Winston tells a fib; who would have thunk it?

Winston Peters made a big play in Parliament yesterday, berating his arch enemy Tariana Turia. Ms Turia, he claimed seemed unconcerned Whanau Ora money being wasted on a Palmerston North women's refuge, which sounded, on the basis of the evidence he provided, rather dodgy.

But there's just one small problem that Peters failed to authenticate, and that Mrs Turia was delighted to point out to him; check this out, via Voxy:

Winston Peters has once again demonstrated his love for political theatre by creating a great melodrama out of a series of unproven facts said Tariana Turia following question-time today.

Mr Peters has cast doubt on the value of Whanau Ora - speculating about the spending of "$174 million of hard-earned taxpayers' money-some of which is in this audit here-when many providers are using it to pork-barrel, and rort, and commit fraud".

"Problem is - and it's a problem for Mr Peters - the organisation he referred to in the House today has never received any funding from Te Puni Kokiri; it is not part of a Whanau Ora Collective - and in actual fact in the audit he referred to there was no mention of Whanau Ora.

"Mr Peters makes allegations at his whim about Whanau Ora - and deserves to be challenged about the veracity of these claims. Sadly his attempts to undermine Whanau Ora will not work because there is no truth in these claims.

Whoops; who would have ever thunk that Winston might not having being telling the whole story?

And Mrs Turia acknowledges that there are problems with the refuge, whilst delivering a final counterpunch at her nemesis:

"As to the allegations around the financial position of the particular organisation should be taken up with the National Collective of Independent Women's Refuges and the Ministry of Social Development who has responsibility for operational funding for some of the work of the Womens Refuge movement.

"As my colleague Paula Bennett pointed out today, MSD funds some 2,300 providers with over 4,000 contracts. Occasionally if things go wrong, and there is an allegation of wrongdoing, MSD move in and find out what's going on, and that is the appropriate course of action to take" says Associate Minister for Social Development Tariana Turia.

"I'm happy to be held to account for the decisions I take, but I won't stand by and let anyone try and discredit me or my officials with the wild allegations we have seen today. It is a very sad day in politics when grandstanding Winston never lets the truth get in the way of a good story."

Ain't that the truth?!