Kiwiblog

What a silly story. It tells us nothing unusual.

Entered Eden Park during Thursday’s cricket international between New Zealand and Australia dressed as construction workers – wearing hard hats and reflector vests hired from a costume shop. Despite having no tickets or ID, the two reporters had unfettered access to construction areas and other restricted zones within the stadium

The getting in without a ticket is silly. Does the SST really think terrorists can’t afford to buy a ticket?

And the access to construction areas in a big yawn also. One could leave a bomb in a bathroom just as easily. And as I said yesterday, one could fake an ID given five minutes anyway.

I take it as a given that if someone really wanted to smuggle a bomb into a provincial rugby match, they could do so. The protection is that the probability of someone wanting to do so is miniscule.

If you really wanted to minimise someone getting a bomb in, you would have metal detectors, frisking of fans, passport level security for staff and contractors IDs etc etc. Now that level of security might be practical and justified for a Rugby World Cup match, but it is ridicolous for provincial rugby matches.

The Australian players are particularly concerned about security right now, following threats by al Qaeda against this month’s IPL tournament in India, and have demanded that rigid security be put in place before they take part in the tour.

And this is the key difference. The tour is in India. New Zealand is not India. India has a long history of violent rebels, of armed conflict, of lethal religious tensions, and in this case there have been specific threats.

If the Gore Liberation Front started shooting government officials, and threatened a campaign of bombings against rugby games, then I would expect security to change.

Took toy explosives and detonators, as well as alcohol, in a bag and on the body, into Waikato Stadium during the March 5 Chiefs-Reds Super 14 rugby game, with Red Badge security staff failing to search one reporter’s bag. He walked freely around all parts of the stadium, approached the Reds’ bench and shook hands with a team manager, entered the VIP corporate box area and spoke with boxer David Tua, got players including All Black Sitiveni Sivivatu to sign the bag containing the toy explosives and walked unchallenged through the players’ tunnel, getting within a metre of the changing rooms before finally being asked to leave by a security guard.

Oh wow. And one could also get within a metre of them at the after match bar the team goes out to. One could also get a fake bomb in a bag within a metre of the Prime Minister (no doubt their next stunt) at most of the many public engagements he undertakes.

New Zealand is not a country that has security based on paranoia. It is based on credible threat. I do not want to live in a country where I get x-rayed going to the local rugby match. Bizarrely, the Sunday Star-Times does.

The Press reports:

It is understood the newspaper had a reporter carrying fake explosives in a backpack and a dummy detonator on his body. It is believed the “bomber” was able to achieve access to restricted areas at the ground.

Of course he could. It was a provincial rugby match. I could probably do the same if you gave me five minutes with a colour printer and a laminating machine.

Sunday Star-Times managing editor Mitchell Murphy said critics should withhold judgment about the newspaper’s actions until the results of its investigation were revealed.

“Our investigation, which is a matter of significant public interest, was well planned and carefully considered,” he said.

There is little public interest in the fact that someone with a fake bomb could sneak into a rugby game. We don’t have armed guards and metal detectors at the grounds. The main purpose of security is to check for alcohol, not to x-ray and body frisk people.

Security should be proportional to the threat. For the Rugby World Cup one would expect higher security, as it is a potential target. Quite frankly with the aviation industry hysterically over-reacting with security, it’s nice to not have that same paranoia at our local rugby matches.

“We sought legal advice prior to commencing our investigation, and the journalists involved worked under strict protocols.”

He said the reporter carrying fake explosives had a letter outlining the investigation in case he was stopped, which would have prevented evacuation.

A letter!!! For fucks sake.  So does the SST believe that if Police come across someone in a restricted area, with what appears to be explosives, they should take no action because they have a letter with them, saying there is no threat.

I’d love to see the SST try that stunt at an airport!

“At no stage was the public at risk; nor did we break the law,” Murphy said.

It seems no law was broken, but the stunt was still moronic. Of course there was a public risk if their mock bombers had been discovered.

With the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand next year, stadium security needed to be first-rate, and the investigation had exposed flaws.

Oh what self serving crap. As I said, I have no doubt I could infiltrate a restricted area of a stadium with a bit of effort. Our stadiums are not designed to be like the Pentagon.

For the World Cup, you do expect a higher level of security, but even then, some common sense. Frankly terrorism related paranoia should not overcome common sense.

Associate Professor Jim Tully, who is the head of the Canterbury University journalism course, said the alleged action was “a silly piece of journalism”.

“It’s one thing to potentially test security measures pretty close to the World Cup, but doing it now seems pretty dumb because they’re unlikely to be in place,” he said.

The story could backfire on the newspaper by damaging its credibility, he said.

A story focused on security is quite valid. But giving people fake bombs just reeks of a PR stunt.

Just received this press release:

A newspaper stunt at major provincial rugby games last weekend could easily have resulted in matches being called off and stadiums evacuated, Police Minister Judith Collins said.

Ms Collins was advised that a newspaper commissioned people to masquerade as terrorists who then gained access to restricted areas at Super 14 matches in Hamilton and Christchurch.

“The actions are unbelievably stupid and irresponsible. This stunt had the potential to result in games being called off and stadiums evacuated,” Ms Collins said.

“This would have caused not only great public inconvenience and cost, but possibly presented a risk to the safety of spectators.

“Common sense would tell you that running around a stadium dressed as a bomber has the potential to end very badly.

“If there had been panic there was the very real possibility that people – particularly the elderly, children and those less mobile – could have been hurt.

“Police are taking this matter very seriously.”

This is beyond moronic. The newspaper responsible is the Sunday Star-Times. I’ve often criticised the media for creating news, instead of reporting it, but this goes to a new low.

Ms Collins said security at major events is based on risk, and that security at a provincial rugby game will be much less than for a major international match.

“The only thing people masquerading as bombers will achieve is an unnecessary increase in security at considerable cost and inconvenience to the public,” she said.

“The last thing people want is the situation where people have to be body searched before attending provincial rugby matches.”

What were the SST trying to prove? Of course a suicide bomber could blow themselves and lots of other people up at a provincial rugby game.They could also blow lots of people up at a school rugby game, or the McEverdy Shield in Wellington.

I suspect their real intention was to scare monger about the Rugby World Cup. So their aim was to scare tens of thousands of people off globally from coming to New Zealand.

