Performance by master of illusion turns to delusion

Tariana Turia PHOTO/FILE

A popular tactic used by some politicians to create myths and illusions is the use of deception and confusion, also known as smoke and mirrors.

It's an attempt to use sometimes complicated rhetoric or selected information to mislead rather than inform.

I guess you could liken it to the way magicians might use optical illusion to create something believable when really they are performing a trick. Like magicians, politicians can create illusions and perform tricks for pure entertainment.

This week Winston Peters attempted to entertain the House, and indeed the general public, by searching in his top hat to pull out a white rabbit - a piece of information that he mistakenly believed would expose something "untoward" going on in the funding of Whanau Ora.

His question in the House, "Does the Minister of Whanau Ora have confidence in the Whanau Ora scheme?" was his first attempt to create the illusion there was undue process over funding. This question was followed by others relating to funding that were an attempt to suggest funding was being inappropriately allocated to select groups. It was designed to discredit Whanau Ora.

Mr Peters is very skilled at creating doubt - through selectively releasing information he builds a picture for those who do not understand or do not support the philosophy and approach of Whanau Ora. In this case he also released emails that might suggest that something happened when actually it didn't. We could call this selectively releasing emails for the purposes of creating illusions.

What he failed to release was a pertinent email clarifying that in my role as a Minister of the Crown I do not determine who receives funding from the government agency for Whanau Ora programmes.

He also chose not to release a response to an Official Information Act request that clarified specific questions around Whanau Ora funding.

The response was clear yet Mr Peters chose not to release this information because it would have not allowed him to continue to create an illusion.

This week, in an interview on National Radio, Mr Peters was called on to comment on the Official Information Act release and the email clarifying the funding. Slowly but surely his performance was coming unwound. Rather than peaking he floundered out of breath on live radio to pull out a new trick from his top hat by reverting to a separate issue to detract from the facts.

His audience surely would have been disappointed - it was clear his illusion was turning into delusion. His audience waited with bated breath - until question time in the House again when he unleashed an illogical question line based on the OIA which he now seemed to know about with all the charisma one can expect of him.

Metaphors aside, Mr Peters seems hell bent on continuing on his path of trying to destroy Whanau Ora by mischievously planting in the minds of the media and the general public that the approach is not accountable and is not working for families. We say different.

There are accountabilities in place as there are with the expenditure of all public funds.

Whanau Ora is an approach which is changing the lives of more than 47,000 whanau members - by making government agencies work together for families and by calling upon whanau to pull together and take responsibility for their lives. The new commissioning agency model will be accountable to government for its spending and all those interested parties must follow due process.

Mr Peters should stop muck raking and concentrate on what is in the best interests of whanau.