PM John Key says Craig's comments on deal with National contradictory; National will wait until closer to election before announcing small party deals

Prime Minister John Key has left Conservative Leader Colin Craig hanging on whether National will do a deal to 'gift' Craig the East Coast Bays electorate in the hope of bringing in other Conservative MPs on his coat-tails.

Key told a post-cabinet news conference Craig appeared to have conflicting views on whether or not to do a 'cup of tea' deal over the electorate.

He said Craig shouldn't 'bet the farm' on a deal with National.

Key said National would wait until closer to the election before making its preferences known on which minor parties it would work with and in which which electorates to maximise the number of support partners for National.

He said National could in theory wait until September 19 before announcing its preferred partners, but was more likely to say some time after the election campaign began. Parliament rises for the election on July 31.

Craig announced on Sunday he would stand in Foreign Minister Murray McCully's seat of East Coast Bays. Polls put support for Craig's Party at anything from 2% to 4%, suggesting Craig could drag in two or three MPs on his coat-tails under the provisions of MMP which allow a small party with an electorate MP to 'top up' their number of MPs to match their party vote.

McCully has said he plans to campaign in the campaign ahead of the September 20 election, but has said National's final decision will be a strategic one. McCully will be overseas campaigning for New Zealand's bid for a seat on the United Nationsl Security Council for some of the election campaign.

Key has already attended a campaign function for ACT's Epsom electorate candidate David Seymour, which has been interpreted as National being likely to back ACT for the seat. United Future's Peter Dunne is also expected to be given National's implicit support for the Wellington electorate of Ohariu.

Key said he had not had any discussions with Craig.

A Stuff Ipsos poll released on Monday showed 81.6% of voters don't support the use of the 'coat-tailing' rules, while 13.8% favoured the use of the tactic under MMP.

Labour called for National to "come clean" on its coat-tailing deals and rule out such deals. It has promised to remove the coat-tailing rule in its first 100 days of Government.

Donghua Liu

Meanwhile, Key said he had known about a statement from Donghua Liu for a few weeks. The statement from Liu that he donated NZ$100,000 to Labour for a bottle of wine in June 2007 was published in the New Zealand Herald on Saturday. Labour said it had only seen the statement the previous day and that the Government was orchestrating a smear campaign.

Key would not disclose how he had found about the statement from Liu before Labour.

But he said Labour leader David Cunliffe had shown a "fair degree of hypocrisy."

"Essentially he was saying was that when National engages with a Chinese donor it was cash for access, but actually when they do it it wasn't. In the end it's for them to resolve who is right and wrong," Key said, agreeing that Liu should provide further evidence of the donation.

Labour list

Elsewhere, Labour released its list of 64 list candidates for the September 20 election, including 34 women and 30 men as Labour pushes toward a policy of 45% women MPs after the election.

Surprisingly, sitting electorate MPs Ruth Dyson, Kris Faafoi, Clare Curran, Trevor Mallard and Rino Tirikatene chose to opt out of the list.

This allowed 'new blood' such as Women's Affairs policy analyst Priyanca Radhakrishnan (23), second hand book store owner Rachel Jones (25), TV presenter Tamati Coffey (30), Tertiary Education policy adviser Jenny Salesa (31), doctor Liz Craig (32) and Massey University lecturer Deborah Russell (33) to be relatively high on the list.

(Updated with more details, background on Donghua Liu, Labour list)