I’m pretty sure there will have been some laws broken by the people who posed as terrorists, but they should not be the ones prosecuted. The people who paid or commissioned them to do so, should face some consequences for such stupidity and malice.

Again I wonder what the SST saw as the end point for this. Do they want every provincial rugby game to have armed police officers, bomb checks, metal detectors?

The SST has done an extensive profile of Speaker Lockwood Smith. The beginning:

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS in the snake pit, and somehow Locky remains an innocent. The MP kept smiling his spooky smile through decades of derision and scorn. He began his public life as a fuddy-duddy – should school kids be reading the nasty sex scene on page 96 of The Color Purple? – and threatened to end it as a dork. Smith was appalled at the uproar which greeted his remarks during the election campaign about the small hands of Asian vine-pruners. Gosh, he didn’t mean to upset anyone.

National leader John Key made him say sorry, pencilled him out of cabinet, and in due course sent him to the Speaker’s chair. This is a place where parties put senior MPs they don’t know what to do with. The politician, says a parliamentary insider, was “dead and buried”. But Alexander Lockwood Smith, PhD, 61-year-old owner of a fine baritone voice and the best set of abs in parliament, refused to lie quiet in his grave.

Instead he launched a couple of revolutions and turned himself from laughing stock into an odd sort of political leader. He put an end to aeons of skullduggery and secrecy by publishing MPs’ expenses. He turned Question Time in parliament from a tableau of official evasion into a real test of the government’s mettle. He became that rarest of political animals, the celebrity Speaker. The pundits praised the new hero of accountability and openness.

The whole article is a good read.

According to the Sunday Star-Times, Cabinet tomorrow will throw out Labour’s decision to introduce mandatory addition of folic acid to bread:

THE BUN-FIGHT is over. Bakers will not be forced by law to add folic acid to our bread, bagels, crumpets and English muffins. The Key government will announce this week that it is throwing out the former government’s policy.

Cabinet is expected to formalise the government’s position when it meets tomorrow, effectively putting the controversial issue on the back burner for three years and, crucially, beyond the next election.

The government is not convinced that making folic acid a compulsory ingredient in all bread is necessary, and wants more time to assess the evidence. Folic acid has been shown to reduce the risk of babies being born with defects such as spina bifida, but bakers say women would need to eat at least 11 slices of bread a day to make a difference to the health of their unborn child.

The Key government favours a voluntary regime. It has been looking for a way to wriggle out of the trans-Tasman agreement, struck by the former Labour government, and due to take effect on September 1.

Community pressure mounted as the deadline approached. Radio talkback shows were last week inundated with indignant callers.

The Star-Times understands that Food Minister Kate Wilkinson on Thursday reached an agreement with the Australian parliamentary secretary for health, Mark Butler, that exempts New Zealand from the new standard.

That is a nice exclusive for the SST, by their political editor Grahame Armstrong.

And the agreement with Australia is much better than unilaterally pulling out. As I have said before, Australian politicians will understand how something can become a major issue.

Under the trans-Tasman agreement, folic acid was to be mandatory in all wheat flour products, including sweet breads and rolls, bagels, foccacia, English muffins and flat breads that contain yeast.

Crumpets, scones, pancakes, pikelets, crepes, yeast donuts, pizza bases and crumbed products were also to be fortified with folic acid.

It was going to be in pizzas also?

Katherine Rich, chief executive of the Food and Grocery Council, said many New Zealanders would breathe a sigh of relief because they did not like the idea of the government tampering with their bread.

There were genuine concerns about the health effects and the prime minister was right to delay any decision until all the facts were known, she said. It was also an issue about freedom of choice.

“It’s quite a scary intervention to dose an entire country,” Rich, a former National MP, said.

“A trip to the baker should not be a trip to the chemist.”

Heh – nice line.

The Herald on Sunday also reveals that Rodney Hide has warned and lobbied fellow Ministers about the issue three months ago.

Whale Oil is in both the HoS and the SST. First the HoS is about the “feud” with Pearl Going:

A fixture of the social pages is at the centre of an alleged text and cyber bullying storm. Police are investigating claims from Auckland socialite Pearl Going that she has been subjected to death threats and abuse via text, Facebook and emails.

If there has been death threats, that is indeed a matter for the Police. However as far as I know, having nasty things said about you online is not a criminal issue – if it was I would be going to the Police every second day!

The 24-year-old, related to former All Black Sid Going, has also complained about a year of cyber-harassment involving two websites, neither of which she has anything to do with.

The saga revolves around a dispute over her reputation, qualifications and background, and has drawn in many members of Auckland’s social set.

This is what puzzles me somewhat about the HoS story. I have absolutely no first hand knowledge of Ms Going and the accuracy (or not) of the various claims about her qualifications and background etc. So why doesn’t the newspaper investigate and find out who is correct rather than just report there is a dispute?

Slater said he took exception to Going being included in a list of up-and-coming Auckland socialites published in the Herald on Sunday’s Spy pages because he challenged claims about her background.

Several members of the Auckland social set this week contacted the Herald on Sunday unprompted to raise similar concerns about the background claims.

Again, the obvious thing to do would be to investigate the claims, I would have thought.

And in the SST, they do a full profile of Whale Oil. Some extracts:

Slater’s profane, occasionally rabid, vociferously right-wing blog Whale Oil Beef Hooked (to be read with an Irish inflection) gets 5000-6000 page views a day, including many readers in the media and political establishment. In the past year, it has broken a number of stories that have been followed, often unattributed, by news outlets, notably Winston Peters’ lingering post-election grip on his ministerial vehicle.

Heading home from a weekly yum char lunch with a close group of fellow right-leaning, Seventh Day Adventist-affiliated mates, Slater takes a call about a proposed visit to Fiji, as a supportive guest of the regime, to interview Frank Bainimarama. The Commodore has not been granting interviews with the New Zealand press, but one of his deputies is a Whale Oil reader.

I’d like to go to Fiji also, but am worried I might get shot at the airport as I am more sceptical of the Commodore’s intentions or more importantly his actions.

The local blogosphere is loud and volatile, the new frontline of political debate. But even in this fierce arena, Slater is infamous for dragging the discourse to new lows, with vicious, juvenile, sometimes misogynistic attacks.

