Kiwiblog

Very interesting to look closely at the words in the media from Brian Henry and Mike Williams this morning. In the Herald:

Winston Peters’ lawyer says a tip-off led him to approach billionaire Owen Glenn for a large donation to the NZ First leader’s legal bills.

Now this tip-off could have been from Winston or from Mike Williams. Also of note if Henry says he solicted the donation while Winston Peters in his February perss conference said that they never approached or asked anyone for money. Of course what Winston meant was they never solicit donations to NZ First but they go hell for leather for personal donations to his legal fund.

Brian Henry said last night he asked the Monaco-based businessman for help after another donor did not deliver.

How many secret donors have there been?

“We made it well known around friendly political circles – or I did – that I was looking for a donor.”

Doesn’t that sounds like a perfect description of Mike Williams?

Mr Henry said he could not recall who had advised him to contact Mr Glenn when the original funder of the legal action fell through, but it was not Mr Peters.

Nor was it Mike Williams, the president of the Labour Party which has also received Glenn donations.

“I can’t off the top of my head remember who it was who told me to call him.”

Oh of course. You can not remember who told you to go hit Owen Glenn up for $100,000 but you can recall it wasn’t Winston or Mike Williams.

Mr Henry said no fund or account for Mr Peters’ legal bills existed.

“The position is that the money is used to pay an existing bill, full-stop.

There is no fund. There is no cash sitting in a balance anywhere. There are bills to be paid.”

Now this is fascinating. Because paying off a bill on behalf of Winston Peters is effectively a donation to him, and there are definite tax implications for that. More on that later.

But let us turn back to the requirements of the Register of Pecuniary Interests:

a description of all debts of more than $500 that were owing by the member that were discharged or paid (in whole or in part) by any other person and the names of each of those persons,

So Brian Henry has just confirmed the Register is incorrect for Winston Peters. And Winston would have been well aware that his legal bills had just dropped by $100,000. Plus it is possible he gets Brian Henry to file his annual return, so any excuses for an incorrect return are shot.

Mr Henry would not discuss why he had not alerted Mr Peters about the donation in February, when Mr Peters denied Mr Glenn had made a donation.

It was of course logical and sensible to let your close friend and client remain in the dark.

Asked about pecuniary gain, Mr Peters told NZPA he did not believe he had benefited personally from the arrangement whereby his legal bills were paid by anonymous donors and he paid the shortfall.

Mr Henry concurred last night.

“There is nothing I am aware of where someone contributing towards a bill you have incurred needs to be declared.”

These men are lawyers? They have to be kidding. They think paying a bill on behalf of someone is not beneficial. Hey let’s pay off Winston’s mortgage for him – that doesn’t count also.

What they say also is directly contradicted by Standing Orders and the Register of Pecuniary Interests.

Henry’s insistence that paying off Winston’s bill isn’t a donation to Winston strongly suggests he did not pay tax on that donation. I suggest a question the nice Peter Dunne, Minister of Revenue would be in order:

“To the Minister of Revenue: What is the position of the Inland Revenue Department as to liable tax if an individual has another individual pay $100,000 debt on their behalf”

Also yet to be resolved is if that $100,000 donation was in any way linked to the large closer to $100,000 than $10,000 sum which appeared in the NZ First bank account in December 2007?

Some related facts about Owen Glenn:

