Kiwiblog

Matthew Hooton hits the mark in NBR today. Go buy a copy for the full column, but here are some extracts:

It’s embarrassing to even chronicle Labour’s descent into economic lunacy this week but it now seriously proposes that borrowing to invest in global sharemarkets is not only a good idea but a one-way bet.

Borrow no matter how gaping our fiscal hole, nor how long the books will remain in the red, Labour insists.

This and only this, it claims, will stop superannuation entitlements to those aged 44 or younger being butchered.
It’s sad seeing Phil Goff reduced to such nonsense. Clearly, he now has no expectation of ever becoming prime minister.

Basically Goff has said that no matter how fire the deficit or debt is, he supports borrowing to save.

Dr Cullen launched his fund when permanent surpluses were forecast. With zero gross debt being on the medium-term horizon, it made sense to establish a sovereign wealth fund.

Connecting it with superannuation, though, was entirely political. Even Dr Cullen made clear there was no link to future entitlements and future taxpayers were always going to have to meet 89% of costs.

Bill English’s decision not to borrow for the fund will increase that by just 3%.

Moreover, in national-income terms, Mr English’s decision relates to just 0.2% of GDP from 2030.

It is ridiculous to worry about such a number. The smallest economic shock over the next two decades – positive or negative – could double or eliminate it, as could small productivity changes.

The media hysteria over the suspension has been put into context by Matthew. 0.2% of GDP.

Failing that, maintaining current entitlements would simply require reducing our surplus or increasing our deficit by 0.2% of GDP, 20 years hence. That hardly justifies the preposterous notion that we should borrow more now to invest in stocks.

Yet that is what Labour is demanding we do.

In reply, Mr Goff says governments can’t lose. He bases this on the banal observation in a Treasury paper that long-term returns from a diversified portfolio are likely to match the market average which, most probably, will exceed the risk-free rate over time.

Armed with these Corporate Finance 101 assumptions – and apparently with certain knowledge that sharemarkets are about to bounce back – Mr Goff demands that Mr English borrow another $20 billion over the next decade, and calculates it will deliver a net return of $8 billion sometime in the future.

No other politician in the developed world would contemplate such lunacy. Take Mr Goff’s argument to its logical conclusion and why stop at $20 billion?

Why not $200 billion to get $80 billion profit, dead cert?

Make it $2 trillion or more and perhaps tax could be abolished altogether with all government services being funded through the sharemarket.

This isn’t Goffonomics. It’s Goofynomics.

A name is born.

Mr Goff should ask why no other political leader in the history of the world has proposed this before.

Perhaps it’s because they understand it’s not government’s role to borrow from taxpayers yet to be born to risk on Wall Street with the promise of free money in the future.

What amuses me most of all is how Phil Goff treats a 50 year Treasury prediction of returns on managed funds as the holy writ, when Treasury can’t even predict from month to month what the deficit will be.

If you have a few spare minutes I recommend you listen to Laila Harre and Matthew Hooton on Nine to Noon discussing the Super Fund.

The Dom Post reports:

Police national headquarters confirmed this week that the file’s release was imminent, after fighting its disclosure for more than a year.

A Brash ally, government relations consultant Matthew Hooton, has been battling police for more than a year over their refusal to release the file. He took the case to the ombudsman.

Mr Hooton was yesterday cautious about the police about-turn. “We may be pleasantly surprised, but our understanding is that the file will be so heavily censored as to be meaningless and we expect the matter will return to the ombudsman or even end up in the courts.”

Dr Brash said police had told him they were about to release the file and had sent him a “heavily censored” version.

This is ridicolous. Why won’t they release the full version, rather than one with 90% redacted?

Hooton in NBR states:

The file will be so heavily censored it will largely be blank and will contain no new information.  This pseudo-release follows an Official Information Act (OIA) request my government relations firm lodged on May 27, 2007.  Under the law, PNHQ had 20 days to respond.  In fact, getting to this point, two years later, has required enormous effort by my staff and pro bono assistance from Kensington Swan.

Lest anyone think police files can’t be released, the “paintergate” press conference, at which PNHQ announced Ms Clark would not face forgery charges, suggests otherwise.  Then, PNHQ staff told journalists that if they scribbled down an OIA request, the file would be released, uncensored, the same day.

I think Mr Hooton and Kensington Swan need to press on – even if it means court action. Hell I can think of a lot of people who might donate to help cover the costs.

Let the truth come out.

I had a superb time at the P J O’Rourke dinner last night, and associated after match entertainment.

