KEY POINTS:
He was the star of the week, Owen Glenn, this big man, this phenomenal success story, this New Zealander of unimaginable wealth who left school at 15 and made a fortune in the tough muck-and-brass world of international shipping. He flew in with his glamorous personal assistant and
for two days wreaked seismic havoc across the political landscape.
He was earthquake and aftershock. He feared no one and he spared no friendship. The first jolt came at the Privileges Committee and why it is the highest court in the land, I have no idea. It has more the appearance of an agenda-ridden rabble. Glenn wore a suit, held his cross, spoke quietly and delivered two lethal pieces of evidence which cut to the very heart of the issue before the committee.
Glenn produced a telephone record of a six-minute, 41-second call to Winston Peters' private cellphone in December last year just after 1.30pm and an email sent minutes later, in which Brian Henry gave Glenn his practice bank account number. Glenn dealt effortlessly to MPs at the hearing. It was splendid to see. His demeanour was correct but he was not to be trifled with.
He was there voluntarily and if he were not afforded common courtesy he would leave. When Michael Cullen piped up with something, Glenn silenced him with, "You've had your 500,000, Dr Cullen."
He was witty, a match for any of them. If he had an intriguing ability to go from being vague in his memory to being extremely precise, he observed to Cullen, it was probably because he was married twice.
Then, no hanging round, straight to Wellington Airport, where John Campbell interviewed him in the Koru Club. Glenn revealed that Mike Williams stayed with him uninvited on his yacht in the south of France in June and asked for more money. What's more, said Glenn, the Prime Minister called Willams four times in one day, the clever implication being that Helen knew exactly where Williams was and why. If Peters was in Glenn's firing line, Williams and Clark would also pay a price.
Next day, the news conference. In strode big, smiling Owen Glenn, casual now with the generous belly of the bon vivant and the beautiful personal assistant. Now it was payback time for the ingratitude after he coughed up half a million for the Labour Party because he liked their style, payback for the appalling snub that humiliated him at the Auckland Business School, to which he gave more than $7 million and which bears his name.
Clark is self-serving. Williams is a liar. Williams asked me for a job while he was there on the yacht, said he was a good administrator, had run businesses. Slightly subservient, though, added Glenn.
Williams doesn't take a second breath without Helen's instruction, added Glenn. Apart from that, he enjoyed Mike's company, a good man to have a beer with. But there is no job for him. And he hoped the whole affair had not ruined their friendship.
The shells exploded everywhere. No one escaped. Every shot was pitched perfectly, every delivery effortless. He was his own man who owed no bastard anything. His anger, if he had any, was buried. He did it all so easily you had to love him.
Glenn has a beautiful voice, his accent educated Kiwi or what I suppose you might call International New Zealand, the speech of the New Zealander who has been a long time abroad and lived in elegant company. There are Australian echoes in his more open vowels and the easy drawl of successful America.
It is a rich voice, one that could command you to listen, or simply draw you in. He delights in words, which is often a pleasure of the autodidact, who loves words because words have been such a rich part of the process by which the self-educated person has opened and extended his adult mind.
Glenn did not use the word liar to describe Williams. One of the reporters did that. Instead he said, "Williams is wrestling with the truth. He is an unmitigated falsifier of veracity."
I called Williams to invite him on my programme the morning after the Privileges Committee and Campbell Live. Williams has for some time removed himself from the news media after one or two bad scrapes. I did not expect him to agree but he sounded extremely chipper and said he would take advice. I took that to mean a call to Herself. Half an hour later he texted me that yes, he would appear, but alone and in the studio. I booked him for 7.15am next morning.
He arrived at 6.30am, full of beans. He appeared genuinely to have no memory of Owen Glenn running by him any donation to New Zealand First. He said if Owen Glenn had mentioned money he, Williams, would have asked him to give it to Labour because they had just fought an election and had a big overdraft. What's more, the visit to the motor-yacht was not uninvited. Glenn's personal assistant had emailed he should go and see Owen in France. So it was an invitation. But then, it wasn't completely one either, I guess.
The same night, there was Williams on Close Up, assured and unruffled, the body language easy, sitting back, calm and relaxed. His performance was superb. He saved the day for himself and did no harm to Helen Clark either. His description of the way Owen Glenn's memory works was as shrewd an assessment as I have heard him make, his implication being that Owen remembers things in a kind of parallel universe, almost correctly, but with omissions and embellishments and misinterpretations.
I found myself thinking an odd thing. That I believe enough of Williams to find him credible and I believe enough of Glenn to find him credible at the same time as they each make opposite claims. I do not believe enough of Peters to find him so.
Williams told me later of his two days with Glenn in the South of France. He was met at Nice airport by Glenn and four women. They drove to Villefranche in a Peugeot van to a beautiful but not ostentatious villa built by King Leopold of the Belgians, now rented to Glenn by an Irishman. Williams has a room with a sweeping view of the Mediterranean.
In the evening they decide to go to Glenn's motor-yacht, Ubiquitous. There is that love of words again. Glenn wants to make sure the crew are getting the correct satellite television installed so they can watch the All Blacks play South Africa the following night. They travel out to Ubiquitous in a tender boat. As the female chef leaps from the tender boat to the motor-yacht she drops the keys to the Peugeot van in the water. The keys are gone forever.
Next morning, Williams wakes early and wanders the picturesque streets of Villefranche. He buys a kilo of cherries and eats them as he strolls. Glenn decides he wants to go to lunch at the Monaco Yacht Club.
The fizzboat takes them to Monte Carlo, leaves them there and returns to Ubiquitous. They return home after lunch and Owen has a sleep.
That evening they return to Ubiquitous to sleep, planning to rise early to watch the game.
Next morning, Williams wakes first and suggests to the crew they should turn on the television because Owen wants to watch the game, but the crew have had the wrong system installed and there is no reception. Calls to Paris are unsuccessful. According to Williams, Owen goes off. Like, goes off.
Williams, realising Southern France is rugby-barmy, suggests a search of the internet for a bar that will show live rugby. They take the fizzboat to a bar in Monaco where they see the second half as the All Black lose to South Africa. Later, they can't get a taxi back to Villefranche.
There are 38 taxi licences in Monaco, all owned by one man, so service is not brisk. They call Maurice, their taxi driver from the night before, and he comes from Nice to take them back to the villa.
Williams says the lesson for him was that you can have a billion dollars and things still go wrong. But things worked out for the billionaire last week in our distant little country.
He came and he sorted them all with style and humour. Then he left for his real life in a world that matters, a world of business, beautiful women and a gracious ship, a world unconcerned with the Electoral Finance and Electoral Declaration agonies and has no interest in politicians in a remote South Sea banana republic scuffling around for money and votes.
