Well worth watching … 50 seconds of … well, of … Patrick Gower.
You know, the [allegedly] ‘deceitful bastard’ ACT leader-on-the-skids Don Brash wouldn’t talk to — three times.
Good on him.
From TV3’s Firstline (full clip). Look how he cracks up Rachel Smalley … who sometimes indulges in a wee bit of humour herself.
And on a completely unrelated issue:
This was emailed to me. Here it is, without endorsement or criticism, warts and all (although I think it’s a cut-and-paste. What ‘motor industry’?):
==START QUOTE==
Dear John Key and Bill English,
Please find below our suggestion for fixing New Zealand’s economy.
Instead of giving billions of dollars to the banks, Iwi’s and others to be squandered on unearned bonuses and extravagant overseas trips, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:
There are about 1 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations: Continue reading →
A little swearing, but I had to chuckle at the tagline…
via stumbleupon.com
What a difference a few percentage points in the polls makes.
I’ve talked before about the intense, irrational personal hatred and enmity evinced by some in the National Party ‘family’ towards their former star MP Winston Peters. It is breathtaking to observe its vehemence. They bear grudges. Intensely.
Scratch some outwardly civilized, even quite-reasonable-on-other-issues Nats about Peters and you trigger an outpouring of hot yellow purulent contempt for the former Tauranga MP. In some cases, the reaction seems close to some sort of Pentecostal frenzy, or an epileptic fit.
They HATE him.
"It should be noted that Mr Slater deliberately published on his blog the details giving rise to these charges. It was part of his campaign to disclose publicly the names of people in whose favour suppression orders had been made in criminal proceedings in the District Court. His general modus operandi was to disclose information which would lead to a defendant’s identification. In sentencing Mr Slater, Judge David Harvey said this: Your {activity}, in terms of publishing the names of people who were subject to non-publication orders, was carefully calculated, carefully thought out and deliberate ... ." — Justice Harrison from Court of Appeal Judgement 9 November 2011 dismissing Cameron John Slater's application for special leave to appeal his convictions for eight charges of breaching judicial orders made under s 140 of the Criminal Justice Act 1985 (CJA) and one charge of breaching a statutory prohibition on publication under s 139 of the CJA.
And now, with Peters’ star rising in the pre-election opinion polls, some indicating his NZ First Party on the cusp of possibly returning to Parliament, National’s attack dogs, trojans and sympathizers in branches of the media (talkback radio particularly) are squawking for all they’re worth: desperately spouting personal denigration, abuse and pointedly raising ‘questions’ about this controversial politician. Timing is everything.
I’m all for free and open debate, and ‘savvy’ observers letting us know what they think and relating issues from the past (gosh, it’s what I aim to do here at ThePaepae.com) but some of what passes for ‘commentary’ about Winston Peters is nothing more than deliberate, fixated sledging of an experienced politician, former cabinet minister and deputy prime minister, a man who, any way you look at it, speaks for thousands of New Zealanders. His critics may have no personal respect for Winston Peters, but in my opinion they owe a duty of fairness to him and to those he represents.
National Party re-animated zombie and convicted criminal Cameron Slater has, in the space of a few days, gone from a position of ‘we do not speak of evil’ (meaning Peters) to micturating a stream of arguably defamatory ‘blog posts’ directing the foulest of personal abuse at Peters — just as he’s done with other National Party ‘enemies’ with whom he becomes fixated. (Cameron looks to me like someone with a little too much time on their hands. Perhaps he could sweep some leaves, trim some trees or water-blast his deck … now that he doesn’t have to train to lose a bike race.)
I started to reply to a comment by Craig, who suggested that if Bradley Ambrose is successful in his call for the High Court to declare the ‘cup of tea’ conversation “not a private communication” that that (in Craig’s view) would be “a sad day for privacy in this country”
Oh yes? I thought. What about Democracy in this country, Craig? Or Law? … as noted yesterday in Bradley Ambrose takes the initiative:
I personally think the country’s international reputation has been damaged by actions involving the police in media suppression just before a general election.
Following his complaint, apparently laid when he summoned police officers to his Beehive office (does that make it at his orders?) the police at first took the extremely unusual step (*never* in my experience) of ringing around news media organizations and overtly ‘warning’ them of the consequences of letting details of the conversation slip out — specifically pointing to big fines and jail time.
Threats? That kinda sounds like something more at home in post-coup Fiji. Or the Kingdom of Tonga.
You think I’m kidding?… Continue reading →
NZ First leader Winston Peters delivers his speech: 'The Real Issues - NZ First Coalition Position' (pic: Peter Aranyi)
I heard comeback kid Winston Peters complaining today that his ‘clear as daylight’ Kelston speech hasn’t been adequately reported in the media.
