Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Sooo, the latest dump. Yes, it's bad that whaledump included personal stuff about health situations - but at the same time... those sections of the printout are about the only bits that show Slater to have some humanity to him. So while it's certainly unkind to those with the health problems, I would argue that it shows some kindness to Slater to leave them in...
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Sooo, Collins isn't on her "last last" chance, she's "on her last chance after what happened last time."
Not really seeing a whole lot of difference there.
I really, really can't see how Key's continual defence of Collins can't be anything other than code for "I can't dump her because she's got dirt on me too and she'd take me down with her - and with all that 'pay them back double' business, you know she would, with bells and kittens...". -
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to izogi,
In Hager's final chapter he talks about the OIA and release of the way-old letter Cunliffe had written asking if Donghua Liu could have a timeframe for his immigration request. He describes it, but notes that it happened after the date of the emails he had access to so that although events certainly followed a very familiar pattern, he couldn't be sure the usual suspects were involved. That would suggest that there won't be emails after the DOS attack.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Craig, for me there's a difference between impugning the integrity of the Electoral Commission, and pointing out that someone who's behaved in such an appalling way towards public servants (amongst other people) isn't a fit person to be in charge of the Electoral Commission.
As Minister, she has oversight over their work and budget. Lower voter turnout favours the right. So... if she's a bad egg, how much focus and budget is she going to put into, say, encouraging voter turnout? How well is she going to resource the department that works to get people to enroll/chases them if they don't?
In general, we rely on the Minister to act in good faith, and in ordinary circumstances I would be happy to do that. But her proven acts of bad faith make it harder to continue to do so. -
It was satisfying to hear a proper grilling....
06:58
Guyon Espiner: "The Justice Minister of New Zealand has conceded publically that she did pass on the name of a public servant, That resulted in him getting some pretty severe death threats. And you think that's OK?"
Prime Minister John Key: "And people can see that..."
Espiner: "Is it OK?"
Key: "And people can see..."
Espiner: "Yes or no, is it OK?"
Key: "And people can see that this is..."
Espiner: "Is it OK?"
Key: "And people can see..."
Espiner: "Is it OK that Judith Collins did that, yes or no?"
Key: "And people can see that this is a smear campaign by Nicky Hager and by...[inaudible]"
Espiner: "I'm not asking you for a critique about Nicky Hager's motivations, I'm asking you that about something that is publically in the arena, Judith Collins has said 'I passed on the name of this public servant,' and we know what happened after that. I'm asking you a simple question, was that appropriate, yes or no?"
Key: "It isn't totally relevant, because at the end of the day, I don't know all the context of what happened there and all those situations..."
Espiner: "You know the context here Prime Minister, please answer the question. Was it appropriate for your Justice Minister to pass on the name of a public servant doing his job, who was then severely sanctioned on a website?"
Key: "I don't know all the details behind all of that, but what I do know is that this is a series of selective pieces of information, many of which can't be backed up. I know that this was..."
Espiner: "I'm asking you about one of them."
Key: "Yeah, well, I'm not going to go into your individual ones because in the end this is a smear campaign, which I gotta say, started the week with people out there...
Espiner: "No, you're not going to talk about burning effigies etc., because it has nothing to do with this."
Key: "Well, it does actually..."
Espiner: "No...I'm talking about..."
Key: "Well it might have something to do with it..."
Espiner: "No."
Key: "...because at the end of the day..."
Espiner: "No, this is about the behaviour of your Justice Minister. Do you stand by her today?
Key: "Yeah, I stand by her," ...[stopped transcription 08: 35].Of course, that's not the whole of that section of questioning, but I count that as seven times Espiner asked the same question, which Key refused to answer.
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Laila Harre's observation that Judith Collins was Minister for the Electoral Commission was thrillingly chilling.
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Has anyone asked the PM whether he thinks attack politics are a bad thing?
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Except that if you make a copy of everything you found there, as Ede apparently did, that's different from just going in to check that noone's robbing the place.
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since August 2013 is only last year, so that's not really very long; and saying it's "never discussed the matter with Carrick Graham" is still not the categorical denial I'm looking for. It would be very easy to say "please manage our social media presence however you think best" without discussing how that was going to be achieved. Most importantly, they haven't offered any explanation for why Carrick Graham was tweeting positive statements about them, which I somehow don't think he'd just do out of the goodness of his heart. (He works for Big Tobacco, therefore he has no heart, let alone one with any goodness in it).
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I’ve been having an exchange with Fonterra on their facebook page asking about Hager’s allegations about their possible involvement with Carrick Graham, and pro-formula posts on Whaleoil. They’ve finally responded saying their head of communications has gone on record… behind the paywall at NBR. Does anyone here have a subscription and want to give a precis of whether or not they were involved with Graham?