Winston can read?

Everyone's expressing surprise that Winston Peters never read the report sent to him by the Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG) on Air New Zealand's chartered flights carrying Australian troops.

But everyone knows that Winston doesn't read reports. All he can read is speeches, and everyone knows who was writing the speeches and the Budgets when Winston was sitting in the Treasurer's office with his name on the door. What Winston is missing in his current sinecure is someone like Bill Birch who is willing to help keep his bone idleness and general incompetence from public view. Clearly, Phil Goff, who is effectively the Foreign Minister de facto, is less willing than Birch was to cover for him.