State Housing Brochure

The reality under National is has increased the housing stock, with the only sales (a few dozen) being to existing tenants, and the capital used to buy more houses. In fact the total number of state houses has increased by more than 1,000 under National. National has also renovated or upgraded 50,000 state houses.

It is an absolute lie to say National is reviewing all state house tenancies. The policy clearly says only *new* tenancies will be placed on periodic review.

So Labour are putting out material saying Vote Labour to save your family home and vote Labour if you want to be around to see your kid’s first birthday. This is what happens when you place Trevor Mallard in charge of your campaign. It shows they are totally unchanged from the bunch that got kicked out in 2008 – in fact I think they have got worse.

UPDATE: Inventory at Keeping Stock blogs the problems caused by Labour’s fake eviction notices in 2005, according to the State Services Commissioner:

Eviction notices

The last issue I wish to raise is the unintended and complex consequences for State servants of actions taken during political campaigns. In this election period, the Labour Party sent fake “eviction notices” to several thousand individual State house tenants as part of a housing policy promotion. This action had two consequences for the State Services. Firstly, it raised trust issues as tenants were suspicious that a government agency had given their private information to a political party, and, secondly, Housing New Zealand staff had to manage calls from worried and scared tenants.

Housing New Zealand confirms that it did not release its tenants’ mailing list. Labour Party president Mike Williams stated the party “constructed its own list” from publicly available information (New Zealand Herald, 10 September 2005). However, the outcome of this communication meant that Housing New Zealand call centre staff were placed in the potentially difficult predicament of managing calls from concerned tenants. Call centre staff were given guidance that they must remain neutral and not get into the position where they are discussing the pros and cons of various party policies on housing with tenants.

Labour have sent these not just to state house tenants, but also to non state house tenants who may be conned into thinking somehow National may evict them also.

Do you know why Labour are distributing these now, and not later this week? If you put out a false pamphlet up until Wednesday, then there is no sanction for Labour, even if say the ASA finds it false. However if they put out a false pamphlet on Thursday and Friday, then it is a criminal offence under the Electoral Act and those responsible can be prosecuted and jailed for a corrupt practice. So the timing is no coincidence.

If anyone at all receives either of the smear pamphlets on Thursday or Friday, please let me know and retain a copy of it.

I thought Labour would never stoop lower than their 2005 campaign when they wrote to state house tenants and told them National would sell and evict them from their state houses. Never mind that National’s policy was that you can only sell a state house to its existing tenants.

But this really takes the cake. It is hugely insulting to the hundreds of thousands of mothers who are not on benefits and do work, because it is equating a work test obligation (which only applies if you are a sole parent who has a second child on the benefit) with not being around to celebrate a birthday.  How denigrating to working mothers. The second page has the slogan “Vote to keep families together, Vote Labour”. So Labour regards having working parents as child abandonment now.

Also the shock tactics where it looks like National’s policy is to kill off parents, with the phrase “you won’t be around to celebrate her first birthday”. It really is vile grubby stuff.

Whale has the full letter. The unanswered question is if Labour is sending these to parents of new borns, how did it get this info?

UPDATE: Stuff now has a story on these, with Grant Robertson defending them. Good to know Labour will resort to tactics like this to try and preserve a welfare system where someone can remain on the DPB for 20+ years and never face work testing.

The BMW smear is worse than that, Because Mallard and Hipkins know it is not true. The most simple of checks would establish the two companies named are totally seperate companies with no common share-holding.

Labour have basically alleged that a $50,000 donation to National from Team McMillan Limited was linked to the Government taking up the option (in the contract Labour negotiated) to upgrade the VIP fleet of BMW cars from BMW New Zealand.

I am amazed some media have focused on who signed off on what, rather than the far more important point that the two companies are totally seperate.

The company that did a deal with DIA is BMW New Zealand Ltd. Their sole shareholder is BMWHoldings B V in The Netherlands. The two directors are Guenther Seeman of Germany and Mark Gilbert of Auckland – the mananging director.

