Conniving and conspiring or confused and confounded

Someone replied to this on Bryan Gould's blog suggesting that he needed to distill the argument down to something short and "matey" in tone so that voters could understand it.

Here's my effort; it's not short nor especially matey but might help untangle the web a bit.

The SIS had a confidential record of a briefing they'd provided Phil Goff, then Leader of the Opposition.

Various media asked for information from the SIS under the OIA but ALL requests were denied except for that of an unaccredited rightwing blogger – Cameron Slater – whose request was granted much faster than usual.

It was widely known that Slater's a mate of leading National MPs and was close to the PM and his office.

Slater used the information, which ONLY HE HAD, to attack Phil Goff in the lead up to an election.


We know about the background to this because Slater talked and boasted about it to his various mates – one of whom worked in the PM's office – and after he'd taken his usual obnoxious behaviour into the realms of the truly repugnant, someone hacked his computer and gave the information to Nicky Hager.

All very embarrassing to Key and his government and looking suspiciously like a set up to make Phil Goff look bad just before the election.

Key claims he wasn't told about the SIS release of information until much later despite 3 pieces of clear evidence that he had been told – evidence from the SIS, the Ombudsman and his own mouth.

Key then claims that when the SIS said they'd briefed HIM – as they are legally and ethically obliged to do – they actually meant they'd spoken to someone (as yet unidentified) in his OFFICE.

So, we're supposed to believe that this anonymous person – presumably senior enough to be briefed by the Director of the SIS – failed to tell the PM that the SIS had decided to release information EXCLUSIVELY to a notoriously partisan right-wing blogger with close connections to the National Party – when that release was bound to cause embarrassment to the Leader of the Opposition and piss off the accredited media whose OIA requests had been denied.

The parties involved of course never anticipated that the Boastful Blogger's computer would be hacked and the whole sordid story would end up with Nicky Hager who would write a book and publish it right before an election. Such sweet irony.

My lay-person's view on the matter:

•        It is, or bloody-well should be, unthinkable that the country's security service would take the decision to give a privileged response to an OIA request from a POLITICALLY PARTISAN attack blog after having denied similar requests from accredited news media.

•        It is, or bloody-well should be, unthinkable that the SIS would fail to brief their minister – who is the PRIME MINISTER  – about a release of information involving the Leader of the Opposition to any news media, let alone to a POLITICALLY PARTISAN attack blog.

•        It is, or bloody-well should be, unthinkable that a member of staff in the PM's office, who was SENIOR enough receive a confidential and highly sensitive SIS briefing, would fail to pass that on to the Prime Minister.

•        It is, or bloody-well should be, unthinkable that Key as the MINISTER IN CHARGE, can refuse to take responsibility for what happened on HIS WATCH and be backed up in that by sections of the media.

Key is EITHER up to his eyebrows in this and the excuses are just so much bafflegab to try to cover up his complicity in/approval of a "sting" devised by his dirty tricksters;


OR, he was oblivious to dirty tricks and machinations involving his office, the country's security service and a HIGHLY PARTISAN attack blog.

He simply can't have it both ways.

So which is it - conniving, conspiring Key or confused and confounded Key?

Rock Star or Rock Bottom

There was a story in the Press yesterday about 14 people sharing a small 3 bedroom house in Hornby after a family of 6 lost their rental and all their (uninsured) possessions in a fire and had to move in with the other two families already living in the house.

Their budget for a new rental, if they can find one, is a maximum of $440 a week. They are struggling to find anywhere because landlords in Christchurch have been allowed to price gouge and profiteer – i.e., do what uncontrolled capitalist markets will always do when supply is low and demand is high.


The man who is believed to have shot dead two WINZ staff members and injured a third, is sick, socially isolated and homeless. Sue Bradford was lambasted for remarking on the political dimensions of the tragedy and using it to "score political points".  

This is a horrible tragedy and we must respect the feelings of the family and friends of the victims but like it or not, it is political.  The fact that people cannot afford private rentals, that there is a shortage of social housing, that WINZ staff are instructed not to be proactive and advise people of their full entitlements, that WINZ staff are the buffer zone between government's social and economic policy and the people who are worst affected by it – are all political issues. 

