Below is a transcript of my speech given in the general debate on Wednesday 30th July (you can watch the video here). Alice in Wonderland is a fantasy world just like the one the media are trying to drag the public of New Zealand into.  It’s dark down there, a place where only media and their imaginations venture!

“This afternoon I’d like to start with a quote from Alice in Wonderland.

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes, I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

And that’s how I’d describe the media’s hysteria of the past few weeks about NZ First. Each day, New Zealanders were being asked to swallow six impossible things before breakfast and for the past two weeks, we’ve been assailed by innuendo and wild allegations. We’ve been expecting it. We’re not surprised and it will continue.

They’ll make frenzied allegations and we’ll bat them away with the truth.

Because what the media don’t know is that in May 2005, three years ago, we informed the Speaker of documentation, the day we got it, of allegations that are now appearing in The Dominion Post. Three years ago.

Let me give you some background. Some of the dirt came from TVNZ via The Dominion Post. The rest comes from vested interests who have been offering big money for any dirt on Winston Peters. They don’t want us around at the next election. TVNZ have had two private investigators, detectives, sniffing around since they were sued for defamation some years ago, an action which is alive today.

And you’ll recall that the then-CEO [of TVNZ] Ian Fraser, threatened me at a select committee meeting that he claimed to have more information.

A reporter called Philip Kitchin from The Dominion Post was hired by Fraser’s then news chief Bill Ralston. Kitchin went back to the Dom Post with documents and e-mails given to him by TVNZ.

These documents were taken when a former part-time NZ First adviser went through an acrimonious split with his partner. She is also part of the defamation case.

In this latest saga, Kitchin went to Bob Jones and deliberately misled him about a donation, just to get a story. So far, there have been at least six impossibly different versions of this story in different media outlets.

To get some more dirt, some branches of the media have been interviewing an individual I sacked in 1996. He’s now being held up as an expert about something that was supposed to have been happening in NZ First.

He must have been clairvoyant, because what he said now, back then, never existed. Mr Speaker, this is the same man who used to talk to young teenage girls on Internet chat rooms. Like he’s got some credibility?

Over the past few months, we have been warned about attacks coming our way. The last was given to me at my mother’s funeral. We were told there’s a pot of money for more dirt on Peters and NZ First.

MR Speaker, what you’ve seen in recent weeks is New Zealand’s neutron news. Destroy the facts, but keep the egos of the media intact. Some deeply sensitive journalists and talkback hosts were even ringing me up during my mother’s funeral service.

To be fair, some journalists have tried to be objective. But most have run around in circles like brainless meerkats. The result of this has been a flood of misinformation. One most disturbing situation arising from this is the constant reporting that I have denied something, when I have simply refused to answer a stupid question. There is a serious difference.

I totally accept being reported as refusing to answer a stupid question, but I do not accept that means refusal or denial. But then perhaps some words in the English language have changed while I wasn’t looking.

We have seen journalists interviewing each other, their computers, my political foes and anybody who walks past.

If you remember Alice in Wonderland, you’ll remember the Mad Hatter’s tea party. The Mad Hatter’s tea party was sane compared to what we’ve experienced in the past few weeks. So to end, I would like to go back to Alice.”Really. Now you ask me,” said Alice, “Very much confused. I don’t think.”

“Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.”

So, Mr Speaker, good advice. If you don’t think, if you don’t know the facts, even though they’ve been with the Speaker for … over three years, if you don’t think, if you don’t know the facts and worse still if you don’t know the law applying to the facts, then you should not talk.”

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