Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Kumara Republic,
That I believe followed in the wake of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into QLD police corruption and Sir Joh’s (mis)use of the local bobbies as his personal goon squad.
We should of course be clear that anything that's happened under any government here is an order of magnitude shy of what happened in Queensland. We've been amateurs at corruption compared to our Australian brethren.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
OK, Labour & Greens folks – I’m going to fucking double dog dare y’all to use every opportunity you have to challenge your respective leadership to hold a joint press conference announcing that a rock solid bottom line for the first hundred days of the next Labour-Greens government will be legislation to:
Not one of which would impact significantly on the Collins case. There are already strong conventions around ministerial conflicts and misleading the House -- they're simply being flouted at the moment.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
If Rob Salmond is right, Collins’ own colleagues have been phoning journalists with material.
With all due respect, I’ll take that with a grain of the same salt I sprinkle on WhaleOil’s sources in Labour’s caucus.
It's not exactly news that she's polarising amongst her colleagues. Remember the Bill English email about her in The Hollow Men? And it does seem fairly well established that she and Joyce are associated with rival factions.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Matthew Poole,
She’s lied long, loud, and consistently, and she’s done so to Key, to the media, to the voters and, most unforgivably (as far as MPs are concerned), in answering questions in the House.
On the basis of what’s just aired on Checkpoint – Key attributing a different meaning to a crucial OIA email than any sensible reader would – the decision has been made to enable her lying. This is disgraceful.
They're clearly hoping the Budget news will swamp the story when Collins comes back. If I were the Opposition, I’d be quietly timing the next gotcha for the day of her return.
If Rob Salmond is right, Collins' own colleagues have been phoning journalists with material.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I’d say it’s because Collins is too big to fail for them. If she sinks to Watergate-level depths, the others will quite possibly be dragged down with her.
My sense is that the majority of the party is furious with her, but her Auckland luvvies continue to love her strong. There's potentially a bloodbath in it, one would think, or at least a few desertions.
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The truth is, her story about what she was doing in China with Oravida has completely collapsed. She has lost all credibility. What started as a pop-in cup of milk and a private dinner turns out to be a turbo-blasted official dinner involving both Governments, their officials, a senior Minister (Collins) and a National party donor (Oravida).
Collins presented it totally differently and she’s been found out, case closed. She didn’t tell the truth to the PM – she misled him, she misled Parliament and she misled you, the voter.
There’s also a bunch of of somewhat dispiriting but probably accurate stuff about how gallery journalists will now compete to “nail” Collins.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Rob Stowell,
The OIA dump Friday is still smoking. The MFAT briefing request prior to the ‘private dinner’ (and the debate about whether the ambassador should attend) was bad. Rob Salmond at polity pin-points the bad smell coming from this MFAT briefing on the ‘drop-in cuppa’.
She's misled Parliament. There's no way around it. Ministers who do that are customarily sacked.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Companies Office says a third. I’d heard he was the sole director, so there’s clearly a lot of murk. The Companies Office is, however, the final word in terms of legal standing.
The third director, Julia Xu, has been described as a co-founder of Oravida, and has spoken to media on the company’s behalf, so she seems to be more than just the obligatory lawyer on the board. She’s attached to Wilson McKay, where she specialises in “asset protection planning and taxation trusts and wills”.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to bob daktari,
While they all do it... National seem to be the most blatant in regard to "buying favours" but also, I feel, the most understandable in their response to donors - its business, pure and simple, the dollar rules and you are accountable to those whom pay the bills
It's a big status game. Remember that many of Collins' most ardent admirers are Young Nats. They want to be in the sphere and to be charmed by the minister. The same issue of Metro contains Tim Lambourne's account of his night at the Young Nats' ball, where northern regional leader Sean Topham brought the house down by declaring of Collins that "I love that woman more than sharks love blood."
The weird part is the crossover with Auckland celebrity culture. Slater and his wife's war on Glucina was really weird (which isn't to say Glucina didn't deserve scorn). But again, it's all tied into status. Status was what Stone Shi was after when he paid to play golf and be photographed with John Key. So no, I don't think it's a straightforward policies-for-cash deal, it's a network of influence drowned in the gravy of entitlement.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Tristan,
I think we can call John Key's successor as Steven Joyce who hardly puts a foot wrong in public
Joyce is able and disciplined, but seriously lacking in charm. I've seen him alienate an entire audience in the course of a speech.