Kiwiblog

One of the anonymous authors at The Standard tried yesterday to smear Murray McCully over, well doing the right thing.

In a post they filed under the “corruption” category, they revealed that Murray McCully has shares in Widespread Portfolios. Except they did not in fact reveal it – McCully did in the MPs Annual Register of Pecuniary Interests. He’s declared every single year since the Register started in 2006.

Then in a piece of detective work worthy of Sherlock Holmes, they went to the homepage of Widespread Portfolios and managed to dig up (I a being sarcastic – it is at the top of their main page) the statement:

Widespread Portfolios Limited (stockmarket code WID) invests primarily in overseas-based mining and mineral exploration companies.

So this so called corrupt behavior from McCully was to declare he had shares in a company that declares it invests in mining companies.

Now not only has McCully behaved entirely appropriately, the value of his shares turns out to be $31.63. McCully has followed the PM’s lead and mooted giving the shares to the young Max Key. Poor Max must be wondering why he is becoming the target of unwanted share parcels. He should suggest to his Dad that he would rather have one of those Ministerial credit cards that Ministers have been disposing of

Phil Goff looks stupid when he says:

Opposition leader Phil Goff said any shares in a mining company working in New Zealand represented a conflict of interest.

“Whenever there was a conflict of interest of any sort in the Cabinet I was part of, a minister was expected to remove him or herself from the room immediately and not participate in those discussions.”

What nonsense. Did half the Labour Cabinet remove themselves when they debated monetary policy, because they were owners of investment properties? Their interest was vastly more than $31.

A conflict of interest is generally about a decision to favour a specific company, not about policies that support a sector of the economy. Do farmers get excluded from decisions about primary production?

Exclusion on a conflict happens only when there is a direct beneficial interest, such as granting a contract to a company you have shares in – and even then, it has to be significant. If your super fund has lots of Telecom shares, that doesn’t mean you can’t ‘t be involved in decision on Telecom – again I suspect most of the Cabinet would have an indirect interest.

The major requirement around conflicts of interests is transparency. And McCully has complied 100%. As it happens, he had not even been present at any discussions on mining, but it is ridicolous of Goff to suggest he can’t be, because of $31 of shares.

But what really annoys me over The Standard’s labelling of this as corruption (the category they assigned to the story) is the immense double standards – and this applies to Phil Goff’s comments also.

Think back 18 months to Winston Peters. Here are the key facts in two cases:

1. Winston knew of a $100,000 donation from Owen Glenn to his lawyer to cover his legal fees.
2. Winston never ever declared this, as he was required to do so.
3. Winston lobbied for Mr Glenn to be given a diplomatic appointment

But the more important case:

1. Racing interests donated money to Winston Peters personally by paying his costs to Bob Clarkson.
2. This personal donation of tens of thousands of dollars was never declared by Peters, and only exposed by the SFO
3. The same racing interests also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to NZ First.
4. Peters was the portfolio minister for racing under Helen Clark, yet never disclosed the personal donations, or the party donations. Arguably no need to disclose the party ones, but he was required to disclose the personal one.
5. Peters advocated for more money for the racing industry, including having the taxpayer pay for bigger prizes for races.
6. Officials strongly advised against doing this, but Cabinet agreed to the extra funding advocated by Peters, unaware that Peters was receiving large donations from racing interests.

Now one can argue Peters was genuinely motivated to help the racing industry, and the donations did not influence him. That is not the issue today.

The issue is that this was the most serious breach of the conflict of interest regime we have seen. A personal donation which directly benefited a Minister (by paying off his damages to Clarkson) was not declared, and that Minister directly lobbied for money to be given in prizes to the racing industry.

So this puts Phil Goff’s holier than thou statement about practises in the last Government in perspective. And remember Phil Goff voted against the Privileges Committee report, as Labour insisted Winston had not broken the rules.

But back to The Standard, what did they have to say about Winston’s conflicts at the time:

On 22 July:

For my part, I don’t see the big deal in all this Peters donation stuff. Transparency in election funding is important (and it’s something that National and ACT have constantly opposed) but there is no evidence of Peters has been purposely secretive.

So no big deal. And even better:

As for the Dompost’s ‘revelations’ today – various members of the Vela family and companies owned by the family gave amounts that may have totalled $150,000 to New Zealand First over a period of five years. So what? The donations are legal and, as long as NZF didn’t receive more $10,000 from any individual person (legal or natural) in one financial year, they didn’t have to be declared under the law of the time.

However the donation to pay Winston’s legal costs to Clarkson was required to be disclosed, but more importantly back then The Standard had no concern about sums 1,000 times greater than $31 going to parties or politicians, and the party leader directly advocating for policies that will benefit those donors.

