Goff says he would do it again
July 28th, 2004 at 10:24 am by David FarrarPhil Goff has effectively said in the NZ Herald that conversations with foreign VIPs are normally “absolutely confidential” unless he thinks he can score political points by releasing them. I am amazed he does not see the contradiction.
Goff is going against even the Chief Ombudsman by saying he would do it again, and in the process destorying any chance of MFAT being allowed back into sensitive meetings involving Opposition MPs.
Goff says he only would do it to expose hypocrisy, but such a judgement is exceptionally political, not objective. Many reasonable people would say a throw away comment that was of so little moment not even the Senators could recall it, is in no way contradictory to National’s stated policy position.
It is only one step removed from SIS agents bugging MPs, so the Government can reveal to the world any “hypocrisy” they overhear.
Anyway I have a solution for all this. The Government should give me access to all MFAT files (I used to have a top secret security clearance so shouldn’t be an issue) of meetings involving Goff and Clark and foreign VIPs, and allow me to release any which in *my* opinion show hypocrisy. Then let the public decide.
After all, what is good for the goose, is good for the gander!
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July 28th, 2004 at 3:19 pm
Yeah, this is a shocker, made worse by Goff’s misrepresentation that the comments were somehow gospel. It’s a huge breach of confidence and only for political gain.
Vote:July 28th, 2004 at 3:57 pm
There is another way to think about this.
If we all lived in the gutter without moral restraint, and if someone said, “Let’s all start being better people. I would like to be a better person, but I just can’t manage it all by myself.” Then, those people who didn’t care for the idea would say, “Ignore him/her, he/she is just a hypocrite.”
So those who hold that hypocrisy is a bad thing are basically just attacking the player instead of the ball. They are saying, “You’ve spent your whole life happily crawling in the gutter, why should you want to stand on two feet to better yourself now? Shup-up anyway because we don’t want other people to get grand ideas which will upset the status-quo.”
Socialists & conservatives make a big issue of hypocrisy because they fear freedom, diversity, and new ideas.
If we start regarding hypocricy as a virtue instead of a vice, then nobody could ever claim that breaking a confidence was justified to expose hypocricy.
Vote:July 28th, 2004 at 5:09 pm
Have you noticed that Goff is commenting on everything at the moment. Is he preparing the ground to push Clark aside, as the Labour polls continue to go south….Worth a thought.
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