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  Note: All transcripts are copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVONE and AgendaAGENDA RAWDON At the most it's now only three months to the beginning of the election campaign, and if you believe the polls John Key is on his way to the Beehive. As if to confirm that our biggest newspaper the New Zealand Herald yesterday for the second week running devoted almost it's entire feature section to try to answer the question who is John Key, but in many ways he still remains an enigma, an unknown quantity in the intimate world of New Zealand politics. So what makes John Key tick, he's with Guyon Espiner. GUYON ESPINER GUYON She made a very interesting comment about that relationship yesterday didn’t she? She said that we are not only friends but we are allies. Are the United States and New Zealand allies? JOHN Well it's not for me to decipher the exact words of the Secretary of State. GUYON What do you think, are we friends or allies? JOHN Well I don’t think she was using the word ally in the formal sense of the word, but I think what we are is that we are very good friends and we do have a partnership and agreement and I think that relationship has improved over time for a variety of different reasons, I think the Americans respect a number of things that we have done, the role that we play for instance in Afghanistan, the leadership role that we play in the Pacific. GUYON Sure there is a lot of those things that we've done but she would not have used as US Secretary of State, very considered and intelligent woman, would not have used that word allies without thinking about the consequences of that surely. I mean does this denote a new level of intimacy between the two countries and does it actually bring with it some security obligations between the two countries? JOHN Well I think it does denote that the relationship is warming, it's going through that period you know that we have moved on, the real thawry part of the relationship where it was frosty and cold 20 odd years ago, that’s moved on dramatically. GUYON Who do you credit for that? JOHN Well I think there are a variety of reasons, time heals a lot of wounds, there's been a lot of different things that have gone on, there are different personalities involved now, as I say New Zealand's stepping up, I think it's respected for what it's done in places like Afghanistan and the leadership role we're playing in the Pacific, but you know I also think it's important to understand that the suspension of ANZUS is something which took place, we're not going to go back to ANZUS I don’t see as a country, and on that basis it's a different – it's not a formal ally. GUYON One of are the biggest foreign policy concerns for the United States right now is Iran, they’ve been testing missiles, there's been some sabre rattling on the United States side, there's clearly an option of a pre-emptive strike against Iran, is that an acceptable option for the United States to pursue? JOHN I think in the first instance everyone would hope that the situation in Iran would be sorted out through a multilateral basis and that’s gotta be the hope. If you look at what's happening in North Korea and the Secretary of State talked quite a lot at length yesterday about Iran and North Korea, there is a process that’s starting to evolve in North Korea with the help of the Chinese and others, and one would have to hope that that similar sort of process could take place in Iran. GUYON So a unilateral pre-emptive strike against Iran is not an option that the US should be considering in your opinion? JOHN No I don’t think so. GUYON What about Israel's stance on this? I mean a senior minister from the Israeli government said that it was unavoidable that there would be an attack on Iran unless it relinquished its nuclear programme. Do you think that Israel has been too aggressive and they need to rein themselves in on this? JOHN Well firstly everyone would want Iran to relinquish its nuclear programme and that’s really the aim of what the Americans and others are doing in working there and trying to get a resolution. You know the Israelis maybe ramping up their rhetoric a little bit but you’ve also got to accept that Amin Deinjad has made all sorts of comments about Israel which have been pretty provocative in nature but look the way to resolve the situation in Iran and in North Korea is not to ramp up the rhetoric, it is to work through a programme and a process which recognises for the world nuclear proliferation is not a good thing, you know countries holding nuclear weapons is not a good thing and we need to work collectively as a planet if you like to accept that we need to work through those and to resolve those issues. GUYON Do you accept Iran's assurances that their programme is for energy purposes only? JOHN Look I'm simply not briefed and close enough to it to comment on that I don’t think, but what I can say is that it's unhealthy when you’ve got the position in Iran that you’ve got and collectively we need to join forces to try and work through peacefully how we can resolve the issue in Iran. GUYON You once said of the Helen Clark led government that its greatest failure in foreign policy terms is its inability to secure a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, how would you succeed where Helen Clark has failed? JOHN I think firstly you’ve got to acknowledge there's a real chance that if we are the next government we will succeed in getting and FTA. GUYON Because of the work that Labour has done? JOHN I think for a variety of different reasons, as I said the