1. He was not born in New Zealand.
2. He has not lived in New Zealand for over 40 years.
3. He is not eligible to vote in New Zealand.
4. He is estimated to have a fortune of around NZ$1.1 billion.
5. He donated $500,000 to Labour for the 2005 election.
6. This is the largest known donor ever in New Zealand politics.
7. The Labour Party amended the Electoral Finance Bill to specifically allow him to keep donating money, while restricting other foreign donations to $1,000 (by defining a foreign donation as being okay from overseas residents who are NZ citizens even though they are ineligible to enrol or vote)
8. He gave Labour a further $100,000 interest free loan in 2007.
9. Labour gave him a gong – Officer of the NZ Order of Merit in 2007.
10. Labour President Mike Williams lied when he said they had not received a donation from Owen Glenn since the 2005 election, as the interest free loan counts as a donation.
11. Mike Williams has said he will be asking Owen Glenn for money for the 2008 election.
12. Owen Glenn says Bill Lloyd of Sovereign Yachts had been “badly dealt by” over getting cheap Government land for his business “…but it’s all been resolved through the good services of Mike Williams, the President of the Labour Party, who’s done a mammoth job.”
13. Owen Glenn wants to be Honorary Consul for NZ to Monaco.
14. Before Owen wanted this post, the Government had repeatedly ruled out having a Consul in Monaco.
15. Mike Williams lobbied Helen Clark on behalf of Owen Glenn to get him made Consul.
16. Owen Glenn lobbed Winston Peters to be made Consul and said he will be confirmed as Consul “when Peters gets off his arse”.
17. Owen Glenn was never given any negative signals about being made Consul even though a previous expression of interest by an individual was comprehensively ruled out by the Government.
18. Owen Glenn says he has donated money to NZ First.
19. The then NZ First President says a five figure donation closer to $100,000 than $10,000 appeared anonymously in their bank account in December 2007.
20. Winston Peters says NZ First has never received any money from Owen Glenn or his associates.
21. NZ First filed a donations return claiming no-one gave then more than $10,000 in 2007.
22. Owen Glenn’s PR firm advised Owen Glenn not to contradict Winston’s denials even though he did make a donation.
23. The Maori Party say someone offered them $250,000 as a campaign donation before the 2005 election if it agreed to support Labour. The offer was made twice.
24. The Maori Party say it was made on behalf of someone who “lived outside New Zealand, and had donated money to the Labour Party” and the intermediary met with him on a yacht or a boat.
25. Owen Glenn’s PR firm says he was right to deny he made the offer.
26. Labour and NZ First forced through the Electoral Finance Act whose purpose is “to strengthen the law governing electoral financing and broadcasting, in order to … prevent the undue influence of wealth on electoral outcomes and … provide greater transparency and accountability on the part of candidates, parties, and other persons engaged in election activities in order to minimise the perception of corruption”

One of the problem of getting most of your news online, is that you sometimes miss out on additional info in the print edition. Having now read the print edition of the Herald, it is apparent the scandal is far more serious than I thought for NZ First – and the Government. The print edition includes extracts from the e-mails dated 21 February, namely:

Steve Fisher: Our plan worked well. There is nothing new about you in here Owen. Note that Winston says you have never made a donation to NZ First, so at all costs you must stick to that line. It was definitely the right thing to do to deny the Maori Party offer as well.

Owen Glenn: Steve – are you saying I should deny giving a donation to NZ First? When I did?

Steve Fisher: No, just stick to the line of referring stuff to NZ First. What I’m saying is we don’t want to contradict Winston.

It is harder to get more clearcut than that. Owen Glenn saying beyond any doubt he did give a donation to NZ First.

Helen Clark sacked Liaznne Dalziel for lying. Is she going to have a different standard for Ministers not from her party?

But this scandal goes beyond Winston. Owen Glenn is Labour’s major donor. He has donated $500,000 to them and lent $100,000 interest free. Mike Williams says he will be asking for more money this year.

Note the reference above to the Maori Party. While not as clearcut as the donation to NZ First, it is highly likely that Owen Glenn was the person who offered the Maori Party a six figure sum if they will support Labour.

Throw into the mix the ONZM that Helen Clark gave him and the Honorary Consulship he kept pressuring Winston and Helen for (with support from Mike Williams) and you have a very messy set of circumstances.

The focus for now is on the contradiction between what Winston Peters has said, and Owen Glenn’s e-mails. But the story doesn’t stop there.

Hidden in the depths of detail in the budget documents are the true costs of the train set Dr Cullen purchased. It is projected to be $1.47 billion by 2012.

So how did Toll get the deal of a lifetime?

Simple. Dr Cullen got Mike Williams to buy it, rather than the Treasury!

Treasury you see were too tough in negotiating rail access prices with Toll, so OnTrack were given the job to negotiate the purchase of the trains. Yes, he deliberately sent in the “weaker” team. Toll must regard their $25,000 donation to Labour last year as their best ever investment.