The Auckland property boom and the Christhchurch rebuild are making some people very, very rich; some people's affluence has increased significantly,  but a lot of people are worse off, especially the  hidden homeless. Some have slipped off the radar completely,  some people hanging on by their fingertips, and a lot are "staying afloat by using their credit cards as flotation aids". 

The number of households that are under stress is steadily rising because rents are going up faster than wages, and inflation is increasing.  

Radio New Zealand detailed the case of a 45-year-old homeless woman in Auckland:

"Sandra and her 2 teenage sons and her 20-year-old daughter are living at the Monte Cecilia housing trust’s emergency accommodation in Mangere. Sandra says the last few years have been devastating. Until a year ago she was working at a plastics factory taking home $890 a week and paying $500 of that in rent for a 3 bedroom house in Papatoetoe.

'With the escalating rents every 6 months it was going up $20 and $20 every time. If I fell behind on the water rates then I was looking at Baycorp, if I paid the water rates then we had no power. If I could pay the water rates the power we didn't eat for that week. I was working 72 hours a week 6 nights a week, 6 at night to 6 in the morning and it just became too much of a struggle and I collapsed.'

"Sandra got arthritis in her hands, she lost her job and then the house. When her job seekers' support benefit couldn't pay the rent, they moved into a friend's state house until the friend was warned her tenancy could be terminated because of having extra people living there.

'So my children and I packed up and for 3 weeks we lived out of a Honda, my car. We would go to Manurewa pools for showers, you know I'd try to make a game of out it 'come on let's go to the pools, we'll have a morning swim and a shower and then we'll go to school.'

“In desperation Sandra turned to the Maori Woman's Welfare League who sent her to Monte Cecilia.

'I'm so thankful and appreciative of being in Monte Ceciia today I really don't know where I would have been if I wasn't here. Um CYFS was certainly an option for me to look at for them to take my children  I couldn't offer them anything, not a home not seven meals a week not 3 meals a day ,7 meals a week, clean water somewhere you know, safe to sleep I couldn't offer them any of that.’"

Janette Walker, the Labour candidate for Kaikoura,  spoke passionately at a meeting last week about the working poor she has met in the south of the electorate – people displaced by the earthquakes, forced into low quality housing and living in garages, sheds, caravans – because rents have risen beyond their reach. 

These hidden homeless and the working poor are no longer the exception to the general rule of New Zealanders having a decent standard of living. 

The raucous claims by the right that poverty is caused by people making "bad choices" and spending their perfectly adequate wages or benefits on "fags and booze" are an ugly echo of all those voices throughout history which have lauded and defended the pathological hoarding of the rich, and claimed it as proof of their superiority in the natural order of things. 

Those same strident voices damn the poor as "feckless", as a "feral underclass" which does not have children but which "spawns" or 'breeds".  Commentators who call for them to be sterilised are applauded as having the courage to say what others are thinking.  Cartoonists who caricature and stereotype them are defended for simply telling the truth.  Bloggers who mock them get media awards.

The rightwing ideologues and their foot soldiers should throw off their shallow pretence to being socially advanced and call for bringing back the Workhouse – that at least would be honest.  

America, America ….

We hear a lot about American exceptionalism – what they lead the world in, what they think they lead the world in, and their unshakeable belief in their god-given right to do so.  

The USA has the highest per capita ownership of guns in the world at 88 per 100 people.  They are, quite simply, nuts about guns.  To the annoyance of the US gun lobby, parents have to wait until their kids reach the age of 7 before they can start teaching them how to shoot a gun – and they often learn by firing at a human shaped target. 

A  few days ago a 9-year-old American girl accidentally shot a gun instructor in the head when she lost control of the Uzi machine gun he was teaching her how to use.  
The Israeli made Uzi is a nasty little thing. Like most guns, it was developed with the sole purpose of killing or disabling human beings – most particularly in the context of close quarter 'combat' – aka crowd control.

The USA spends more money on "defence" than the next 13 countries combined, and it is the top supplier of weapons to other countries.

