Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to giovanni tiso,
This is a man who knows he is not going to have to apologise for that remark.
Yes. I think the same can be said of his blunt statement "the Prime Minister is lying" on The Nation on Saturday.
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Crikey. Goff didn’t mince his words on Firstline this morning:
"I’m not Machiavellian enough to believe that the SIS leaked this to Cameron [Slater]. I believe that it came from Jason Ede in John Key’s office, that John Key knew about it. Jason Ede was his senior adviser at the time – two doors down the corridor. John Key went in, said ‘this will embarrass Goff – leak it’.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
As I said, I don’t blame Hager for doing it – we would have done the same –, and of course he’s entitled to the presumption of good faith until evidence shows up to the contrary.
What on earth do you mean by that?
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to simon g,
Both Newstalk ZB and Morning Report (RNZ) have today reported a direct contradiction between Warren Tucker and John Key. Tucker says he told the PM about Slater’s OIA, Key says he didn’t.
Until now, I’ve felt that Key (and Collins) could ride this out, albeit clumsily. But if this latest story is true, then he really is in trouble.
Thing is, Tucker told this to ZB’s Felix Marwick in 2011. In the letter attached to this post. It’s hard to see how Key can continue to claim he wasn’t consulted and knew nothing, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him try. He’s now caught very deep in that lie.
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security’s inquiry will doubtless also be interested in who Slater was talking to for his “expedited” OIA request.
Also: good work Felix Marwick for keeping the paperwork. That's how good journalists roll.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
He can cut the pious hand wringing – he’s well on the record saying he got rid off all the material to avoid being sued to disclose the source, so these are the consequences. I’d bloody want to distance myself too, but let’s not be terribly surprised. As they say in Boston, politics ain’t bean bag.
Yes, he was justifiably concerned over the Winkelmann decision declaring that David Fisher’s book didn’t enjoy journalistic protections on account of being a book. He’s not “well on the record” as saying this: he has simply said it’s the case. He’s not “distancing” himself from anything either. He quite clearly stands by his work.
I get that you’re hostile towards the book and its author. I think the contents are pretty important.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to nzlemming,
Yep, but my point was that (to my surprise) that cat unfortunately was already out of the bag. As they say.
That doesn’t excuse you being a party to it.
I'm okay with this. Jolyon White's name was reported at the time and there's a public interest in knowing what else happened.
But thanks for caring. I think we're getting an insight on how meticulous Nicky Hager was about avoiding personal material in his book.
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Whaledump has apologised for posting the document with the personal conversations still in it, says he "got lazy", didn't read it properly, and won't do it again.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to giovanni tiso,
How’s he to blame? He’s not the hacker. If he hadn’t written the book, do you suppose the hacker wouldn’t have released the material?
Exactly. The hacker would have gone to someone else and/or dumped the material anyway.
When Hager was refused access second time around, he asked his source not to post personal material. He can't do any more than that.
The thing that's really off is a part about Cameron Slater's mother dying, but there are a couple of other things that also made me delete my link.
I was initially amused because I'm mentioned, but there is quite a lot of considerable public interest, which is appropriately summarised by David Fisher.
It's also worth noting that on Saturday Fran O'Sullivan was tearing into Hager for not shipping the documents to "Wikileaks or similar".
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I play politics like Fijians play rugby.
I think the Fijian rugby players would be thoroughly pissed off to be likened to Slater.
If you're talking about the 15-man game, how the Fijians play rugby could be summed up as "without much success".
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to Michael Meyers,
Update: I emailed the Herald to ask. The response is “Hi Mikey, we don’t allow comments on nzherald.co.nz news articles. That’s a long-standing policy. Our regional websites do allow comments on most stories.”
Yes, that's what I thought
