Reality cheque

I still cannot believe that the public care greatly one
way or another about whether or not Winston
Peters knew about cheque A or payment B to his party.
While not unimportant, and certainly warranting
investigation and clarification, these matters are at
least two removes from the direct concerns of voters,
and will be perceived by many as something to be
sorted out in-House, as it were. Rather than being
seen as some critical moral issue I think the so-called
“party donations saga” is more likely to figure in most
people's minds as something that the media and
Peters’s political opponents are fixating on—for want
of any other point of leverage—in order to bring him
down. I don’t believe it will severely impact on public
perceptions of Peters, and I see no scenario in which
the Prime Minister will feel obliged to call for his
resignation. He and his party remain very much in the
running for seats in the next Parliament, and John
Key may live to regret his decision to reject NZ First as
a potential coalition partner, when he needs all the
partners he can get.