relationship has improved for a variety of reasons not just what's happened with the Clark administration or Winston Peters or anyone else, I think there's different factors at play here. GUYON Are the dynamics there though in the American political system for a Free Trade Agreement to actually be progressed? JOHN Again we don’t know that today because there'll be a new administration post November, and the President of the day would have to want to support that and also be given by Congress the ability to actually negotiate that, so no one can sit here today and say it will happen but what we can do is what I did with Secretary Rice yesterday and what the Prime Minister and I'm sure the Minister of Foreign Affairs did, and I think it's important to acknowledge that we have handled this on a non partisan basis, we have tried as the Opposition not to put politics in this relationship and advance an FTA. GUYON Okay, a Free Trade Agreement would obviously be a big boost to many businesses and to the economy here, but there are plenty of issues at home on the economy that we need to focus on. One of your top priorities has been reducing taxes, can you confirm for us today that you will reduce the top rate of taxation from 39 cents in the dollar on personal income tax? JOHN Well I'm not going to detail our tax policy on your show today. GUYON I'm not asking for that, what I'm wondering is are you going to cut that top rate at 39. JOHN Well I'm not going to dissect those individual parts of the tax programme but what I can reconfirm is that we are committed as a top priority to reducing taxes in New Zealand, New Zealanders won't be waiting nine years under a National government as they have done under a Labour government, that we see is a very important issue and it's likely that we'll detail our tax programme in the first week of the campaign. GUYON Have you adjusted those thoughts that you had about the average Kiwi getting 50 bucks a week? JOHN Well the question was what was my expectations, and my expectations sit at those levels, I think New Zealanders do expect to get a tax cut of around $50 a week, and you know whether that’s achievable or not you'll have to see our tax programme, but at least understand one thing, in the last nine years in Australia someone on $47000 a year, that’s a little bit below the average wage in New Zealand, they’ve received $100 a week, now that’s a pretty serious sort of tax cut. GUYON They're big gains. At that upper end of the income level you’ve been talking about something of a trade off between Working for Families perhaps and tax cuts, are you going to make any changes to the Working for Families scheme. JOHN Well National's considered Working for Families very carefully and the conclusion that we've reached is that there will be no changes at all to Working for Families under an incoming National government and the reason for that is we want to ensure that there is certainty and there's not greater complexity in the system. GUYON That’s a big change for the party though because you’ve previously described it as middle class welfare, what's changed your mind on that? JOHN A couple of things, you see we went away and had a look at the system in great detail. Now we could make changes to it at the upper end if we wanted to, it reaches right up to you know north of $150,000 a year people can still get Working for Families, but there's a lot of complexity in the system. Firstly Working for Families is based on the family income and you know personal taxes are based on individual income, secondly the numbers of people receiving Working for Families above $100,000 are very small. GUYON Pretty low – but can you afford to have big tax cuts and Working for Families? JOHN Oh yes we can and you’ve got to remember, go back to our 2005 tax package that included the families package which largely signed up for Working for Families with a slightly different abatement rate and you know essentially we weren't rolling out the last ten dollars but we were rolling out a much more comprehensive tax programme. GUYON Okay, one of the big issues this week obviously which dominated politics is this issue with New Zealand First and Winston Peters receiving these donations, I mean is this a case for the Police to investigate? JOHN It could be, in the first instance I would have thought the Prime Minister would want to get satisfactory answers, and what we do know is that post the press conference of Winston Peters on Friday we now have more questions than we actually have answers. I think Mr Peters actually does need to provide more than just bluff and bluster, he actually needs to provide satisfactory answers to what are some pretty serious allegations. Now he's fully entitled to give his side of events and actually clear that up and it's within his powers and I would have thought the Prime Minister's powers to get for the public of New Zealand the answers which you know can provide what's really gone on here. GUYON Should he resign over this as a Minister, is this resignation material? JOHN Firstly what has to happen is he has to clear up what's gone on. Now if he hasn’t received donations from a trust then therefore he doesn’t need to register it, but that’s hard to reconcile with the statements made by Bob Jones who said he wrote out a cheque for $25,000 to a trust, argued their trust's so secret that we didn’t even know it existed. GUYON You have said his credibility has been dented over this and this was even before Sir Robert Jones' comments that you’ve talked about there, can you today rule out him being a minister in a government that you lead? JOHN Well