0 Quote of the Day - 13 June 2014

Fran O'Sullivan's Herald column today is about political donations, and the expectations thereafter. Headed Cash donors have expectations it concludes thus:

Justice Wylie's judgment is also notable for the light it sheds on SkyCity's relationship with Brown. SkyCity had not previously donated to an Auckland mayoral campaign. But in 2010, Brown's campaign team approached the casino company for a donation.
SkyCity's board and CEO Nigel Morrison agreed to make the donation and one of a similar size to Banks. SkyCity did not want either of the two $15,000 donations to be made anonymously.
The Banks saga is still to finally play out. But what is notable is that Brown - who was publicly perceived to be concerned about the social cost of casinos - was quite prepared to have his campaign team pursue SkyCity for a donation.
As the EY inquiry disclosed, Brown benefited from free nights at the casino operator's hotel. Brown also gave his support to the Government's "pokies for convention centre" deal with SkyCity.
It's not easy to hold back a tsunami of disbelief that donor cash doesn't buy influence when looking at the sequence of events.
I've questioned before why Brown wanted to take power off the Council Controlled Organisations and centralise it in the mayor's office. There are some good commercial brains on the boards of the CCOs. But they have been subject to too much dictate from the centre.
At a national level, Labour's Andrew Little was right on the button with his call for an independent inquiry into the police decision not to prosecute Banks. But Little shouldn't stop there. The bigger question - which far outweighs Banks' transgressions - is why the police didn't file a legal prosecution against Labour Party identities after Labour raided parliamentary funds to back its 2005 campaign for re-election.
That question still remains.
Banks has paid a price for a crime which is substantially less than that committed by the country's then ruling party.

Fran O'Sullivan's comments about Len Brown and his relationship with SkyCity reawaken the events surrounding the outing of his affair with Bevan Chuang, and the investigation which followed. They will do nothing to dispel the lingering suspicion that Brown is unfit for the office of Mayor of Auckland on several levels.

But it is her comments on Labour and the 2005 Pledge card scandal that are the most telling. We warned Andrew Little last week to be careful what he wished for. Now the Pledge card rort is back in the news, and Labour will have to go into damage control all over again. 

This time though, they are doing the damage control from the Opposition benches, so any time spent putting out nine-year-old fires is time that Labour ISN'T telling New Zealand what it would do for the next nine years.

0 Rudman on coat-tailing

Brian Rudman doesn't hide his contempt for coat-tailing in his latest Herald column. But under the headline Cut off the coat-tails and end MMP rorts he's not exactly kind to the Labour Party and David Cunliffe either; he opines:

Labour is promising to abolish within 100 days of taking office the MMP coat-tail rule that enables a minor party electorate MP to bring party list mates into Parliament regardless of the 5 per cent entry threshold.
The joke is that, barring a miracle, there seems little chance of Labour leader David Cunliffe and his Green allies forming a government without the aid of the Mana-Internet "party", whose existence depends on gaming the coat-tail provisions.
And having exploited the system for all it is worth - and spent more than $3 million of internet millionaire Kim Dotcom's cash - to get back into Parliament, it seems unlikely that Hone Harawira and Laila Harre will turn around and vote to end the fun.
The stitch-up between embattled Mana Party leader Mr Harawira and Mr Dotcom, the millionaire refugee from American law enforcement agencies, is not the first attempt to game the MMP rules. It's just the most egregious.

Rudman is dead right. The deal between Dotcom and Harawira is the rort to end all rorts, and everyone knows it. John Key may invite minor party leaders for a cup of tea, but on the rort scale, the MegaMana one is a five course dinner with wine matches, and port and cigars to follow.

Of course, that won't stop David Cunliffe, if that is what it takes. Faced with a choice of governing and reaching some sort of deal with MegaMana, and facing another three years in opposition, we all know what David Cunliffe will do.

And we all know that Labour has form; read on:

In 1999, in the second MMP election, Labour leader Helen Clark encouraged Labour supporters in Coromandel to support Green candidate Jeanette Fitzsimons to ensure the defeat of the National incumbent and bring in several Green list candidates on her coat-tails.
Ms Fitzsimons narrowly won - but in the end the Greens' party vote just sneaked over the 5 per cent threshhold, entitling them to six seats anyway.