It imprisons more of its citizens than any other country; it has 5% of world's population but 25% of its prisoners – a grossly disproportionate number of whom are black and hispanic.

It leads the world in the consumption of opiate painkillers, consuming 80% of the world's production.

35% of its population is obese and health issues arising from that are of epidemic proportions.

It wastes 57% of its energy annually.

50% of its population breathe air that is polluted enough to cause health problems and polluted air causes an estimated 200,000 early deaths annually.

It used to have one of the safest water supplies in the world but its infrastructure is crumbling rapidly under the weight of a lack of investment and the strain of dealing with the 50,000 chemicals in use and increasing leaching and spills from the country’s massive toxic waste dumps. Attempts to privatise supplies have failed and led to the obscenity of poor people having their water supply cut off when they are unable to pay the bills.

In terms of GDP, the USA is the world's richest country, but it ranks:

3rd in the world in terms of inequality of wealth distribution;

16th in literacy;

27th in the world in median household income; 

27th in life expectancy;

61st in environmental protection.


It's 46th in infant mortality – behind Cuba and Korea, most of Europe, Australia, NZ and Canada. 

Annually, twice the number of US babies die on the first day after birth than in all 27 European Nations combined, although 1 million more babies are born in Europe. (Save the Children's State of the World's Mothers’ Report).  

A major contributor to the USA's infant mortality rate is the high number of premature births among poor women who experience low levels of primary health care and high levels of physiological and psychological stress during pregnancy.  This is a judgment on the American health-care system and on American society as a whole. 

So what is the relevance of all this to us here today just 18 days out from an election?

Make no mistake – this is the sort of society we are on track to become if the right continues to set the political, economic and social agenda.  We are already well on the way and  the rolling back of all the social advances that people of my generation took for granted, simply has to be halted and reversed.

The only way to do that is to vote in a progressive government – and then camp on its doorstep and force it to do those things it promised to do – and more. 




YahooNZ's news polls

Another YahooNZ poll': September 1st

"Do you think Dirty Politics is distracting from more important issues this election?" 

Results at the time of writing this:

Yes. absolutely
77%  (5622)  

No, it's important
22%  (1619)   

I'm not sure
1%  (66)    

The capitals on "Dirty Politics" clearly indicate that the question refers to Nicky Hager's bestselling book and, by logical extension, the issues the book exposes.

As is often the case with the YahooNZ poll, the question is badly worded and seems designed to elicit a particular outcome.  If we  believe this poll is representative of all New Zealanders, it suggests that almost 8 out of 10 Kiwis are so stupid and / or so amoral they consider what has proven to be the tip of an iceberg of corruption and dirty dealings, to be a distraction from "more important issues".

What could be more important than the proven existence of a conspiracy to push the dominant party in parliament further to the far-right by the smearing of political opponents inside the party? Or smearing and threatening people who stand in the way of the interests of big business?  Or top ranking government ministers fast tracking OIA requests from a far-right and utterly vicious blogger to use to smear the opposition? Or the compromising of key government institutions like the SFO, FMA and SIS?  And let's not forget the evidence of the complacency, compliance and outright connivance of parts of the mainstream media.

It is impossible to separate out "more important issues" given the corruption and dirty dealings  in, and close to, the National Party go right to the top of government and are completely entwined with wider socio-economic and political concerns – they influence and affect ALL other issues facing the NZ electorate.   

Getting back to the daily "news poll" on Yahoo!NZ.

I've wondered before whether this poll is rigged. It's clearly not reflective of public opinion so, the issue of the inept wording of the questions and possible answers aside, is it possible to vote multiple times to push the poll in a particular direction? (1)

I also think it's odd that the percentages on the poll never vary by more than 1 or 2 points (and mostly stay fixed) from the very outset of voting to the close. 

If the poll only allows one response per ISP address and therefore may be argued to be a fairly accurate reflection of the people who have YahooNZ as their home page or who use the site to garner news, it means the site attracts a disproportionate number of people who consistently come down on the very conservative side of almost all questions.   

There is a demonstrable lack of intellectual and professional rigour from the people who run the site so is it a case of dumb attracts dumbed-down?  This if course begs the question why I am still visiting it – it's a purely academic interest, I assure you.

