0 Armstrong on extinct birds - and moa!

John Armstrong lampoons the fighting-for-survival Trevor Mallard and his leader this morning. In a column headed Moa no goer, but Cunliffe must wish dead ducks could fly Armstrong opines:

Trevor Mallard's mind-boggling suggestion to harness science to bring the moa back to life will likely end up being much-a-dodo about nothing.
And won't David Cunliffe be relieved. Trying to breathe life of its own into his faltering leadership, Cunliffe had recently promised that Labour henceforth would be focusing on "the things that matter".
Mallard may have misunderstood his leader, but it is unlikely that the "matter" Cunliffe was referring to was recovered DNA from moa egg shells.
Along with his front-bench colleagues, Cunliffe had to grin through gritted teeth as they were lampooned mercilessly by Government MPs for much of Parliament's afternoon hour-long question-time and beyond.
Never one to look a gift moa in the mouth, National's Steven Joyce kicked off the mass ribbing by manipulating his forearm and hand to resemble the neck and head of a moa and then waved the ensemble at arriving Labour MPs -- a pantomime act so polished that Joyce must have devoted all but a few moments of his lunchtime to perfecting it.

Trevor Mallard certainly provided a fertile topic with which the Government could mock the Labour Party. And of course David Cunliffe won't have been grateful for that as he tried to attack the Government's record on education using questions that may well have been written for him by NZEI.

But surprisingly (or not!), it was another parliamentarian from the Jurassic era who copped the best sledge of the afternoon; read on:

The subsequent deluge of puns and wisecracks became progressively more lame from thereon -- with one exception. When Winston Peters got to his feet, National backbencher Scott Simpson interjected: "A live moa!".
Peters -- for once -- was silenced, albeit briefly. He had no answer to Simpson's clever jibe, which labelled Peters a dinosaur without calling him a dinosaur.

Winston Peters looked a little confused by Simpson's jibe, and didn't quite know what to make of it. Then again, and to be fair, confusion has been Peters' hallmark of late, and he still looks far from well. He may even have felt in need of a dose of Mallard de-extinction yesterday, not that we would ever suggest that anyone try to clone Mr Peters!

For Trevor Mallard though, this was a clever move. Facing a real fight for political survival, he got a day's free publicity, and as the experts say, there is no such thing as bad publicity, especially with an election just around the corner. 

There was another benefit as well, notable for the fact that Mr Mallard is the de facto president of the ABC (Anyone But Cunliffe) faction within Labour. Armstrong concludes:

The person who should have been quivering in embarrassment at having created yet another distraction from Labour's less zany efforts to connect with voters instead seemed to be revelling in all the attention. Maybe Mallard has been so ostrich-cised (sorry) by Cunliffe that he no longer cares too much what he says or does. To escape Cunliffe's fury, Mallard could have argued his idea was a cunning plan to outflank the Greens. The latter have been devoting much time and energy to saving the Maui's dolphin from extinction. Labour could go one better by saving an already extinct species ... well, from extinction. On the other hand, maybe not.
When it comes to saving animals headed for extinction, Cunliffe would probably happily exchange a dead duck for a live moa.
Before you could say Dinornis giganteus novaezealandiae, however, Cunliffe had decreed the moa was not a goer. Like Mallard's wacky idea, this bird was never going to fly.

Regular readers will be aware that we are not members of the Trevor Mallard fan club. But give the man his due; this was clever stuff from the veteran MP. He managed to boost his own profile for a day, and stop his leader getting Labour's message out; a Machiavellian master-stroke.

And perhaps that's why Labour doesn't want the media present at its "congress" this weekend. Maybe there's going to be some DNA experimentation going on. Is a reconstituted Norman Kirk about to gazzump Grant Robertson's plans to assume the Labour leadership after the election?

Maybe Trevor Mallard is on to something after all... 

0 Breaking news: David Cunliffe advocated for Donghua Liu

The Herald has just posted this story:

Labour Party leader David Cunliffe - who said this week he had never met Donghua Liu or advocated on his behalf - wrote a letter to immigration officials on behalf of the controversial businessman who was applying for residency in New Zealand.
The 2003 letter was written in his capacity as the MP for New Lynn after he was "approached my constituent Donghua Lui [sic] who is concerned at the time it is taking to process his Investment Category application".
Mr Cunliffe this week denied any involvement with Liu's residency bid after the Herald revealed the property developer paid $15,000 at a Labour Party fundraiser for a book signed by Helen Clark in 2007.
The letter, released to the Herald today under the Official Information Act, dated April 11, 2003 said Liu's application for residency was accepted for processing by the Immigration Service on August 13, 2002.