Of course, that's not Labour's only coat-tail rort. From the first MMP election in 1996 to his retirement at the 2011 General Election, Labour stood a series of Neville Nobodies against former Labour Party president and MP Jim Anderton in Wigram. By the time he retired, Anderton was back to being a Labour MP in every way except his self-named political party.

So Labour knows all about coat-tail rorts. But make no mistake; David Cunliffe, for all his pontificating now will reach out to Dotcom and Harawira if that's what it takes after 20 September. Then he will ask the MegaMana MP's to close their eyes, block their noses, and like turkeys, vote for an early Christmas. Labour's hypocrisy is galling. 

0 Espiner (C) on MegaMana

There has been a lot written in the last week about MegaMana, Kim Dotcom, Hone Harawira, Laila Harre et al. 

MegaMana Fatigue Syndrome is fast approaching, and a Dotcom-free day beckons, but it's not here just yet; not whilst people like Colin Espiner are making their voices heard. Under the headline What's behind Dotcom's civil union? Espiner (C) opines:

Say what you like about the sacrifice of conscience for cash - a great big German spanner has just been flung into the machinery of this year's election campaign.
I wasn't going to write about Kim Dotcom's vanity party again this week. It has had far more publicity in its short life than it deserves.
Plus, it seems that everywhere you look Dotcom is there. Giving evidence in the John Banks trial. Breaking up with his wife, Mona (on Twitter, of course). Fighting Hollywood over access to his millions. Calling on Prime Minister John Key to resign (again).
Shortly, it will be Dotcom in the dock as he fights extradition to the United States on fraud and racketeering charges. Forget Banks and buckets of mud - that hearing is going to be the trial of the year. So a bit of Dot-gone seemed like no bad thing.
And then suddenly, there he was in a civil union with the beneficent ghost from socialist Christmases past: Laila Harre.
The media was expecting Dotcom's Internet Party would announce a flake as its new leader. Or a complete moron. Either would have done just fine. We could have ridiculed them, and moved on to more important matters.
But Harre isn't a flake. And she's certainly no moron. She's one of the most driven, persuasive and intelligent politicians I've met. I don't know how Dotcom managed to put a ring on the darling of the Left but on the face of it, it's a major coup.
The question, though, is for who?
Harre is an old-school socialist. She's from a trades union background. She's a former member of the Labour Party, of New Labour, and of the Alliance Party. She's most recently worked for the Green Party.
She's mates with most of New Zealand's remaining old hard Lefties, including Matt McCarten (now Labour leader David Cunliffe's chief of staff), rent-a-protester John Minto (also in the Internet Party tent), ex Green MP and now ex Mana candidate Sue Bradford, broadcaster and former Alliance MP Willie Jackson (who's flying a kite about standing for the Internet Party himself) and radical Maori separatist Annette Sykes (president of Mana and number two on its list).
Harre was one of Jim Anderton's stars when the Alliance Party won 10 per cent of the vote and entered government with Labour in 1999. She quickly rose to Cabinet rank, and was a capable minister.
But when the Alliance imploded three years later, Anderton and Harre fell out. He went on to form the Progressive Party, returning to Parliament on the back of his safe Wigram seat. Harre took over as leader of the Alliance, and lost, badly, in the 2002 election.
On the face of it, then, Harre is likely to appeal to older Lefties who admire her feminist principles and strong trade union credentials. 

And therein lies the problem for Dotcom's "Internet" party; older Lefties are already voting for the parties of the Left, so all that is likely to happen is that the votes of the parties of the Left will get further diluted. MegaMana may get a bigger share of the vote, but it will be at Labour and the Greens' expense, and a few conspiracy theorists may be lured away from Winston First. Will that change the Government? Probably not.

Espiner (C) continues:

It's hard to see her appeal to young, internet-savvy geeks though. Last time Harre was in Parliament the internet was barely out of short pants. And the people she's trying to persuade to vote for her weren't born and certainly wouldn't know her from a 33K dial-up modem.
But does it matter? Probably not. As long as Harre gets votes, neither the Internet Party nor Mana will care where they come from. And she's got $3 million of Dotcom's money to spend - that's more than any other party contesting the election, including Colin Craig's Conservatives. 