Like American gossip juggernaut Perez Hilton, Slater routinely uses Photoshop to vilify his targets: grafting Helen Clark’s head onto the body of a crotchless starlet, or riddling her with digital bulletholes. On seeing an article titled “The World’s Ugliest Dogs”, Slater “couldn’t resist” reposting the story, appended with pictures of female Labour MPs. He has published bizarre sexual allegations against a female Labour official and challenged strangers to fights, including the sons of Folole Muliaga.

“I got sick of the way the media created a frenzy around a fat woman who was sent home by the hospital to die,” he says. “F— them.”

No doubt a genuine Whale quote!

Some stuff on his private life;

Slater found his after the collapse of the security systems company, of which he owned 49%, in 2004 amid rancour with his business partner. The failure ruined Slater financially he had to sell his second home to pay the IRD socially, and eventually, psychologically. The depression he had battled for years became disabling.

As a result, he is unable to work. Because he had income protection insurance, he now receives 75% of his former salary.

“The first year was dark, very dark,” recalls Slater. “I’d stay inside all day, the curtains pulled, unable to make decisions. You open the freezer and try to decide what you’re going to cook for dinner, you can’t even do that, so you go back to bed.”

To get him out of the house, one of his mates insisted he come and work in his office, free of charge. As “an outlet, a place to let off steam”, he says blogging has helped him, as do his daily workouts.

But he still battles despair, takes medication, sees a psychologist each month. Undoubtedly, the desperation of his circumstances has shaped his blogging persona.

“When you’ve got nothing to lose, you’re dangerous.”

“I’ve got no money. I’ve got nothing. What’s anybody going to do, sue me? Fill your boots! You’ll waste 100 grand,” he says.

The best advice I give about Cameron (and he now gives the same advice) to people is to avoid wrestling with pigs in mud, because you’ll just get dirty and the pigs will enjoy it

I suspect the Sunday Star-Times enjoyed getting to print this article:

REPORTERS at the Herald on Sunday newspaper were instructed to steal stories out of the Sunday Star-Times in what the tabloid paper’s former assistant editor calls “industrial espionage” on an unprecedented scale.

The revelations are included in an early draft of a brief of evidence from Steve Cook, who was assistant editor at the Herald on Sunday until he was sacked following rumours of drug dealing.

Cook has taken a case to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) claiming unjustified dismissal he was not charged by police with any offence and although the authority struck out evidence relating to the industrial espionage claims, the Star-Times has obtained a copy of the initial brief.

In it, Cook says that for a period in 2005 soon after the Herald on Sunday’s launch, reporter John Manukia would be dispatched on Saturday nights to the Fairfax presses in South Auckland to get an early copy of the Star-Times.

Manukia, later sacked for fabricating stories, would take the paper back to the Herald on Sunday offices and, acting on instructions from executive staff, “would proceed to lift stories from the SST without any attribution for publication in the following day’s Herald on Sunday”.

Cook says the practice ceased in July 2005, following a “near catastrophe”. The Star-Times had obtained exclusive extracts from a biography of All Black Justin Marshall, which its rival wanted. Manukia was dispatched to the presses to get a copy of the paper.

“That night the Fairfax presses were running late, so when Manukia eventually got his hands on a copy of the newspaper there was only time to phone through details from the book. I asked Manukia to give me the title of the book but instead he gave me the headline on the SST story.”

The Herald on Sunday went to press with the erroneous title, and when editor Shayne Currie discovered the error, “was left with no choice but to stop the presses”, Cook wrote.

Currie yesterday said the behaviour was not “standard practice”. In a statement to the Star-Times he said: “I recall this happened on two, possibly three, occasions, in 2005. It has not happened since. On one of those occasions we did a `spoiler’ story on the new Justin Marshall book, which was being extracted in the SST.”

Media commentator Jim Tully damned the practice, saying lifting stories from another media outlet without attribution was “both unethical and potentially risky as past experience has shown. It is indicative of the intense competition between the Sundays and suggests a note of desperation in not being scooped by a rival.”

I think things are less intense now, but I do know newspapers hate nothing more than missing a story their rival covers.

Cook also gave details in his early brief of “the most incredible example of industrial espionage ever seen in the newspaper industry in this country”. A Herald on Sunday reporter had rented an apartment across the road from the Star-Times offices in Auckland and had a view of the editor’s office, including a whiteboard with details of upcoming stories. Cook claims the reporter was given a telescope and told to ring through details of what the Star-Times was doing that week.

But senior Herald on Sunday reporter David Fisher put a statement on the Public Address website on Friday, saying the telescope was his, and that the so-called spying was “a joke driven by a sense of mischief”. Currie said the incident was a “silly prank” which gained nothing and he did not find out about it until later.

David Fisher’s blog on the issue is here. I trust David entirely as to this being the context to the story.

The ERA heard on Friday that Cook was dismissed from the Herald on Sunday last year after a chain of events that began with a visit to the paper by two drug squad detectives.

They told Currie that Cook and a company car had been spotted on several occasions at a property they had under surveillance.

Currie said that over the following days and weeks Cook refused to provide a satisfactory reason for being there and would not hand over notes. Cook said he wouldn’t provide the notes because he did not trust Currie, who had given his home address to the police officers.

Even I had heard about the rumoured drug involvement. But the key issue will be whether Cook was legally entitled to refuse to hand over his (alleged) notes to his editor, and also whether the HoS followed correct process in dismissing him.

An interesting interview of Michael Cullen in the SST:

MICHAEL CULLEN didn’t mean to call John Key a rich prick. At least, not out loud. “That was an interjection I never meant to be heard by anybody, not even those around me,” says the former deputy prime minister. “It was under voice,” he explains, mouthing and whispering the infamous words again to show how it happened.

Just like when Steve Maharey said “fuck you” to Jonathan Coleman and Ruth Dyson referred to Katherine Rich as a stupid tart. Also there was no whispering when Cullen called Key a scumbag, so I think we should be careful of rewriting history.

But Cullen was angry that day in Parliament, for family reasons. National leader Key had brought Cullen’s wife Anne Collins into the debate the previous night.

I generally agree that MPs families should be left out of politics. But there is an exception to that rule – when the family members willingly get involved in politics themselves.