Mr Cunliffe said Mr Liu wished to set up a joint venture business with his Tianlong Property Development Company - which owns his stalled property development in Newmarket - to export large quantities of agricultural and horticultural products to China.
"It is hoped that products from the company will be available to the market in July 2003," wrote Mr Cunliffe.
"I am aware of the difficulties facing the Business Migration Branch of New Zealand Immigration Services in coping with the overwhelming numbers of applicants that have applied for consideration under these categories and the time taken to verify documents.
"However, it would be very helpful to Mr Liu to be advised of an estimated period of time in which he could expect a decision on his case."
"Yesterday, Mr Cunliffe told reporters questioning him about Liu's financial support for Labour he did not recall meeting him and denied advocating on Liu's behalf in his residency application."
Liu was granted residency under the Investor Category in 2005 by Labour's associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor against official advice.

And the Herald has posted this snippet from an interview with Mr Cunliffe yesterday on Twitter:

Wow. Is this ever going to set a cat amongst the pigeons! It's hard to imagine how Mr Cunliffe can survive this.

Even this morning, he told Tim Fookes at Newstalk ZB in Wellington that to the best of his knowledge, he had never met Mr Liu. Just hours later, he is exposed as having written a letter to the Immigration Service where he said that he had been "approached by my constituent Donghua Lui [sic] who is concerned at the time it is taking to process his Investment Category application".

Here, via the Herald, is the letter in question:
 

And John Armstrong has chimed in; he opines:

David Cunliffe is in deep political trouble. So deep that his resignation as Labour's leader may now be very much in order.
It now emerges that - contrary to the point-blank denials that Cunliffe gave to a press conference only yesterday - that he did assist controversial businessman Donghua Liu in the latter's application for New Zealand residency.
At a minimum, the revelation that Cunliffe wrote a letter to immigration officials seeking information on progress regarding the residency application is a massive blow to the Labour leader's personal credibility. How can anyone have any confidence in what he says from hereon?
Cunliffe may argue that the letter was about immigration processes and written on a constituent's behalf - something MPs frequently do - and therefore was not an endorsement of the application.
But that does not wash. Either deliberately or through a lapse of memory, Cunliffe has been economical with the truth.

He has called for National Party ministers' heads to roll for the equivalent or less. Having set the standard required of others, it is incumbent on him to himself follow suit.
The self-ravaging of his credibility means Labour now has to abandon its strategy of trying to paint John Key and National as corrupt. To carry on it that fashion would be the height of hypocrisy.

This is a huge blow to David Cunliffe, and a huge blow to the credibility of the Labour Party.

Parliament sits in just over 40 minutes. It will be unmissable this afternoon.

0 Quote of the Day - 5 June 2014

John Armstrong helpfully points to the hole that David Cunliffe has dug for himself over his determination to ban coat-tailing:

Of more immediate pertinence, Labour could yet need Internet Mana to secure a majority in the next Parliament. But bringing more MPs into Parliament alongside Hone Harawira will likely require that the new umbrella party's leader hold his Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
If Harawira lost, Internet Mana's party votes would go down the gurgler to the huge disadvantage of the centre-left in what is shaping as a very close contest.
But Cunliffe is now hamstrung. If he drops even the slightest hint - even a coded one - that Labour voters should opt for Internet Maori in Te Tai Tokerau, Cunliffe will be deemed an absolute hypocrite.
Not the kind of label you want to be carrying during an election campaign.

John Armstrong gets this one absolutely right (sorry Rex!), especially with the news this morning that Labour is prepared to do a deal with MegaMana if that is what it takes. To enable coat-tailing when you are promising to do away with it later would be complete and utter hypocrisy. 

It would seem once again that David Cunliffe has managed to seize disaster from the jaws of triumph!

0 A self-fulfilling prophesy

John Armstrong waxed lyrical about the Labour Party in his Saturday Herald column. It started like this:

It must surely be tempting fate to mention it, but there are definite signs that Labour has finally emerged from its long bleak winter of dysfunction, despair and inertia.