Now who is a Director of On Track? Labour Party President Mike Williams. So what role did Mike “confused” Williams have in buying the trains? Is there not a conflict of interest in being Labour’s chief fundraiser who accepted a donation from Toll and also being on the board buying the trains off Toll?

Mike Williams denies being a rich prick in the Hewitson interview:

He made, by the way, a lot of money from his direct marketing company and so is surely, I said, “a rich prick” like John Key. “Not any more,” he said, “I’ve been working for the Labour Party for 10 years.” He gets $25,000 a year and gives it all back one way or another. He buys a lot of raffle tickets.

Mike forgot to mention he is a DIrector of seven companies, appointed by his mates in Government:

1. Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited
2. Genesis Power Limited
3. Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA)
4. Transit New Zealand
5. Waitakere Enterprise
6. New Zealand Railways Corporation (Ontrack)
7. North West Auckland Airport Limited

And what does Mike get as a Director for each:

1. GNS – $21,000
2. Genesis – $333,000/9 = $37,000 approx (maybe more as now Deputy Chair)
3. ARTA – $35,000
4. Transit – $25,000
5. Waitakere Enterprise – $65,110/5 = $13,000 approx
6. Ontrack – $26,000
7. NW Airport – fees unknown

So that is $157,000 from government (central and local) board appointments. Now I dont begrudge Mike Williams his fees if he is doing a good job as a Director. But how in touch are you as Labour Party President when your income is over $180,000 a year and you deny you are rich?

Michele Hewitson interviews Mike Williams in the Weekend Herald. He agreed to it before he got told to stop giving interviews.

He says that of course some good ideas came out of the congress but that it’s a big party and there are always going to be some dumb ones. “You cannot stop people coming up with idiotic ideas and if I’d heard what he’d said I would have said, ‘That’s a bloody stupid idea’.” At the time he said this he didn’t know that “he” was Ruth Dyson’s husband.

Didn’t he? I understand that he did refer to him by first name. It would be extraordinary not to recognise someone who has been a long-time member of the ruling NZ Council.

They also discuss the song, which he thinks was “quite good”:

I am fixated on another amazingly silly moment from the congress: the god-awful sing-song by four lady Labour MPs.

“Well, I thought it was quite good.”

He must, I say, be lying through his teeth.

“Well, I thought the words were quite good. I thought the singers were vocally challenged.”

That is one way of putting it, although I was too engaged in snorting into my coffee to put it that way.

He says, “For God’s sake, we’ve got to chill out a bit. You’ve got to have a bit of fun. I thought it was funny.”

“It wasn’t funny. It was appalling,” I say. “The only thing that could have been a worse look would have been morris dancing.”

Michelle – he wasn’t lying through his teeth, he was merely confused through his teeth!

So true.  Original from Stuff.

Mike Williams gains attention from both The Press and the Dominion Post editorials today. Let’s start with The Press:

The congress took place just weeks after the Electoral Commission found that Labour had become the first party to breach its own Electoral Finance Act by distributing a taxpayer-funded pamphlet which was deemed to be election advertising. Williams’ comment at the congress fairly invited the claim that Labour intended to side-step the Act, by using as electioneering tools pamphlets paid for by the taxpayer and intended to provide apolitical information.

Prime Minister Helen Clark quickly rejected this idea and no doubt thought she had shut the issue down, but the hapless Williams promptly re-opened it. His denial that he had endorsed the delegate’s proposal was quickly disproved by a recording of what he had said.

Clark must be livid at her party president, but has brushed off any suggestion that he should resign by explaining that Williams had been “confused”. But this is not the first time that Williams has been confused and misleading.

One could almost suggest Mr Williams is a pathological confuser!

Williams has also made a huge contribution to Labour, as the campaign manager in 1999, as president and fundraiser, so the party would be reluctant to lose his services before the election. But the question which must be asked is how many more gaffes will it take before Labour decides it would be a “damn good idea” to look for a new president.

Maybe it would just be a “damn good idea” not to blatantly lie nine times in one interview.

The Dominion Post sees a wider trend:

When the president of a political party says one thing and does another, when a government department suppresses a report that is embarrassing to a senior public servant or when a state-owned enterprise associates itself with a company that uses questionable tactics, they do not just damage their own reputations. They damage confidence in institutions that rely upon public trust to function effectively, The Dominion Post writes.