I’ve looked at Hansard of that day, and the reference is merely to Anne Collins having supported Russel Fairbrother’s nomination in 2002, and Cullen signing Stuart Nash’s nomination papers in 2008. If you are actively involved in a political party, supporting various candidates, then you are in politics and it is not the same as a spouse who has no political involvement at all.

The politician finds it depressing that “everyone made a federal case” out of his blurt. He’s the father of Kiwisaver, the Cullen superannuation fund, of Working for Families and a return to egalitarianism in the age of excess, and all the media want to talk about is the “rich prick”! Cullen sighs in his blank office.

It was the quote that kept on giving. And the reason it did, was the inclusion of “rich”. If he just called him a prick it would have been forgotten. But by calling him a “rich prick” it implied being rich was a bad, nasty thing – like being a prick.

The government was sensitive to the charge that it was Nannyish, he says, but the rage over the light-bulb ban seemed “highly irrational”. The new bulbs were more efficient, less expensive and more environmentally desirable. But it didn’t think it could reverse the ban either. “When you’re a government that’s been there a long time, you keep doing u-turns and people start seeing you again as weak.”

This is one of the key mistakes third term Governments make. National did it with Punket in 1999, and Labour with various things in its third term. You convince yourself that “winning” and “not giving in” is more important than killing off an issue.

The anti-smacking bill was another strange case: even though National ended up voting for it, Labour got all the flak. Cullen says Labour could not have avoided the issue posed by green Sue Bradford’s bill. Section 59 of the Crimes Act had led to the acquittal of people who had made quite serious attacks on children. And it fitted Labour policy, so opposing the measure would make people say it had no principles.

But it was not a binary choice between the old law and Bradford’s proposal. The Borrows amendment would have stopped those acquittals but not criminalised parents who apply a light smack for correctional purposes.

Cullen still insists he could not have afforded big tax cuts in 2005 when he offered only the “chewing gum” cuts. Treasury was still forecasting disappearing surpluses.

“It’s a brave minister of finance who tells Treasury, `You’re wrong, I think we can spend it’, and then Treasury will produce numbers which will show you moving into significant deficit… I’d have been shot.”

Bullshit. Because he did exactly that in 2008. Even before the credit crisis, the tax cuts he announced were on a far far worst set of books than in 2005. The irony is tax cuts in 2005 would have been sustainable, but his 2008 tax cuts probably will not be.

The National-led government cut 70 staff from the Tertiary Education Commission. “The chances are this will lead to another blowout in low-quality education spending [such as the notorious "twilight golf" courses], which will cost far more than the bureaucrats.

These twilight golf courses occured under the TEC Labour set up. They had hundreds of staff and did nothing about them. WHen there were just 25 staff in the Ministry of Education, they had far better quality control than the montrosity created by Labour. Does Cullen really think twlight golf courses occured because there were too few TEC staff?

Cullen believes “only a tiny group of highly entrepreneurial people will make their way out of any situation, because they’ve got this enormous gift and it’s a lucky gift they’ve got”.

So sucess is all due to “luck” and a “gift”. Hard work, perseverance, education, training have nothing to do with it?

“It doesn’t matter that much how rich people get, provided they’re prepared to pay their taxes. What I always hate is when I hear the rich complaining they have to pay their taxes, that that is so unfair. I’ve always said, `Gosh, I was so pleased when I was deputy prime minister earning enough money to pay so much tax’.”

Dr Cullen has never worked in the private sector. When your income is due to your activites actually generating wealth, you do get upset as almost half of it disappears to Dr Cullen. When you have been on a state salary for 35 years or so, then of course you don’t mind paying tax.

On the PM: “[John] Key is a natural high pragmatist or low pragmatist. He wants to be prime minister, he wants to do things but he’s quite pragmatic about methods. Bill English is much harder-line.” So how come Labour painted Key as a neo-con wolf in sheep’s clothing? “I’d prefer not to go into that.”

This is quite extraordinary. Cullen basically admits that Labour’s negative campaign against Key was false, and they knew it was false, but they hoped the mud would stick. What else did Labour campaign on, knowing it was false?

On “We won, you lost, eat that!” No, he says, he never said that to National. “It’s a wonderful piece of historic myth.”

I think it was directed to business actually. Hansard for back then is not online, so hard to tell.

I’ve supported Helen Clark’s candidacy for the UNDP job, and have always acknowledge her considerable political skills. It has been her policies and judgement (in the third term specially) I have had issues with. Her interview with the SST reminds me why:

She was surprised by the standing ovation she got in parliament. There were “a lot of people there obviously that I’d crossed swords with, but I don’t believe I’ve ever been seen as a nasty, mean-spirited person. Sure, I’ve been a tough and strong politician but you know not in a way I think of as being personally vindictive”.

So calling Don Brash cancerous and corrosive is not personally vindictive? Suggesting John Key shouts over his wife at home is not nasty or mean spirited? Let us not totally rewrite history here.

She read later that one person Act MP David Garrett had not joined in the applause, but “to be honest I wouldn’t recognise the person, so it’s not of any great moment. Maybe he will learn after a while in politics that there are some things you do and some things you don’t”.

This is the same Helen who walked out of the House as Don Brash was about to start his valedictory speech?

She won’t discuss her legacy, but she does note that during the election campaign “I talked till I was blue in the face saying, `Look, a change of government isn’t just changing a brand of toothpaste there will be substantial change’. “And I think people didn’t want to hear that. Now we see the things that are happening show that it wasn’t just about changing toothpaste. But you can’t rewind the film.”

She admits she is exasperated that her prophecies were ignored. “Of course, but I can’t do anything about it. I always think of that old homily that used to hang on my grandparents’ wall, which said, `Give me the grace to accept the things that I cannot change’.”

And again we get the sense of total denial that Labour did anything wrong. It is all the fault of the NZ public voting for a change, and not realising what they were doing. It just doesn’t even occur to Helen that peopel did vote for change. That they were sick of no tax cuts until the week before the election. They were sick of nanny state. They were sick of her defence of Winston’s behaviour. They were sick of law & order policies that made parole and bail easier to get, not harder.

