Kiwiblog

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!

Tags: Matthew Hooton, SST

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.

Tags: Rodney Hide, SST, Steve Braunias

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.

Media	Mean	Median	Mode	Minimum	Maximum	Range
NZ Press Assn	6.1	6	6	4	9	5
Newsroom	5.8	6	5	1	10	9
Trans-Tasman	5.5	6	6	0	8	8
NZ Herald	5.3	6	6	0	8	8
Scoop	5.2	5	5	0	10	10
Newstalk ZB	5.1	6	7	1	8	7
Listener	5.0	5	3	1	8	7
NBR	4.9	4	4	1	8	7
Radio NZ	4.8	6	3	1	9	8
Radio Live	4.4	5	1	1	8	7
Sky/Prime News	4.3	5	5	0	7	7
The Press	4.2	5	1	1	7	6
TV Three	4.1	5	6	0	8	8
Dominion Post	4.1	4.5	1	1	7	6
TV One	3.9	5	5	0	6	6
Maori TV	3.7	4	5	0	6	6
Herald on Sunday	3.5	3.5	7	0	7	7
Sunday Star-Times	2.7	3	3	0	5	5

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:

Media	All Mean	Nats Mean	Others Mean	Difference
TV One	3.9	6.3	2.2	4.2
TV Three	4.1	6.2	2.6	3.6
Maori TV	3.7	5.2	2.5	2.7
Sky/Prime News	4.3	5.5	3.3	2.2
Sunday Star-Times	2.7	3.5	2.1	1.4
Radio Live	4.4	4.8	4.2	0.6
Radio NZ	4.8	5.0	4.6	0.4
Dominion Post	4.1	4.2	4.0	0.2
Herald on Sunday	3.5	3.5	3.5	0.0
Newstalk ZB	5.1	4.8	5.4	-0.6
The Press	4.2	3.8	4.6	-0.8
NZ Herald	5.3	4.2	6.1	-1.9
NBR	4.9	3.3	6.1	-2.8
Listener	5.0	3.3	6.3	-3.0
NZ Press Assn	6.1	4.3	7.4	-3.1
Trans-Tasman	5.5	3.3	7.1	-3.8
Scoop	5.2	2.8	7.0	-4.2
Newsroom	5.8	3.0	8.0	-5.0

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.

Journalist	Mean	Median	Mode	Minimum	Maximum	Range
John Armstrong (NZH)	6.4	7	2	2	10	8
Peter Wilson (NZPA)	5.8	5	5	3	8	5
Audrey Young (NZH)	5.7	6.5	7	0	10	10
Ian Templeton (TT)	5.6	7	7	0	9	9
Jane Clifton (Listener)	5.6	6	6	2	9	7
Barry Soper (Sky & ZB)	4.9	5.5	7	1	9	8
Ian Llewellyn (NZPA)	4.9	5	5	1	8	7
Vernon Small (DP)	4.6	5	6	1	8	7
Colin Espiner (Press)	4.5	5	6	0	8	8
Guyon Espiner (TV1)	4.4	5.5	7	0	7	7
Tim Donoghue (DP)	4.1	4.5	2	1	9	8
Brent Edwards (RNZ)	4.1	4	4	0	7	7
Tracy Watkins (DP)	3.8	4.5	6	0	7	7
Duncan Garner (TV3)	3.7	3.5	3	0	8	8
Gordon Campbell (Scoop)	3.6	5	5	0	7	7
Ruth Laugeson (SST)	2.7	2.5	2	0	6	6

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.

Journalist	All Mean	Nats Mean	Others Mean	Difference
Laugeson	2.7	4.2	1.6	2.6
Clifton	5.6	7.0	4.5	2.5
Soper	4.9	6.2	4.0	2.2
Campbell	3.6	4.8	2.8	2.0
Edwards	4.1	4.8	3.5	1.3
Llewellyn	4.9	5.2	4.7	0.5
Young	5.7	6.0	5.5	0.5
Garner	3.7	3.5	3.9	-0.4
Espiner G	4.4	4.2	4.6	-0.4
Wilson	5.8	5.5	6.0	-0.5
Armstrong	6.4	6.0	6.8	-0.8
Watkins	3.8	3.0	4.4	-1.4
Donoghue	4.1	3.2	4.9	-1.7
Small	4.6	3.2	5.6	-2.4
Espiner C	4.5	2.8	5.8	-3.0
Templeton	5.6	1.8	8.5	-6.7

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?

