0 Grant Robertson rejects "gotcha" politics

TVNZ's Breakfast programme had Grant Robertson and Judith Collins side by side this morning. Unsurprisingly, the main topic of conversation was David Cunliffe; here's the piece:

What interested us the most was Grant Robertson's reinvention as a stringent opponent of "gotcha" politics. It's great that he wants to spend the next three months talking about the things that matter to New Zealanders, like jobs, and the economy.

Unfortunately though, Mr Robertson has been so obsessed with getting Judith Collins' scalp since he first raised the Oravida issue in early March that he hasn't had a lot of time to talk about the things that matter to New Zealanders.

Mr Robertson has asked at least 13 primary questions of Judith Collins or the Prime Minister since he first raised the Oravida issue, plus a number of supplementaries to primary questions asked by other MP's, most notably David Cunliffe and Winston Peters. In addition, the "media centre" on Mr Robertson's page on the Labour Party website has multiple media releases put out by the MP or his media staffers.

Credit to Judith Collins though. She must have been heavily tempted to shred Grant Robertson after all the unpleasant things he has said about her and her husband in the last few months. But she sat serenely and full of grace, although the twinkle in her eye suggested that she may know more about the Donghua Liu donations to Labour than she was letting on; time will tell.

Perhaps Mr Robertson's latter-day conversion to having a strong dislike of "gotcha" politics has more to do with Labour currently being the "gottee" rather than the "gotter", if you'll pardon us inventing new words. Or perhaps it has something to do with the date. After all, after tomorrow, Labour can change its leader without having to ask the party and the trade unions, and this might just have been Grant Robertson trying to differentiate himself from David Cunliffe.

It will be interesting to see how long Grant Robertson's rejection of "gotcha" politics lasts.  

0 Where's the smoking gun?

Left-leaning bloggers and a few journalists were cock-a-hoop yesterday. Judith Collins' office released documents under the OIA which, they claimed, Proved beyond doubt that Mrs Collins' dinner in China was an official one, not a private one. Except the documents didn't prove that at all; if anything, they added weight to Collins' denials

Vernon Small reports on Stuff:

Justice Minister Judith Collins' office initially asked for a foreign affairs briefing before a controversial dinner in China with Oravida representatives and an unnamed border official.
Collins has insisted the dinner was a private affair with no official business discussed.
However, documents released to Fairfax Media under the Official Information Act show that five days before the dinner her office sought the briefing from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat).
An October 15 email from her office noted:
"On Sunday, October 20, the minister will be having a dinner that will include (redacted name). He has agreed to meet with the minister arranged by Mr Stone Shi, Oravida. The minister would like ambassador Carl Worker and his wife to attend this dinner. A briefing from Mfat will be required."
Worker did not attend and the dinner went ahead with Collins, her official, Oravida executives Shi and Julia Xu and the Chinese official present.
But later emails show that Collins' office declined Mfat assistance and said no briefing would be required.
The New Zealand embassy in Beijing asked about the dinner and said it assumed the booking would be made by Shi. It also asked if transport was required.
Collins' office replied nothing was required from Mfat.
"The minister is having a private dinner on the Sunday evening."
Mfat's China unit policy officer, Nicholas Clutterbuck, advised that "while the dinner can be regarded as private, the minister cannot make unplanned/uncommunicated travel movements around Beijing during her stay".
Asked today why there was an initial request for a briefing before the dinner, and then it changed, Collins said:
"My office naturally asks for briefings for everything but it was a private dinner so it wasn't needed." 

If Winston Peters and Grant Robertson were hoping to find a smoking gun yesterday in Ms Collins' OIA dump, they will have been somewhat disappointed. Judith Collins' handling of this issue may have been haphazard, but there is no evidence that she gave Oravida any favourable treatment as a result of the private dinner.

Labour now has a choice to make. Grant Robertson has pursued this matter now for two months. He has wasted a number of oral questions from Labour's daily allocation which could be used to hold the Government to account on other matters. When the House resumes on Tuesday, Judith Collins will still be on National's front bench.