there's two things to consider here right, there is firstly I think there's no question that his reputation has been dented and damaged and that’s because there's an integrity aspect of things, and Winston Peters has argued for a long time… GUYON Yes exactly, and so can you accept a minister with dented credibility in your own words in your own administration? JOHN Well there's two things, one is there's the real issue about the way that he's campaigned against big money and ultimately against trust, there's a second issue and that’s more of a one involving legality. GUYON No but let's talk about – because this is about leadership and it's about integrity, you’ve said he's got a dented reputation, I'm asking you for a straight answer on this, would you accept a Minister with dented credibility in an administration that you lead? JOHN Well the New Zealand public will determine whether … GUYON But that’s political expediency, you're saying oh look we'll take him if we have to, now that’s a very long way away from saying that you are going to uphold high standards in your administration. JOHN Actually we're not saying we'll take him if we have to, we have made it quite clear and I've made it quite clear that I expect transparency, I wouldn’t expect a minister in my government – I don’t really care which political party they come from – to take donations in the way that for instance occurred with the Owen Glen situation where they were for the benefit of that particular minister and not to declare those, so we have standards and we'll uphold those standards. GUYON And if you are true to that word you would say today that you can't accept him as a minister in a future government that you would lead? JOHN No what we'll say today is we expect Helen Clark and Winston Peters to provide real answers and credible answers to the issues that have been raised. At the moment it's a hypothetical situation. GUYON And if they don’t would you rule him out then? JOHN Well look they’ve got to be cleared up and in my view you know they will be cleared up between here and the election because if they don’t the New Zealand public will take a pretty dim view to that. GUYON So just before I leave it you are saying you're leaving open today the prospect that Winston Peters may be a minister in a government you lead? JOHN Well let's have the situation cleared up. GUYON Yeah and at the moment that option's still open? JOHN Well quite frankly I don’t have the facts and actually neither does the New Zealand media despite the fact that they spent an hour talking to him on Friday afternoon and if someone can provide us with the facts then we can give you our verdict of those events, but at the moment we simply don’t have those facts Guyon. Rawdon back to you. RAWDON Thank you Guyon, now we're joined by our panel, Barry. BARRY SOPER – Newstalk ZB JOHN Well it would depend on a certain number of circumstances, firstly let's recognise what the order of events is, firstly National wants to get out there and get the maximum party vote it can so we don’t know whether we'll need to work with any political party… BARRY But no forget that John because it's a simple question isn't it, that if the public delivers Winston Peters and MPs back to parliament would you work with him? JOHN Well that would depend on a number of factors, whether we can get satisfaction…. BARRY Well would you say yes or no would you work with him, he would be a minor coalition partner but would you work with him? JOHN Well we might work with him but it would depend on a number of factors, whether for instance we can get transparency around the issues that we've raised and we're concerned about, as I said earlier we have some standards, we have some bottom lines if he can't meet those standards then we wouldn’t, but of course we need to get the answers to those questions. RAWDON Talking about transparency do you – does the National Party have its own secret trusts and funding measures? JOHN Well National's made no secret of the fact that it's accepted donations from trusts and the Waitemata Trust was one of those, but National works within the law and prior to the changes under the Electoral Finance Act National did take donations from trusts, these days the law has changed and we live within the law now. RAWDON Do you have any issue about the Spencer Trust and the way it's been operated or apparently seems to be operated? JOHN Well that’s one of the reasons why Winston Peters needs to provide answers, because if you were to accept what Bob Jones is saying that he made a donation for $25,000 to the Spencer Trust and it was to be used for the New Zealand First campaign, then under the law that operated in 2005 New Zealand First would have been required to list that trust. Now there are I guess hypothetical ways that they couldn’t have registered it if they never spent the money or hypothetically if they went and spent it on something completely different, and that’s one of the reasons why those who control the Spencer Trust need to open it up and explain exactly what the money was used for. FRAN O'SULLIVAN – Columnist, NZ Herald JOHN Well I made the point on Thursday Fran that I thought that this matter should be cleared up before Condoleezza Rice arrived in New Zealand, and I think that was the right way to handle that. FRAN But it wasn’t cleaned up. JOHN It wasn’t clear. FRAN Well what does that tell you that the Foreign Minister couldn’t clean it up and get a clean slate so that the whole visit wasn’t marred by the pantomime we've seen over the last 24 hours? JOHN Well it tells you three things, either Winston Peters couldn’t or