We wonder what Mr Armstrong will be saying today, after three polls in the last week all showed Labour going backwards.

And we doubt that David Cunliffe will be in any way grateful for John Armstrong's self-fulfilling prophesy. The piece was so out of touch with Armstrong's normal pieces that we even wondered whether Hey Clint and Matt McCarten had managed to hack Armstrong's NZ Herald access, and submit their own column in Armstrong's name!

So we think that Mr Armstrong will be getting a call from Mr Cunliffe's press secretary today, who is also named Cunliffe. He'll be asked not to tempt fate in the future, and to refrain from self-fulfilling prophesies, thank you very much!

0 Armstrong on Labour's bad week

Herald chief political commentator John Armstrong muses on Labour's bad week. Under the headline Labour's brutal week reveals Achilles heel, Armstrong opines:

Could things get any worse for David Cunliffe than they did this week?
It is quite conceivable they might, of course. Cunliffe's leadership of Labour still has a way to go before it hits rock-bottom. But this week's very public exhibition of the disunity which flows freely and abundantly from the deep schisms within the party may well have proved to be sufficiently damaging to have put victory in September's general election out of reach.
Senior Labour figures are bracing themselves for an expected hit in the opinion polls, but are confident it will be shortlived.
Before this week's disasters, Labour's own pollsters were said to have been registering the party's vote at around 30 per cent. That is very close to the 29.5 per cent recorded in the most recent Herald-DigiPoll survey.
However, usually reliable sources say National's private polling over the past week points to the real scale of Labour's horror story with support crumbling to a mindblowing low of just 23 per cent.

If National's polling is anywhere near accurate, and there is no reason to suspect that it isn't, Labour is in a word of trouble. The party is in the same kind of territory where the Bill English-led National Party was in 2002, and if it is indeed true that less than one quarter of voters will support Labour it seems impossible that David Cunliffe will be in a position to form a government.

There's a big difference however. In 2002, National had completed just three years in opposition, and there had been a significant clean-out from the Bolger-Shipley years. Labour is SIX years into opposition, and hasn't yet had a clean-out. Not only did most of its MP's serve Helen Clark, but there are still three from the Lange-Palmer-Moore era!

Armstrong continues, noting with reference to a danse macabre within Labour:

The start of the week was punishing enough in itself with Labour squirming in humiliation following National's cruise missile-like strike which removed the Opposition party's current prime asset from the forthcoming election campaign.
Labour's embarrassment at losing Shane Jones as a result of a quite brilliant piece of politics on Murray McCully's part left Labour powerless to hit back at National.
But that was no excuse for the outbreak of factional warfare in the form of the Labour left indulging in a danse macabre on Jones' still warm political corpse.
This would not have been in National's script. The governing party would consequently have been pinching itself at its good fortune in provoking such disarray.
For those in Labour's ranks still interested in winning the election, observing the self-destructive behaviour must have been the equivalent of watching members of the orchestra on the heavily-listing Titanic fighting over who owned the instruments.

There's plenty more in Armstrong's piece where he highlight's the monster that Labour created for itself in 2012 when the party changed the rules on how leaders were selected, seizing the power from caucus. This has left the majority of Labour's MP's saddled with a leader they either dislike or despise, depending on how involved they are with the ABC faction.It's well worth a read in full.

But it's clear that Shane Jones' departure, and the circumstances surrounding it have sent shockwaves through the bitterly-divided Labour caucus. This close to the General Election, that's not where Labour wants to be.

0 Labour's own manufactured crisis

At last Labour has a crisis to be concerned about; even if it is its own crisis; Vernon Small from the Dom-Post reports:

Disarray. There is no other word to describe the mess the Labour Party plunged into last night. Not only did it have to come to terms with the loss of one of its strongest performers in Shane Jones, the party seemed to freeze like a possum in the headlights.
More than 90 minutes after the story broke there was no official confirmation, and leader David Cunliffe and his deputy David Parker neither returned media calls nor issued any statements.
Press secretaries were either unable to help, unhelpful or offline, and party president Moira Coatsworth and secretary Tim Barnett initially went to ground.
Former leader David Shearer was gracious enough to confirm he knew of the resignation, but other MPs said it was a "bolt from the blue" and "gutting" before a gagging order went around the caucus.
His replacement off the list Kelvin Davis - a mate of Jones - said he knew nothing.
It took Coatsworth until well into the evening to finally confirm Jones was quitting, just as Cunliffe and Jones went into a meeting together.
If anything was designed to scream "crisis" it was this. Jones will be a serious loss to the party.