And her so called prophecies consisted of hundreds of advertisements that said just one thing – you can not trust John Key. It was the most personal and negative campaign in NZ’s history – they did not run even a single positive television advertisement – they were 100% negative.

To be fair to Clark, her view appears to be shared by most in Labour. They still think the public was conned by John Key, and that all they have to do is wait for the public to come to their senses and beg Labour for forgiveness for not letting them rule for ever.

A good article by Tim Hunter in the SST on how Mascot should never have been let into the deposit guarantee scheme:

Mascot was one of the smaller lenders in the sector, but not tiny. Its most recent accounts, for the year to March 2008, showed a loan book of $118 million, just over half of which (57%) was lent on property projects of various kinds. The rest of the lending was to charitable trusts for gaming machines and to commercial loans.

The lending was financed by a debenture book of $123m.

Right there, it is clear that Mascot had a problem. Its debenture liabilities were greater than its loan assets. What’s more, the imbalance was more severe in the short term. Only $53m of its loans were due for repayment within one year, while Mascot owed $71m to its debenture holders over the same period.

Before the year was up ie, by the end of this month Mascot was highly likely to hit the wall.

This is the sort of analysis you hope Treasury would have done.

Mascot’s desperate situation didn’t require much detective work. It was laid out clearly in the liquidity profile in its accounts, which showed the company would be in the red to the tune of $6.8m within the next 12 months.

Without a substantial reversal of its fortunes, Mascot had no chance of survival. By the time it entered the government guarantee scheme on January 12, it is highly likely that Mascot was already doomed.

Not all collapses are foreseeable. But this one seemed prety obvious.

Another thing one of the criteria the Treasury could consider in awarding the guarantee was whether the people controlling the company were of good character. In this context it is interesting to note that one of Mascot’s directors, Christchurch lawyer David John Stock, was fined and censured in 2007 by the Canterbury District Law Society for serious misconduct after acting for both his long-term mistress and her unwitting husband, in a deal in which the husband signed away his interest in the family home.

He was also criticised by Justice Willy Young in 2002 for having “a credibility problem” and for repeatedly making “untrue” statements during a court dispute between rival meat companies PPCS and Richmond.

Due diligence on directors should absolutely be a requirement before taxpayers guarantee a finance company.

Treasury used to be regarded as the top performing Government agency. Their breach of the Public Finance Act over ACC, and this stuff up, is tarnishing their former reputation.

Anthony Hubbard in the SST predicts some axes tomorrow:

ACC MINISTER Nick Smith is likely to sack ACC chairman Ross Wilson and several other board members tomorrow.

And embattled Corrections Department chief executive Barry Matthews is likely to be soon removed from his post by the State Services Commission.

We’ll find out tomorrow if that is correct or not!

Almost every major newspaper has now called for Barry Matthews to do the decent thing and resign. The latest is the Sunday Star-Times:

LET’S CONCEDE that Barry Matthews has a tough job. His department must look after the human wreckage that society has spurned: the lost, the vicious, the drunk and the addicted, the hopeless and the bent and twisted.

Absolutely. Corrections is as tough as it gets.

Let’s also concede that Corrections, for deep historical reasons, is not well placed to cope. The tough criminal culture has produced a tough culture among the guards. Attempts to change this culture are difficult and take time. One reason for the enthusiastic move to try private prisons all those years ago was the feeling that the state prison system was unreformable: a fresh start was needed.

And Labour’s killing off of this initiative is one of the most ideological stupid things they did. The state prison system does have a culture of corruption (the SST calls it “tough”, and this was a chance to help turn that around.

Does all this mean that Matthews should keep his job? No. The Auditor-General’s report is, in truth, a damning one and there can be no excuses for the trouble it uncovered. A year-long audit showed that despite the department’s spectacular failures in the case of murderers William Bell and Graeme Burton, Corrections continued to fail to do its job. This was not a case simply of not enough workers to carry out the tasks. It was just plain negligence and sloppiness. Dangerous prisoners walked free and no attempt was made to warn their victims. Others went out into the world and did not see a probation officer for weeks or months.

The public, in other words, was at risk because the department wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. Matthews, as the chief executive of the department, must be accountable for these failings. He has been in charge for four years. That is long enough to ensure that those who work in the organisation do the job they are paid to do. These were not isolated shortcomings. They were frequent or systemic.

Traditionally, we have demanded accountability either from the minister or the chief executive of a department; too often, both have declined to accept the blame. Judith Collins has the great good luck to be a new minister, and cannot fairly be blamed. The buck stops, therefore, with Matthews. No doubt he has done his best. No doubt he has worked hard to reform an intractable organisation that has had to bear impossible new loads. But in the end, the democratic system requires accountability. If Matthews will not resign, the State Services Commission must move or sack him.

There is little new in the Sunday papers on the Paula Bennett story, but worth looking at what has been said.

The main story in the HoS quotes from the two letters released yesterday, and is pretty unexceptional. What I found more interesting was the HoS Editorial, which seems to be slightly schizophrenic in part prasing Paula, while part insisting the public had a right to know. I suspect their original story got a bit of a backlash. An extract:

On the face of it, and in the absence of any evidence arguing to the contrary, Bennett’s decision to take Halaholo under her roof and her pleas in mitigation on his behalf are unexceptionable, understandable and even commendable. At times of strife, particularly when the law is requiring an errant youngster to face the consequences of his actions, family bonds are tested, and those that do not break are precious indeed. It is difficult to imagine that Bennett’s motives in allowing her granddaughter’s father to be bailed to her home were anything other than entirely blameless. Her personal history, which has not been free of tribulation over which she has triumphed, would equip her to be an ideal guardian of a young man who needed watching over, and the non-custodial remand alternatives, presuming they existed, would very probably have been less satisfactory.

I think most people have reached that conclusion.

But that is not the issue. As a society, we quite properly regard election to any public office, and particularly to Parliament, as imposing duties of disclosure above and beyond those that attend on normal citizenship. This is particularly true of ministers, which is why they are required to declare their assets. It is for the public, not the executive, to decide what among their private financial arrangements is and is not relevant to the discharge of their public duties.

There are additional duties of disclosure, but I am not sure your daughter’s boyfriend qualifies. Where do you stop? Your brother’s P habit? Your uncle’s drink driving? Unless there are links to your actions as a Minister, I tend to think it is private business. If a Minister’s child crashes a private car, it should not be noteowrthy. If the car they crash if a Ministerial taxpayer funded car, then it is noteworthy.

