The Donghua Liu saga has just got even more dangerous for the John "drop the insinuation then duck" Key as The Herald is forced to publish an altered statement from Mr Liu that changes much of his original statement.
It now appears that Mr Liu is claiming to have donated $2000.00 to the Hawkes Bay Rowing Club Branch of the NZ Labour Party and $60,000+ to The Yangzte Concrete Factory Branch of the NZ Labour Party to give the "honorable members a luxury cruise as a reward for their hard work making concrete for honorable building projects."
The claim that he purchased a bottle or bottles of wine at a Labour Party Auction on June 3 2007 has also been shot down in flames as searchers have now identified the auction being one run by The Midland's Hawkes Bay Wine Charity at which no wine was sold at the inflated price Mr Liu claims to have bid. The Herald's new story now has Rick Barker receiving the bottle of wine from Mrs Liu rather than, as was originally alleged "giving it to her." The Herald is certainly back tracking all over the place on this story.
I look forward to the front Page apology to David Cunliffe, the NZ Labour Party and the long suffering NZ public who have had to put up with irresponsible reporting from the paper for far too long.
Left, Rick Barker receiving a bottle of wine from Donghua Liu's (top right) partner Juan Zhang. Photo / Supplied, NZ Herald
The questions need to be asked loudly, clearly and many, many times to John "Scuttle and Run" Key, Cameron Slater, Jami-Lee Ross and others close to Maurice Williamson and Donghua Liu "Who wrote the original statement for Mr Liu and who fed it to Key and Jared Savage?" and "Did Mr Liu really understand what he was signing because, as Mr Williamson claims Mr Liu speaks and reads minimal English?"
POST SCRIPT: 1) The Fairfax stable is now asking questions about the Herald's reporting and the Key involvement in the Donghua Liu situation. About time the blow torch was applied to the links between The Herald and the Ninth Floor of the Beehive.
2) Radio New Zealand Morning Report Political journalist declares that the Liu story doesn't stack up (27.6.14).
3) NZ Herald attempts to back off from its inept reporting by lampooning itself in an editorial claiming to be a crusading, reputable news-sheet and reducing the alleged "donations" from Liu to $38,000 in a series of anonymous donations over several years to different un-named MPs.
The Keynglish 2nd budget was released yesterday. Hints at reviving Nosferatu Douglas' privatisation agenda and giving Hide free rein to sell off Auckland's water supply to the NACT rorters incorporated along with a forecast rise in debt, inflation and indirect tax along with fees. These two cartoons are a great demonstration of the management processes of the Key led NACT government.
I was browsing through a book of Tom Scott cartoons - "In a jugular vein" recently and came across these cartoons commenting on the National government social and economic policies. Apart from changing the facial features of the social welfare minister (the build is the same) there appears to be little difference between Shipley and Bennett.
Then if we look at the social policies of the Engkeylish government we see echoes of the following.
Then the noises from the Treasury and the Brash consulting group provide reminiscences of this failed economic policy.
Paula Bennett with John Key and their apologist Hooton revealed the depths of stasi like behaviour that those with long memories associated with the bullying dictatorship of East Germany where the private records of the citizens were routinely used to prevent any criticism of the activities of the government. In earlier posts I remarked on this bullying tendency as being a hallmark of the NACT politicians signaled during the election campaign. Paula Bennett's use of confidential data held by a government department on a citizen and John Key's endorsement of that action is nothing more than the arrogant abuse of power one would expect of a petty tyrant whose inability to engage in rational and reasoned debate is only resolved by destroying the individuals who dare challenge their policies. Garroting Garrett's threatening public servants who attend Select Committees to question government policies along with Hide's roughshod attack on local communities with his super city legislation we have too many examples of dis-quietening anti-democratic behaviour by the NACT government. The complacency of the media with its willingness to mouth the PR line fed to it by the government is also not reassuring... in another country the headlines would have been a concerted call for the minister's head along with cartoons with John Key as Salome.