When TVNZ aired a tape showing Labour Party president Mike Williams had used words he said he had not used at a Labour strategy session his response was to say he was sorry for misleading the public but he did not recall using the words in question. When Prime Minister Helen Clark revealed he had admitted to her that he had used the words, several days before he went on television to deny using them, her response was not to demand his resignation but to question the way TVNZ had used the tape.

Indeed. How dare TVNZ reveal her President lied.

If TVNZ had really wanted to play mischief, they could have kept the tape under wraps for a few more days, and asked Clark, Goff and King if this new version of events as told by Mike Williams was now the correct one.  Who would want to bet money that they would have contradicted him? And then think the damage which would have been done if the tape came out after everyone in Labour aligned their stories to the new version. So Clark should not be angry at TVNZ – she should be pleased they aired the tape when they did.

Of course if Mike Williams had never changed the story, and resurrected what was mainly a dead story, TVNZ probably would have never even felt a need to use the tape.

Helen Clark has been defending Mike Williams on the basis he was confused. The Press reports:

Following an all-day Cabinet meeting yesterday, Clark refused to say if Williams had her full confidence.

Asked by a journalist if she still trusted him to tell the truth, she would not answer directly.

“Well, I’ve known him for a long time, but he can be a little loose and confused,” she said.

But does this sound like a confused man. From Agenda:

MIKE  There was a seminar between 8.30 and 9.30 in the morning which I conducted.  The hall was set up so I was right at the back of the stage on a lecturn almost behind the proscenial arch in the Wellington Town Hall, I’ve got 400 witnesses who’d tell you the first thing I said when I took the lecturn was that I could neither see nor hear them, the acoustics were terrible and the lighting was such I couldn’t even see the audience, okay.  I gave my address, it lasted about 50 minutes.  There was then discussion.  Now what I heard the delegate say and I wasn’t hearing him clearly was that if somebody asks you for a Kiwisaver brochure the IRD’s got good ones.  Now according to people there I did not respond that is a good idea, I simply moved on to the next question which was the last one.  So the whole thing is an incredible media beat up, it arguably never happened.

Funny that for someone who could not see or hear the audience, he referred to the delegate (and fellow NZ Council member) by name. Anyway he labels the whole thing an incredible media beat up and denies outright that he praised the suggestion as a damn good idea.

GUYON  So why did Helen Clark accuse you of poor judgement then?

MIKE  Well she hadn’t spoken to me.

Now this part is crucial. This is where Williams is not just “confused” about what happened, but starts to directly lie about his conversations with Clark. He has just asserted he did not respond “That’s a damn good idea”, and the only reason Clark said he exercised poor judgement was that she had not yet spoken to him.

GUYON  So does the Prime Minister accept your…?

MIKE  Absolutely, I’ve spoken to her after the event, she did the right thing.  Now look make it clear it was my session and I take absolute responsibility to anything that was said there, but I do not believe anything like that was said and I certainly did not hear anything like that said and neither did I endorse it.

While Guyon did not finish his sentence, it is clear he is referring to Williams version of events, and Williams very clearly implies on nationwide TV that the PM has accepted he did not endorse the idea of handing out Government pamphlets while campaigning.

But what does Helen say. The Dom Post reports:

But Miss Clark said yesterday that Mr Williams had informed her last week that was what he said.

“The first thing he told me was the right one. That was, he’d reacted along the lines of `what a good idea’ and he should have continued to repeat that. For whatever reason, he didn’t.

Now if one was very gullible or generous one could almost believe Williams was confused about what was said and what he said at the conference. But are we really meant to believe that he was also confused about his conversation with the Prime Minister?

I mean Clark is quite clear about what he said to her.  The Herald reports:

She said she was baffled at Mr Williams’ denial on Agenda, because he had confirmed it to her when she first spoke to him after the Herald revealed it last week.

This is not confusion. How can you be confused about what you told the PM? Having worked with a PM or two, you tend to remember in great detail your conversations with them – especially those only a few days old.

