Thursday, February 21, 2013

Making it up as he goes along

Yesterday in Question Time, Prime Minister John Key, when quizzed about SkyCity's apparent assumption that it would be acquiring land owned by TVNZ for its convention centre, said that they had approached TVNZ about it, and that TVNZ had sold it to them. TVNZ, however, knows nothing about it:
TVNZ says it has had no approach from Skyity to buy its land for the proposed convention centre, contrary to the Prime Minister's assurances to Parliament yesterday.

The state broadcaster also ruled out any commercial arrangement with the casino company.

[...]

TVNZ spokeswoman Megan Richards told the Herald on a number of occasions last year there had been no approach by SkyCity for the land and no deal had been done.

Today, she said the position had not changed. "We have had no approach from SkyCity. We have no commercial arrangement with SkyCity. If we were to be approached by SkyCity we would have to consider it on its merits."


Someone is lying here, and I don't think its TVNZ. The Prime Minister is simply making it up as he goes along, telling any story he can in a desperate effort to avoid responsibility for his sleazy backroom dealing. But when you do that in Parliament, its called "contempt". He needs to be held accountable for it.