The night got off to a good start, when I ran into the Director of the CIS, as I was looking for my name at the table list. I only registered a couple of days ago and wasnt part of a formal group or table, so was not sure who I would be with. I was hoping it wouldn’t be a bunch of boring auditors so had requested on the form to be with some interesting people. I asked Greg if there were any interesting people at my Table – Table 8. He said “Well you’re with me and P J O Rourke, so is that interesting enough”. I managed to restrain myself from hugging Greg – but how seriously cool is that.

The dinner at Sky City was excellent and great conversation at the table. PJ’s speech and then Q&A session was simply stunning. Not only is he the funniest political speaker I have ever heard – he also delivered such a powerful strong message in favour of limited Government. I will blog some quotes from his speech, once I have a copy. It really was superb.

I could not resist in the Q&A asking him if he supported private mercenary armies, as written about by David Shearer, and O’Rourke said that is just about the only area he doesn’t support a private sector role. So I was amused that Labour’s Mt Albert candidate may be to the right of P J O’Rourke when it comes to the role of the private sector. PJ was amused over dinner to find out that one of the chapter headings of Shearer’s paper was “Give War a Chance” – the tile of one of O’Rourke’s best known books.

As I have said before, I think it is excellent Shearer has been willing to advocate that decisions on private sector involvement should be made on the basis of pragmatism, not ideology. Shearer basically says “If they can provide a better outcome, then don’t be put off by the fact they will make a profit from it”. All centrists and rightists should welcome such an outbreak of common sense in Labour, and support him. Matthew Hooton covers this theme in NBR:

What Mr Shearer advocated was that a controlling legal authority – the UN – retain ultimate responsibility for initiating, funding and regulating peace-keeping, but have flexibility in going about it.

If a company like Blackwater, Pathfinder or Executive Outcomes was better placed than soldiers from national armies to undertake a particular operation, then the UN could contract them.

This is a classic funder/provider split model. Admittedly, Mr Shearer went one step further in proposing it be applied to military operations, but his idea is no different in principle to the New Zealand Ministry of Education funding Kura Kaupapa Maori or other private schools, the Department of Corrections contracting out prison services or rehabilitation programmes, or employers choosing approved alternative insurers within the framework of a national ACC.

In each case, the state would remain responsible, being the initiator, funder and regulator, but its agencies would be able to choose the best provider of the service.

Instead of crying “privatisation”, our leaders should be expected to debate such ideas more intelligently than was evident this week.

Absolutely. Privatisation has been a hysterical catchcry from Labour for too often. We need a sensible rational debate on increased utilisation of the private sector, without the kneejerk backlash. Hooton continues:

His selection will mean Labour will never again be able to cry “privatisation” when contestability of service delivery is suggested, and will open the possibility of a more sensible debate about the current structure of the SOE portfolio. New Zealanders can only gain, both as consumers of public services and investors in state assets.

Indeed National would welcome David Shearer into the Labour Caucus. It will largely nullify the privatisation issue for National. If Shearer is confirmed as the candidate (which is highly likely as Head Office control 3/7 votes) I will not be surprised if some National Party members vote for him tactically – knowing the huge boost it will be to have in the Labour Caucus one of the world’s leading proponents (his articles have been cited in scores of other research in this area) of legitimising private sector involvement in military operations.

Anyway once again big thanks to CIS for organising the P J O’Rourke dinner and to all those who went out on the town afterwards. It did mean I was late filing my NBR column, but 3 am is a very bad time to try and start writing it.

I blogged earlier today about Clayton Cosgrove’s comments. On Nine to Noon politics Matthew Hooton called them unhelpful. That was restrained to Laila Harre who said:

I think Matthew’s description of Clayton Cosgrove’s comments as unhelpful should be restated as “disgraceful”.

Matthew responded he was being subtle, and Laila said that in relation to Clayton Cosgrove there is no need to be. She continued:

His comments are utterly disgraceful.

Finally Laila said she was ashamed to see Labour behave like this. I suspect many in Labour feel the same.

Matthew Hooton has an excellent column in NBR (as he unlike me, remembered it was being published today not tomorrow). His description of the problems with the status quo in Auckland is so good, I have repeated an extract here:

Auckland has always been ripped off by the rest of New Zealand, paying far more tax to Wellington than it has ever received back, even including benefits to South Auckland.

The city’s infrastructure has never been a priority. Reefton had electric street lighting before Auckland; the first telephone call was made from Roxburgh; Auckland had to wait for STD to first be rolled out in parts of National’s provincial heartland; and its roading network was never completed because of political priorities in marginal electorates.

Today, the city’s roads remain shambolic; electricity supply is not guaranteed; cellphone calls can’t be maintained driving from Queen St to the airport; public transport is more primitive than in Queen Victoria’s London; Cath Tizard’s opera house stands at the wrong end of town; Auckland couldn’t competently respond to Trevor Mallard’s offer of a free rugby stadium; it idiotically runs a major port at the foot of its CBD, separating the city from the sea and with no possibility of ever achieving streamlined transport links to the country’s manufacturing base; and its kids were recently at risk of losing their elephants because politicians couldn’t agree about funding for the zoo.