wouldn’t clean it up, or Helen Clark wouldn’t demand that he cleaned it up, and quite frankly it wasn’t hard to go into that press conference and understand the questions that would have been asked, and quite simply Mr Peters could have gone in there and said yes money was received by the Spencer Trust but these are the reasons why – or this is the person to ring who will take your phone calls to clear that up. Neither of those things occurred and so… BARRY I would suggest though that you'd never get Winston Peters being that simple, I mean he operates on smoke and mirrors. Just to pick you up though on the Condoleezza Rice yesterday, she talked on more than one occasion about impediments in New Zealand's way, you said in the interview with Guyon that basically we maybe an ally in words but technically we're not, what do you mean by that, and what are the impediments that she outlined to you? JOHN Well I don’t think we're a formal ally because we don’t have a military partnership in the way the formal allies would have, that was suspended after ANZUS. BARRY And impediments? JOHN Well impediments are being moved out of the way, I think the relationship is genuinely warming. BARRY But she still said there were impediments, she didn’t say what they were but she said there were, no doubt she outlined them to you? JOHN No look we didn’t spend a long time dwelling on that, we actually spent time talking about the nuclear proliferation issues, we talked about Afghanistan and Iraq and China. BARRY I'd suggest though those impediments could actually curtail any possibility of a Free Trade Agreement and they certainly still don’t like our anti nuclear stance. JOHN Well I don’t think there'd be any great secret that they don’t like our anti nuclear stance but whether that’s an impediment any more I'd suggest it's probably not, and it was indicated I think when Helen Clark visited Washington last time that the rock in the road, they were gonna find a way around the rock in the road, so look I think there is every chance New Zealand can secure an FTA with the US but it will depend on a number of factors and that is not the least of them being that the President of the day has the prerogative to be able to do that and the desire to want to do that. RAWDON What do you think Condoleezza Rice would have thought about – whatever the details are we know Winston wasn’t straight up, do you think she was aware of this as well. She's a very bright woman, she's come into the country? JOHN Look I suspect that she has such a vast number of things on her mind she's not going to involve herself in domestic New Zealand policies. BARRY Yeah but then how could she avoid it, I mean she had two news conferences yesterday, New Zealand had four questions at those two conferences, two of those questions were on Winston Peters. Here's the American Secretary of State listening to the Foreign Minister's I guess his probity being questioned, surely she must have raised the spectre of what's going on in this country. JOHN Well she didn’t raise it with me and she would have looked at that and look I don’t think she's gonna spend a lot of time on domestic New Zealand politics about whether New Zealand First took donations or didn’t take donations, she would consider that something for New Zealand First and the Prime Minister to resolve. FRAN John if you were Prime Minister yesterday for instance speaking hypothetically and Winston Peters your Foreign Minister had put on such an amazing display on the Friday would you have wanted him to front or would you have just put him out of the way and got someone else in? JOHN I would have got on the phone on Thursday and said look it's inevitable the sort of press conference you're gonna face on the Friday, I made it clear on Thursday … FRAN Yes you said that before but what if for instance he still went ahead and gave such a performance, would it be a sacking offence. JOHN It's unacceptable that he's not providing answers. FRAN But would it be a sacking offence if you were Prime Minister and your Foreign Minister performed like that? JOHN Well you wouldn’t be happy about it but you said demand answers. FRAN Would it be a sacking offence? JOHN Well you can sack people if they’ve misled the public and basically broken the law and that’s what we just simply don’t know. BARRY Would you have advised him perhaps not to hold a press conference? JOHN No I would have advised him to go to the press conference… RAWDON And be straight. JOHN … and say there is no issues here – that’s right – so Winston Peters is saying there's no problems here I've don’t nothing wrong I haven’t broken the law, well that’s totally fine, just display that. BARRY But to even suggest that John to me suggests that you don’t know Winston Peters. JOHN Well look I've seen enough press conferences on Winston Peters, what I am saying is that there's a lot of difference between some general allegations and what are very specific allegations. You’ve got a donor with a cheque with a trust with a whole lot of things which are very clear here and so therefore it's not a matter of hypothetical general sort of innuendo as often gets thrown around in parliament much of which is baseless, but this is a specific trail and on that basis Helen Clark would be able to understand like any other New Zealander can, what that trail and sequence of events was and what the acceptable and correct answer would be and she has failed and quite frankly Winston Peters has failed to clear that up. RAWDON We're gonna have to leave it there, John Key thank you very much for coming in. |
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