It is reassuring to hear that the traditional NACT policies are succeeding in their usual manner - unemployment is increasing at 1100 a week and the number of people on benefits has reached 302000 - the highest since 2005, and that Social Welfare Minister Paula Bennett's solution is to simply let everything, from welfare through to the Family Commission fiasco that is Christine Rankin, go west as she looks to her weather vane leader to vacillate towards another off the cuff unresearched scheme that will resonate with emptiness in the Herald's PR pages.
Commentary from the right wing and Granny Herald indicate that disillusionment with their favourite sons is beginning to set in.
First: Rodney's favourite: Mr. Garrott: (sorry...... Garrett)
A Government MP has been reprimanded for lewd conduct just weeks after the resignation of National's Richard Worth.
Act MP David Garrett was spoken to by party leader Rodney Hide after making sexual comments to a female member of the party's Parliamentary office.
Hide said last night he had cause to speak toGarrett after learning the fledgling MP had made "off-colour" remarks. He said he hoped the incident would not lead to the end of Garrett's career as a member of Parliament.
Garrett is one of the drivers behind Act's "Three Strikes" policy - and this incident makes for his own second strike. Garrett also came under fire when he compared homosexuality to paedophilia on TVNZ's Eye to Eye show, after he had been drinking.
The new allegations have earned the National-led government a warning that it risks becoming branded as a "government of sleaze". INDEED!!
Second: Key Apologist - Bill Ralston:
In dismissing the need for better political management he shows he is not really a politician. After almost three decades in the business Goff is truly a politician.
Goff understands that a government can be slowly undermined by all the "white noise".
He served as a minister in two governments in which that happened. Labour lost power last year, even though the economy was still strong and it was continuing to deliver the goods to its constituency. It lost because it was gradually overcome by the "white noise" and the public lost faith.
The Government needs to learn it might ignore the "distractions" but that doesn't mean they will go away and the consequences can be fatal.
Third: Matt McCarten: on the Melissa Lee fiasco:
The campaign was deserted by the leadership
Does Key get it that by-elections are national campaigns? Anyone can hold the job as leader when things go well. The test of a leader is when things are not going well. Key failed. He picked Lee against the wishes of the locals, he didn't get his experienced people taking ownership of the campaign and he just wasn't there. But the unforgivable act was Key's holiday on by-election weekend. The best he could do was send Lee a text. None of his senior ministers or even his president was there. Lee was left to face the massacre alone, like a stunned possum in a car's headlights.
If this is how National copes under stress in a campaign, I hope the recession doesn't get too difficult. This by-election shows us that our Prime Minister and his Cabinet can't be counted on when things get tough.
Fourth: Rodney Hide's puppet master - the Nosferatu of NZ politics- Roger Douglas:
"This only enforces the emerging trend we have seen between Mr Key and Mr English. Mr Key announces a stupid idea - be it a cycleway or forced investment in New Zealand - Mr English realises the idea is stupid, and distances himself from it.
"The Prime Minister then becomes hell-bent on scoring another symbolic victory over the Finance Minister - who backs down and Mr Key gets his way. But these battles are only resulting in pyrrhic victories - neither the cycleway nor forced investment will make New Zealand better long term.
"The trend is towards an obsession with massaging Mr Key's political image, at the expense of New Zealand's long term prospects.
Fifth: Brian Rudman: On the decision to waste the Rate Payers' money on a grandiose booze barn or John Key's "Party Central"
Brian Rudman: Government bullies pushing city a wharf too far
Sixth:ChristineRankin's decision to front the support whacking your kids campaign despite the assurance from John Key that she would not be involved in actively campaigning on the issue:
Families Commissioner Christine Rankin's decision to be a face of the "vote no" campaign for the smacking referendum is "quite incredible", Green MP Sue Bradford says.
Ms Bradford was the architect of a 2007 law change which removed the defence of reasonable force in child abuse cases. Ms Rankin vehemently opposed the law change and was spokeswoman of For The Sake Of Our Children Trust.
Tomorrow Ms Rankin will front at the launch of a campaign urging voters to vote no to the question "should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand"?