If Auckland were some Pacific island, we’d call it a failed state.

And this is the status quo that Labour now has decided it wants to protect?

Labour have been quick to say what they don’t like, but are being very careful not to offer any constructive solution of their own. Would they have Maori seats on the Auckland Council? Depends which Labour MP you listen to according to John Carter who said in the House that a senior Labour MP was reported ruling out Maori seats as recommended by the Royal Commission.

By coincidence Matthew Hooton’s column in NBR today (print edition only) is also focused on the successful Steven Joyce. I’ve stolen a couple of paragraphs to blog here:

Steven Joyce first became prominent when he helped pick up the pieces after National’s 2002 disaster but was not embroiled in any of the infighting that followed. Many, including me, doubted the wisdom of his appointment to Cabinet before he had even been sworn in as an MP, but Mr Joyce has met Mr Key’s expectations and exceeded those of everyone else.

In Mr Joyce, Mr Key has entrusted his personal priorities of sorting out New Zealand’s shocking transport and IT&T infrastructure, and he is deeply involved in decisions about Auckland governance.

Associate to Bill English in Finance and Infrastructure, it is to Mr Joyce that the prime minister will turn when the government hits a major crisis.

Key and Joyce have a number of similiarities – in that they both have 20 years or more of commercial experience, and both very sucessful when in business.

My weekly column is online, titled “Much ado about Little”.

I cover the Government’s spending cuts, Phil Goff on charity and Colin Espiner’s comments on Andrew Little’s dual role.

As usual, comments and feedback can be made over at NBR.

Matthew Hooton’s column (not online you have to buy the paper) is also on the Government’s spending cuts. Matthew does a fascinating case study of the bureaucracy in the tourism portfolio (Labour set up a new Ministry of Tourism that now costs 10% of the budget of Tourism NZ that does the actual marketing) and concludes entire agencies need to be cut, not just programmes. His conclusion I’ve typed up:

The Ministry of Tourism is far from being the worst case. Take the masakari to the corporate welfare programmes of the Ministry for Economic Development and NZ Trade and Enterprise; abolish the pointless Tertiary Education, Families and Electricity commissions; simplify the Emissions Trading Scheme so it won’t cost tens of millions to administer; slash the “policy advice streams” of TPK, Youth Development, Women’s Affairs and so forth, and you’ve saved a billion dollars before breakfast.

I like the word masakari. It’s an ancient Japanese battle axe used by warrior monks.

Today’s politics segment with Laila Harre, Matthew Hooton and Kathryn Ryan was a very interesting lesson. I enjoy it because both participants are willing to praise MPs from the otehr side of the spectrum, and disagree with MPs from their own side.

I found Laila Harre’s words today very interesting, especially as Laila has been a Minister in a Labour-led Government and is the head of the reasonably militant National Distribution Union:

I have to say sitting through the summit, I found it difficult to imagine the Labour Party under Helen Clark really taking a risk like that which was to give a group of people an open brief in a very public way to propose some ideas and solutions. …

I don’t think there was ever a willingness [by Labour] to take those kinds of risk. … Labour’s objective at the Knowledge Wave conference was to keep it as tight as possible.

I actually felt that in terms of my political experience anyway this was the first time I personally been engaged in a genuinely tripartite process at a New Zealand level … I’ve never seen anything looking like that in New Zealand.

That’s generous praise. It shows that you can disagree with some of John Key’s policies but praise him for his leadership style which is very different to what we have had in the past.

Both Hooton and Harre praise the national cycleway proposal.

Hooton also ripped into borrowing $2 billion a year to stick into a savings fund. Harre declares she has never been much of a supporter of the Fund as future superannuation provision will always depend on economic health of country. Says it is a no brainer to suspend contributions.

Hooton also says the 2010 and 2011 tax cuts should not occur if we still have large deficits. I think it all depends on how large the deficits are, and how sucessful one has been in clipping low priority spending. At this stage, it is very premature to be making declarations, as Matthew does, about the future tax cuts. The time to decide would be early 2010. And from my point of view suspending or cancelling the tax cuts would be your last resort – only if the deficit was on a track to disaster.

1. Busted Blonde has a post on domestic violence and how she spent several years in an abusive relationship. Go read it, and make sure you show it to any friends who need to read it.
2. Adam Smith blogs on the Giles cartoons. As a child I loved Giles cartoons, and every year could not wait for the annual. Grandma was my favourite character. For those who never saw them, you missed out on classics.
3. Matthew Hooton makes the case for an Upper House.
4. Steven Price reviews two decisions by the Advertising Standards Authority.
5. Matt Nolan wants some better statistics from the Government.

