NATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW: Labour leader Helen Clark says the National Party has used the Official Information Act to dig through her husband’s professional life, looking for a “smear” against her.
And that means John Key can’t claim the moral high-ground about the Labour party’s research into his past, she says.
Asked in her last televised interview before the election (to screen on Alt TV tonight) about Labour party president Mike Williams’ trip to Melbourne to look through court documents including evidence from Mr Key, Miss Clark told host Oliver Driver that as a public figure, both her husband’s and her lives had been “raked over.”
“In June this year when the health research council grants grants were announced my husband got a grant,” Miss Clark said, “because he’s a researcher at a university, goes back 40 years.”
“When those grants were announced National put in an Official Information Act request demanding to see all the reviewers’ reports, really trying to get at some kind of smear that my husband got grants not because of his academic reputation but because of me.”
Miss Clark’s husband, Peter Davis, is a well known academic. He is professor of sociology of health and well-being at the University of Auckland, and heads the Social Statistics Research Group.
National has said Labour is running a smear campaign on leader John Key. And while its campaign has been largely targeted at Mr Key and his integrity, background searches on politicians are the bread and butter of the large parties’ Parliamentary research unit.
“I do say, that in public life we have to be prepared to have people rake over our backgrounds,” Miss Clark said. “They’ll even get into our spouses background.”
“I haven’t put this to the media before. But the thought that Mr Key thinks he’s going to sit there and noone is ever going to do any research on him is ridiculous. The rest of us have had our lives raked over.”
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