That is despite Prime Minister John Key last week saying he would not expect Ms Rankin to continue to campaign against the law change, and the Families Commission saying it supported the new law.
One can only echo the favourite word of the National Party Bloggers: "INDEED!!"
The Guardian commentary is spot on and should be required reading for all New Zealanders after their fool-hardy love affair with the neo-liberal economics of the NACT government of the naked money speculator turned pseudo-politician.
The National cabinet has been appointed in the manner befitting an autocrat. Key has appointed a group of courtiers who, in the manner of the Fairy Tale Emporer, will, on seeing his new clothes, inform him that they are a perfect fit even though all other observers can recognise the imperfections, the fakery and appeal to vanity that is the reality of those clothes. The new cabinet will soon find that their appeal, as acolytes, will soon fade both for Key and the real politic in the electorates as , very soon, the repeated blanishments of empty praise pall for both the appointer and the wider audience. In an earlier blog I pointed out that Key had been, folowing the advice of Crosby-Textor, dressing himself in clothing borrowed from greater men in preparation for the election campaign and that the imagery behind these borrowed vestments would be exploited for the duration of the campaign and the first symbolic 100 days of power. After this Key would initially keep wearing the clothes but, like the Anderson's emporer, slowly cast them aside until someone (Maurice Williamson perhaps?) cries ot that "There are no real clothes being worn" and the demands for Key and the party he represents dress in the manner to which they are accustomed. At present Key has surrounded himself with those, like him, who wear the election campaign image. Their tenure and security will remain until the demand from the Party's traditional constituency to return to their philosophic basics reveals his fundamental insincerity and philosophic shallowness. Cracks in te artifical gloss on this cabinet are already apparent for those, unlike the Herald reporters, look in depth at the blogs and research sources. Here, for instance is Paula Bennett, Minister for Social Welfare, on the National Party during her student days:
"Newly elected National Party MP of Waitakere has been found out about her past days as a National Party bagger. Using her pseudonym Paula Poo she lambasted the National Party for cutting Education and increasing student fees , these comments made when Paula was President of the Massey University Student Association;
"Fees suck and fee increases just piss me off. Damn the Nat's who bring cuts to our education system, make us pay for them out of student loans that will take many people decades to pay off. In my own case, I will probably still be paying off my student loan when my daughter gets to university age; her future looks promising!" When urging her fellow university students to make their vote count she said ... "don't vote for f**k wits." Reconciling these views of her favoured political party with her present reality will take a lot of doing ... unless, of course, she is locked into the groove of praising new clothes.
Another crack in Key's reality comes from Pansy Wong who informed the Principal of Howick College, after he had made a speech to the school prize giving ceremony calling for the policy to be abandoned, that the much trumpeted testing against "national" standards had been swept from the table even before the lunchtime bell had been rung despite her local colleague and cabinet minister (outside the room) Maurice Williamson telling the Eastern Courier that the policy still stood.
There has been a glimmer of analysis of the wisdom of Key's appointments appearing in the media, especially over the relationship with Rodney "Rheinfeld" Hide and his role as "Minister" of Local Government for it is in this area that the real agenda that lies beneath the "emporer's"new clothes will be revealed.
Once "Rheinfeld" Hide begins to cry "Master! Master! Help me!" to Nosferatu Douglas and John Key begins the return to the National Party's roots the electorate will see the dismantling of the image... watch out for slash & burn attacks on Kiwisaver, on welfare, the Cullen Fund and other areas of social expenditure with the excuse of " dire economic times" and the "international credit crisis" have forced the Government to back down on so many of the implied policies offered during the election campaign ... we will see how apposite Paula Bennett's earlier advice to the readers of her blog were.
In an earlier blog I argued that Key and Rodney (Rheinfeld) Hide would engage in trade offs that would give ACT the impression it had power in this national led government of self interested selfish parties but that son splits would occur and Rodney would do a Winston and throw the baubles of office out of the cot. It was, therefore,no surprise when the National Party advertising pamphlet, The Herald, published Brian Rudman's critique of the marriage of ACT & National and the flip-flops on climate change it required. Perhaps the baubles will be tossed earlier than the 18 months I argued would be the length of time this government would take before disintegration begins.