Matthew Hooton has a long post on why he thinks Duncan Garner was right to run the tape, but to put it in context. But he also gives an example of how the media may be relaying a lit, by not insisting on the full tape. His example is:

Labour Spy: Do you reckon Obama can win?

Key: Oh, I hope so, he’ll be a great president.  I’m actually looking forward to meeting him if I become Prime Minister.

Labour Spy: But you don’t think Americans will elect a black president?

Key: Sure they will.  There have been black mayors, black governors, black Secretaries of State, this is just the next step.  Sure there is still a lot of racism in the US – I saw it when I lived in New York, even way up in the North-East, and it is worse in the South - I still think Obama can win and it will be good for the world.

Labour Spy: Oh come on, New Zealand wouldn’t elect a bloody Maori boy PM ….

Key: Just wait a second.  I suppose you’re one of these racists who says ‘the American people aren’t going to elect some nigger boy their president, let alone have that black wife and those black kids in the White House.  He’s not even really an American’  … but if you think that you’re in the wrong party pal.

Labour Spy: Maybe, thanks for your time Mr Key.  I’ll go and talk to Bill English now.

And of course all that would be handed to TV3 is:

the American people aren’t going to elect some nigger boy their president, let alone have that black wife and those black kids in the White House.  He’s not even really an American’

Now that is a made up example by Matthew but a useful example of why it is important for media to treat extracts with caution. And remember this Keystone Kop who did the taping was deliberatly trying to entrap people by saying things he did not believe in.

Matthew Hooton blogs his final pre-election SST column:

After the defeat in 1990 of the last Labour government, in which Helen Clark was deputy prime minister, the late, great left-wing writer, Bruce Jesson, confessed his difficulty in treating it fairly because, he wrote, he had come to despise them. “Everything I wrote about them,” he declared, “dripped with contempt. They were a government entirely without principle, cynical and untrustworthy, who clung to power for the sake of it.”

As a writer, I would not suggest to be even remotely in Jesson’s class, but I now know exactly how he felt.

There was a time when the Clark government was a breath of fresh air after the Bolger/Peters/Shipley fiasco. In 2000, I was perfectly happy to help the Labour Department sell Margaret Wilson’s Employment Relations Act and I even came to admire Clark’s leadership skills when I worked on the formation of Fonterra, a company that would not exist without her intervention.

I feel none of that now.

This is a sick, dying but dangerous government, reduced to sending its party president to Melbourne to dig through 13,000 pages of documents in the hope of finding something, anything, to smear its opponent. No matter that the Serious Fraud Office and all the Australian authorities have already gone through all the documents, jailed those who committed crimes, and exonerated those who were not involved, Mike Williams and his Labour operatives used taxpayers’ money to act as some sort of private, politically-motivated, parallel police force.

Nice.

It is keeping secret the true state of our accounts and instead of policy is offering only that, if re-elected, it will reveal its true intentions in a mini-Budget in December. Labour is turning the concept of a “hidden agenda” into an art form, yet Clark has the audacity to say the election is about trust.

The mini-Budget will inevitably be repugnant to New Zealanders. Just as Clark promised prior to the 2005 election that there would be no ban on smacking, she and Michael Cullen will be keeping secret measures they know would be opposed by the vast majority, otherwise they would announce them now.

Remember it’s all about trust!

Winston Peters is the (suspended on full baubles) Foreign Minister of New Zealand. Yet he refused to take part in the Radio NZ debate on foreign policy. That is amazing enough. I’d ask the Prime Minister what she thinks of a Foreign Minister who won’t debate foreign policy?

But having been too busy to debate foreign policy, he did find time to ring up Radio Live talkback and attack host Matthew Hooton, journalist Phil Kitchin and others.

I asked Matthew whether Winston actually provided any useful information such as a guarantee the money would go to Susan Couch, despite still being with the trust months after he announced it. Matthew laughed and I realised how ridiculous my question was – asking if Winston actually provided useful information.

Matthew Hooton quotes Andrew Geddis on the info kits, with Andrew saying that they are not election advertisements as they are orange not red and don’t mention Labour.

Hooton points out though that Phil Goff, unlike his colleagues, has described himself as the “Labour MP for Mt Roskill” on the cover of his info kit.

This raises the possibility that for Phil Goff (but not other MPs) they will be counted as an election advertisement and hence an election expense. And if he has already spent more than $16,000 then he may have broken his spending limit. If that is the case he could lose his seat.

So if Phil Goff wins Mt Roskill, I am sure lawyers will be looking very closely at his election return.

And I wonder why Goff stuck Labour on his cover, when it seems most of his colleagues did not?