It's going to be fun over the next few weeks going through speeches made during the Electoral Finance Bill debate. We've already made reference to Hone Harawira's remarkable transformation from one who hated the influence of money in elections to one who has $500,000 to spend this time around. 

And the Hansard extracts we've saved so far have some really doozies in them that we'll share a little closer to the election as the political landscape takes shape.

Here's the remainder of Espiner's piece, where he gets right to the heart of the issue, and what this obscene display of money-flashing is all about:

On the face of it, the Left has engineered a spectacular reverse takeover of Dotcom's party. It's like a reunion of every failed candidate from every disappeared political party of the past 20 years, funded by an avowed capitalist whose fundamental philosophy - the freedom of movement of capital and people - runs counter to everything his candidates stand for.
But remember, Dotcom doesn't really care. His political aims are pragmatic, not philosophical.
In my opinion, there are two reasons why Dotcom is manipulating the political process. First, he wants rid of Prime Minister John Key. Second, he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in a United States penitentiary. If the Internet-Mana party is elected with more than a couple of MPs, then Dotcom is likely to achieve the first objective.
There is no possibility the party could side with National. So a vote for Internet-Mana is a vote for a Labour-Green-Internet-Mana-and-possibly-New Zealand First-Government.
On the second objective, it's possible Dotcom could delay any extradition ruling against him long enough for a change of government to take place. The new multi-tentacled administration could overturn a court ruling. It would be foolish and contrary to the rule of law, but it could.
The Internet-Mana party may also either confuse or scare the bejesus out voters and strengthen National's hand. Blue-collar, socially conservative, Labour-leaning voters - who'd only just got their heads around the idea of dealing with the Greens - may not countenance their vote ushering in a potential coalition led by far-Left feminist and Maori radicals.
In her acceptance speech of the Internet Party leadership last week, Harre admitted her party was gaming the MMP system in a bid to get into Parliament. But she said it was "time for New Zealanders to take back MMP".
It was a nice line, with a ring of socialist rhetoric to it. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The Internet-Mana party may be successful or it may fall flat on its face.
But it is Dotcom who is attempting to take over MMP. And it is for no-one but himself. 

Kudos to Colin Espiner for calling the MegaMana marriage for what it is; a cynical piece of manipulation by Dotcom, to his own benefit. And shame on all the supposedly principled Left-wing politicians like Harawira. Laila Harre and John Minto who are standing by and letting it happen.

In this case, the end does NOT justify the means. The largest attempted rort of our political democracy in this country's history is underway, and it needs to be strongly condemned. Roll on July 7th.

 

0 Quote of the Day - 2 June 2014

Karl du Fresne is one of a dwindling band of old-school journalists; the kind who don't simply recycle the many press releases that cross their desks each day. And his comments on MegaMana are interesting; under the headline Mana ties knot with eye on cash du Fresne opines:

Whatever else you might think of Sue Bradford, she sticks to her principles. You have to respect her for walking away in disgust from the Internet-Mana pantomime.
Who, other than the most gullible, is going to believe these two parties have genuine shared concerns? They are united only by rank opportunism.
Hone Harawira needs access to Kim Dotcom's bank account, while Dotcom seems driven by a personal grudge against Prime Minister John Key and a need for political friends who might help him avoid extradition. These are hardly a sound basis for a credible political party.
In his desperation to make the merger look honourable, Harawira argues that internet access is a pressing issue for young Maori.
This is a convenient but very recent conversion. When I last looked, digital access wasn't even mentioned on the Mana website.
The $200,000 that Dotcom reportedly put into the Internet Party is a far more likely explanation for Harawira's enthusiasm. But at least he had the decency to grin cheekily when he admitting coveting his new ally's resources. Like Winston Peters, he often gives the game away by grinning when he knows no-one is fooled.
Unfortunately, a mischievous grin can't disguise the notion that this alliance is a cynical exploitation of a flawed electoral system. Theoretically at least, there is a possibility that Internet-Mana will end up in a position of power that bears no relationship to its voter support.
What's more, the two parties have undertaken to review their relationship six weeks after the election. So if they get into Parliament, all bets will be off. Take that, suckers.
The best we can hope for is some entertainment as the inherent tensions boil to the surface and Internet-Mana blows up like Krakatoa. How long, for example, before Mana office-holder John Minto – a conviction politician in the Bradford mould – spits the dummy? He can only fool himself for so long that the merger is in the best interests of the proletariat.
Even on their own, Far-Left parties such as Mana have a glorious history of disembowelling themselves. Who knows what bloody mayhem could result when the hard-core Left hitches itself to a wholly incompatible ally like the Dotcom party? 