And do you know what is the weird thing. There was no need for Williams to lie. He wasn’t some cornered rat like Benson-Pope desperately lying because the truth would force him out of office. The truth had already come out, and Williams had been gently reprimanded by the PM. There was no suggestion his job was at risk up until the Agenda interview. By trying to rewrite history, he resurrected what had been an almost dead issue. One can only assume he made a calculated decision that no-one could contradict him if he started to spin what happened. But he went well well beyond spinning. He lied nine times in one interview.  He was in no way confused when he says the whole thing is a media beatup and never happened.

We have heard a lot from Labour about how the suggestion to use taxpayer funded Government information pamphlets while out campaigning just came from a delegate at the conference, and Mike Williams just agreed with him that it was a damn good idea (before WIlliams then denied everything).

Now as someone who has attended a lot of party conferences, I can sympathise that sometimes you get very naive and inexperienced members at these conferences who say stupid things.

So when the proposal to use the taxpayer funded advertising for campaigning is dismissed as just being from a delegate, you do wonder what sort of delegate?

Was it someone just active at branch level? Was it someone active at electorate level? Or was it someone who held office at regional level? Or was it someone even more senior than that.

Well thanks to a Kiwiblog reader, we have an answer.  A female Mainlander e-mailed in to identify the voice as Martin Ward. Mr Ward is (or at least was until recently) a member of the Labour Party’s ruling NZ Council.  So this delegate the President was responding to, was one of his colleagues on the Party’s top board.

And according to reports Mr Ward suggested the use of both KiwiSaver and Working for Families brochures. WFF is one of the Government’s key welfare benefits (by way of family tax credits). And who is the Minister of Social Welfare, sorry Social Development and Employment. Well by coincidence Mr Ward’s wife – Ruth Dyson.

So this suggestion to use taxpayer funded material for campaigning did not come from some junior lackey. It came from a member of the Labour Party’s Council and the spouse of a senior Cabinet Minister.

Whale Oil has stuck the TVNZ item up on You Tube, but has helpfully added on a loud buzzer for everytime Williams tells a porkie. You get to hear it a lot.

The scandal over Williams lies re the Labour Party Congress have been the main focus of the last 24 hours. But there are plenty of other statements which are worth looking at. From the transcript:

GUYON  Your own poll Mike Williams UMR, I saw it this week, 51-36, 15 points behind, how do you pull that back?

MIKE  Well again I think UMR is the subject of this problem that – let me tell you virtually all polls are conducted by landlines I don’t know one that isn’t.  Now I was the first person in New Zealand ever to put the electronic white pages together with the electoral roll.  Okay that was in 1986 I think, and I got an 82% match in the general seats.  Right, what we got in January of this year was a 50% match.  What this means Guyon is that half the population is statistically invisible.  Now what I trust is our canvassing data and our canvassing data shows the Labour vote about where it was last time, about 40%.  Now at that point it’s winnable.

I find it amusing that Williams works so hard to discredit polls, when his party spends so much money on them! And I have never known someone to claim canvassing data on behalf of a party is more representative than a random scientific poll.

Now look I am the last person to deny there are some challenges for the polling industry, but people over state the problem of landlines. Labour’s Coromandel candidate Hugh Kininmonth for example claimed yesterday:

I’ve never been a fan of the polls. They’re incredibly irrelevant and unrepresentative. For one they seldom report the number of respondents who are ‘undecided’. Around 37% of electors don’t have a landline – they are therefore exempt from participating in the polls.

The 2006 census found only 8% of households said they had no landline, with only 2% having no telecommunication services at all.  I have no idea where 37% comes from.

Williams stuff on matching the electoral roll to the white pages is also somewhat of a red herring. That affects the party’s abilities to match voters to phone numbers, but does not affect polling for media organisations as they do not use the electoral roll, but just call random numbers from the ranges Telecom have advised are available for allocation.

GUYON  Alright, some people say that Andrew Little is lining himself up for the job of Labour Party President.

MIKE  I’d welcome that in the fullness of time yes I would.

GUYON  Is that going to happen?

MIKE  I wouldn’t be surprised, I think he’d have good support

Now Andrew would be a very capable Labour Party President, and on present form he may get a promotion sooner than he wants!