Forget that manufactured manufacturing crisis that Labour was a party to in 2012-13. This is a genuine crisis for Labour, and it's happening right now.

And it's not just Vernon Small saying this. Over at the Herald, John Armstrong opines thus:

Shane Jones' shock decision to quit as a Labour MP will lead voters to draw one conclusion and one conclusion only: that he thinks Labour cannot win the September general election.
His departure is close to an unmitigated disaster for Labour. For starters, unlike the bulk of his colleagues, Jones could reach into segments of the vote - especially blue-collar males - who have switched off Labour. He was in the process of switching those traditional relationships back on.
He was a major weapon in helping Labour to win back more of the Maori seats.
Perhaps of most significance, Labour has lost the one man who would have acted as the essential go-between in securing Winston Peters' signature on a post-election coalition or co-operation agreement between Labour and New Zealand First which enabled Labour to govern.

Shane Jones has clearly blindsided the Labour Party's top brass. Pretty much the closest thing Labour had to Chris Trotter's mythical creature Waitakere Man, Jones appealed to the kind of voters that have deserted Labour as it forgot its working-class-and-proud-of-it roots, and set out to appeal the the urban elite in the likes of Grey Lynn and Wellington Central.

Armstrong also spells out the logistical implications of Jones' decision to bail out:

He might not have intended it, but his leaving is also a massive blow to Labour's morale at one of the worst possible times - just five months before election day when the party is endeavouring to motivate its membership to go door-knocking to get out the Labour vote.
The best that can be said is that Cunliffe will now not be overshadowed by anyone from his own side during the formal election campaign. That was always going to be a danger when Jones was around.

If Labour wasn't already in enough trouble, the departure of Jones is going to twist the knife. It's going to make it especially difficult for Labour to win back the Maori vote, although there is one upside; Jones' replacement Kelvin Davis will be able to campaign against Hone Harawira with the resources of Parliament behind him one he becomes an MP again.

However Labour spins this, it is a genuine setback, and from what we've seen and read this morning, Labour's top brass was in crisis mode last night. Shane Jones' biggest contribution to the New Zealand political scene might just be his exit from politics.

0 Armstrong on Collins and truth

John Armstrong takes a close look at the Judith Collins/Oravida allegations. Under the heading Peters faces wait to complete Oravida jigsaw Armstrong opines:

Winston Peters has gotten to the very heart of the vital matter of whether Judith Collins is guilty of such a serious conflict of interest that she would have to be sacked from the Cabinet forthwith.
In tandem with Labour's Grant Robertson, the New Zealand First leader has pieced together a jigsaw of separate events and happenings involving Collins, the milk-exporting company Oravida, and the Chinese border agency which blocked dairy imports after the Fonterra botulism scare last year.
It goes beyond Collins creating the "perception" of a conflict of interest — something the Cabinet Manual stresses Cabinet ministers must avoid and which Collins acknowledges her actions created.
The two Opposition parties claim enough information has now seeped into the public domain to suggest Collins had a real conflict of interest — one from which she stood to benefit from financially.

Unfortunately for Peters and Robertson, a rather vital piece of the jigsaw is missing.

Well colour us surprised; Winston Peters had made an allegation that he cannot substantiate! Just like the impending sale of Huka Lodge to the Chinese; just like any number of Peters beat-up over the years, he cannot deliver the coup de grace. There's a good reason for that; in the Oravida case, there IS no coup-de-grace.

Armstrong continues, getting to the heart of the issue:

That piece, which would join all the dots, is proof that Collins lobbied a Chinese official to exempt Oravida from China's freeze on dairy imports.
Without that proof — and Collins strenuously denies that she engaged in any such behaviour — the evidence remains circumstantial and any conclusions are therefore only conjecture.
The latter commodity is not sufficient reason for John Key to relieve Collins of her ministerial warrants; he has to take his minister at her word. If that word is found to be in conflict with the truth, however, then he will have to dump her from his ministry.
Given she has issued repeated denials in the House, she would probably have to leave Parliament altogether if she is found to have been economical with the truth. That Collins is risking such a tough sanction suggests she has been truthful.