Here’s a copy of the speech notes that I had at the event (with my scribbled notes on the last few pages). I filed reports from the venue on what I saw as the main ‘news’ angles — his declaration that NZ First would NOT go into coalition government with any other party, and would rather aim to be an ‘effective opposition’, etc and did further coverage of the speech and event back at the news centre.
Radio news isn’t really the medium for a protracted discussion about his (conspiracy?) theories. It can really only punch the issues and provoke discussion about them (like this) … but whatever your opinion of Peters, his issues are worth reading about, so you know where he’s coming from and what his ‘hot buttons’ are, exactly.
So have at it if you want.
Read Winston Peters 6 November speech at Kelston (PDF 200KB)
It really is quite amusing to see the … er … unease the rise and rise of Winston Peters provokes in certain sectors of the National Party, from high up, down to the attack poodles who ‘hate’ him.
What’s he got to lose?
– P
Talk is cheap, and this guy's critics have spent a fortune.
This is a smart move. His lawyer says Ambrose has been slandered and vilified by some in the National Party operating in election mode. They’ve treated him as if he had no reputation to defend.
With loose language about Ambrose’s actions being ‘illegal’ and ‘unethical’ being relentlessly squirted at him … by increasingly desperate-sounding National apparatchiks — including failed National candidates working in the media — and various partisan spin doctors (amateur and professional) … it makes total sense to seek a declaratory judgement. The smear would become reality if left unchallenged, and the stakes for Ambrose personally are way out of proportion.
Good on him.
Journalist takes tea tape saga to court
Kirsty Johnston, Andrea Vance, Danya Levy and Michelle Cooke stuff.co.nz 17/11/11
The cameraman at the centre of the tea tapes saga, Bradley Ambrose, has filed proceedings with the Auckland High Court in an attempt to clear his name.
Ambrose’s lawyer, Ron Mansfield, said he was seeking a declaratory judgement as to whether the conversation which took place between Prime Minister John Key and Act candidate John Banks was private. Ambrose has denied the recording was intentional.
If a judgement was made saying the meeting was not private, police would be unable to prosecute.
“He’s needed to take this action because the National Party in particular has been describing his conduct as unlawful and unethical,” Mansfield said.
“This is obviously damaging his reputation and ability to work.” Continue reading →
Exit, stage right. A case of ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?’
Reflecting on John Key’s clearly-scripted talking point before he ‘stormed out’ of a media conference yesterday, it seems to me the National Party spin doctors (and lawyers?) will be emphatic that their man Key NOT under any circumstances admit to any ‘public interest’ in the cup of tea tapes. Thus, the apparent attempt to smother the issue with what amount to repeated slogans about what — in the beleaguered National Party leader’s view — the New Zealand public regard as ‘important issues’. Having at first promised to ‘take all those [tea tape] questions at the end’ of the media conference, John Key apparently shiftily broke his word (another ‘dynamic environment’, Mr Key?) and abrubtly left the podium. But before that — and more significantly — listen to how he studiously steps around the trapdoor 3News’s Duncan Garner invites him to hover over:
(It’s the audio from this video clip at 3news.co.nz )
Key questions (not a pun): Q: Do you think there’s any public interest in the tape being released, prime minister? Q: I’m asking you if you think there’s enough public interest in this for it to be released… 
What’s a political leader to do? Dodge the question? Ask to be ‘left alone’? Not a good look. I don’t think the ‘tea tape’ questions will stop, and, as I said earlier, the release of the recording or transcript seems inevitable. One thing is for sure: ‘enemies’ are being made right now. The National Party will not forget which media actors and organisations are twisting the knife in their beloved leader now by not taking the hint and ‘moving on’. Mark my words.
– P
PS And don’t miss Leave John Key Alone.
Oh dear.
Now he’s a subject of piteous mockery. (I assume.)
Whoever ‘runawaywithgypsies‘ is, I’m sure Cameron will have the number plates of their motorcycles up on his website days before the NZ Herald.
– P
I spotted this on a quick flick through my ‘Junk’ folder.
‘Mail thinks this is Junk Mail’.
Er, … that’s fersure.
But it must work, or they wouldn't do it, surely? (click to enlarge)
What gives it away as fake, most of all, is that I’ve never actually entered that lottery.
A small detail.
– P
Information wants to be free. Whatever is on the teapot tapes will be released into the wild ... eventually.
Politics is all about responding to emergencies — and I don’t mean a container ship grounding itself on a reef.
