Kiwiblog

The SST reports that Mike Williams will resign as Labour Party President this week. Sadly there is no word on whether he has resigned off all the Government boards Labour appointed him to.

He still claims no regrets over his attempted smear job of John Key:

Williams, who drew much criticism for his dash to Melbourne late in the election campaign to examine papers about National leader John Key, said he had no regrets about doing so.

The 13,000 pages of court documents turned out to contain nothing incriminating of Key.

“To use a metaphor, if you’re pinned down, somebody has to crawl out under the barbed wire,” Williams told the Sunday Star-Times. “I drew the short straw on that one and the chance of getting my arse shot off, and I did.” The allegations had to be checked out, he said.

It’s sad he still doesn’t realise his mistake. As Party President he never ever should have been flying to Melbourne and taking back 20 kgs of papers. There were scores of other people who could have been dispatched.

Merely being a party president for the party no longer in power, doesn’t mean one should have to immediately resign all your Government appointments. Normally they would be allowed to see their terms out.

But WIlliams tried to prove that the Prime Minister was NZ’s biggest fraudster. He personally drove and managed an attempted smear campaign. He even blogged about it as Batman. He sent copies of documents to journalists at their home addresses. Having done all that, how ca he expect to be trusted to govern any crown entity on behalf of the new Government?

If Williams will not proactively resign, the Government shoudl show some balls and write to him asking him to resign off all the Boards he is on.

Oh today’s Dom Post editorial is wonderful:

First they take the piss out of Williams and compare it all to a John le Carre novel.

At the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions a swarthy, middle-aged man is hunched over a desk working his way through an enormous stack of documents, The Dominion Post writes

In Wellington a pile of documents is dropped in a Dominion Post reporter’s letterbox wrapped in a copy of the Otago Daily Times. Further documents follow, delivered by someone who calls himself Batman.

The script for an antipodean John le Carre-style thriller? Sadly no.

Le Carre would have approved of “Batman”. It’s a nice touch, hinting at a sense of self-deprecation on the part of the document dropper, but if Le Carre had been writing the script, the man poring over court records in Melbourne would have been a Russian emigre with a limp, not Labour Party president Mike Williams, and the drop would have been wrapped in the Times Literary Supplement, not the ODT.

But then they really put the acid on:

However, two critical facts have been uncovered by document searches in Melbourne. In an interview last year, Mr Key wrongly stated that he left Elders Merchant Finance a year earlier than he did in 1988 and he wrongly stated that he paid for a 1988 lunch that Australian court documents show was actually paid for by a colleague.

These are matters of grave import that go to the heart of Mr Key’s credibility as a prime ministerial aspirant.

If he cannot be relied upon to remember who paid for the champers with which he and his colleagues toasted his departure 20 years ago, how can he be trusted to run the country? Next thing he’ll be claiming he was unaware the crown limo in which he was being ferried from one place to another was travelling at twice the speed limit, signing his name to artworks he did not produce, rewriting electoral laws to suit his party or pretending not to notice that a political ally has been misleading the public.

Ouch, ouch and ouch again.

Some useful comments from John Armstrong and especially Fran O’Sullivan on Labour’s attempted H-Fee smear. It is worth remembering that this was a smear thay had been pushing for over a year, with Ministers in the House going on about it.

Armstrong writes:

Labour did trip itself up this week, the cynicism and arrogance of power coming back to bite it with a vengeance. That was most obvious in Labour’s latest attempt to dredge up something, anything, in John Key’s foreign exchange dealing past which might make voters question whether National’s leader has the integrity worthy of a prime minister.

Labour believes it is perfectly within its rights to probe Key’s character. That may be so. But New Zealand voters have huge difficulty with investigations into MPs’ pasts and private lives. Some discretion is required on Labour’s part. Yet, it clumsily seems to think it can fool the public that it is performing a public service that gives it the latitude to parade the flimsiest material as proof of Key’s unfitness to govern.

When it turns up nothing – and no less a figure than the party’s president is doing the digging for dirt – Labour looks as if it is driven by a fatal mix of arrogance and desperation. Hardly a good look in the penultimate week of an election campaign.

Labour (and many others including myself) were appalled when the Exclusive Brethren hired a private detective to investigate the Prime Minister. Labour are acting no better than the Exclusive Brethren when they have their party president flying to Australia and hawling back 20 kgs of papers in an attempt to smear Key.

O’Sullivan points out how truly desperate Labour must have been to try this:

Labour Party president Mike Williams must have been tired and emotional or greatly deluded to believe he was finally on the track of a “neutron bomb” which would blast National leader John Key’s election campaign into smithereens.

