Posted by Blogger Name. Category:
Helen Clark
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Julian Wilcox
,
Labour Party
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Shane Taurima
,
Taito Phillip Field
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Tamaki Makaurau
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Technicality
Hold the phone! TVNZ's 7am Breakfast news bulletin casts a different light. The Labour Party has not excluded Shane Taurima for selection in Tamaki Makaurau because he was found to have misused TVNZ resources in his activism for the Labour Party.
No Dear Readers; the reason that Mr Taurima has not been granted a waiver to throw his hat into the ring for selection in Tamaki Makaurau is because he hasn't been a member of the party for the required year!
This is a bit like Taito Phillip Field revisited. Helen Clark and her MP's defended Mr Field to the hilt whilst the allegations which later saw him jailed swirled around him. She convened a sham report, with a predetermined finding, then declared that the only thing Mr Field was guilty of was "trying to be helpful". A High Court jury disagreed. But Field was only suspended from the Labour caucus when plans emerged that he was involved in the formation of a new political party; that was the unforgivable sin.
Now we are certainly not suggesting that Mr Taurima was in any way like the corrupt Phillip Field. The Labour Party however seems to have wimped out regarding Mr Taurima, only excluding him from selection in Tamaki Makaurau on a technicality rather than on the findings of the TVNZ report.
So it begs the question; how long has Julian Wilcox been a member of the Labour Party, and if the answer if "less than a year", will he be granted a waiver when Shane Taurima was not?