I've said before – half-jokingly – that YahooNZ is aptly named in light of the Swiftian derivation of the word as the name of the race of ignorant, brutish creatures in Gulliver's Travels which gave rise to the use of "yahoo" to describe rude, noisy or violent people.  

Given Telecom persists in using YahooNZ as its email provider despite Yahoo's lamentable performance in that role, perhaps we need to be asking Telecom what it thinks of the content of YahooNZ's website. (2)  

I remember the role that the infamous Telecom Xtra message boards played in the lead up to the 2008 elections. They were one of the hunting grounds for the totally rightwing obnoxious loud-mouthed louts whose MO was personalised, vicious attacks on – well, just about everyone who wasn't one of them.  

If they had no hard facts to back up their nasty allegations, they simply made them up, secure in the belief that enough of their mud would stick – and that the calm, quiet voices of reason would not be heard above their howling and caterwauling.


(1) The "should Judith Collins go" question a few days ago showed 75%  (from memory) thinking she should go which is interesting given it preceded the leaked email that gave Key the Hager-free excuse to force her resignation; and was followed by a poll which asked if National's chances had improved since Collins resignation with a similar percentage saying "yes".)

(2)I know Telecom is now called Spark but it's such a stupid name I can't yet bring myself to use it.

Careering to the right ...

Post published on The Standard.

In May 201, Andrea Vance wrote an article about far-right National Party member and political strategist, Simon Lusk.  Four of Lusk’s clients in 2008 and three in 2011 were successful in being selected as National Party candidates. These included Nicky Wagner, Sam Lotu-liga, Chris Tremain, and Louise Upston who was appointed Chief Whip in the 2013 cabinet reshuffle that also saw Jamie-Lee Ross, another client of Lusk’s in the 2011 selection round, promoted to Third Whip.

 

Vance’s article is worth re-reading to see how much of what she reported as "political lore", "claims", "rumours" and Labour Party "fixation" has been confirmed by the disclosures in Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics.

 

Hager argues that since Key took over as party leader from Don Brash, National has been following a "two-track" strategy – fabricating a public image of Key as personable, populist and politically moderate, while a covert strategy relies heavily on unscrupulous and vicious attack politics delivered via social media – in particular, Cameron Slater’s Whaleoil blog.

 

These attacks have not just been on political opponents, they’ve also been used against moderates and the "old guard" in the National Party itself.

 

Hager’s book proves that Lusk and Slater worked together to further the selection of far-right candidates by attacking their opponents and non-compliant party officials. The exposure of this far-right agenda within the National Party is one of the book’s most important elements so it’s interesting that most of the mainstream media have ignored or downplayed it. (1)

 

The internal attacks were sometimes couched in Slater’s trademark belligerent and ungracious style, and sometimes in a more subtle way – such as damning by faint praise or by posing as the guardians of ethical standards in candidate selection.

 

When Stuart Smith, an ex-President of the NZ Winemakers' Association, successfully challenged the incumbent in the safe National seat of Kaikoura, a post on Whaleoil said:

 

“Challenges are good for the party, they should be encouraged as they drive membership and engagement.  This challenge should also pose as a warming (sic) to meddling board members that their days of whispering campaigns and threats are over. The next people to be rinsed will be them…especially the longer serving and out of touch ones.”

 

On November 10^th, 2013, in more typical Slater-style, it was claimed that Whaleoil would never take sides:

 

“…unless some stupid fundy tries to break all the rules and rig selection, or if some factional war lords wearing drag try to impose a candidate on an electorate.”

 

These sorts of statements are typical of the mendacity and hypocrisy of the cabal that has used Whaleoil to conduct dirty tricks campaigns within the National Party aimed at advancing candidates who were current or potential clients of Simon Lusk.  Those who Lusk and Slater advised and helped get selected had to be a good fit with Lusk’s stated plan to build a “loose alliance of committed fiscal conservatives” to take the National Party more to the far-right.