One cannot help but wonder at the political naivety of the National Party leader when he announces to the world that he would prefer to work with a Republican President rather than a Democrat as he believes that McCain's policies would indicate he would be a friend to NZ whereas Obama would not be such an assured "friend to New Zealand." John Key should realise that the US President is not Winston Peters or whoever else in NZ politics he doen't like. At this time in an election cycle and as a pretender to the premiership of NZ one would think that Key would exercise sound political judgment and refrain from making such a pronouncement especially as it has taken the Labour led Government till recently to persuade, cajole and negotiate with the American administration to recognise the reality of international politics that New Zealand has a very principled and clear position on international affairs that, while being different to those espoused by the USA, are recognised by other Nations and do not interfere with NZ's willingness to be constructively involved on the world stage. To announce that Key favours the Republican positions is to give credibility to the English position that" the world needs a US president who will pull the trigger." - that is who will take war were ever he thinks deserves one. Mind you, judging by the ACT pamphlets I've received it would appear that Mr. Key is merely echoing the paranoia of the canary one - Rodney Hide. No thanks Mr. Key - if one needed an excuse not to vote National you have just given us one.
The earlier post: Look Alikes appears to have had a ring of truth about it when one considers this story on the Herald's website today.
The Great Gambler appears to have thrown the flip flop dice once too often - this time they've fallen against the run of play.
Where was John Key when Allan Hawkins needed him?
National Party leader John Key faces accusations of misleading the public about his knowledge of one of New Zealand's most notorious white collar crimes, the New Zealand Herald website reported today.
An item posted on the newspaper's website said the allegations centred around the so-called H-Fee -- two payments totalling $A66.5 million to Equiticorp funnelled via sham foreign exchange transactions in 1988 -- and an interview Mr Key gave the Herald last year.
During the interview in August 2007, Mr Key confirmed he worked as a foreign exchange dealer at Elders Merchant finance, part of Elders IXL, which made the payments to the Allan Hawkins-controlled Equiticorp.
But he said he left Elders in 1987, before the transactions were processed.
"Three months before any of these deals got decided I left Elders...I was never involved in them," Mr Key said during the interview.
The Herald said it had checked court documents made public by the Labour Party which included the fact that Mr Key resigned from Elders in June 1988, six months after the first payment.
It said there was no evidence Mr Key was involved in handling the sham transactions.
The Herald said it had read the 13,000 page court file in Melbourne which contained a statement by Mr Key in which he said he resigned from Elders on June 24, 1988, and was immediately placed on leave because he was going to a rival company.
It said Labour was planning to drop the "bombshell" on the election campaign trail tomorrow.
Prime Minister Helen Clark said if the Herald had published the story then they obviously believed there were questions to answer.
Miss Clark said it was not a story that she was handling, but whether it was a bombshell depended on the answers to the questions raised by the story.
Asked if it was appropriate for Labour to be digging around in Mr Key's past, Miss Clark said the lives of political leaders were open books.
This cartoon says it all. Here is the first wedge of the workers' benefits to be axed under a Key lead government. Remember a gambler prefers to gamble with other peoples' money while ensuring the house retains its share!
A simple question: How does a party leader this answer these questions and maintain logic: "How will you fund the infra-structure building you plan to do with a reduced tax take from the large tax cuts you have promised?" Answer""By borrowing thus increasing the public debt." Question: "But aren't you borrowing to fund the deficit created by introducing huge tax cuts?" Answer: "No we'd be borrowing to build infra-structure." To any intelligent listener the logic of this series of answers is as somewhat tenuous and revealing of the speaker's fundamental lack of economic logic as the increased borrowing must logically follow from the reduced income created by the tax cutting programme that he espouses. If the Government has a decreased income flow because the tax take doesn't fund the planned spending then the borrowing is necessary to fund the tax-cuts. Then the real answer must be that given by the man John Key says he'd be happy to resign to after one term holding the reins of power - Bill English who declared in a taped interview at the National Party Conference "We'll sell State assets - i.e. KiwiBank." (Un-said by underlying the message: at least not until we've been wielding power for a term... and have convinced the public that asset stripping, like the cane was said to be, good for the state as the country's assets are best held by foreign companies.) After all selling the family silver will allow National to reduce state taxes and allow private enterprise to levy taxes in the shape of tolls and increased charges and prices.