There were signs when Parliament went into recess that the public was tiring of Labour's attack on Ms Collins, and reigniting the attack next week will be a risky strategy for Labour. It will be interesting to see how Labour handles this going forward, because it could all end very badly for them unless they find the smoking gun.

It was disclosed yesterday by the Electoral Commission that Oravida donated $30,000 to National just prior to Christmas. Labour of course sees this as further evidence of cronyism. But Oravida has a legal right to donate to any political party, and National has correctly declared the donation. Contrast that with David Cunliffe's lack of transparency over his anonymous donations to a secret trust last year. We suspect that Labour's angst is more because no one will give them the time of day, let alone any donations to be declared.

Winston Peters will continue to pursue this, because unsubstantiated allegations, threats of release of non-existant documents and innuendo are his stock-in-trade. Labour might be better advised to leave the mud-slinging to the master mud-slinger and look for more fertile ground.

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 Collins fights back

Judith Collins is not taking the latest allegations against her lying down; Stuff reports:

Justice Minister Judith Collins has hit out against the latest conflict of interest allegations levelled against her by Opposition MPs.
Collins has been under fire over allegations she used her ministerial position to benefit her husband's business interests.
She was also refusing to name the Chinese border official who she, Oravida managing director Julia Xu and chairman Stone Shi, who were close personal friends, shared a private dinner with while on an official trip to China.
The latest allegations levelled by NZ First leader Winston Peters under parliamentary privilege were that Collins went to the rescue of Oravida after it wrote to the Government seeking assistance after the Fonterra botulism scare last year.
The letter said Oravida had been "profoundly negatively" affected by the disaster and urged "ministers and the New Zealand Government to help us to navigate through this difficult time".
Collins has avoided the media, but told RadioLive today the allegations made by Peters were "utterly untrue".
"Worse than that, TV3 and Winston Peters have made utterly false comments and stated as fact things that are not fact," Collins said.
"Pretty much everything" about the allegations was false "and I'm not going to to dignify them with a response", she said.
"I'm not responsible for the company, I'm not responsible for actions that they take and I'm absolutely disgusted at the way in which my family has been dragged through this by some elements of the media."
She denied it was a bad look for her to meet with Oravida after the company wrote to Trade Minister Tim Groser and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy seeking government help.
"It does not look wrong. It looks no more wrong than the fact that 41 companies wrote or received some funding from the Government because of the issue," Collins said. 

David Cunliffe made a rare appearance in Parliament yesterday to lead the attack on Judith Collins. But given that he still refuses to name those who donated anonymously to his leadership campaign, and given those donations were hidden away in a secret trust which Mr Cunliffe hoped would remain secret, he is the last person who should be calling for transparency.

Opposition MP's used three of their eight allocated questions yesterday during Question Time to attack Ms Collins, but made little progress. There's a good reason for that; it's a beat-up, and no amount of hysterical shrieking, mud-slinging and innuendo can change that. 

Winston Peters promised to release damning evidence against Ms Collins to Parliament yesterday, but once again he came up short. His allegations against Judith Collins are as strong as his allegation earlier this year that Huka Lodge had been sold to Chinese buyers.

And the Minister of Justice knows who her real friends are:

Any ties that Sir Peter Leitch may have still had to Labour from the Clark years were severed when Darien Fenton attacked his character in 2011 for daring to say something nice about John Key; the ultimate act of class treason in Ms Fenton's eyes. We applaud him for sticking up for his friend; that's the mark of the man.

We will predict that Judith Collins will survive this because, apart from having fallen foul of the Prime Minister's "no surprises" policy, there is no evidence that she has done anything wrong. 

There is plenty of innuendo, there is no shortage of mud being flung, but there is no evidence of wrong-doing. Sure, she is suffering some reputational damage, but in the absence of any evidence that Ms Collins directly or indirectly intervened on Oravida's behalf, the Opposition has nothing.