And again on 23 September:

So, the committee found what everyone knew: Peters story doesn’t add up. But it also shows that this story isn’t really about anything significant. Oh, no, a politician didn’t make the efforts he should have to find out what benefit he may have gained from a legal donation, his form was wrong as a result, and he made up a story to try to cover himself. Shoddy behaviour to be sure but nothing that actually impacts on the substance of government.

So as Winston supported Labour, there was nothing of substance wrong. Never mind he didn’t declare the personal donations to cover his legal costs to Clarkson, and never mind the Labour Cabinet had no idea when Peters was advocating more money for racing prizes, he was receiving these donations from companies that are likely to benefit.

Peter’s conduct was probably the biggest breach of standards since the marginal loans affair. Yet to Phil Goff and The Standard, it was all okay.

Now let us admit that we all are coloured to some degree and see things more rosy for the side you tend to support. That is natural, and expected. We’re not neutral reporters.

But I find those who blog anonymously stretch that to breaking point – there is almost no misconduct they won’t defend for their own side, and they will label as corrupt basically anything that moves from the other side.

The Standard suggest McCully is corrupt for following the rules and declaring his $31 of shares (yes they did not know the amount, but the issue is McCully has acted entirely appropriately) yet they defended Winston time and time again over horrendous breaches of the conflicts of interest regime.

I regard myself as a mate of Phil Heatley. Have even stayed at his house and he is one of the nicest guys you can meet. But when the Dom Post published their story yesterday, I described the use of the ministerial credit card as totally unacceptable with no ifs and no buts.

Those who blog anonymously tend to use extreme language to smear people. They call them corrupt, crooked or racist or bigoted. They do so, because they don’t have to defend their comments in real life.

So here is my challenge to Eddie. Stop the extreme language against people just because their politics are not your own, or have the guts to blog under your real name.

The Greens often go on about how they are a party of principle and policy and veer away from personal attacks, and smears. They seem to have forgotten to tell on of their senior office holders.

For some reason someone at The Standard posted a photo of MPs Bakshi Singh, Melissa Lee, Bill English and John Key – asking which one is not like the other.

Toad responded:

Nah, it is that the three on the left have substantive allegations of corruption against them personally. The allegations against the one on the right are “only” of covering up the allegations against the others.

A bit like a line-up of Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum, Clint Rickards, and John Dewar.

Well done Toad, you score bottom of the barrel this week.

I’ve been reading a fascinating book – Mudslingers – the 25 dirtiest political campaigns of all time.  It covers US campaigns only – would be interesting to do a local NZ version.

Anyway the part I enjoyed most was the purported speech made a 1950 Senate primary for the Democratic nomination by Pepper’s rival:

“Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper before his marriage habitually practiced celibacy,”

Heh.

It is purported that this speech was delivered in small towns all over the state, but this has never been proven, so it may be an urban legend.

Michael Bassett compares NZ Labour and UK Labour:

Over the last few weeks evidence has seeped out that Britain’s Labour Party had started a Dirty Tricks Department within ministerial offices to smear political opponents. Gordon Brown’s most trusted spin doctor, Damian McBride, has been forced to resign because of the part he played in putting together a series of smears on a website against the Conservatives’ leader, David Cameron, and the Tories’ Finance spokesman. Today comes the news that Brown has asked the head of Britain’s civil service to tighten up a code of conduct governing ministerial advisers whose salaries are paid by the taxpayer. Brown says that they should sign a contract acknowledging that if caught “disseminating inappropriate material they will automatically lose their jobs”.

It’s high time we had such a system in place in New Zealand. Those with memories might recall the parade of dirty tricks used by the beleaguered Labour Party prior to the last election to smear their opponents.

H-Fee anyone?

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?

Colin Espiner sums things up nicely:

So not only is John Key responsible for the global meltdown of the world’s finance markets, the man is a would-be murderer who, if he’d had the chance, would have sent 60 young Kiwis to their deaths in the war in Iraq.

OK, I’m exaggerating Labour’s position slightly. But not by much.

Next they will allege John Key will lower wages. Oh wait already done that one. Hmm, how about that John Key will sell all the schools. Nah done that one also. How about John Key will close down the hospitals? Yeah that must be next.

Colin Espiner writes in The Press:

In an early sign the campaign could focus on personal attacks, Cullen lost no time in attacking Key, appearing to blame him for the worldwide collapse of his former bank, Merrill Lynch.

“Given his background and the fact that Merrill Lynch has just gone belly up, I would have thought New Zealanders should draw the conclusion that you wouldn’t put a man like that in charge of the New Zealand economy,” Cullen said.

My God that’s so lame. Where do you start.

