Posts by Michael Meyers
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to Euan Mason,
You are right of course, but it will be difficult for Key to take this path. He apparently has a delicate within-party struggle on his hands, and he favours the more extreme right, where Collins is Queen diva.
There are at least two problems for the National Party with sacking Judith Collins right now.
It's admitting that there is truth to the "made-up stuff" in this "smear campaign" from a known "left-wing conspiracy theorist". And what if it doesn't stop the rot? What do they do when the leaks keep coming and Key himself is implicated. He would have to go too.
They can't sack JC over this. Not with five weeks until the election. They just need to hang on until after the election and hope it dies down enough.
If, as has been suggested, Judith Collins does have dirt on John Key, I don't think that would stop him sacking her now. If she were to leak damaging information about John Key a month before an election and were responsible for destroying National's election chances, she'd be destroying her own reputation as well as her party's. Career suicide.
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Looks like a bit of change in approach by National today.
John Key looked a lot more composed this morning on Firstline with a much more coherent sounding story (although still the same flimsy talking points as ever). Bill English is distancing himself (although I'm not sure he can really take John Key onto that high horse with him). Judith Collins is being labelled as "unwise".
They seem to be making progress at weaselling out of this and claiming that everyone is doing this, especially all those "shock jock left-wingers".
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to nzlemming,
I was initially there in calling out Craig as promoting something that I didn't think was what Laila Harre had said. I had heard her in person at the Internet Mana roadshow rather than on Morning Report (which I have now listened to).
I've got a couple of points. Firstly, I still think after listening to the Morning Report interview that Harre wasn't calling in to question the integrity of the Electoral Commission. However, Harre shouldn't get a free pass on this either. Is there any evidence that Collins is running down the budget of the EC? Is she otherwise hindering their operation? I've seen no evidence of this. So, you can say that Harre is being misrepresented, but what of her position. Is she also misrepresenting reality.
Also, I have to disagree about Harre failing to get a word in. Harre was very evasive about any relationship that Kim Dotcom has to the Nicky Hager emails. She seemed wholly unprepared for a question that should've been expected. This was not preventing her getting a word in but rather asking pertinent questions.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
it might be a good idea if Laila Harre took a deep breath before passive-aggressively impugning the integrity and political independence of electoral agencies.
For my sins, I was at the Internet Mana roadshow yesterday where Laila Harre was talking about the electoral commission and Judith Collins. Harre's point was that the electoral commission isn't getting enough money to properly do its job and get people voting. As a result voter turnout has been declining.
I have no idea if they have enough money to do their job or not but Harre was not questioning the integrity and independence of the agencies, just the independence of their budgets. This is a big difference.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Reading the responses to my post, I do wonder if I didn't write my original post with sufficient care.
I'm certainly not trying to dismiss the seriousness of the allegations. I'm more despairing that Key and Collins are covered in teflon. Nothing sticks to them no matter how serious, unless it's ironclad.
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Seriously, why not just go read the book? It’s quite short! Hager’s pretty good at telling a story. It’s quite an easy read.
You know, I probably will. I just haven't read it yet. I know it's short. And a good read.
Are you a troll?
No. Just suspecting that John Key and Judith Collins will shrug this off (again) and be washed clean following an election win. This book is big news bit it's not a panacea. The next few weeks will be interesting though.
There used to be these people back in the 90s who the most pressing issue in their lives seemed to be that they couldn’t get takeaway in containers like they saw on Seinfeld. Horribly, they appear to have procreated. Ain’t a terminally self-absorbed fanboy a wonderful thing,
What? I don't even understand what that means?
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So, after four days where are we at? I'm feeling like nothing has changed. We've got the National Party accessing part of the Labour website that was openly accessible. We've got the government ministers having a cozy relationship with a dislikable blogger. And we've got OIA requests getting favourable treatment. To me this amounts to nothing at the end of the day.
The web site access (at least according to the Whale Oil video) was openly available. A little obscure but it was open. Surely it's not unauthorised hacking when you can just type the address into a web browser! I've just recently closed that loophole on a website I have been setting up.
The Labour party might not like it but it was open. I'd be surprised if this would stand up in court and it was arguably in the public interest too (as Whale Oil said "can't secure a web site, not fit for government"). If this does stand up in court as "unauthorised access", I'd be worried about what else might be hacking.
The real message I'm getting here is: hacking Whale Oil's email: good, accessing obscure parts of Labour web site: bad. It's just not a consistent or helpful message.
The government giving favourable treatment to a favourable blogger is also nothing new. Friends talk to friends and information gets passed along. Right or Left. It's what happens. Maybe the scale of it is a little worse here but is there anything illegal going on here? Is this anything that other parties haven't done?
The more dodgy one here is the OIA requests. It looks like the government departments are complicit according to this Ruminator article: http://ruminator.co.nz/the-official-information-act-cam-and-me/ If there are departments forcing OIA requests through in half an hour then that's a systemic problem rather than a National Party problem. We've got no evidence Labour weren't doing that same thing.
Maybe it's worth changing the law so that OIA requests will take at least a day and all OIA requests and responses will be immediately published on the department web site. This would help to resolve some of these issues.
Admittedly I haven't read the book and there are probably things that I'm missing here. My initial excitement has died down a little and I'm coming back to reality.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Russell Brown,
Only just catching up with this but I gather Key is accusing Hager of faking emails. Good grief.
He's not quite saying that. His line is pretty consistent from what I've seen. In answering questions about the emails being faked, he's saying that Hager is "a left-wing conspiracy theorist" without a good track record. He's refuting some of the allegations in a limited way (" I'm not involved", "Mr Ede isn't [currently] involved in...", etc).
He's making it appear that nothing is true by his limited denials and letting you draw your own conclusion that the emails must therefore be faked.
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Looks like 3 News has got a full 20 minutes video of an interview with Key about the book. "Nothing to see here"...
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to SteveH,
No idea if the Judith Collins prisoner thing is true but it would be ironic considering her comments about not getting involved in operational matters for Katie Bradford.
On a different note, I'm a little surprised by how few actual denials I'm seeing today. Even Mr Slater's denials aren't really denying much of anything.