There has finally been some attention paid by the media to Labour’s “information kit for the over 60s” which their MPs are posting and handing out in the tens of thousands.

Matthew Hooton has blogged on this several times in recent days.

This is a continuation of Labour’s 2005 pledge card strategy where Labour tries to get the taxpayer to pay for material it can use during the election campaign – and also tries to not have it count towards as part of their $2.4 million spending limit.

There are two questions involved:

1. Is it appropriate and legal for the info kit to be paid for by The Parliamentary Service (taxpayers) for distribution during the election campaign?
2. Does the info kit constitute an election advertisement under the Electoral Finance Act?

The answer to (1) is that it is legal – but, and this is important, only because Labour, NZ First and Greens rammed through a law change to over-turn the Auditor General’s interpretation of the previous law.

The Auditor-General could well have found, if the law had not changed, that this info kit was electioneering – especially as it was produced and distributed so close to an election. If it was a genuine info kit it would have been produced and distributed last year or even earlier this year.

But Labour First and the Greens changed the law (without even giving the public a chance to submit on the law change) so that only material which explicitly sought support for a party (as oppossed to implicitly) is covered. Under this law change Labour’s 2005 pledge card could be legally taxpayer funded again.

My solution to this rorting of the system is simple – ban taxpayer funding of such advertising in the last 90 days. If it was a genuine info kit then they can produce and distribute it when there is not an election a few days away.

This is all part of Labour’s strategy to hold its most marginal seats. Part One was the Electoral Finance Act to silence new candidates by extending the $20,000 limit in the regulated period from 90 days to all of election year. This is a limit of around 5c/voter/month. Part Two was changing the law so incumbent MPs could use taxpayer funded advertising during the election campaign. It is all designed to keep incumbent MPs in their jobs.

Considering the huge amount of interest in the pledge card last time, it is surprising it has taken so long for the media to cover this issue. Has TVNZ or Radio NZ told their viewers and listeners that Labour and “friends” changed the law to make these info kits legal?

The second issue is whether or not the info kits are advertisements under the Electoral Finance Act. I tend to think they are not. The issue for me is whether MPs should be allowed to use their taxpayer funded budgets so close to an election to be writing and sending stuff to tens of thousands of voters.

I’ve waited a long time for someone to actually point out the reality behind Winston’s bluster, and both Matthew Hooton and Barry Soper did so on Eye to Eye, which you can watch below in three parts.

If you do not have time for the full show, just watch this part.

Part Two.

Part Three.

The Herald on Sunday reports:

A television stoush between New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and a National Party insider got so heated filming was stopped and the show’s lawyer called in.

Matthew blogs he does have some regrets:

He kept calling me a liar.  I kept calling him a liar.  Willie stood up and said “cut” (or words to that effect).  In the discussion about how to proceed after we were no longer recording, I told Winston he was a “fucking cunt” – in retrospect, I accept that I left out the important adjectives “lying” and “corrupt” between the other two appropriate but more Anglo-Saxon words.

Matthew is correct that Winston is a liar. We have a report from the Parliamentary Privileges Committee which says he is. The corruption tag is debatable – certainly knowingly filing false election expenses and donations return (as NZ First appears to have done in 2005 and 2007) is a corrupt practice. But the party secretary, not the party leader, is held liable under the law.  But if the party secretary says they were never made aware of secret monies controlled by the party leader – well you see how it is certainly debatable.

And Matthew feels a bit guilty:

Finally, I am very proud that I have looked Peters in the eye and called him a liar, a crook and a fucking cunt.  He has been a most evil influence on New Zealand politics since he first began telling lies, scaremongering and attacking minorities in the 1980s.  And I also feel a little guilty that I have been able to look him in the eye and tell him the truth when so many other New Zealanders don’t get the same opportunity.

I can’t see much chance of a reconciliation!

I am totally unsurprised by the outcome of the Serious Fraud Office inquiries into the Spencer Trust. And the outcome is in no way a clearance or an exoneration. What it says is laws have been broken, but not fraud laws.

NZ First’s failure to obey the electoral laws of New Zealand is what made the investigation occur. Because the public facts were that Bob Jones had stated he had made a $25,000 donation intended for NZ First, through the Spencer Trust, and the NZ First Party had filed a donations return saying it had not received any donations in 2005 of over $10,000. To quote the SFO:

There were two competing explanations for how this could be.

1. The Spencer Trust never passed the money onto NZ First, which would be possibly fraudalant
2. The Spencer Trust did pass the money onto NZ First, and NZ First filed a false electoral donations return

No 2 was always far more likely. And thanks to the SFO investigation we now know this is true. In fact we know that NZ First has filed a series of false returns, as has Winston Peters personally, and Peters has lied on multiple occassions about these returns, including giving false information to the Privileges Committee.