I note on that issue the Herald states:

Mr Little said he would be able to keep his role with the EPMU if he gained the Labour Party presidency.

Now imagine if Little ascends to the presidency before the election. He would be running the Labour Party campaign, and at the same time also running the independent third party EPMU campaign, which will in no way of course be aligned to help Labour’s campaign. That will be a serious case of hat shuffling.

MIKE  There was general agreement I mean it passed with a majority in the parliament and I do think it needs to shake down.  What I’d say to you Fran is that this is what it’s about, it’s about the influence of big money in election campaigns and I think in New Zealand we do not want the kind of American politics transplanted here.  I mean this book (The Hollow Men) really shows an outrage, it’s a conspiracy to overspend and that’s what the Electoral Finance Act’s all about.

Mike’s idea of general agreement is a fascinating one. He means Labour, NZ First and the Greens.

But the prize for hypocrisy is for the line “it’s a conspiracy to overspend”. Mike Williams’ own party overspent by $400,000 to $800,000. They lied to the Chief Electoral Officer about it. They stated they woudl include the pledge card as an expense at a time when they knew that was impossible to do and stay within the limit. They lied merely to keep the issue out of the media until after the election. So for Williams to go on about conspiracies to overspend is just laughable.

MIKE  Well that’s like we had in the past I mean if you’ve got a long memory you’ll realise Muldoon called an election under a National passed law that said you couldn’t enrol after the writs were down, in other words enrolments in that election that Muldoon actually lost cut off in 48 hours and we had to run round, parties change laws, that’s the prerogative of government is it not?

Williams is citing Muldoon as constitutional precedent! God help us.

MIKE  The sort of feedback we get is that yes people are definitely and something has to be done about that, and I think that will be at least partly addressed in the budget, but I do think there’s an understanding that the government cannot legislate for food prices, cannot legislate for petrol prices, there are some things that governments cannot do.

Well if you are going to cite Muldoon as a precedent for constitutional law, why not also follow him as a model for the economy and do a price freeze like he did.  After all his economic management was on a par with his constitutional law probity.

BERNARD  And we don’t have a government list if you like of what are other strategic assets, so we have to wait and hope or guess at what the government’s view on this is, this is the danger of politically driven decisions on foreign investment isn’t it?

MIKE  I’d agree with you, I think we probably do need a list and I think that’s an oversight, but Helen said you know we’re not perfect and these things don’t arise very often, I mean we haven’t had major strategic assets that I’m aware of the people trying to take them over before.

Here I agree with Mr Williams. We do need a list of what assets the Government now deems strategic. Even the Labour Party President says we need a list. So hopefully someone will ask Dr Cullen when he will be producing one.

MIKE  Well I think this government has been very constrained in its use of government advertising I mean if you go to New South Wales in advance of an election you’ll see wall to wall government advertising you know we’ve got advertised for nurses doctors and that sort of thing, I can’t anticipate that but obviously you’ve gotta tell people about what’s going on.

Cough, splutter. Constrained? Well constrained when the Auditor-General knocks some of the more outraegous plans back, but $100 million of government advertising spend is not constrained.

Helen Clark has distanced herself from Mike Williams and basically called him a liar for his performance on Agenda, yet says he will remain President as the Party conference elects him and has confidence in him.

Some quotes from Clark on Breakfast on TV One:

Clark: “I certainly can’t understand why he made the comment on Agenda yesterday Paul. I watched it with some disbelief because of course after I spoke to you last Monday I did when I got to Wellington speak to Mr Williams and established the facts of the matter both from him and in the course of the day and that led me to go to my press conference and say there had clearly been a misjudgement. That was only compounded by what was said yesterday.”

Henry: Did he tell you the truth, because it appears he has not been telling us the truth.

Clark: He told me the truth, and that’s why when the tape was run on TV last night I knew that was what I had been told six and a half days before. Really what possessed him on Agenda I do not know, I can only put it down to confusion.

Clark has all but called Williams a liar with her comments that she has no idea what possessed him to deny what happened on Agenda, and watched it with disbelief.