The upshot of Williams’ lunatic attempt to try and link Key with the notorious 1988 H-fee scam – when no such evidence has been uncovered – is that Labour is now (rightfully) scrambling to fight off accusations that it is more interested in launching smears against its opponents than fighting a fair election at a time of extreme international financial turbulence.

The Prime Minister’s pathetic attempt to distance herself from Williams’ ham-fisted behaviour lasted a mere 24 hours before she was forced to confirm the Labour Party paid for what she initially described as his “private mission”.

Have no doubt if the smear had worked Clark would have fronted it.

It is unfathomable that Williams and Labour’s taxpayer-funded “researchers” thought they would drive home a connection putting Key at the centre of this white-collar crime by uncovering evidence that had eluded the Australian National Crimes Authority’s forensic investigators.

If evidence existed linking Key to the transaction he would either have faced charges, or been subpoenaed to give evidence in the subsequent court cases against Jarrett and Hawkins. He wasn’t.

This is the part that made me realise how desperate Williams was with his Keystone Cops routine. Williams thought his collection of amateur detectives would find evidence that had been overlooked by the Serious Fraud Office and the Australian National Crime Authority’s foresnic investigators.

Duncan Garner blogs:

The H-fee fiasco hasn’t blown up. Well it has – but it’s a minor smoke bomb and it’s exploded in Labour’s face.

Labour had hoped that Key signed off on the $66m Elders – Equiticorp foreign exchange scam in 1988. It would ha ve been gold wouldn’t it?

The signature looks the same – but it’s not Key.

Labour’s President Mike Williams spent a few days in Melbourne last week pouring over the 24 kilograms of papers. But he couldn’t access to the court documents easily.

He had to use the Australian Labour Party’s top lawyer to get a court order – through a judge – to get to the documents.

So who paid for the top lawyer and who paid the court filing fees? Was it the Labour Party?

Did Helen not notice her party president – the Labour Party Campaign Chair and Manager, was out of the country trying to dig up dirt on John Key from 20 years ago?

Yes – she has confirmed she knew what Williams was up to.

Did no one notice he was absent from the daily campaign meetings he normally chairs?

Possibly not, since Helen appointed herself chief political strategist instead of Mike.

Why were taxpayer funded members of Labour’s Parliamentary Research Unit also in Australia with Mike Williams trying to smear John Key?

Helen says none of them flew over, but they were assisting Williams.

Who paid for all their travel?

Well either Helen or Williams are lying here. Helen says WIlliams paid himself. Williams says the Labour Party paid.

Does the head of the research unit still report unofficially to Heather Simpson?

Yes. And there is no way they would have been authorised to work on the smear campaign without Heather’s sign off.

Is the Batman who posted documents anonymously to Dominion Post reporters the same Batman who is an author on The Standard and posted on the H-Fee earlier this month?

Yes.

Why did The Standard delete the previous post from Batman?

They did not delete it, but changed it from being an author to being a guest post and put up a disclaimer that they do not know who Batman is.

Does this not link The Standard to Mike Williams and the Labour Parliamentary Research Unit?

They claim they do not know who Batman is (despite giving him or her posting rights temporarily).

Is it not time that Labour fronted up and revealed how many of the 15 Standard authors are parliamentary and ministerial staffers?

And is Batman one of them?

Who from Labour told Winston about the smear so he could refer to it on Alt TV?

My guess is Pete Hodgson

Doesn’t it undermine Helen’s claim she had nothing to do with it, when her parliamentary strategist Pete Hodgson is trying to beat it up?

And continues to try and beat it up.

Is Helen just pretending she knew nothing about the attempted smear, or has she lost control of her party, her party president and her own research unit?

I don’t think she has lost control. She is in contact six times a day with Mike Williams. If it had not blown up in their face, she would be fronting the issue.

1. Did Helen not notice her party president – the Labour Party Campaign Chair and Manager, was out of the country trying to dig up dirt on John Key from 20 years ago?
2. Did no one notice he was absent from the daily campaign meetings he normally chairs?
3. Why were taxpayer funded members of Labour’s Parliamentary Research Unit also in Australia with Mike Williams trying to smear John Key?
4. Who paid for all their travel?
5. Does the head of the research unit still report unofficially to Heather Simpson?
6. Is the Batman who posted documents anonymously to Dominion Post reporters the same Batman who is an author on The Standard and posted on the H-Fee earlier this month?
7. Why did The Standard delete the previous post from Batman?
8. Does this not link The Standard to Mike Williams and the Labour Parliamentary Research Unit?
9. Is it not time that Labour fronted up and revealed how many of the 15 Standard authors are parliamentary and ministerial staffers?
10. Who from Labour told Winston about the smear so he could refer to it on Alt TV?
11. Doesn’t it undermine Helen’s claim she had nothing to do with it, when her parliamentary strategist Pete Hodgson is trying to beat it up?
12. Is Helen just pretending she knew nothing about the attempted smear, or has she lost control of her party, her party president and her own research unit?

