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The Soap Box: Big issues mired in fine print

Author
Barry Soper ,
Publish Date
Thu, 20 Aug 2015, 9:20AM
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

The Soap Box: Big issues mired in fine print

Author
Barry Soper ,
Publish Date
Thu, 20 Aug 2015, 9:20AM

Trouble with politics is that at times the big issues are awfully convoluted, caused in large part by the practitioner's inability to explain what they actually mean.

Over the years there have been plenty of examples, one of the more celebrated involved the master of political theatre and conspiracy Luigi Peters, who for several years attached his name to a winebox, but without enjoying the fruit of the vine it once contained.

It's the one he had his sidekick Tau Henare lug into the debating chamber containing papers outlining what Peters claimed was evidence of a major tax dodge by leading businessmen, using the Cook Islands as a tax haven.

For three years the late Justice Ronald Davison, who years earlier brought Peters in Parliament on an electoral appeal, presided over the Winebox Inquiry before finally declaring there was no criminality. Peters being Peters appealed the decision and was vindicated, giving him reason to bring in another winebox, the contents of which were a little more pleasurable than the papers.

Move forward a couple of decades and we've got the Saudi sheep deal which is painting Foreign Minister Murray McCully as the black sheep, scheming with a Saudi businessman to get a free trade deal with the Gulf States across the line.

Our public watchdog the Auditor General's now casting her eye over the details of McCully's machinations, which saw a model Kiwi farm set up in the Saudi Arabian desert and stocked with pregnant ewes, along with a four million dollar sweetener on top for the businessman who was cross about his live-sheep-for-slaughter trade being axed.

The blowtorch has been trained on Teflon John Key who's been forced to take the heat because McCully's been out of the country virtually ever since the issue blew up. To cloud the issue, which Key has wrongly insisted was entirely Labour's fault, the Beehive tried the death by a thousand pages trick a couple of weeks ago, dumping documents that few had the time to read in detail, although a lot of that was blacked out anyway.

Labour's been beavering away in the small print and seems to have proven the Beehive's breached its own rules by involving people in making decisions on the Saudi farm deal that they went on to benefit from, while at the same time cutting out competition.

Unfortunately, it's the way of doing business by a few that could end up jeopardising business being done by many in the wider Gulf region!

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