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Media Release
27 April 2006

Parker Case Highlights Worst Kind Of Politics

"It is a sad indictment on our politics when a person of unquestioned talent and integrity is caught in a net of personalised scandal not of their making. Such is the case of David Parker, a man who is among the most credentialed MPs to be a Minister and yet who has been dragged into the tawdry undercurrent of scandal perpetrated by insidious MPs in Act and National," says Rt Hon Winston Peters.

"It is one thing to highlight scandals when the public good is at risk or where genuine issues of incompetence and failure exist. It is another entirely to shamelessly indulge in the politics of personal denigration without the evidence to back it up.

"This playing the man without the ball is politics at its worst. Mr Parker in this case had a memory of having followed the law. But, this being an old legal issue, was all he had to go on.

"The Companies Act, and the spirit behind the law where bankruptcy is concerned, suggests he was right. I said so at the time and now the evidence, absolute in this case, backs him up.

"A fortunate lapse in procedures for the timely destruction of documents has saved him. The mob, and the pack that raced to follow, is now proved wrong.

"Rodney Hide and the National party MPs who joined the attack on Parker should not be in politics.

"It is little wonder that the former Act leader Roger Douglas has so vigorously distanced himself from Mr Hide's persistent lowlife scandal mongering," Mr Peters said.

ENDS

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