contact with Labour cabinet ministers, and how he’d “claimed to be older than he was”. Jevan certainly looked older than 14, but he’s adamant the key people at Labour did know his real age and that’s one of the reasons he became a bit of a token good-keen-Labouryouth attending ministerial functions. In his initial interview he talked extensively of having free rein inside the Beehive. JEVAN: I was pretty much able to do what I wanted there at Parliament. Tim probably became a little bit of a lesser part of the picture, you know, I was from Christchurch and I hadn’t really met any of the ministers apart from at annual conference, and apart from Lianne Dalziel and Ruth Dyson, but when I started going out with John Tamihere and being invited to the Speaker’s Flat with Jonathan Hunt, Tim became more insignificant in the role he played. It was always known that I was there initially under the care of Tim’s office but some days I’d walk into Steve Maharey’s office and he’d take me out to a conference, or other days I’d walk in and have lunch with Michael Cullen. We used to have this big saga where the security guards in parliament would continuously pull me up because I’d be walking around with my video camera and I’d have all these other young people following me around, and they’d drag me over to the security spot. Jonathan Hunt would then come out and say ‘How dare you? He’s allowed to do what he wants here’. Apparently all I needed was the Speaker’s [Jonathan Hunt’s] permission and I had free range. INVESTIGATE: What was it that you believe made Labour sit up and take notice of you? JEVAN: Labour can look at it and say – I’m older now so I can look back now and also say what I think – but Labour would look at it and say ‘Jevan is young, he’s enthusiastic...’ but the reality is, cutting all that crap out, I’m good looking. It wouldn’t matter if I knew s*** or not, I still would have ended up being able to do what I did regardless. I can imagine you’d know how hard it was to go into a political party and pull out all the good looking young ones – it wouldn’t happen! So I think that was a bit of a bonus. I really was ‘show and tell’. I see that now. If I’d had glasses and freckles all over my face it wouldn’t have happened. I quite adamantly say it wouldn’t have happened. There’s been certain Labour MPs I’ve spoken to who have blatantly said to me that is why. I feel like I was used, to be quite honest. I didn’t go in there for the fact that I’d 30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM May 2010
get to ride around in Crown cars to KFC, I went in there with the attitude, ‘this is cool, I like the political buzz’. Remember, I was young and I hadn’t experienced the other parties, the other views that people shared. Because I was so young I was hustled into ‘this is the way we do it, it’s the right way, and anyone else who says otherwise, that’s the wrong way’. INVESTIGATE: In terms of Annette King and Phil Goff, did you have many dealings with them? JEVAN: Dinner a couple of times at group functions where I was sitting next to Annette. As for Phil Goff I probably had more to do with his daughter, who worked for a Government agency when Labour was in. Her name is Samantha. She was just stunning, she was beautiful when I met her, she was really hot. And I was like, ‘Piss off, you’re not his daughter?’ And she was, so we used to go out and have dinner and lunch quite a bit. Phil was a, I think he was a bit of a nobody then. INVESTIGATE: Did you ever run into Heather Simpson? JEVAN: I don’t recall meeting her. All I recall about her was when I went back to Tim’s office someone in the office turned around and said, ‘Did you run into the bulldog?’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’, and he said ‘Oh, so you didn’t meet Heather then because you would have known if you did’. I said ‘no’, and Tim turned around and said, ‘No, her lover hides behind closed doors’. INVESTIGATE: Who were they referring to? JEVAN: To Heather and Helen. INVESTIGATE: Was it common knowledge or just ‘supposed’? JEVAN: To Tim I’d say it was common knowledge, and when Tim said it he sounded pretty adamant that he was correct. Like when Tim said it he made a statement, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t a joke or questioning. When other people said it it was all just assumption and speculation. Also, Tim made remarks about Helen and Judith. The only reason I knew Tim wasn’t lying is because I didn’t even know Judith very well when he first mentioned her. In fact, I didn’t know who she was, all I knew was that she was a minister in Auckland. INVESTIGATE: What did Tim say? JEVAN: He would have only said it three times at the most during the whole time. After the time when he mentioned Heather he said, ‘I wonder how Judith’s going to feel about that’. Who was Tim talking to –
because Tim wasn’t talking to me, I was listening in. I think he was talking to Kimberley Woods who was his office manager. The other time was in Wellington and it was just me, Tony Milne and him, and we were at Tony’s house – because Tony moved to Wellington to work in Tim’s parliament office. And the time after that was in Tim’s office again. INVESTIGATE: What was the context at the time with Tony? JEVAN: They were having drinks and joking, candidly, together. INVESTIGATE: What sort of things were Labour paying for in regard to you? JEVAN: It was more trips and hotels. They put me up in a couple of hotels on certain occasions. The one in Wellington, and the other in Christchurch. The occasion in Wellington was that Tim didn’t want to get in trouble, he’d suggested I get out of school and the school was after me, and he thought it not a great idea I stay at his place – it wasn’t a good look – and it’s not a good idea I stay at Tony’s place because Tony works for him, so yeah, let’s keep him as far away as possible until he turns up to conference tomorrow. INVESTIGATE: So did you normally stay at Tim’s? JEVAN: It was decided it was too risky and Ramon was there as well. Ramon never liked me. INVESTIGATE: So where were you staying most of the time? JEVAN: Tony Milne’s, in Roxburgh Street if I recall, by the Embassy (cinema) because at the time the dragon was up and Tim used to always take us to the Phoenician kebab shop. I was 14 and 15 at this time. INVESTIGATE: So did Tim put it on his credit card, do you recall how it was paid? JEVAN: I had no money, it was just paid. I presume it was Tim, I think Tim had a ‘Labour fund’ for his office and it probably would have been that, the Labour fund. Lynne Lulham, when all the crap went down afterwards, because I think she ended up working for Winston Peters, but she told me, ‘we always told Tim he was going to get in trouble’. ••• For his part, Tim Barnett adamantly denies paying for hotels or airfares for Goulter. Barnett believes Goulter had enough loot from his McDonalds job to fund the trips, but Goulter’s eyebrows raise at this: “McDonalds? How was I going to get rich on one shift a week?”