1. Umm Michael, John Key stopped working there around eight years ago.
2. The recent losses are from bad investments primarily mortgages, and John was in charge of currency trading
3. When John was there, his section of the business was highly profitable – that is why he made so much money. It is called being successful.
4. Merrill Lynch has written down around $50 billion of investments. However they have not gone belly up – they have been purchased by the Bank of America for US$44 billion – a sum a bit larger than the turnover of the NZ Government.

It really is sad that all Labour has is personal attacks.

Prog Blog is an unofficial blog on behalf of Jim Anderton’s Progressives.

Last week they did a blog post about a quote from John Key saying “Young people are a group I’m passionate about”.

They commented beneath that

“So is Gary Glitter”

The post has now been deleted but it is still in Google Cache.

Someone e-mailed me this a few days ago but I only noticed the e-mail today. Some other blogs highlighted this earlier.

Hmmn, and even though the page has been deleted, it still shows up on their main site.

I think media should be asking the Hon Jim Anderton who writes Prog Blog for them, and does he condone comparing John Key to paedophile? Will someone offer an apology at the very least?

People said this would be a very dirty campaign, but not even I thought it would be that dirty.

John Armstrong sees Labour’s smears as hurting Labour:

So obsessed is Labour with destroying John Key that the party seems blinkered to the damage this is doing to Labour’s already-slight chances of winning the coming election. …

Clark herself launched an attack on her rival in Parliament on Wednesday.

That it miscued badly suggests Labour’s fixation with persuading voters Key has feet of clay is clouding its judgment. …

But Labour’s constant chipping away at Key does not seem to be making any headway.

That is because Labour has failed to display any sense of proportion. It has seized on anything that might put Key in a bad light no matter how small or trivial and brandished it as evidence Key is not up to it.

Yep, next we will hear that he once jaywalked as proof positive Helen should be able to reign forever.

This has proved counter-productive. Voters _ especially crucial female “swing” voters _ have a profound distaste for politicians launching personal attacks on one another’s character. The Prime Minister’s attack on Key may have done more damage to her credibility than his.

I’m not the most dispassionate observer but Clark comes across very badly on TV when she is fronting one of those attacks. It makes her most unattractive, and I don’t mean physically.

Clark’s gaffe echoed the previous week’s similar backfire by Labour over Key’s supposed ignorance of the New Zealand wars of the 19th century.

That was another case of Labour picking up and running with something that was shot full of holes. Key had been quoted out of context and the radio station that first ran the story backed off hurriedly as the story began to fall over.

It is a moot point whether the public gave a toss anyway about what Key was supposed to have said. These kind of arguments are the stuff of the Wellington Beltway.

I think it is worse than that. The public are hurting with food and petrol prices, and a shrinking economy. They are looking to the Government for some leadership. And what they see is a Government more focused on trivial smears than on the issues which matter to New Zealanders.

It isn’t going to happen because Labour has cried wolf too often. It has jumped on any mistake Key has made, no matter how trivial, and highlighted it as incontrovertible evidence of his unsuitability to be Prime Minister.

Labour sees the mistakes as compounding on one another. It lays the message that Key is a lightweight on thick with a trowel. But the highlighting of minor errors only makes Labour look ever more desperate. So what if Key said “condone” this week when he meant “condemn”.

He holds the high ground when it comes to attacks on political personalities. He has now cleverly boxed Labour in by labelling its tactics as “smear and fear” politics.

Quite simply, Labour needs to stop playing the man and start playing the ball.

I can safely predict there is really no chance of this. Simply put, Labour is desperate and dateless and has nothing else to offer.

Helen actually made two mistakes in Parliament yesterday. One was about John Key which I’ll come to shortly. The other was on the level of investment needed in rolling stock:

Mr Key caught out the Prime Minister in an error when she claimed that Dr Cullen had said that an investment of $80 million a year would be needed to keep the rolling stock in a steady state – and she said that would be $300 over five years.

In fact, Dr Cullen said it would be $80 million over five years; he has not mentioned $300 million.

A spokesman for Dr Cullen said last night that the Prime Minister had “misspoke” with her figure of $80 million a year, but he said that the $300 million figure was an option in for making a medium-term investment.

Now I don’t think this is a big issue. MPs make mistakes all the time. I highlight it purely because people think Clark doesn’t.

But now let us look at her big blunder. She stated as a fact something about John Key which she had not verified, and was wrong. By not checking her facts (and I think share registers in listed companies are publicly accessible) she had it backfire massively. Now what she should have done is post the issue as a question. If she had said “It is well known John Key is or was a shareholder in Toll, so maybe he can tell the House whether or not he still had $30,000 of shares when he was talking their bid up” then it would have been very different. Sure Key would have still confirmed he had sold them, but the headlines then might have been “Key narrowly escapes” instead of “PM’s smear backfires”.