 The company that donated to National is Team McMillan BMW. Their two shareholders are MacFam  Ltd and Collins Asset Management Investments Ltd. MacFam Ltd is owned by Bob McMillan, Kerry McMillan, Ronald Jamieson and James Syme. Collins is owned by Cottisloe Holdings which is owned by Timothy Cook and Beverly Collins.

Team McMillan BMW did not benefit by one cent from the DIA decision. In fact they say they were unaware of it.

So the story is an absolute nonsense. But I suspect we will see lots more of these to come – Labour seem determined to run the same style campaign as they did in 2008.

In September 2008, John Boscawen donated $100,000 to the ACT Party. In exchange, he got a high list ranking, leading to an MP’s salary of $131,000 a year plus expenses. And now with the overthrow of Deputy Leader Heather Roy, he looks likely to turn that into a Ministerial position paying $204,300.

Looks like Boscawen made a pretty good investment.

What a disgusting post, which he won’t even allow comments on.

First of all, it is well known that John Boscawen has had a successful career in business. His dad was a school teacher and he went to Otahuhu College, so we are not talking inherited wealth. But John is now a multi-millionaire, and to suggest he entered politics to gain a salary of $131,000 or even $204,000 a year is ridicolous – I doubt that is even close to the interest he makes on his investments. Actually it is just a nasty malicious smear.

Secondly John’s donation was made on 26 September 2008. The ACT party list was announced on 20 August 2008, so Idiot/Savant is just telling lies to support his smear when he claims he got his high list ranking in exchange for his donation.

The reality is that Idiot/Savant reveals more about himself, than John Boscawen, with his blog post.He can’t imagine someone not motivated by money – which reflects on him more than he realises. In his world, you can’t donate a large amount of money to something just because you believe in a cause.

For some time, the startling increase in the number of people on sickness and invalids benefits has been as vexing as it is worrying. Have we become a sickly society? Is this the logical consequence of an ageing population? The relentless rise in the number of such beneficiaries – from 1.2 per cent of the working-age group in 1980 to 4.8 per cent today – suggested other factors were at work. Indeed, it is now apparent that a major factor is mental illness. Psychological disorders, led by stress and depression, accounted for the entire increase in sickness benefits and a third of the increase in invalids benefits from 1996 to 2002. This has obvious implications for those charged with getting as many beneficiaries as possible back into the workforce. …

Happily, it has just been highlighted by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which, in a position statement, noted that “the evidence is compelling: for most individuals, good work improves general health and wellbeing and reduces psychological stress”. The college points to a recent British review, which found the beneficial effects of work outweighed any risks, with the benefits much greater than the harmful effects of long-term unemployment or prolonged sickness absence.

I’ve had a couple of brief periods of unemployment or under-employment. During those times I did volunteer work so I was still doing something, rather than nothing.

The Press focuses on the proposed Gaza flotilla inquiry:

The Israelis also fear what they see as the stitch-up that the Goldstone inquiry into the assault on Gaza a couple of years ago became. Although it was led by a respected South African former judge, Richard Goldstone, and made some efforts at even-handedness, that inquiry’s findings were quickly unpicked by critics as weighted unfairly towards the Palestinians and ultimately were easily dismissed. One of Palmer’s tasks, if he gets the job, will be to ensure that the inquiry is conducted with a scrupulous regard to impartiality. A properly conducted inquiry might help defuse some of the tension that the raid has generated. It might go some way to averting serious and lasting diplomatic damage that at the moment seems inevitable.

I may not agree with Sir Geoffrey on alcohol reform, but I think he would be a very good choice for this role. NZ is one of the few countries seen pretty much as an honest broker, and a proper inquiry would be very beneficial.

The Dom Post talks road safety:

Last year 10 people died on the roads over Queen’s Birthday Weekend. By late yesterday this year’s toll was one. That is good news, but it is still one too many.

Aroha Ormsby was killed when she was thrown from a car. Her death leaves three young children motherless, and friends and family confronting a personal tragedy that will never be revealed by a study of the bald statistics.

The death of Ms Ormsby – and of the hundreds of other New Zealanders killed each year – is why the police were right to trial a lower tolerance for those who break the speed limit. As long as there are New Zealanders dying on the roads there can be no slackening in the effort to make the roads safer.