This is no case of an accidential omission on a return, due to Mrs Muggins the branch secretary. This was a strategy signed off by the Leader. Let us look at the multiple false returns and statements:

1. A false donations return for 2005
2. A false election expenses return for 2005
3. A false donations return for 2007
4. A false return on the Register of Pecuniary Interests for 2006 (Payment of debt to Bob Clarkson for Peters)
5. A false return on the Register of Pecuniary Interest for 2006 (Payment of debt to David Carter for Peters)

Now these are not just mistakes or errors. Only because of the SFO investigation has this come to light. And it gets even worse. Most semi-honest people would, once they had been caught out, would at least reveal all. But no Peters does not.

He was instructed by the House of Representatives to file amended pecuniary interest returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007. And all he did was amend them to include the two donations that had already been publicly forced out (Owen Glenn and Spencer Trust for Clarkson) but he didn’t declare the $13,640.37 the Spencer Trust paid on his benhalf to David Carter in 2006. These are the actions (assuming Weekend Herald is correct) of a pathological liar, not a cleared man.

And on that issue, it sounds like Eye to Eye at 11.30 am on Sunday will be interesting watching as Matthew Hooton is on the panel with Peters as the guest. Quoting Roar Prawn:

TVNZ sources say that Willie Jackson’s Eye to Eye tomorrow will be one of the most fiery TV debating shows ever seen in New Zealand.

Winston fronted up to the Green Room, last night to tape the show that airs on 11.30 on Sunday on TVNZ, thinking he would be up for a cosy chat with his mates Barry Soper and Chris Trotter.

He was high on hearing that the SFO had dropped criminal charges, but he was less than impressed when he realised that Jackson had decided to replace Trotter with Matthew Hooton.

Hooton won’t talk about the encounter but BustedBlonde’s media sources say that Winston tried to bluff his way out of appearing with Hooton, . saying there was no way he was going to be with someone who called him a liar.

Before they even got on air, we understand Hooton then called him a liar, a crook and a lying c***t straight to his face.

Anyway, things didn’t get much better on air, and the air was so blue Jackson had to stop the pair at one stage and re- record the show.

Our sources say that Winston always wins these debates on points but Hooton had him on the ropes more than once refusing to kowtow to the liar (our words)

Our sources say it was one of the most brutal encounters they had ever witnessed on NZ television.

That is very typical of the mischievous Willie Jackson – invite Peters on and then have Hooton on also. Can’t wait to see it.

Matthew Hooton blogs some disturbing information he has obtained from the Police. It has taken him 18 months to get the information under the Official Information Act, even though it should have taken only 20 days.

It deals with the Police investigation into the Brash or so called Hollow Men e-mails. Key points are:

• The alleged theft was notified to Police in August 2005
• The Police did not begin their investigation until September 2006 – 13 months later!
• The Police did not interview anyone as part of the investigation until June 2007 – 22 months after the complaint
• The Police lied when they said in April 2008 the file was closed, as they now claim it is open but not active.
• It took 18 months to get even this information out of the Police
• The Police are refusing to release the file, even though they say the file is no longer active
• The Officer in charge is the same Officer who decided not to prosecute Labour for their $800.000 of over spending in 2005

Now some will say there is nothing bad or sinister about this. They will claim the e-mails were never stolen. But why did the Police spend 20 months fighting the OIA release?

Laila Harre has made a good suggestion regarding the Leader’s debates. Thw two major party leaders have said they want head to head debates, because otherwise they only get 10 minutes or so each in a 90 minute debate.

However the minor party leaders make the valid point that people are not just selecting a PM, but also coalition partners for the Government.

Matthew Hooton blogs on Laila’s suggestion:

On our regular slot on Nine to Noon this morning, Laila Harre came up with a great idea about how to faciliate this.  Laila argued that there should be a “Left” debate and a “Right” debate.

To develop the idea further, Laila’s idea would mean we get to see Clark v Key and decide which of these we want to be Prime Minister.  Then we see Clark, Peters, Anderton, Norman in a debate, then Key, Dunne and Hide.  The Maori Party, being more uncommitted, could decide whether to appear in one or both of the debates.

This makes sense to me.  It would still allow a Peter Dunne “worm” effect, as in 2002, if he did a much better job than Key.  The Greens could make the case why Labour votes should vote Green, and so forth.  Everyone gets exposure, but in a more serious context.  And Clark and Key together, as the two candidates for Prime Minister, aren’t put in the position of being equals with the smaller party leaders, which they are not.

I really like this idea. You may also get some really informative discussions in the “left” and “right” debates as they talk about what pace or what blend of policies is best, rather than the normal we are good you are evil rhetoric.