Clark generously puts it down to confusion but she knows he was not confused on Agenda. He didn’t like the fact he had been reprimanded and tried to rewrite history on the basis no-one could prove otherwise. He claimed it was all a media beat-up and grossly misrepresented what the delegate said, and what he said.

Once again the Labour Party President has been caught lying. He denied repeatedly on camera that he had said something, and TVNZ have produced a tape recording of him saying the exact words he denied.

Let us look at what he said on Agenda this morning:

GUYON  A delegate at the Congress last weekend suggested using public information campaigns like Kiwisaver and information from government departments as an electioneering tool, why did you think that was a quote “damn good idea”?

MIKE  I didn’t think that was quote a “damn good idea” and let me…

GUYON  But that’s what you told them though isn’t it?

MIKE  No it’s not what I told them and let me get this clear.

Okay note here that Guyon said he was quoting what Williams said.  And note Williams absolutely denies he said it. Lie No 1.

MIKE  There was a seminar between 8.30 and 9.30 in the morning which I conducted.  The hall was set up so I was right at the back of the stage on a lecturn almost behind the proscenial arch in the Wellington Town Hall, I’ve got 400 witnesses who’d tell you the first thing I said when I took the lecturn was that I could neither see nor hear them, the acoustics were terrible and the lighting was such I couldn’t even see the audience, okay.  I gave my address, it lasted about 50 minutes.  There was then discussion.  Now what I heard the delegate say and I wasn’t hearing him clearly was that if somebody asks you for a Kiwisaver brochure the IRD’s got good ones.  Now according to people there I did not respond that is a good idea, I simply moved on to the next question which was the last one.  So the whole thing is an incredible media beat up, it arguably never happened.

Lie No 2 is his claim that the delegate merely said if people ask for a KiwiSaver brochure the IRD has got good ones. Lie No 3 is that he did not respond and simply moved onto the next question. And then he has the temerity to state the whole thing is a media beat up.

MIKE  Well she hadn’t spoken to me.  It was a surreal experience and something you’d tell your grandparents about.  At five o’clock on Monday morning I went to Tauranga, I didn’t see a Herald and I got a text from Helen when I got there saying what did this person say, and I responded as I remembered it that if somebody wants a Kiwisaver brochure send them to the IRD, I certainly did not hear anybody say go down and get some, and I’m in good company because Annette King, Phil Goff never heard that either.  I then went to a meeting in Tauranga which went till about three o’clock when I went on a tour of the Port of Tauranga and that turned into…

Lie No 4 is that the comment by the delegate (it gets watered down each time) wasn’t even that one should hand out IRD pamphlets, but that if someone wants one, you should refer them to the IRD.

Lie No 5 is claiming that King and Goff never heard it either. Annette King had already used the Helen Clark No 2 excuse and had previously said she didn’t hear anything at all as she was engrossed in conversation with someone. Now Williams is citing her in his defence.

MIKE  Absolutely, I’ve spoken to her after the event, she did the right thing.  Now look make it clear it was my session and I take absolute responsibility to anything that was said there, but I do not believe anything like that was said and I certainly did not hear anything like that said and neither did I endorse it.

Lie No 6 is his claim that nothing like that was said. Lie No 7 is that he did not hear anything (unless you believe he endorses something he never heard as a damn good idea) and Lie No 8 is his claim he did not endorse it.

MIKE  Absolutely, and the idea is a bad idea not for the reason you gave, you can’t hand out government information but it’s also a damn silly idea, if you’re going canvassing you don’t hand out IRD pamphlets that’s just dumb, but that’s also not what I heard him say.

And that is Lie No 9.

Now let us look at what TVNZ revealed on One News tonight. Williams never though a Labour Party delegate would tape what he said, so he thought he was safe lying repeatedly about what happened:

Delegate: “hand those out when you’re going around and you can say this is what the Labour Government broguht in and by the way the National Party voted against it … In fact they’re better than having Labour Party material because they’re informing people about things they may not already be getting.”

Williams: “Well that’s a damn good idea” … applause

Williams lied to TVNZ and to the public of New Zealand, not once, not twice, but nine times. He lied about what was said, he lied about what he said, he pretty much lied about everything.