This article from the Australian press provides further insights into the connections between John Key and the Crosby-Textor group. The insights given here add more to that revealed by Nicky Hager and the Sunday Star Times and provide further evidence of questionable political manipulation and the provision of borrowed clothing for the New Zealand National Party and John Key.
John Howard has been willing to use race to differentiate himself from his opponents. Mike Clancy investigates the men — and the strategies — that have allowed Howard to get away with it
Indigenous Australians, refugees, asylum seekers, Muslims minority groups and racial issues have been at the forefront for much of John Howard's political career, starting in his days as Opposition Leader when he was widely criticised for his anti-Asian statements.
In taking so many anti-minority positions, Howard's insight has been to appreciate the potential of people's fears and resentments.
In his long years in Opposition, Howard saw a range of special interest groups develop around Paul Keating. Howard could not relate to the ideals of the time; to multiculturalism, land rights, equal opportunity, and the Government's role in promoting these in his terms 'peripheral' issues. He came to loathe what he saw as this new 'politically correct' orthodoxy and believed that the average Australian was just as angry about these issues as he was. Howard understood the underlying fears held by some Australians fears of the 'Blacks' and the 'Yellow Peril,' fears of being overrun by hordes from the north.
Howard was the first Prime Minister since the 1967 referendum who was willing to use race to differentiate himself from his opponents. How was he able to do this and not be branded a 'racist?'
To answer this question, we need look at the record of one of his key election strategists, Mark Textor. Prior to commencing work with Howard in the 1996 election campaign, Textor had worked as a market researcher for the US Republicans and big business, such as the tobacco industry. He brought with him the wizardry that would enable Howard to reassure those with resentments and racial prejudices that their attitudes were okay, while avoiding the use of overtly racist language.
The ABC's Background Briefing became interested in Textor and his methods in 1999, observing that he was doing something quite different from other pollsters, who would sample the entire population. Textor's key tool was market research in marginal seats. While working as a market researcher for the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party (CLP), he opted to research only White swinging voters those he described as 'the undecided, uninformed, and indifferent' so that the CLP could do whatever it took to win their vote.
Textor used his research tools to penetrate the thinking of 'soft voters' and map their underlying resentments. In the Northern Territory case, for instance, he identified dormant fears that the Government might institute one rule for Blacks and another for Whites.
This was useful (even though there was little basis to the fear) because his campaign could imply that Labor might introduce such laws if elected. The vast data Textor collected about the worries and resentments of people in marginal seats was then rolled into his campaign strategy.
One such strategy, imported directly from the United States, was push-polling a telemarketing technique that uses telephone calls to canvass potential voters. It feeds them false and damaging 'information' about an opposing candidate under the pretence of taking a poll to see how this 'information' affects the voter's choices. The intent is to 'push' the voter away from the candidate you are attacking, and towards your candidate.
Background Briefing found that Textor was behind attempts to use push-polling in the 1994 Northern Territory election campaign. Typical questions asked in a so-called market research phone poll run to this pattern:
Would you change the way you vote if you knew that Mr xxx and his Party plan to close the seas to recreational fishing as part of Aboriginal land rights if they win on Saturday? Would you change the way you vote if you knew they plan to have two sets of laws: one for Aboriginals and one for non-Aboriginals?
Typically, hypotheticals used by push-pollsters are invented. After receiving a push-poll call, the targeted voter is much less likely to vote for a candidate they now believe intends to make extreme changes if elected or a candidate they now find personally offensive because of the innuendo in the polling message. Thousands of such calls can turn an election result.
Courtaction was brought against Textor and the Liberals' Andrew Robb for defamation in a 1995 push-polling campaign that targeted ACT Labor candidate, Sue Robinson. Their out-of-court settlement involved an apology and a large payment to her.