So it is in this case. Only three years after being elected to Parliament, Bennett has been entrusted with an important cabinet portfolio at what might be regarded as a tender age. There is no evidence that the hospitality she extended to Halaholo compromised her, but the questions this paper wished to put to her and to her boss remain of public importance. When did she become aware that Halaholo was involved in a gang? What contact has she had with other gang members or associates? Did she, in the security vetting that all ministers undergo, disclose her relationship with a convicted violent offender? What discussion has occurred about the potential security risks involved?

I really don’t think the daughter’s boyfriend being associated with some gang members (I understand he is not in fact a member of any gang) is quite the same thing as having an affair with the girlfriend of a Russian spy (Profume affair).

John Tamihere has a brother who is a convicted killer, and probably knows dozens of gang members. Is anyone suggesting he (when a Minister) should have had to detail to the Cabinet Secretary every gang member he has ever associated with in case it somehow is a security risk?

Hey Rob Muldoon had a few sessions with gang leaders. That is a security risk I guess. Well mainly a risk to the gang members

Personally I think the security risk angle is merely justification for running the story. Not that I’m upset the story was published – I think it shows that Ministers are not some privileged elite with perfect families and lives.

Finally we have the SST story. It is largely unexceptional, except for this first paragraph:

PRIME MINISTER John Key has reprimanded his renegade social development minister Paula Bennett after she failed to tell him about letters of support she had written for her daughter’s jailed partner.

Paula is now a renegade Minister? Wow, let’s use the really colorful language.  Dictionary.com defines a renegade as:

1. a person who deserts a party or cause for another.
2. an apostate from a religious faith.
–adjective
3. of or like a renegade; traitorous.

So maybe we can agree that’s going a bit over the top. As in 1000% over the top.

But at least Paula is in good company if she is now an official renegade. That is also the Secret Service codename for Barack Obama, as detailed in the Telegraph.

My favourite codename is Kittyhawk for Queen Elizabeth II!

The SST has a collection of fascinating stories on how the Police have been spying on various protest groups for many years, through a paid informant who was active in the groups.

The informant, Rob Gilchrist, was exposed by his (presumably ex) girlfriend Rochelle Rees. Rochelle is an animal rights activist and also got well known for her Google Bomb against John Key.

Gilchrist, in one of the more stupid acts known to mankind, asked Rochelle to help fix his computer. Now if you are spying for the Police, and communicating with them via e-mail, asking your girlfriend (one of those you are reporting on) to fix your computer is monumentally stupid. He also gets stupid marks for not using a Gmail or web based mail account for his spying, so that there is little trace on the computer.

So who were the Police spying on. According to the SST, it was:

1. Anti-Bases Campaign
2. Auckland Animal Action
3. Beneficiaries Action Collective
4. GE-Free NZ
5. Peace Action Wellington
6. Greenpeace
7. People’s Moratorium Enforcement Agency (GE Free)
8. Save Animals from Exploitation (SAFE)
9. Save Happy Valley
10. Wellington Animal Rights Network

I do wonder how much overlap of membership there is – some people may belong to all 10 groups

So should the Police be spying on these groups, if they are protest groups. Well the answer is, it depends.

If they never set out to break the law, and organise legal protests, then the Police should be taking no interest in them. Presumably that is what Forest & Bird are not there or the World Wildlife Fund.

If however the groups have a deliberate strategy of breaking the law, of commiting damage, of theft etc – then the mere fact they are a protest group doesn’t make them immune from the law, and doesn’t mean the Police can’t use informants to find out what illegal activities are planned.

So do the ten groups above all take part in organised law breaking activities? I’m not sure they do. Save Happy Valley certainly does and I have no problem with the Police monitoring them, if done within the law. But I suspect in some of the cases, the Police would be stretching it to justify their surveilance through an informant. The question I would ask is whether the use of Gilchrist as an informant actually prevented any crimes? I not, then they should not be spying n the groups. If however they were planning illegal activities, some surveillance can be argued as justified

There are a number of interesting questions, especially about Gilchrist himself who is profiled here.

1. How did he become a Police informant – did they turn him, or did he offer? If he offered out of the blue, then no surprise the Police said yes.
2. Was he informing just for the money of $600 a week, or did he disagree with what these groups did?
3. He is reported to have been a ringleader is advocating some of the illegal protests. Could this not be entrapment if he promotes some form of illegal direction action to the others, and then gets them arrested?
4. Did anyone ever wonder how he managed to live for so many years without working? Did they just assume it was the generous welfare state?
5. Did he pay tax on his informant income?
6. How many other spies are there in these protest groups?
7. Does anyone else find it ironic that it was under a Labour Government, that all the leftie groups were spied on?

Matthew Hooton blogs his final pre-election SST column:

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

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

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

I feel none of that now.

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

Nice.

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

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

Remember it’s all about trust!

The SST has an interesting feature on Rodney Hide after Steve Braunias spends a day with him. All pretty positive for Rodney.

Douglas to Dancing analyses the article and asks whether Rodney should be pushing a two ticks strategy in Epsom to try and lift the party vote nationally.

Last week I set up an online survey for MPs, asking them to rate various media organisations and senior gallery journalists on a scale of 0 to 10. Just under one quarter of MPs responded, and the results are shown below.

As the media often rate how well MPs are doing, I thought it appropriate to reverse this and ask the questions in reverse. The media are a hugely powerful filter, and it is appropriate (in my opinion) to have some focus on how well they are perceived to be performing.

The questions were:

1. For each media organisation please give them a rating from 0 to 10 for how well you think they do in their parliamentary reporting. This should take account of all relevant factors – accuracy, fairness, thoroughness, relevance, substance etc.
2. Now for some individual senior members of the press gallery, please rate from 0 to 10 how well you think they perform at proving fair, accurate, unbiased and informative reporting on Parliament. You can skip any that you do not feel able to rate.
3. Finally can you indicate your party grouping as National, Labour or Other. Your individual identity is not sought by us, and we have no way or interest in identifying individual respondents. However we would like to summarise results for all MPs and by the three groupings to see if they vary by party grouping.