Clark also has blundered with the timing. National was being pinged on Crosby/Textor plus you had the ACC issue also. So why on earth would you detract attention from those two issues, with the attempted smear about Toll shares. If Clark was thinking tactically she would have kept that for another day, which would also have given her time to have the dates checked out more fully.

That is John Armstrong’s take on Parliament yesterday:

An ugly afternoon in Parliament – and, at times, a downright nasty one; an afternoon when the atmosphere was choked with personal attacks, personal insults, charges of blackmail, allegations of dirt-throwing and threats to really dish the dirt. …

Quite why things should have got so rough is hard to explain. But the tone was set from the moment the Prime Minister produced some material which she and Labour thought would finally nail John Key. …

But if Clark’s gaffe was a low point – and it was revealing in showing the lengths to which Labour is going to find some dirt on Key – there was more to come.

Has Clark apologised yet by the way?

A further argument which began with Mark’s leader, Winston Peters, accusing National of “venal, corrupt politics” culminated in Act leader Rodney Hide referring to Peters as a “tired old drunk”.

It took a few minutes, but Peters eventually demanded Hide apologise. “If he does not, then I am going to tell the House the truth about him, which I have hitherto kept to myself. He can laugh and giggle. This is his last warning.”

But Hide argued he could not apologise. If he did, it would look like he was being blackmailed and Peters had “something on me that was true”.

There was more argument and more intervention from the Speaker. But no apology. Peters saved whatever he had to say about Hide for another day.

In fact Rodney did not call Winston a “tired old drunk”. The full Hansard is below:

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the Insurance Council of New Zealand is a subscriber to a political party’s coffers and gains from it a commitment to privatise ACC after the next election, what do we call that, if not venal, corrupt politics?

Hon Bill English: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. That member is an experienced member and knows that it is out of order to imply that someone in the House is influenced by factors outside the House.

Hon Trevor Mallard: The member certainly raised that as a possibility; he did not state it as a fact. I think there is room for the Minister to answer the question properly.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Just because the truth hurts is no reason for someone to object in this House. Let me say this: the Insurance Council of New Zealand is a subscriber to the National Party’s coffers. Those members know it, and I—

Madam SPEAKER: That is not speaking to the point of order.

Rodney Hide: That is not correct. The Minister has no responsibility for what Mr Peters raised. And Mr Mallard is wrong, because if he were right, we would be able to raise as a possibility that Mr Peters is a tired old drunk, and we are not allowed to say that.

Rodney was making the point that Winston can not accuse MPs of corruption by hiding behind the defence he merely said it was a possibility, and used an example to illustrate that.

But the interjections, barracking, needling and insults continued. At one point, Labour’s Trevor Mallard described a question from National’s Anne Tolley as “just stupid”. The stopper had clearly been put on the milk of human kindness.

But most sobering of all was the realisation that all this was a portent of what is yet to come – an ugly, nasty and vicious election campaign.

Sadly John will probably be correct. But I would suggest readers reflect on where the ugliness, the nastines and viciousness is almost exclusively coming from.

I have been predicting for some months that Labour’s re-election campaign will be a campaign of personal denigration and smears against John Key, and today we saw Stage One.  Colin Espiner blogs on how Clark tried to smear john Key but got her facts wrong:

There are generally three golden rules for MPs planning a personal smear attack on an opponent in Parliament.

The first is to make sure your facts are correct. The second is to ascertain that you are not guilty of the same things you are accusing your opponent of. The third is to do it under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, so if you fail on the first two, at least you can’t be sued.

Prime Minister Helen Clark managed to get two out of three right in Parliament today, but unfortunately she fell down on the most important one: accuracy.

This is the one which probably least bothers Labour.

She further claimed that Key’s family trust owned 30,000 shares in TranzRail at a time that Key made comments as Opposition associate transport spokesman in 2003, in which Key made disparaging remarks about the Government’s offer for the company and suggested Toll was more likely to win the bid.

That is of course what ended up happening. Toll won the bid and I imagine – although I don’t know this – that Toll’s share price went up too.

The only problem is that Key’s family trust had already sold its shares before Key made his comments. He has told Parliament this afternoon (and so I imagine he must be very certain of this) that neither he nor his trust held any shares in TranzRail at the time he made his remarks in June 2003.

Of course one could have checked the facts rather than just make it up. I mean to have the Prime Minister accuse the Leader of the Opposition of such a serious thing, and to get it wrong, should result in apologies.

But Labour don’t care if their smears are correct. John Key is a “rich prick” and they want the public to associate him with greed. They think if they repeat lies often enough, some mud will stick.

Their problem is that it looks so desperate. They are 20% to 25% behind in the polls and as Rodney Hide said in the House, they can’t even tell us how much the purchase of Toll cost, yet can find time to go through share registers trying to smear John Key.