The sceptics will point to the atrocious weather over the holiday break, and say that the low toll and lower speeds owe as much to people staying home or slowing down in the rain. That will have played a role but so too will the increased prospect of a ticket.

I certainly think the appalling weather was the major contributor. I also think it is unwise to jump to conclusions based on just two data points.

They should remember that the 100kmh limit is just that – a legal limit. It is not meant to be treated as an infinitely flexible guideline, something that applies unless the road is clear and it’s a sunny day, or unless there is a car that needs overtaking

I hope the editorial writer has never over taken a car by exceeding the limit. Never mind that to overtake a car travelling 90 km/hr means you need a straight road with no cars coming for at least 2,000 metres to do so without exceeding 100 km/hr.

The ODT looks at Labour’s mud and smears:

The Labour Party seems unable to get over the fact that John Key is wealthy, and it has frequently made attempts to imply or demonstrate that he gained his wealth deviously, and continues to do so.

None of these efforts has succeeded.

Helen Clark tried it when she claimed Mr Key personally profited from the 1993 privatisation of Tranz Rail, because he had been a former director of Bankers Trust, which won a contract to advise the then National government on the sale.

At the relevant time, however, Mr Key was nowhere near the sale; he was operating as a foreign exchange dealer.

Ms Clark may have been badly advised, but this did not slow her attempts to muddy the Prime Minister’s credibility, especially in the business and commercial world.

Clark and Labour’s view seem to be if you made your money in business, you must be corrupt – the only honest way to earn money is as a teacher, academic or unionist.

The latest attempt has been made by another senior party figure, the Dunedin North MP, Peter Hodgson, who has tried to show the Prime Minister knows what assets are held in his “blind trust”, implying that a conflict of interest has or can arise where government policy is concerned, to Mr Key’s financial advantage.

That is a serious claim to make where public figures are concerned who hold positions where they can influence policy.

Mr Hodgson’s “evidence” – it hardly justifies the description – has been successful to the extent that Mr Key, in responding, seems to have had some knowledge of one asset in particular.

It is no more than that, however: there is no shred of proof that his knowledge – if he had it – has been used to influence policy to his advantage.

Key’s crime is that three weeks after the blind trust was set up, he referred to owning a vineyard that was now in the blind trust.

That appears to be the end of the latest attempt to impugn the Prime Minister for his wealth, but it is unlikely to be the last.

The ODT has got to the heart of the real crime – that John Key is wealthy. You can just feel the envy and hatred blister as they snidely refer to his holiday home in Hawaii. How dare he have become wealthy.

I’d say this little attempt to smear Key has been about as successful as the last dozen ones Labour has tried, including their infamous H Fee attempt.

You have to wonder how many hours of taxpayer funded Labour work went into trawling through TV footage back to 18 months ago to find something he said at a dinner, and then digging through company files, all in a desperate attempt to prove wrong-doing in Key’s personal business affairs.

UPDATE: Tracy Watkins independently reaches much the same conclusions:

There is more than a whiff of the H-bomb debacle about Labour’s pursuit of John Key over his blind trust. That must be particularly galling for the new generation on Labour’s backbench.

The burning question is why anyone in their right mind would want to revive memories of a Labour Party that spent its dying days in office trawling through Australian court records for non-existent dirt on Mr Key. The equally troubling question for the rookies must be why Labour’s old hands are intent on repeating the same mistakes. …

Why so determined to drag him down? It is not personal. Labour just want to chip away at the fairytale. Mr Key’s rags-to-riches tale of a state-house boy made good is a huge political asset. Understandably, Labour sees a huge upside in denting that and its goal is to taint the fairytale with the usual big money associations. But it hasn’t done that so far with these latest allegations. Nor with the prevous attempts – which, in the case of the H bomb, came at a heavy cost. And the wounds from that had only recently healed.

So if Phil Goff’s leadership was supposed to turn a new chapter, why on earth reopen them – and, in the process, risk reminding voters that the old hands they voted out are still in charge?

There is no new chapter with Hodgson and Mallard still running things.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.