This is of course not the first time Mike Williams has been caught out lying. He lied in January when he denied any donations from Owen Glenn since the last election. Also he would have signed off on the letter last election to the Chief Electoral Officer in which they agreed to include the pledge card in their expense return, and then weeks later lied and reneged on their word.

Now normally one would raise the question of whether Mike Williams could continue as Labour Party President after having been caught out lying nine times in the one interview. But I predict this will in no way make Helen Clark reconsider his position. After all she will conclude, his only sin was getting caught. They will not be angry at Williams for lying. They will be angry at the Labour Party delegate who recorded what he said, and exposed his lies.

The NZ Herald has obtained confidential strategy notes from the Labour Party Congress, detailing how Labour plans to get around the spending limits they have foisted on everyone else.

It involves taxpayer money again of course – this time Government Departments:

In a private session on the election strategy, run by president Mike Williams, delegates were advised to distribute pamphlets on KiwiSaver produced by the Inland Revenue Department and on Working for Families produced by Work and Income.

They were also advised to tell voters when handing out the pamphlets that National voted against both measures.

Normally in an election a party in Government would pay a hundred thousand dollars or so to produce a party pamphlet which tells people about the good things they have done. But to both save Labour money, and keep them under the limit everyone else has, they plan to get hundreds of thousands of extra Government funded information pamphlets and then scare people into thinking they WFF and KiwiSaver will eb abolished if you dare not to vote Labour.

Now let us remember here that this is not a low level campaign worker thinking “Hey why don’t we grab a hundred KiwiSaver pamphlets in case we run into people interested in them. This is the Labour Party’s most senior campaign official telling every MP, candidate and campaign activist to use taxpayer funded material as part of their election campaign.

The Auditor-General actually saw this possibility back in 2005:

Auditor-General Kevin Brady raised concerns about the use of Government publicity as a political tool in a report he wrote in June 2005, three months before the election.

He said a non-political departmental publicity campaign for a policy such as Working for Families could still have value to the Government as a political tool if it were used in a wider, more politically driven campaign.

And that is exactly what they are doing.

Oh there are going to be so many lawsuits and electoral petitions after the election.

Wellington can be a very small place!

Headed into town on Saturday night with various friends who were down for a campaign planning day for National, and around 15 of us decided to head to Chow on Tory Street for dinner.

Had a few drinks at the bar, and then they showed us to our table. As we are moving around it, Auckland Girl points out to me that the person at the table next to us (and backed onto us) looks like Labour Party President Mike Williams. Sure enough it was the Labour President and Head Office staff. We quickly whisper around the table to be careful in the conversations. A few minutes later in an exchange with one of the HQ staff, she confirms that they had much the same conversation – along the lines of “Hell, looks who is being seated next to us, so watch what you say”.

Sadly we had too much of a fun time to actually listen in to any conversations, and ended up heading off around three hours later having enjoyed some great food and champagne.  Just after I left, I got texted to say EMPU Secretary Andrew Little had just arrived and was in conversation with the National Party lawyer who had served papers on the EPMU the day before.  I was tempted to head back, but by then was settled in at Mac’s Brewery, but always amuses me how Wellington is such a very small place.

The Herald quotes Labour Party President Mike Williams:

Labour President Mike Williams is calling on the Electoral Commission to abandon its policy of not pre-approving party election advertisements to avoid confusion over what will or will not count.

Mike, Mike, Mike. There’s no need. Just apply the law of common sense as Annette King declared.

And Mike, have you thought that the reason the electoral authorities have not been so willing to declare what is permitted under the Electoral Finance Act is because even they have no fucking idea what parts of it mean?

Did it not even trigger a moment of concern Mike, when the CEO of the Electoral Commission took the unprecedented step of going on National Radio to publicly state how the then proposed law was unclear and confusing?

Did you not even pause for a second to consider that having Annette “common sense” King get up and declare one day what her view of “parliamentary purpose” is, and then the next day say how she got it wrong and you should just listen to what all the MPs views are in Hansard, might just possibly introduce some uncertainty in the law?

And Mike most of well why should the electoral authorities tell you in advance their view of material, when the last time they did it, your party lied to them, ignored them, broke the law and then attacked the electoral authorities as having got it wrong?