It is important that these be read in context, so make the following points:

1. This is the opinion of MPs only. It does not set out to be an objective rating, and should not be seen as such.
2. MPs get reported on by the gallery. While this makes them the group of NZers potentially best able to have an informed opinion on the media (which is why I surveyed them), it also gives them a conflict of interest. MPs may score journalists lowly due to personal run ins with them, or the fact they are too good at their job! This should be borne in mind.
3. I only e-mailed the survey to the 121 MPs, but it is possible that one or more responses was filled in by a staff member who has access to the MPs mailbox. I think this is unlikely, as most staff are very professional. However MPs were not required to prove their identity to vote, as confidentiality of individual responses was important. You need to know the Survey URL to be able to vote.
4. National MPs made up 43% of responses, slightly above their numbers in Parliament. Minor Party MPs were also slightly over-represented, Labour MPs under-represented and some MPs did not give a party identification.

NZ Press Association tops the rankings with a mean or average 6.1 rating – and received no very low ratings from anyone. The two Internet agencies were in the top five, indicating MPs like the fact their releases are carried in full. Trans-Tasman also does well.

Television generally gets ranked lowly with all four stations in the bottom half. Sky News actually ranks highest.

Radio is middle of the field with NewstalkZB being the highest ranked radio broadcaster.

The newspapers range the spectrum. The NZ Herald is up at 5.3, Press at 4.2 and Dom Post at 4.1. I would have them all higher, but this is a survey of MPs, not of my views.

Now the sample sizes are of course very small (but of a limited population) but let us look at how National MPs ranked media compared to all the other MPs:

National MPs ranked the four TV channels much higher than other MPs did. Maybe this is minor parties upset that they do not get on TV much?

Despite the generally accepted lean to the left of Radio NZ, National MPs ranked Radio NZ higher than other MPs did. And while some on the left attack the NZ Herald at favouring National, National MPs actually ranked them lower than other MPs did. The Listener and NBR also get accused of leaning right, but again get ranked lower by National MPs.

The Nat MPs also rated the online media very lowly.

Now the journalists. I decided not to list all members of the press gallery, but only those who are relatively senior, and are more likely to have a reasonable number of MPs have formed opinions about them. Looking back I could have included more.

If any journalist is unhappy about being missed out, happy to include you next year. Now again it is worth remembering these are only the opinions of those MPs who responded to my survey – it is not an objective rating.

John Armstrong tops the ratings, followed by the NZPA Political Editor Peter Wilson. Generally MPs ranked journalists slightly higher than media organisations. As can be seen by the minimum ratings showing, some MPs were very harsh handing out zeroes. Did WInston multiple vote? (Note I have no idea if Winston did vote)

And once again we compare responses between National MPs and other MPs.

Again very interesting. The SST is generally seen as hostile to National, but Ruth Laugeson is ranked much higher by National MPs, than by other MPs. Likewise the Gordon Campbell and Brent Edwards (both left leaning) are ranked higher by National MPs than other MPs.

Also for some reasons National MPs ranked Ian Templeton very lowly. Maybe they don’t like his weekly chats with Clark and Key, ignoring the lesser MPs?

Anthony Hubbard in the SST has written an interesting and well balanced article on dirty politics in cyberspace. Has quotes from Cameron Slater, Rochelle Rees, Lynn Pretnice and Rob Salmond.

The Standard speculates that David Garrett may be ACT’s mystery No 5 candidate. He is a barrister associated with the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

By coincidence Garrett had a column in the Herald on Wednesday on Labour’s sudden interest in banning gangs:

There is nothing particularly radical about Labour’s endorsement of a policy banning gangs – which begs the question why it has taken so long. …

Given Labour’s long opposition to such laws it is difficult not to be cynical about its timing now – eight weeks from an election.

Indeed. The chance of Labour actually passing a law to ban gangs is around equal to their chance of developing nuclear weapons.

The point is well made that banning gangs per se may not in fact be such a good idea – at least while the Mongrel Mob and Black Power strut around in their patches or “colours” they are easily identifiable.

True.

Criminal non-association laws would have the same effect without the disadvantages.

The police are aware who most gang members are and which of them have criminal records. If consorting with known criminals becomes an offence, groups of intimidating thugs on our streets would quickly become a thing of the past. Problematic laws banning gangs themselves would become unnecessary.

But how many criminals are needed for it to become consorting? Some would argue Cabinet would become illegal

Although it’s about 25 years too late, Labour’s belated realisation that gangs are just criminal organisations, and not some alternative to whanau, is a welcome development. Pity it comes so close to an election.

Just a coincidence I am sure.

Two interesting stories in the SST on Owen Glenn, but first a little mystery.

A reliable source tells me that  that a crew member on Glenn’s boat, Ubiquitous, told a family member that a recent guest on the boat, when in the Mediterranean, was Labour Party president Mike Williams. Mr Williams it is reported spent several days on board.

It is also reported that Mr Williams left the boat hastily, after receiving a phone call from the Prime Minister who was not amused he was there.

Maybe someone could ask Mr Williams if he was on the boat as reported, and why he left.

Anyway first we have Matthew Hooton:

Owen Glenn is flying back to New Zealand to sink Helen Clark, Winston Peters and the corrupt government they lead.

I love Matthew’s subtle style.

Clark may soon have reason to regret the disgusting way she treated Glenn when he was here for the opening of the University of Auckland’s new Owen G Glenn Business School, to which Glenn donated more than $7.5 million. For Glenn, the immigrant schoolboy from Mt Roskill, who never had an opportunity to attend university himself, this was the culmination of his more than 40 years of success in business.

Clark ruined his day. Her almost unbelievable rudeness to the biggest benefactor of her own party and the country’s largest university shocked all decent New Zealanders. In public, she uttered not one word to Glenn, nor would she look him in the eye, and she sent her prize thug Trevor Mallard to keep him away.

Worse, Clark is believed to have turned on Glenn in private with angry words being heard through the walls by those in the next room.

It was meant to be a day of glory for Glenn, and he was treated as a leper.

Glenn will also have been fully briefed about the vicious smear campaign launched against him by Labour ministers and Beehive apparachiks. As usual, it was Mallard who sank furthest into the slime, reportedly advising people privately to check for scars on Glenn’s forehead, implying Glenn has received some type of brain surgery or electroconvulsive shock therapy. These are not nice people who surround Clark.

