A tale of four letters

In the last couple of weeks we have devoted a reasonable amount of space to the Shane Jones/Bill Liu citizenship issue. And pretty much as often as we've posted, Judge Holden has brought Pansy Wong's participation into the argument.

So let's look at the letter she wrote, in comparison to the letters written on Bill Liu's behalf by other MP's. It's a matter of public record that Bill Liu made donations to the campaigns of Mrs Wong, Chris Carter and Dover Samuels, so on that basis, each was treated equally.

Wong

Minister of Ethic Affairs Chris Carter wrote a similar letter:

Carter

Note that neither Mrs Wong's letter nor that of Mr Carter actually asked for the application to be granted. Both ended in almost identical fashion, expressing a wish that Mr Liu would hear soon from the Department.

Compare these letters with those written by former Minister and then-current Labour MP Dover Samuels. The first was written on 30 January 2008; here it is:

Samuels1

Mr Samuels' first letter is very reasonable, and like those of Mr Carter and Mrs Wong, does not directly petition the Minister for a favourable decision. However his second letter, written in May 2008 is a different kettle of fish altogether:

Samuels2 

This is an angry letter. Dover Samuels rails against the concerns raised by Immigration and Internal Affairs officials. He talks about Liu being under "mental torture", and he asks the Minister (at that stage, the Hon Rick Barker). Interestingly, although Mr Samuels professes to have known Liu personally for some time, there is no mention made of his arrest on any return to China, nor execution, nor harvesting of organs. Nor was there any request for Rick Barker to approve Liu's application on humanitarian grounds.

But back to Judge Holden. He/she has tried for days now to embroil Pansy Wong into this turgid mess. But the letter she wrote on Mr Liu's behalf is nothing more or nothing less than would would be expected from an MP writing on behalf of a member of the public. Ask any MP; writing references and testimonials on their constituents for all manner of reasons is a daily occurrence.

And let's not forget that it's not Pansy Wong who is in the firing line; she was no more than an Opposition back-bench MP when this letter was written.  Dover Samuels was a Labour backbench MP, but a close mate of Shane Jones. And although Samuels may have had little impact of Jones' decision, be may be able to assist with the identity of mystery Labour donor Tamati Wu, whose address was the same as that of Jones' senior private secretary

Shane Jones was the Minister who made the decision, and it is his decision on Bill Liu's citizenship application that has caused all the controversy. But Judge Holden can't resist trying to muddy the waters. We can only deduce that (s)he is so embarrassed by the ineptitude of his/her beloved Labour MP's that this is his/her way of dealing with it. But let's not let a good smear get in the way of the facts.


FOOTNOTE: The letters reproduced in this post are documents that are available in the public domain. They were part of a package of documents released under the OIA, to which we linked in a post last week.