Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest
345 Responses
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Stephen R, in reply to
My memory is a bit rusty, but I think that it's a random order of parties on each ballot paper to avoid just that situation.
(Obviously, it's difficult for me to have checked this... It's possible they say it's random, but just print all the ballots the same way and trust that people won't multi-vote...)
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I disagree – there is a very real public interest here. Outing people who hold these vile opinions about half the human race may go some way to showing how unacceptable these opinions are, and perhaps provide a heads-up to the women who have to interact with them IRL. I read on twitter last night from a number of women who had had to interact with these low-lifes IRL. It also supports Hager’s book where he revealed predatory behaviour on young Nat women. For many, rape culture is a bigger issue than political and business corruption.
hear hear
From a purely personal perspective those comments had me in tears. I simply could not cope with the sheer vileness on display. So many of the people I love dearly are women, how could anyone be so viscous towards them.
Women are half "the public" and of the other half at least some are deeply offended by those remarks. So yeah it MUST be in the public interest to expose people who speak that way even in (especially in) private.
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Bruce Ward, in reply to
The quiet voice in all this has been outrage within the National Party.
What evidence is there that points to any outrage in the National Party? Matthew Hooton? Others?
There do not appear to be any speaking up. Perhaps we need to assume that they all accept the behaviour. After all it is looking good for winning the election. -
Luke Williamson, in reply to
This is what I truly fear Bruce, that there is no backlash, no repercussions, and the final anyalyis is that no-one cares enough to punish them and stop the continuation of the behaviuor. 'We won so who cares?'
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
‘We won so who cares?’
It's not how you play the game,
it's whether you win or lose -
nzlemming, in reply to
This is only peripherally related, but I downloaded my overseas voting papers (I usually don’t vote as I don’t want to tell you people how to live your lives, but sometimes an exception has to be made ….) and they seemed odd to me. NZF was all alone up the top, with a gap between it and the rest.
Look at the candidate paper. The first candidate in the list will be from NZ First, the second will be an independent. They have mirrored the party paper against the alphabetical candidate paper.
[edit] hmmm, maybe it is random after all, but I can't explain the blanks in that case. -
Darien Fenton facebooked her voting paper, which is where my theory came from. But Laile Harre had a blank next to her so....
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Aidan, in reply to
The electorate is Palmerston North, the candidates are NZF/Internet/Lab/Nat/Cons.
It was as much about the gap as anything. Really makes it a "NZF .. or some other party".
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Aidan, in reply to
So clearly it is randomised. Can't really understand the gaps though. Odd.
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Looks like the electoral commission assumes that internet/mana are separate parties as far as party vote is concerned.
We need to see a paper where there is a local mana candidate to tell for sure. -
Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
So clearly it is randomised
It won't be randomised, because that would make counting harder by several orders of magnitude. At the very least it will be the same throughout each electorate.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
No, they are a party with component parties as provided for by s.127 of the Electoral Act*
Electorate candidates can be Internet Party or Mana Movement, but there is a single list. The number of list MPs will be the quota of MPs proportionate to the party vote, minus the total of electorate MPs from either the Internet Party or Mana Movement.
* I'm not sure, but suspect this provision may have originally been put in to incorporate the Rātana Labour members?
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Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
Electorate candidates can be Internet Party or Mana Movement, but there is a single list
Yes I get this. From the appearance of the two papers so far it looks like internet party candidates have been divorced from the IMP party vote. We don't know whether the same is true for the mana movement candidates.
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From RNZ:
John Billington, QC, told the High Court in Auckland today that it is blindingly obvious that his client's emails were stolen and a gross breach of privacy has occurred. He said this case is about where the public interest lies.
Mr Billington said Mr Slater does not want to suppress information in Nicky Hager's book Dirty Politics or information already in the public domain.
The injunction would only cover information held by media outlets that is not yet in the public domain, he said.
Mr Billington asked the judge to take until next week to decide if Mr Slater's emails should be banned from being made public.WTF? Doesn't this allow the emails to continue to be published until the Judge rules otherwise?
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Slater hasn’t appeared in court but his lawyer has. And what’s this?
His lawyer John Billington, QC, said the case was unique in New Zealand history.
“What we have, really for the first time in this country, is a person’s private information being taken illegally and in breach of the Crimes Act."
Is he wilfully ignoring Slater’s own alleged illegal entry into others’ electronic files? His alleged theft and illegal use of information from both Matt Blomfield and the Labour Party come to mind. Sheeesh!