People may think Matthew is making this up. But not only did I hear the same thing at the Senate party in Wellington, the SST itself reports the smears in its main article on Glenn:

It can hardly have helped when Labour’s deputy, Michael Cullen, started describing Glenn as “confused”, and when rumours began to circulate in political circles that perhaps Glenn’s memory wasn’t quite what it was since his surgery last year to treat a life-threatening subdural haematoma (bleeding on the brain), something Glenn had openly discussed with the Herald in February.

The article quotes Cactus Kate on Glenn:

More recently, the acerbic blogger “Cactus Kate” (the nom de plume of a Hong Kong-based New Zealand lawyer) took Glenn’s political temperature during a long conversation with him in Auckland’s Soul Bar in 2002, and came away convinced there had been a meeting of right-wing minds. Writing earlier this year, she recalled that, “I didn’t hold back on the government of the day and Mr Glenn was extremely supportive of the idea that they were all things evil … He did not seem to like the `sisterhood’, unless they were hot and invited him to watch. He bemoaned the lefties in New Zealand and their sexual habits … “

I suspect Mr Glenn donated to Labour because they were the Government, rather than any firm ideological commitment to centre left causes.

Anyway Tuesday will be a fascinating day.

This week she is not near perfect. The SST talks of her revelation:

After months of confusion over the Glenn donations, it turns out Clark has known much more than she has been letting on. The famously candid prime minister has been caught out being economical with the truth.

She said she knew as early as February that there had in fact been a donation something that Peters only ended up confirming in July after his lawyer Brian Henry told him.

“It’s always seemed to me that somewhere, someplace there must have been some kind of contribution, but it wasn’t clear where,” she said.

Why did Clark suddenly come clean? One theory is that Labour has realised that their sugar daddy has turned feral on them, and that Clark feared what Glenn might reveal next in any further testimony to the privileges committee.

That seems most probable.

While Peters has been centre-stage, Clark has also taken a less visible but potentially hugely damaging political body blow this past week.

Indeed.

After the 2005 election National dealt the first hammer blow to Clark’s reputation, with the revelations that Clark’s pledge card had been paid for out of parliamentary spending when it should have been paid out of party funds.

And that they deliberately over-spent in the 2005 election!

Now Clark’s credentials as a straightforward and competent leader have been shaken again. Not only are there questions about why she wasn’t franker, sooner. There are also questions about why she didn’t get to the bottom of Peters’ donations in February, rather than turn a blind eye to what was clearly a major problem area.

And all it would have taken was a simple phone call back to Owen Glenn. A donation is not like a conversation, where there can be two versions of what happened. It is a simple provable fact. She could have asked Glenn for verification. She did not, because she knew that Glenn would be able to provide that proof, and she wanted to continue the sham of pretending her Foreign Minister was telling the truth.

The ground shifted in a third way last week. National leader John Key’s stand to rule out Peters as a potential coalition partner saw Key come forward out of the shadows as a leader. As a money dealer, Key was known for calmly taking big and risky stands in the market, and then collecting up large. Key learned in that career an exterior blankness that hid his true feelings, much like a high stakes poker player.

But as a politician, that blankness has made it difficult for the public to get to know him. Last week he showed a hint of steel beneath his bland exterior, and gave the public more clues on his dimensions as a potential leader.

A number of people have made the mistake of under-estimating John Key.

Now Key is at work drawing a sharp, lethal line that threatens to cut Labour off from all that has made it strong. He is acknowledging the old, popular, trusted Helen Clark. But he is claiming that Helen Clark is gone. Instead he claims today’s Helen Clark is different, mired in the evasions and compromises of coalition politics. Last week gave Key some more of the weapons he needs to carry out the job.

People just need to keep repeating these two lines:

• A vote for New Zealand First is a vote for a Labour-led Government
• A vote for Labour is a vote for Winston to be in Government

Simple.

The Beehive must be in crisis mode. The Sunday Star-Times launched a savage attack on the Prime Minister in yesterday’s editorial.

Their editorial was full of praise for the Prime Minister and her handling of Foreign Affairs. It was an editorial worthy of a nobel peace prize nomination. But they ruined it towards the end, with just two words. They conceded the Prime Minister was “not perfect”.

Such savage press criticism can not be tolerated. I am sure the PM’s Office will be complaining to the Press Council and asking the Sunday Star-Times to justify its editorial position that the Prime Minister is “not perfect”.

Sunday Star-Times Editor Cate Brett has resigned to take up a job as Senior Policy and Media Adviser to the Law Commission.

Fairfax have denied the rumour that they have appointed Nicky Hager as the new Editor

Professionally, I’ll be very interested in Brett’s new work:

Ms Brett, who has a long-standing interest in media law, is currently researching the impact of new media on free speech, including suppression and contempt of court.

I have on my list of things to try and organise, when I have the time, is a seminar involving Internet, media and legal industries regarding exactly those issues. The existing laws seem very unworkable in the Internet age. I don’t mean that Internet sites are exempt – but that Internet publishers often breach supression orders because they don’t know the detail of the supression order. There is no mechanism for publishers to check if something is supressed.

I’ve just done the SST’s Believe it or not survey. Takes around 10 minutes but is quite interesting to do, and the results will be fascinating. Probably a bit depressing that so many people believe myths. Anyway go do the survey if you have time.

The Sunday Star-Times best efforts to re-elect the Government continue. They try a double header today.

First a story on National’s Benefits Policy. They only talk to two people oppossed to the policy, and no-one in support. They talk to a senior lecturer in political science and a mother who has been on the DPB for 10 years.

Meanwhile they gush over Labour:

Early childhood worker Jemima Newcombe and her partner Jason Steel are ready to raise the roof. The aspiring homeowners from Glendene, Auckland, are among the first to be accepted into Labour’s pilot shared equity scheme.

And the entire story is about how wonderful they feel to have got this support.

So for the story on National’s policy they choose to only interviwe people who are critical of it, and for the story on Labour’s policy, only people who have benefited from it.

Maybe it is just coincidence. But wouldn’t it have been more balanced to have a contrary view in each article? It would not have been hard – probably take 30 minutes work.