From the NZ Herald’s John Armstrong today:
John Key insists there is nothing on the secret tape of his “cup of tea” conversation with John Banks to cause him the slightest bother. If so, why on earth won’t he agree to the release of a transcript so everyone can see whether their private tete-a-tete was as bland as the Prime Minister says it was.
Withholding permission may yet be Key’s biggest mistake in this election campaign. That and going to the police in order to shut down the whole affair.
Key can talk all he likes about fighting “News of the World tabloid tactics” before they take root. But he is in the midst of the white-hot heat of an election campaign. The pressure will only build on him and Banks to reveal exactly what was said. The politics have quickly moved beyond the question of media ethics with which the Prime Minister seems to be consumed. …
Yeah, it’s a tough situation for National’s John Key. As someone whose popular public image (‘show face‘ I called it) is the central — only? — plank of National’s election campaign, anything that erodes his popular, everyman, a-millionaire-but-a-regular-bloke image is bad for National.
Armstrong’s reference to ‘the white-hot heat of an election campaign’ is accurate. Time is critical. This is the big league. Impressions and perceptions are everything.
Mistakes — even small ones — can be mercilessly punished and seized upon by one’s opponents. Misjudgments and misstatements made under pressure can’t be rewound (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Look at the political oxygen the mere idea that Key and Banks may have referred in denigrating terms to elderly NZ First supporters has given Winston Peters:
The Resonator: Winston Peters never wastes a platform offered to him
Peters tells supporters teacup tapes contain insult to elderly 3News
“That’s what you’re gonna hear in these tapes, what some young turkey thinks of you and your sacrifice,” he told supporters today.
That Turkey is of course John Key.
Mr Peters claims the ‘teapot tape’ caught Prime Minister John Key showing disrespect to the older generation.
“When you find out what’s on in that tape, it is that some people think they are superior to you because you are going grey. Doesn’t show much gratitude does it?”
Mr Peters is talking about the generation who fought World Wars, and survived the Great Depression.
Many of whom are his core constituency – the New Zealand First voters.
3 News asked Mr Peters whether he thought the tape should be made public.
“I think older people should know – and before the election,” he said.
And Mr Peters had something to say about Mr Key’s attitude towards senior citizens.
“You know what the tape said? It said thanks for the state house and all the help on the way through, but I want to forget about you. That’s what it says.” — Patrick Gower
Oh, Peters does ‘outrage’ very, very well, and his naked appeal to the politics of generational resentment almost always resonates.
John Key told TV3 he is 'teapot-tape' victim
John Key can, I think, fairly be said to be looking slippery over this matter. God knows his mealymouthed, verbal ducking and diving performance after the ‘cup of tea’ with ACT’s leader-in-waiting John Banks was bad enough. Now Key really looks like he’s got something to hide, and that’s a hard impression to shake.
The National leader’s spin, that he’s standing up against News of the World-style media tactics ‘as a matter of principle’ … to keep us all safe … reminds me of the wonderfully cynical quote attributed to Groucho Marx:
‘Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.’
Kinda fits. I predict the tape or a transcript being released is inevitable.
– P
UPDATE: In an extraordinary display of service beyond the (routine) call of duty, I’m told the police actually rang individual news outlets last night (14/11/11) to emphasize this release/gag threat (above). Even going so far as saying “Have you read paragraph three? About the two years in jail?”
Wow, what great service the police give when the prime minister lays a complaint seeking to suppress a recording two weeks before an election.
Experience counts.
I appeared to briefly flabbergast John Banks on Friday when I asked him for a lift from the radio station to the venue for the now infamous ‘cup of tea’.
Cheeky? You might say that, but it made sense: He’d just, at 2:00 pm, finished a session (along with ‘official’ National Party Epsom candidate Paul Goldsmith) as a guest on Willy & JT’s always excellent RadioLIVE political hour … and he was obviously heading to the café for his ‘catch-up’ with John Key (date with destiny?) at 2:30. So I asked for a lift.
Anyway, I know Banks from my time in the press gallery and have interviewed him in the lead up to this election:
“Mr Hay is an enthusiastic apparatchik of the ACT party, and that’s fair enough … but there’s been no deal” — John Banks
… was a memorable soundbite from our interview about the controversy sparked when the ACT Party New Plymouth electorate chairman tackled John Key on the campaign trail demanding he pull Goldsmith out of the race for Epsom as quid pro quo for ACT not standing a candidate in the race for the marginal New Plymouth seat.
Banks is, whatever else anyone may say about him, an effective communicator. He is relentlessly ‘on message’.
As he (very kindly) drove me to Newmarket on Friday, we talked about some of the lessons experience teaches — to both politicians and journalists.