Chris Trotter has criticised Matthew Hooton for his use of the term Clark/Peters Axis. Matthew explains why in a long post:

First, yes, I do believe that Winston Peters is an evil influence on New Zealand politics and the use of the phrase “axis” was entirely deliberate, chosen as being more appropriate than “allies” or even “bloc” for the regime he sustains.

Peters is a person who has attacked Asian immigrants for being too rich and Somalian refugees for being too poor, and, in both cases, has known that to do so is wrong, with his friend Sir Robert Jones saying that, in private, Peters believes none of it.

Like Matthew I think the only thing worse than a bigot, is someone who is not a bigot, but pretends to be just to get votes. I respect people from the left who genuinely disagree with my beliefs, and I respect “social conservatives” whose views differ from mine also. But I have little time for nationalists and populists who believe in nothing and will say anything to get elected.

Matthew goes on to criticise Trotter and many others on the left for their constant support of Peters. And then he states his opinion of Clark:

Clark has dictatorial tendencies. She has marched through the institutions. She has improperly brought the civil service under her control, including, most outrageously, the police. She has stolen taxpayers’ money for her election campaigns, deliberately broken our election spending limits, run filthy fear campaigns such as the letters to state housing tenants saying they would be evicted under a National Government, told lies about all this, and rammed through retrospective legislation to legalise her own staff’s and party’s crimes.

Constitutionally, she is far worse than Muldoon, who people like Chris would eagerly have called a fascist in the early 1980s.

The Clark/Peters Axis? You bet.

I’m not in the same space as Matthew here. Don’t get me wrong – I think Clark is shockingly unethical and I think someone from Labour should have gone to jail for the $800,000 overspending in the last campaign.

But I never find comparisons to Nazis, fascists, “evil regimes” or “eyes of a killer” particularly useful on the blogs.  On the billboards against the Electoral Finance Act, we did feature praise for the EFA from various dictators but that was purely in response to an Act which deserves to be vilified as it was designed to silence critics of the Government.

And as someone with Jewish relatives, I find comparisons to Nazis especially ranging from trite to offensive. I disagree with Matthew that Bolger was justified in comparing Peters attacks on Asian immigrants to Hitler’s attacks on Jews.

Matthew then talks about his role with Don Brash and the Orewa speech as The Standard wrongly claimed he was an architect of it. They could not have been more wrong.

Then I pushed Don to do his controversial press conference at the Tamaki Yacht Club a bit later, where we really put the knife into Bill, and then …. the rest is history.

(Unfortunately for me, Don was forced to do the Tamaki thing a week earlier than I had planned, and I had law exams, so I couldn’t go to Wellington for the vote, so Catherine Judd arranged for Byran Sinclair to do the media work instead, so I missed out on being part of all the drama …. )

I’m not sure I ever mentioned this to Matthew, but I was sort of responsible for Don having to bring his coup announcement forward a week. I was unofficially on the team trying to keep Bill in office and heard whisperings of what was coming and alerted the leadership to it and they forced the coup out into the open. So Matthew was working for Don and I was working to keep Don from winning – sort of ironic as I then ended up working for Don when he did win. In fact it said a lot about what a great guy Don is that he kept me on, despite me having featured on television the night he won plotting victory at the Backbencher with the English team.

And then it came to the fateful Orewa speech.

I was sent a draft for comment and I hated it. The truth is, I’m a “sickly white liberal”, as Peters would describe it. I got Diane to pay me to write an alternative that had the same policy ideas (because they had been agreed by caucus) but which wasn’t as nasty in tone.

When it was confirmed to me that Brash was going with the Keenan [version of the] speech I cancelled my table. Lockwood tells me there was a gap, which he – as local MP – was embarrassed about, but which I am quietly proud of.

The Standard obviously need to re-read the Hollow Men, as the book makes it pretty clear Matthew was an opponent of the Orewa speech.

Matthew Hooton did a good post on Friday about his political perspective and beliefs. The full post is worth a read as he includes a recent speech he did. He comments that sometimes the different political tribes can never understand each other, quoting something Chris Trotter said:

“There live among us a reckless and very dangerous minority who use their triennial vote not as a tool – with which to construct a better future – but as a weapon. For these sociopathic individuals, the ballot is valuable only for the pain and suffering it is able to inflict upon the individuals and groups they despise. They seek to punish these people, by facilitating the election of political parties whose policies are most likely to fulfill their twisted fantasies of violence and revenge.”

Like Matthew I doubt such people really exist in politics – these sociopathic individuals with twisted fantasies of violence and revenge. But Chris Trotter semes to genuinely believe they do. Presumably so do some others in the “left tribe”. How very sad for them.