Of course, since du Fresne penned his column we have discovered that Herr Dotcom has put a lot more than $200k into the Internet Party. The generally accepted figure now is $4 million, with $500,000 of that being paid to Hone Harawira's cult party as a dowry.

Karl du Fresne is dead right (sorry Rex/Edward/Judge); this is indeed a "cynical exploitation" of MMP. And if Labour overtly or covertly instructs Kelvin Davis to not try too hard in Te Tai Tokerau, it too will be a party to this dirtiest of dirty deals.

 The Left has lost the right now to criticise electorate deals done by any other parties. Having so staunchly defended MMP when New Zealand last voted on its system of democracy, who would have ever expected it would have been the parties of the political Left who exposed just how flawed MMP is, and gave us convincing reasons to demand change?

In the meantime, let's just stand back and wait for the ritual disembowelling to begin!

0 First Gower, now Garner

We blogged last night about Patrick Gower's rant about the MegaMana rort.

If you think that was bad, wait until you see what Duncan Garner thinks; Gower's piece was but an entree. In his op-ed this afternoon he has absolutely ripped in to Dotcom, Harawira et al. Under the headline Party for sale - Internet-Mana is a sham and a rort Garner opines:

This Internet-Mana party alliance is a sham and a rort, but MMP allows for it - which is the worst bit. 
I’ve seen nothing like it in the history of NZ politics. It is far less transparent than the dodgy electorate seat deals National has done over the years. New Zealanders have every right to be outraged.

This is about an already convicted criminal - a rich internet tycoon wanted on piracy charges, no less – on the run from the United States and sheltering in New Zealand. He’s a had a run in with the NZ Government and the US authorities, so he’s doing all he can to buy his way out of trouble.
It now includes pulling out his cheque-book and paying for a political party and buying people off – so he can keep his sorry backside out of the clink.
It’s as simple as that: he’s paying big money so he doesn’t turn into some sort of dribbling mess behind bars – some reports suggest he’s pumped $4m into setting up this party. So how much is he paying his people?
I asked new leader Laila Harré yesterday, she said she wasn’t sure yet. But money between the two will change hands at some stands, she’s clear on that.
She will be paid for this role. Is this the New Zealand way? I would argue no way. It’s grubby isn’t it? You only get paid once you get elected don’t you?
I have had a bit to do with Harré over the years. She has been a tireless and effective campaigner for those on the left. However, her former allies think she has sold out; Jim Anderton is far from impressed.
Harré is ambitious. Before all this she had integrity and credibility, but many of us are questioning that now. What does she really have in common with Kim Dotcom? Bugger all. He’s found she has a price after all.

Duncan Garner absolutely nails all the key issues in this sordid rort. Kim Dotcom clearly thinks he can buy people off. New Zealand needs to send him a clear message that that's not how we do things here.

Every man, they say, has his price. We know now that Hone Harawira will dispense with democracy for half a million big ones. We don't know what Laila Harre's price is, but we're guessing it's a darned sight more than the base salary for a back-bench MP.

Garner closes, and rolls out the dreaded "C" word:

Most of all this deal lacks transparency; she will, and should be, hounded by the press about how much she is personally being paid by Kim Dotcom to be the leader. Plus, what sort of deal has been done on Kim Dotcom’s possible extradition?
If there is a change of Government, and a future Minister overturns any extradition, isn’t that corruption? Wouldn’t he have bought his way out of an American jail?
New Zealanders have every right to feel dirty over this deal. It brings our political process into disrepute. Dotcom has contempt for our system, our democracy and our country. To him, everything is for sale and everyone has their price.
I don’t see it lasting. This will, and should, end in tears.