 

In Dirty Politics, Hager details a 2011 Whaleoil smear campaign against two candidates for the Rodney seat, Brent Robinson and Scott Simpson, and the electorate chair Cehill Pienaar.   Simpson eventually gave up and sought and won selection in Coromandel, and Pienaar resigned. The Rodney selection was won by Mark Mitchell, who was one of Lusk’s clients. (Somewhat bizarrely, in light of his attacks on him, Slater now refers to Simpson as, ‘my best friend in caucus’.)

 

On March 21^st, 2014, in a post headed "Skullduggery in Hunua Selection”, Whaleoil was at its hypocritical and mendacious worst:

 

“Long time readers will know this blog does not support any candidate for selection in National seats, believing in fair play and ethics in selections at all times. In 2011 WOBH outed the skullduggery in Rodney where Brent Robinson and Cehill Pienaar tried to jack up a selection by not following the rules or the unwritten selection etiquette of the party. ….The electorate chair was forced to resign the day after the selection, and deservedly so as there is no place for dodgy behaviour from impartial office-holders in the National Party.”

 

It goes on to say that, “certain electorate chairs haven’t learned that they need to remain impartial” and accuses the Hunua chair, Ian McDougall, of committing the same "skullduggery" as Pienaar had in Rodney – trying to influence branches over who to select to replace Paul Hutchinson who had resigned.

 

Whaleoil huffed sententiously :

 

“If this is true is (sic) an absolute disgrace and McDougall should be forced to resign immediately. There is no place in the National Party for officials elected in the expectation that they will be impartial to take partisan positions.…..The Party hierarchy needs to investigate the skullduggery in Hunua immediately. “

 

The gall of this is breathtaking if you know that Slater and Lusk had smeared candidates and officials in Rodney in 2011 to ensure the selection of Lusk’s client, Mark Mitchell. Lusk and Slater set up camp on the moral high ground and claimed to be acting as impartial guardians of National Party ethics and procedures whilst taking pot shots at yet another electorate chair who got in the way of their preferred candidate.

 

In November, Slater claimed MacDougall had tried to “rinse” the outgoing MP Paul Hutchinson in the past. In March Slater said that Paul Hutchinson was an “old duffer” who “was going to get hammered by a well-organised selection challenge.”

 

Slater was not referring to a challenge from Kael Roberts who he’d alleged McDougall was supporting, but to the eventual winner, Andrew Bayly. Even if Andrew Bayly has no connection to Lusk or Slater, their attacks on his opponent via a smear campaign against the electorate chair means suspicion hangs over him.

 

In truth, anyone who has been selected for a safe National seat over the past three elections who paid for Lusk’s services, attended Lusk’s candidates’ colleges, or whose opponents were attacked on Whaleoil is tainted by association. 

 

Lusk was quoted by Vance as saying that Chris Tremain would not beat Labour’s Stuart Nash (who Lusk described as “an exceptionally gifted politician”) and this assertion was repeated on Whaleoil in March this year. Tremain duly resigned his seat.

 

Kate Wilkinson, who took the fall for the Pike River disaster, resigned her Waimakirriri seat. Slater claims she “got the arse at the same time as Heatly, mainly for being far too cosy with the unions.” She has been replaced by Matt Doocey, one of the Carter family.

 

Phil Heatley, who was “given the arse by John Key from cabinet …couldn’t see much point in hanging around” had taken Whangarei from marginal seat status to a 12000+ majority. He resigned and has been replaced by Shane Reti.

 

One who did not take the hint was Colin King, and in November 2013 Whaleoil was at it again with the headline “Skullduggery in Kaikoura”.

 

The post contained covert threats about what would happen if there was any attempt by “old buggers” to influence the contest. It reminded people (who supported King) that Whaleoil has “eyes and ears everywhere”, that he knows “who they speak to, what they say and who they saying to to” (sic). He ends by reminding people how easily Whaleoil could use its voice against them.

 

The seat was won by Stuart Smith, who has been a National Party member for just two years. The outcome was announced at the meeting but no details were given of the votes cast for each candidate and the voting papers were destroyed immediately.

 

A commenter on Whaleoil’s Soapbox on June 21st confirmed what I’ve heard that a lot of grass roots National supporters in Kaikoura are angry about King’s deselection and are worried about the strong challenge from the Labour candidate. And of course there’s the off-shore oil drilling issue in Kaikoura itself.

