you never tell a Member of Parliament. Now, I learned my lessons really well," Ms Urlich said.
She said money was received from "all kinds of sources". When asked by presenter Sean Plunket if the party had received money from the Vela family, Ms Urlich said "You have seen the Dominion Post" and "you can take what you like out of that".
"I never talked about money to the party members at all. I never told Winston Peters things like that at all. I never wanted to put him in a compromising position," Ms Urlich said.
- NZHERALD STAFF, NZPA