Textor and Robb then drew back from push-polling. But push-polling is just one of the prongs employed in a strategy known as wedge politics. Wedge politics seeks to highlight and intensify division within communities in order to help political Parties stay in power. It does this by building fears against the 'other' typically by attacking minorities.
The truly sinister nature of the programs run by Textor and his business partner Lynton Crosby becomes apparent from their exploits beyond our shores. In 2004, the two were advisors to the UK Conservative Party Leader Michael Howard. Commentators in the British press were onto their tactics early, noting that Crosby and Textor were advising (the other) Howard to use 'immigration, asylum seekers, gypsies, law and order and abortion to exploit fear and prejudice to win the battle for votes.'
The campaign was based on billboard pictures of refugees and gypsies captioned: 'Are you thinking what I am thinking?' It's hard to decide what is more vile: the sentiment or the cowardly refusal to own up to it.
But why do tactics that failed with Michael Howard and Don Brash work so well for John Howard? Is it because Australians are more vulnerable to such tactics? Or do Howard's own predispositions fit him perfectly to the role of gentlemanly racist?
Hager's conclusion is sobering:
The Crosby/Textor-style campaign tactics may be manipulative but, as John Howard's four wins in Australia demonstrate, they can work, by producing a short-term reaction from the so-called soft voters that can swing elections.
Whatever we think of the morality of the process, Textor, Crosby and Howard are masters of this demographic.
While Fraser, Hawke and Keating promoted multiculturalism, social cohesion and a 'fair go for all,' Textor has shown Howard how to create division and inflame the potential fears of the 'undecided, uninformed, and indifferent' without being branded a racist.
Howard refuses to censure the inflammatory comments of Pauline Hanson, Alan Jones and a whole gaggle of Murdoch noisemakers, cynically appealing to freedom of speech and the value of pluralism. Regarding Hanson's racist comments he said: 'In a country such as Australia people should be able to say that.' Ten years later he was using the same tactic, this time about Alan Jones's comments: '... but he is a person who articulates what a lot of people think.'
Whose interests is Howard serving here?
Howard's idea of democracy is one where you do whatever you can to win an election, even if this involves attacking and making scapegoats out of the innocent. His appetite for power trumps every other consideration. Howard is playing a dirty game, and he should be called on it, every time, unequivocally.
Progressives recognise that democracy works best when people are fully informed and not subject to manipulation. When our democratic system is being so abused, we need voters to better understand how they are being manipulated and we need to consider whether we need new regulation to control such abuses.
The revelations on the Sunday Star Times (29.6.08) that the National Party have hired the media - image manipulators Crosby-Textor - to micro-manage John Key and the dressing of the National Party demonstrated the accuracy of my initial commentary on the "double speak of Engkeylish" which was critical of the use of the language used in the speeches coming from the National Party and its public face, John Key. What gives Mr. Hager's article even more gravitas is the revelation that John Key was the instigator for the hiring of Crosby-Textor, the same firm that managed Don Brash of "The Hollow Men" fame. One would think that having been tarnished once with an association with the company it would be unwise to continue the relationship. Nicky Hager's article about the involvement of the Australian push-polling, image controllers has clearly shown how cynical the National Party is as a political force as we see a party that has been advised to c0ncentrate on hiding its real policies on important social and economic development and its true agendae on the direction of New Zealand's economy so that John Key can be dressed in borrowed clothes and sold as being a credible, knowledgeable leader. His latest out break of political slipperiness when he attempted to rewrite New Zealand history should be an excellent example of his lack of understanding and knowledge of our country - the country he is attempting to dress himself as being a potential leader of. The danger of being controlled by a firm like Crosby-Textor is that the real policy direction of the National Party will be hidden in the smokescreen of spin. For anyone with a long term political memory the National Party will, when it comes to the "great policy reveal" simply roll out their usual reductionist programmes that penalise the worker and reduce access to essential social services while the "family silver," in the form of state assets, is hocked off to overseas asset strippers.