 

There was widespread speculation that prior to this election, many National Party MPs in safe seats had been told that it was time to step down. There are rumours of large cash payouts being made to sweeten the deal for some of them. Whatever the reasons and however it was managed, there has been a major clearing out of MPs – something that Slater has been crowing about and has taken delight in contrasting National’s rejuvenation’ with the retrenchment of Labour’s old guard in safe electorate seats.

 

Andrea Vance quoted Lusk’s prediction that the holders of several safe seats will retire including “John Key, Murray McCully, Gerry Brownlee and Bill English” and says that Lusk “confirms he is acting for potential successors.” Lusk claimed in an email to Slater that he has  “at least half a dozen people in their twenties who will be in caucus one day."

 

Predicting that politicians will retire is hardly proof of great political insight, but it’s interesting that one of the senior MPs who Lusk named, resigned his seat to go onto the Party List. Bill English was succeeded in Clutha-Southland by Todd Barclay who, by the age of 23, had got a degree, worked as a lobbyist for a tobacco company and as an intern for Hekia Parata and Gerry Brownlee, and gained sufficient political knowledge and nous to justify his selection for a National citadel formerly occupied by one of the Party’s most senior and respected people.

 

That’s truly incredible – in the "impossible to believe" sense of the word.

 

Another young person with political ambitions who Lusk described as a "client", is Sam Johnson, who was catapulted into celebrity by being the public face of the Student Volunteer Army in the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes.

 

Johnson, who was named Young New Zealander of the Year in 2012, is the sort of young, politically ambitious National Party member that Lusk wants to get on board – advancing the far-Right agenda by creating long term relationships based on shared ideology and – importantly – indebtedness.

 

People who get places by being associated with unscrupulous ideologues who use overt and covert dirty tricks, will always be hostages to fortune. That fact alone makes this a serious threat to democracy and should concern all of us – the more so because the influence of far-right political strategists like Lusk is not the full picture. There’s also the influence of big business in who gets into safe seats in electorates and into high places on the party list.

 

Hager points to the use of Slater’s blog by commercial interests, like tobacco industry lobbyist Carrick Graham who has deep family roots in the National Party.  In exchange for significant sums of money, Slater placed articles under his name on Whaleoil that were written by Graham. Had these openly promoted smoking that would be bad enough but, like the candidate selection scenario, the Whaleoil articles smeared the reputations of anyone opposed to Big Tobacco.

 

There are at least two National Party candidates who were lobbyists for tobacco companies, Todd Barclay and Hutt South candidate, Chris Bishop, who, at 49 on the list, would be expected to make it into Parliament unless National’s vote collapses. Then there’s the influence of the dairy, alcohol and oil industries whose interests are also best served by a government that minimises controls over how big business operates.

 

The truth the New Zealand electorate needs to face is that the far-right smear campaigns have not just been against the left but have been waged against National’s "wets’"– those who Slater and Co disparage as "old buggers", "old duffers", "old tuskers", "numpties", the "sitting scum", the MPs with a "difficult missus" – and worse.

 

We all know how this would have been spun by the right and their supporters in the media had anything like this grubby shoe been on the other foot.  The evidence of that is in the way the rightwing media has spun innocuous and tangential issues into major controversies to whip up political and moral indignation against the left in this and the previous two elections.

 

There is NO leftwing equivalent of Whaleoil or of Lusk whose objective is to take the National Party permanently to the far-right. The left and moderates in the National Party need to realise that the polarisation that started with the hi-jacking of the Labour Party by neo-liberals in the 1980s is being accelerated and intensified by a National Party that has been hijacked by the same type of soulless, money-grubbing bastards. It’s beyond time we sent them ALL packing.

 

 

 

1) A conspiracy theorist could be forgiven for thinking that’s because drawing attention to those sitting MPs and candidates who are associated with Lusk could have far more impact on the outcome of the election than Judith Collins’ leaking of information to Slater and fast tracking OIA requests, and the question of who is in charge of the SIS.