Garner is right; this stinks, far worse than the snapper that got David Shearer's number. The stench of corruption hovers over this dirty, dirty deal. 

And it is especially ironic to consider Hone Harawira's contribution to the Third Reading debate on the Electoral Finance Bill in December 2007, when speaking as a Maori Party MP he said:

HONE HARAWIRA: I want to make the point that if I wish to speak in Māori at any time, I will do so.

We are the Māori Party, with not a bean to our name, but we still turned down $250,000 rather than compromise our independence, and for the same reasons we are opposed to this bill. We are the Māori Party, and we were angry with both the divisive “Iwi/Kiwi” campaign run by National and the nasty “a vote for the Māori Party is a vote for National” campaign run by Labour, because we did not have the wherewithal to counteract either. Yet still we are opposed to this bill. We are the Māori Party, with not a bean to our name, but we stand free in this House, answerable to no one but our own people, uncompromised by shady deals with either of the major parties, and we are proud to say that we are opposed to this electoral finance legislation.

We know Harawira's price now; a price Kim Dotcom willingly paid, with his tainted money. We hope he can live with himself.

0 Quote of the Day - 30 May 2014

John Key sees right through the MegaMana sham. And he's telling the country; this, via the Herald:

Prime Minister John Key has ramped up his criticism of Kim Dotcom in the wake of the union of the internet Party and Mana Party, saying Dotcom was trying to "buy influence" and there was nothing Dotcom had in common with either Laila Harre or Hone Harawira.
He said he had little doubt Mr Dotcom was simply trying to get politicians in place who might be able to help block his extradition.
"You've got a guy who can't buy a house in New Zealand, but he can buy a political party. I think most New Zealanders would look at that and be pretty cynical about it. No one should be under any illusion.
"This is a very wealthy guy trying to buy a political party to stop himself being extradited."
He said Ms Harre and Mr Harawira had "zero" in common with Dotcom.
"Kim Dotcom lives in a house that is probably worth about $25 million. FBI records show the hundreds of millions of dollars that came with him.
"And you're telling me he's a natural bedfellow of Laila Harre and Hone Harawira? If you believe that then you believe Santa Claus is going to turn up 12 times a year just to make New Zealand a more joyous place."
The internet Mana deal is aimed at maximising the number of MPs Harawira can bring into Parliament with him if he holds his Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
He said he had not known the law allowed parties to stand as joint force and then split into separate parties after the election and "it seems a bit of a rort."

Key is dead right. And he's not finished either; read on:

He said the internet Mana Party's first joint policy of free tertiary education was "unaffordable and New Zealanders will know that."
"That's what you're going to see from the far left of politics. You'll be led by Russel Norman, Kim Dotcom, Mana, David Cunliffe, you're going to see extreme examples that New Zealand can't afford and fundamentally promises they can never meet."
Mr Key said he was not worried about the impact of the internet Mana Party on National because it would take votes from the Greens and "disaffected Labour voters" rather than National.
"From National's point of view it's of no great relevance. But if you're Metiria Turei, Russel Norman, maybe David Cunliffe, you might be just a little more worried."

David and the GIMPs will halt New Zealand's economic recovery in its tracks. Their big-spending policies will fuel inflation, and taxes and interest rates will go up. The people they purport to represent will take the biggest hit. Waitakere Man and his wife will be paying more at the pump for their gas as David and the GIMPs meddle with the Reserve Bank Act and force the exchange rate down. Food prices will soar, mortgage rates will go up, and the plunge in the exchange rate will make the family holiday that Waitakere Man had been saving hard for unaffordable.

Fortunately though, Waitakere Man realised in 2008 that Labour had lost its way, and he and his missus voted for John Key. In 2014, they have joined the National Party, and they are now campaigning to make sure that Labour gets the message as to how far it has strayed from what used to be its core constituency.

As for Kim Dotcom, Waitakere Man knows a rort when he sees one.