Let me see if I have this right.

Helen Clark claims she can’t remember when she was first briefed on Owen Glenn’s wishes to be made Consul – a relatively recent event, and a pretty significant issue.

While Helen is also claiming there is something sinister about the fact that John Key may have got wrong who paid for a meal 20 years ago when he was 26, and the date he left a job.

Let’s first deal with what is an undisputed fact – John Key had nothing to do with the H-Fee. Here is what the then SFO Director said:

‘Mr Key was simply one in a “vast array of innocent people, potential witnesses, in a massive fact-gathering exercise. I feel compelled to fully support the reported comments of John Key in relation to the H-Fee transaction. It should not need to be said that John Key was completely innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever. For any politician to hint or suggest otherwise would be absolutely rubbish and pure mischief-making’

Also from the same story last August:

Yesterday Labour Ministers were denying any knowledge of the H-Fee rumours and Labour Party president Mike Williams said the news was “a bolt from the blue” for him.

This is the same Mike WIlliams who is reported today:

In a drive to pin down Mr Key’s involvement in the case, Labour Party president Mike Williams took time out from the heat of the election to fly to Melbourne last week to search documents relating to a court case over the H-Fee.

So get this. The Labour Party President – a man paid almost $200,000 a year by the taxpayer for his multiple board appointments actually flew to another country to search through 20 year old court documents in a desperate attempt to smear John Key. This is Labour’s plan for the future.

And the best he could find was inconsistency over who paid for dinner.

Also worth remembering the SST last year:

Former Equiticorp boss Allan Hawkins and Australian-based expat and former Elders Merchant Finance executive Ken Jarrett have both confirmed Key’s claims he had nothing to do with H-Fee.

So there is no proof at all that Key was in any way involved. It is an attempted guilt by association smear.

So what is this so called neutron bomb. At best it is three minor inconsistencies. Let’s take them one at a time:

Date of Departure

Yes John Key originally said he left in 1987,and in fact it was 24 June 1988. But the Herald themselves had the correct date in their 15 page profile on him in July 2008. So the correct date was already out there.

Before or after the H-Fee

Key said he left before the NZ H-Fee, which was on 7 Sep 1988. This is correct regardless of whether he left in 1987 or June 1988.

There was an earlier H-Fee in Jan 1988 for A$40m. Yes Key still worked for Elders then – but that earlier fee took place in Australia and Key was working in New Zealand. In his own words:

Mr Key says the Labour Party’s desperate attempt to link him with this issue again now appears to revolve around an earlier H-Fee transaction which took place in Australia while he was working for Elders in New Zealand.

“I was not involved in, or even aware of, that earlier transaction. Labour is clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel and will stop at no lie or innuendo.”

And remember that *everyone* says Key was not involved – the SFO, the then head of Equiticorp and the then finance head for Elders where the 26 year old Key was working.

This is again an attempt at guilt by association.

Who paid for the meal?

Mr Key told the Herald last year that Mr Jarrett had denied being in the country when that meeting took place. He said in the interview last year he was able to back-up Mr Richards’ story that Mr Jarrett was in the country because he – Mr Key – had paid for the lunch and had the credit card bill to prove it.

In fact, the court records show that Mr Richards paid for the lunch, not Mr Key.

Oh my God a dispute over who paid for lunch 20 years ago.

Mr Key said today that he always held the belief that the credit card used was his, but conceded it could well have been Mr Richards’.

Oh God Key may have been wrong on some details of a meal 20 years ago when he was 26. This is far far more serious than Helen Clark claiming amnesia over when she was first lobbied to make Owen Glenn Consul.

Finally for those who are going to try and make a capital case out of the fact there were some inconsistencies between people at the lunch, I quote from this e-mail sent to me by a lawyer a few minutes ago, quoting a standard summing up from the crown:

Reminds me of crown summing ups – “now the defence will no doubt point out to you that there are inconsistencies in the stories told by the crown witnesses.  We accept that, of course there are inconsistencies.  It’s human nature.  People can only give their memories, their recollection and such things are never perfect.  Indeed, if the stories were exactly the same there would be cause for concern.  That would suggest collusion.  No, what you have heard is unvarnished recollections.  What is important is that there is clear agreement on…”

I really hope someone asks Mike Williams who paid for his dirt digging trip to Melbourne.