The Herald this morning is characterising the shift in tax brackets to be announced in today's Budget as similar to those proposed last year by United Future, which suggests that UF will be stepping up to take credit after the announcement. It would seem a reasonable deal for loyalty, even though the changes seem likely to fall short of what was called for.
There have been a variety of reader responses to the Benson Pope story, some of them raising claims about the personal lives of Opposition MPs that I'm not about to run here. Rodger Donaldson mused on potential witch-hunts but said:
It's more interesting (and disturbing) to me that we're seeing the right here appearing to go wholesale for the route of the US right in an effort to get back into power: NBR seems to be suggesting that the economic right ought to embrace Destiny (hey, it worked for the Republicans!); National's clumsy attempts to make the PM's lack of religious belief an issue; and the exposure of personal lives is a huge step up from anything during my adult life.
Partly it concerns me because it goes down a route that gets away from how well people actually do the damn job (who are children better off under? The childless Helen Clark, or the Jim and Jenny show of the 90s?), partly because it can spill into a generally repressive culture as politicians start to sniff around my bedroom to placate the voters they gain with this shit, and partly because if the US is any guideline, the "left" (as much as they have one) is pathetic and impotent when it comes to countering this sort of stuff.
A streetfighter-driven Labour would by now be replaying the image of Gerry Brownlee beating up on an OAP and asking if this was how National planned to sort out the problems of the elderly, or putting the acid on [potentially defamatory passage snipped here - RB]
Newstalk ZB has run a story saying that "Opposition MPs who are former teachers are looking deep into their pasts amid talk the Government is looking for retribution over the allegations leveled against David Benson-Pope. In private, some confess to fearing that anything considered an 'incident' could come back to haunt them …"
But John Armstrong writes in the Herald that although "Labour has its own stockpile of allegations" relating to Opposition members, it has made a strategic decision not to start flinging them, at least for now.
Reader Ben Wilson said:
I don't think character assassination is going to work too well for the Nats, and is a sign of complete absence of popular policy.
It works nicely in FPP and similar systems, where embittered voters failing to vote for their traditional party are effectively passing votes to their opposition. But here if people can be trained to distrust Labour on character, that doesn't automatically push them to National.
Philip Temple, on the other hand, wrote that "Benson-Pope is an arch denier - witness his statements over the Ahmed Zaoui affair - and it is this for which he deserves censure," and referred to further rumours about bullying circulating in Dunedin.
Ian Orchard said:
When are they going to learn? Never deny anything in the House. Always say "I have no recollection of such & such, it was a long time ago." (Except maybe stuff you did yesterday)
A Herald editorial today says that Benson Pope's ministerial career is probably done for - as much because of his those blanket denials in the House as the alleged conduct in the 1980s - but Garth George, as I thought he might, rides to the minister's defence.
James Littlewood said:
Although some of what's been said about him is weird, it's all unexceptional. Schools are places of longstanding institutionalised sadism ... ask anyone who went to Auckland Boys Grammar. OK, so it don't make it right. But I think the real test will be if anyone calls his bluff and takes their complaint to the cops.
Which is pretty much what has happened, with the solicitor general referring the allegations to the commissioner of police. Curiously, that's not enough for Rodney Hide, who wants a full-blown public inquiry. Hide's rhetoric over this - and his bitching at the Speaker yesterday - suggest that he regards this as politically very important to him, which is a bit sad. Still, when some in your own party want to replace you with John Banks I guess you get a bit twitchy.
Karl had comment on the coverage:
Suddenly John Tamihere's paranoid rants about Rodney Hide and Duncan Garner seem to have a hint of truth. One week Rodney Hide and Judith Collins mount a well-informed, co-ordinated attack in the house on David Benson-Pope. The following week Duncan Garner leads 3 News with an item, using the same information, that he says he has been investigating for 3 months. I may be paranoid, but I now seriously doubt the impartiality of 3 News.
I'm sure Garner has been consulting with Hide on this - and I think it has all been long and carefully planned, from the Parliamentary sting to the sudden willingness of the former students to talk on camera - but I also don't think this is a kind of story that any reporter can walk away from. I think Campbell Live has handled the story reasonably well, following up the Hide interview the next night with one from former pupil John Whitty, who declared that Benson Pope's harsh discipline had been the making of him, and accused the other former students of being liars.
My response, in the end, is that I'm very glad to have attended a high school that got rid of corporal punishment in the 1970s - and consequently enjoyed a drop in all kinds of school violence, including playground bullying. The idea that a clip around the head is assault but caning isn't is quite a difficult one to sustain morally.
There are quite a number of reasons to dislike the expelled British Labour MP George Galloway, but it's hard not to admire the rhetorical flourish of his testimony this week to a US senate committee. He really did, as the Americans say, hand Senator Norm Coleman his ass. One Good Move has a particularly fluent excerpt, and also a Hardball interview with Coleman (who seems to have trouble speaking in sentences) and then Galloway.
It seems Galloway was terminating with extreme prejudice before he even got into the hearing, informing Christopher Hitchens that he was "a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay ... Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink."
It was left to The Scotsman to point out that Galloway did not entirely dispel the cloud over his name.
The Columbia Journalism Review has a well-considered response to some of the tosh that has been written and spoken (including the ludicrous and paranoid allegations on Instpaundit) since Newsweek's Guantanamo whoopsie became apparent. Worth reading.