John Armstrong does a far better job than the likes of Patrick Gower, Duncan Garner and Corin Dann have done. Instead of being duped by Peters' promises to bring down a Minister and with her John Key, Armstrong understands that all that Robertson and Peters have is rhetoric and speculation. They have no evidence that Ms Collins discussed Oravida at that infamous dinner. On the other hand, Judith Collins has steadfastly maintained her position.

And Armstrong closes with a reference to Winston Peters' time-honoured modus operandi:

Peters says he has more to come on this matter. But he needs the protection of parliamentary privilege to use it to maximum effect. After today's sitting, Parliament goes into recess for two weeks. And if a week is a long time in politics, then two weeks is a very, very long time in politics, especially in an election year.

Winston Peters is always promising that there is more to come. He uses it to keep himself and his personality cult party in the headlines. But all too often the issue fades from the public consciousness, without Peters ever delivering the promised "evidence".

We reckon that's what'll happen here. Winston Peters talks a good game, but if he had the evidence he claims to have, he would have tabled it in Parliament yesterday. He didn't, because there isn't any evidence, beyond Winston Peters and Grant Robertson putting two and two together and coming up with 22.

0 Armstrong on Labour's dilemma

John Armstrong paints a difficult picture as he sums up Labour's current electoral dilemma. Under the headline Labour steps over Greens to pick Peters he opines:

Having turned its caucus room in Parliament Buildings into a war room staffed almost around the clock by policy wonks, political strategists, experts in social media, plus assorted press secretaries - all in readiness for the coming general election - the Labour Party may find itself with another war on its hands before then. Or something close to it.
The "enemy" on this occasion will not be National. Neither will it be Act. Nor United Future. Nor Colin Craig's Conservatives. Nor even Kim Dotcom and his Internet Party.
No, this war will be of the internecine variety where the combatants all come from the same neck of the (political) woods.
It will have been sparked by the seemingly endless positioning and posturing ahead of September's election which will count for little in the aftermath. But this week it all turned ugly for the Greens. And things may yet get uglier still.

It may be that fate has decreed that the power struggle between Labour and the Greens takes centre stage at the worst possible time for the centre-left.
It may not come to open warfare. But the dismissive, almost contemptuous attitude displayed by David Cunliffe with regard to a supposed ally is bound to rankle deeply wherever Green Party members gather.
You can be assured there will be a response; that there will no longer be any scruples about upstaging Labour on the hustings.

Readers with good memories will remember how outraged Clare Curran was in 2011 that the Greens would DARE muscle in on Labour's vote. Yet that is exactly what Labour is now doing in reverse. To give the Greens credit, they campaign well, so any moves by Labour to steal votes from the Greens will not be met with silence and indifference.

Armstrong continues, noting that it is Labour which has caused this situation to develop and fester; something that the Greens have, up until now, been relatively patient about. But with an election just over five months away, time is short:

The Greens may put the stress on peace, love and understanding in the resolution of disputes. Their image may be more flower power than firepower.
But the closer the party gets to seats around the Cabinet table - and thus the exercising of real power and influence - the more the Greens are toughening up to cope with the pressures of being a coalition partner. They simply have to do so. And this week showed why.
Russel Norman, in particular, has shifted into a higher gear in terms of tenacity in both promoting and defending his party. He is now de facto leader rather than just co-leader. He grabs people's attention. And they listen. The same cannot be said for Labour's leader.
The Greens have been exceptionally patient with Labour in expectation that a centre-left victory in September will finally bring long-delayed reward.
They are acutely conscious, however, that time is running out and Labour has done precious little to fill the empty canvas on the centre-left which is Labour's failure to paint a picture in voters' minds as to how a Labour-Greens government would function and what its priorities would be.

When push comes to shove, and Labour needs the Greens in order to govern, you can bet that David Cunliffe will go to Russel and Metiria on bended knee, sincerely apologising for having ostracised them. But how will such an approach be met?

And then there's Winston Peters, not that a Labour/NZF grouping could even get close to governing on the current polling numbers. How does the Labour rank and file feel about Cunliffe climbing into bed with Winston Peters? Will they hold their noses, and pretend it isn't so?

The Left is divided at the moment, and there are no signs of division healing any time soon. Will voters risk a centre-Left coalition, knowing that at any moment it could all turn to custard? We think not.

David Cunliffe has some serious decisions to make; far more serious than his Royal tour pettiness.