It’s good having Hooton blogging, because he often covers something before I do, so I can be lazy and quote him:

Tonight’s TVNZ and TV3 news coverage of the first day of campaigning was a clear win for John Key, with the networks showing the National leader attempting to cross the traditional political divide (which positions him as a unifier) by going to the Otara market, in contrast to their coverage of Helen Clark’s efforts to smear him and play class war (positioning her as a hater and wrecker).  TVNZ highlighted Clark’s claim that Key’s day campaigning in South Auckland was “a tribute to his power of self-delusion” while TV3’s preferred quote from her was “I suspect he was a bit like a tourist there. He should have stuck to what he really believes and gone to the Northern Club.”  What a nasty piece of work she came across as.  This is not the way to win an election.

A nasty piece of work indeed. Imagine a National Prime Minister telling a Labour Opposition Leader to fuck off out of Remuera because he/she doesn’t fit in, and should stick to Cannons Creek or something. Cheap, and nasty indeed.

But as Matthew points out, we are usefully being tutored on the difference between negative and dirty:

Already, of course, the Prime Minister’s Office is saying that what Clark did today was “negative” but not “dirty”.  A nice attempt to try to spin the situation - but still, after one day, I would say it is Key 1 Clark 0.

The part I found most amusing from the linked post is this part:

While we’re on the topic, when Helen Clark said ‘hard hats on’ to Labour supporters, contrary to what the commentariat seem to think,  that did not mean ’get ready for a dirty campaign’. It meant ‘get ready to work hard’.

How incredible. They know what the Prime Minister meant by her comments. Is this mind reading at work?

Matthew Hooton blogs some useful info on the Peters trip to Las Vegas:

The Foreign Minister has confirmed that he made the “sidetrip” when he was in Berlin entroute to Singapore, so some “sidetrip” it must have been.

You can fly from Berlin to Singapore, via Frankfurt, on Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines for the discounted Business Class fare of around NZ$7730.50.  (I don’t know why on earth the HoS would assume, as it did, that Peters would fly economy – he was meant to be working on this trip, remember.)  It is quite an efficient way of getting from Berlin to Singapore, taking a total of around 14 hours.

In contrast, getting even from Berlin to Las Vegas is considerably more arduous, taking at least 16 hours, and requiring at least two stops.  Getting from Las Vegas to Singapore can also be difficult, taking almost 24 hours on United Airlines.  Book Business Class Berlin/Las Vegas/Singapore on United Airlines and it will set you back around $15,500.

To be square with the taxpayer, it seems the Foreign Minister would have had to pay about $8,000 for the tickets alone (and god knows what sort of condition he would have arrived in, in Singapore, after flying halfway around the world and stopping over in Las Vegas for a fight, but he is known for his resilience.)

That is a very expensive diversion indeed.

The average ticket price for the fight was said to be over US$1,300.  So the total cost of the Foreign Minister’s “sidetrip”, paid by him personally, would have been over NZ$10,000.

I hope he enjoyed himself for that amount.  He must be a big boxing fan.

A huge fan.

We must take the Foreign Minister at his word that he personally paid this ten grand.  It would put the whole matter to rest to see the receipts.  And also the dates on them.

Yep that is all that is needed. Just as all Brian Henry needs to do is produce a phone log showing his multiple calls to Owen Glenn.

And it would be also interesting to know if the Prime Minister approved the sidetrip and knew how it was to be financed.  From my memory working for the Trade Minister in the 1990s, prime ministers have to approve all ministerial travel, including sidetrips.  This remains part of the Cabinet Office Manual:

“2.113 Subject to parliamentary or portfolio requirements, and with the prior approval of the Prime Minister, Ministers may occasionally extend overseas visits outside the formal itinerary for personal reasons, provided no additional costs are incurred by the government as a result.

“2.114 Ministers may make personal visits overseas if they obtain the Prime Minister’s prior approval, which will be subject to obtaining leave to be absent from the House. Ministers must also obtain the agreement of another Minister or Ministers to act during such periods of absence. (See paragraphs 2.39 – 2.42.) The Cabinet Office should be advised of any such arrangements.”

Well maybe Helen can clear this all up for us. She would have approved it. As Matthew says this may all be a load of nonsense. So best to expose it for the nonsense it is as soon as possible.

Matthew Hooton has taken to blogging like Madonna to sex. Lots of goodies today.

First Matthew highlights the item in Sideswipe about how a candidate’ financial agent had a brick thrown through a window at their home. The Electoral Finance Act has forced residential addresses to be used on all advertising, which is ridicolous overkill for registered political parties and their candidate.

Then Matthew calls on National to fillibuster the ETS third reading today. He think Clark will sack Peters tonight so if it is delayed until tomorrow, then there will not be the numbers for it.

He also speculated on what role Mike Williams may have played in the $250,000 offer to the Maori Party to support Labour, and calls on Tariana Turia to reveal all.