[Edit: bold emphases are mine]
And thanks Russell for the additional "alleged"s. -
Dan Salmon, in reply to
You're right, I'm making assumptions (based on the fact it's a political party). Also listening to Hooton and Boag and a few others. Sure people are in denial now, but once the election is out of the way, i think there'll be a lot of acrimony. The potential damage here to National is massive and there will inevitably be some very pissed off people in the party. Even without genuine outrage there will be opportunists looking to maneuver closer to leadership.
Mind you, i do function on the assumption that people are generally decent… (and some of them clearly are not) -
Idiot Savant, in reply to
This is only peripherally related, but I downloaded my overseas voting papers (I usually don't vote as I don't want to tell you people how to live your lives, but sometimes an exception has to be made ....) and they seemed odd to me. NZF was all alone up the top, with a gap between it and the rest.
Look at the electorate section, and it will become apparent: electorate candidates are ordered alphabetically. Parties are ordered by their electorate candidate to make it easy to give two ticks, with those without a candidate in that electorate listed alphabetically below.
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Even before Dirty Politics came out, I had my own reasons to be angry at the System. Facing the prospect of American-style medical debt because of a rare and uninsurable dental condition, I took the issue to my local MP (in this case Grant Robertson), only for Health Minister Tony Ryall to respond to the effect of, “get the patient to arrange an instalment plan”. I took that as code-word for “sod off, you’re not important enough to get help. Come back to us when you’ve got a Swiss account.”
On top of that, when I contemplated suicide after being rejected by the DHB for even a place on the waiting list, my dentist claimed to be sympathetic to my plight, but to me he came across as Pollyanna-grade ignorant of my concerns. I even showed him some articles about medical debt being the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy in the States, and he cheerfully dismissed it as an only-in-America thing. Not coldly callous thankfully, but blissfully ignorant all the same.
I fell through the cracks in the health system, and was only able to climb back out of them when I took a haircut in living standards, meaning I could get a community services (get-out-of-jail-free) card. All the same, the whole episode has left me with a bad taste.
It’s understandable when everyone including the Govt has to tighten their belts. But when I see my tax dollars propping up an aluminium smelter that could shut down at any time, already-loaded Hollywood studios, casino wheeler-deals, Big Oil and what-have-you, then it’s not austerity. It’s socialism for the Epsom set and austerity for the rest. I’m not one to spite the face, but part of me thinks it would be poetic justice for those who would blindly vote for crooks if they think it makes themselves feel richer, to have a financial hard landing of some sort.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Yes, they all will be because the candidates are all running for component parties, so Hone Harawira is a Mana candidate and Chris Yong is Internet Party.
Any seats they win count against the party vote for Internet Mana.
It's all by design.
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Angela Hart, in reply to
I’m not one to spite the face, but part of me thinks it would be poetic justice for those who would blindly vote for crooks if they think it makes themselves feel richer, to have a financial hard landing of some sort.
The hard landing is probably on the way as the housing bubble can't last forever. Election time always makes me wonder how many sheep we really have in the country.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
The hard landing is probably on the way as the housing bubble can’t last forever. Election time always makes me wonder how many sheep we really have in the country.
It also lends weight to those who think Cunliffe should tank the election, in the event that Jesse Colombo is proven right within the next 3 years. Chances are whoever is in power when the bubble bursts will probably be taken down with it.
Also, will those who lose their homes see the error of their ways? Or will they sink further into denial and blame everyone below them on the social ladder?
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Maybe it's time to rewatch 'Sleeping Dogs' and dig out the Angry Brigade and Weathermen manuals...
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Speaking of Judges, it would seem J. Chisholm is about as soft as we could have expected to have had appointed to the Collins inquiry. Not sure who is behind this KiwiFirst site that rates Judges but Chisholm is not very highly rated. High Court Justice Lester Chisholm 2010 Judge Survey Score
Some comments: Prone to frequent legal faux pas, not a good judge to have if facing an influential or Crown adversary and fractious history with Solicitor General David Collins and other political heavyweights; experiences which have cumulatively added to Chisholm’s insecurity when it comes to rule without fear or favour. -
andin, in reply to
All the same, the whole episode has left me with a bad taste.
Bloody heck! Im not surprised
All the best Take care -
izogi, in reply to
Not sure who is behind this KiwiFirst site that rates Judges but
I’m unsure of the background of this, but the domain’s registered to Spartan News Limited, also acknowledged on that site. The Companies’ Office lists the single director as Vincent Ross Siemer, whose Wikipedia page starts off stating he’s “a prominent critic of the New Zealand judiciary”.
The rest of the Wikipedia blurb looks very colourful regarding his dealings with the courts, so I guess he has a certain insight, the value of which you could judge for yourself.
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