Murray McCully MP
National Party Foreign Affairs Spokesman

10 October 2007

Peters caught out again

Helen Clark's Foreign Minister has been caught out again over the involvement of his office in the Air NZ charter flights fiasco, says National Party Foreign Affairs spokesman Murray McCully.

Papers released today to National under the Official Information Act from Winston Peters make it clear that the answers he provided to questions on 16 August in Parliament were wrong and misleading.

"Yesterday I was prepared to accept that Mr Peters had a narrow basis for arguing that because I had specified communications from his ministry in my questions, that that CTAG report might have been excluded from his answers.

"However, today it's clear that the CTAG report was forwarded to him by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that his office was part of the Mfat distribution list.

"This is at odds with his denials of communications with the ministry in any form about the CTAG report - both in the House on 16 August and in the past day.

"In addition, it's now clear that not one but two copies of the report had been received by his office - the second copy on the day before he denied his office had received any communications about the Air NZ charters.

"Mr Peters now has even more explaining to do."

ENDS

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