Our conversation, rightly, remains off the record, but I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing this maxim he quoted, saying his mentor Rob Muldoon used to impress it upon the National Party caucus:
On message
At volume
Over time
— Sir Robert Muldoon’s secret of effective political communication
That’s what John Banks does.
Then, this morning on my way into town, I saw this near Gillies Avenue:
Banks’ campaign is doing the basics well. Does he deserve to win? That’s not a question for me to answer, but he’s putting the work in.
– P
Oops, I did it again.
I briefly engaged in a Twitter conversation with ‘Whale Oil’ right wing attack blogger Cameron Slater, provoked by his stream of increasingly hysterical and accusatory rants against the Herald on Sunday about the bugged cup of tea …
Statesmen. Cameron Slater would prefer this image to be seen as reality
Starting about 9.40 this morning the National Party’s [avowedly] unguided missile, lap blogger (to borrow his phrase) and John Banks supporter started railing against the Herald on Sunday with bold masterpieces rabid blog posts like:
… throwing epithets like ‘sneaky’, ‘weasel’, at the HoS staff, questioning their ethics, accusing them of ‘not caring’ whether their actions were legal or not, and saying
Its editors should now be facing the blowtorch and the camera operator’s character will have to be scrutinised. If the public are being asked to take their word for it – we need to know whose word it is we’re taking.
Well, it made me chuckle. So I tweeted:
Outrage at HoS emoted by @whaleoil seems ludicrous coming from someone a judge described as giving ‘naive + evasive’ explanations for his crimes
Which drew a quick response accusing me of dishonesty (see conversation).
Conversation with Cameron Slater (click to enlarge)
oh good oh…a reporter for Radio Live now puts the words of a lawyer into my mouth…dishonest much?
Well, having just reported the Thai Sex Tour trial verdict on Friday morning — before going on to cover the ‘cup of tea‘ — a trial at which I naturally respected the court ordered name suppression (the convicted man ‘W’ faces another trial next year) I guess my tolerance for my honesty being questioned by convicted name suppression law breacher Cameron Slater was low.
So I cited the source of my earlier quote: ‘a judge described [Cameron Slater] as giving ‘naive + evasive’ explanations for his crimes‘ to show I hadn’t distorted it:
Nothing to do with radio or lawyers. Refer DECISION OF JUDGE DAVID J HARVEY 14 Sept 2010 para 192: “hearing the interview as it progressed and of observing Mr. Slater as he gave his explanations. I found them naive and evasive.”
[Read the full judgement in which Cameron was convicted for yourself here: Police-v-Slater.pdf – 570KB]
Well, Cameron didn’t like that. It appears Cameron Slater wants to be able to call for people working in the news media to have their character and actions ‘scrutinized’ and to be able to loudly criticize them and call their practices into question … but his own actions, and his own track record (and criminal record!) are somehow unmentionable?
Does that seem two-faced to you?
As I told him:
The judgement seems relevant to your allegations against Fisher & HoS IMO. Own it.
Somehow I don’t think we’re Twitter friends anymore…
Funny, until today we were Twitter buddies. Not any more. Self-proclaimed champion of free speech, National Party attack blogger Cameron Slater does NOT like to be criticised when he's busy smearing the news media, it seems. (Pic: Peter Aranyi)
– P
So. it transpires that the ‘cup of tea’ stunt was bugged, and the Herald on Sunday‘s intrepid David Fisher has the recording (kudos, David).
How could that happen? And was it deliberate? Dunno.
But simple almost always beats complicated …
Here's the scene at the supremely stage-managed 'cup of tea' on Friday. That's me on the left. The seemingly ageless Wayne Eagleson is John Key's chief of staff, Banks & Key at centre, and just in shot my former RNZ colleague Todd Niall's hand with his mic. Note the 'mystery object' in plain sight. Shortly after this we were bustled out by the PM's Diplomatic Protection Squad goons, one of them somewhat aggressively grabbing my gear and shoving it away ... but leaving the mystery object RIGHT THERE ON THE TABLE. (Pic: Dean Purcell NZ Herald) Click to enlarge.
Here’s my shot as we were being shepherded out like geese by Wayne (right) and the gorillas DPS. Note the mystery object the PM’s security detail left in place on the table next to him.
Well, it was hardly a private chat anyway ... but leaving a recording device on the table? Doh. (pic: Peter Aranyi)
Oops.
Hands up who wants to hear it, or read a transcript? I do. It strikes me as amazing if they actually talked about any matters of substance while in a glass box surrounded by media. Kinda stupid of them if they did, wouldn’t you say?
– P