Tags: Audrey Young, Barry Soper, Brent Edwards, Colin Espiner, Duncan Garner, Gordon Campbell, Guyon Espiner, Herald on Sunday, Ian Llewellyn, Ian Templeton, Jane Clifton, John Armstrong, Maori TV, Media, NBR, Newsroom, NewstalkZB, NZ Herald, NZPA, Parliament, Peter Wilson, Prime TV, Radio Live, Radio NZ, Ruth Laugeson, Scoop, Sky TV, SST, The Listener, The Press, Tim Donoghue, Tracy Watkins, trans-Tasman, TV3, Vernon Small

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.

Tags: Anthony Hubbard, Cameron Slater, Lynn Prentice, Rob Salmond, Rochelle Rees, SST

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.

Tags: ACT, David Garrett, gangs, Labour, SST, The Standard

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.

Tags: Cactus Kate, Helen Clark, Matthew Hooton, Mike Williams, Owen Glenn, SST, Trevor Mallard

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.

Tags: Helen Clark, John Key, SST, Winston First

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”.

Tags: Helen Clark, media bias, SST

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.

Tags: Cate Brett, Law Commission, name suppression, SST

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.

Tags: SST

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.

Tags: media bias, SST

The Sunday Star-Times does its own focus group in Newlands, Wellington.

LYNNE WARREN was so annoyed at the government’s plan to ban incandescent light bulbs that she went out and bought up a sackful. She is tired of Labour telling her what to do.

She doesn’t like the new, green, fluorescent compact bulbs. As a hairdresser she needs lots of light, fast. She doesn’t want to hang around waiting for the bulbs to shine properly.

But the light bulbs were just part of the problem. “The way things are going,” she says, pausing above her client’s rollers, “we don’t get much of a say any more.

I have been surprised by how much the light bulb ban has become a hot issue.

And wait until Lynne finds out that the Government is going to force all hairdressers to draw up a public health management plan, and have to submit it to the Government for approval.

The thing that annoyed her most the turning point in her thinking, it seems was the anti-smacking law. She and her husband have two sons, both now grown-up, and she didn’t think it was the government’s job to tell them how the kids should be raised.

“I have been lucky with my children. They didn’t get into any bad trouble,” she says. She and her husband didn’t mistreat the boys, of whom she is clearly proud. So what business has the prime minister interfering?

The fact that the law change has become so associated with Helen Clark instead of Sue Bradford has been one of a number of strategic blunders by Labour.

Tags: Labour, Section 59, SST

God knows how the SST thinks it is front page news that the National Party uses focus groups and advisors that Nicky Hager doesn’t like.

They breathlessly report:

An April 2005 Crosby/Textor report described how the focus group questions probed for latent negative “hesitations or concerns” about her. “Regardless of your overall view of Helen Clark,” the moderator asked, “what would you acknowledge are her weaknesses at the moment, even if they are slight or begrudging weaknesses?” The report’s “strategic opportunities” section concluded that the research revealed “an emerging perception that Helen Clark is too busy with `minorities’ and `other people’ to worry about the concerns and the pressures on `working families’.”

This is of course normal fare for parties, but only front page news if done by National. I blogged back in February how Labour were testing attack lines in their polling. And I concluded:

So that poll, presumably on behalf of Labour, was entirely legitimate as a form of message testing.  They were trying to find out which attack lines on Key will have the most effect on reducing National’s support, and conversely which lines about Labour will be most effective at increasing support for them.

Yet the SST thinks that it is front page news that National does the same thing.

But wait you say, isn’t the issue that the firm is Crosby/Textor who were associated with Don Brash.

Well no, that is crap. I am going off memory but Mark Textor has been giving advice to National since the 1993 election. So 2008 would be the 6th election where he has been involved. So what is the news value in National having the same advisor as the last five elections?

Matthew Hooton aptly summarises the situation on National Radio yesterday describing Nicky Hager as the Patricia Bartlett of NZ politics – wanting to be the moral guardian of NZ, yet he himself is a political activist himself.

Even Russell Brown has a reasonable balance:

A sense of perspective is worthwhile here. Political strategy is a cynical business by its nature. Labour’s people were not appealing to higher ideals when they ran the “slippery” campaign against Key this year. Even the Greens once (in 2002) hired themselves an electoral shitkicker from Australia.

Adam Smith also weighs in:

Predictably the Hager árticle’ in the SST had all the usual left voices acting as if John Key had been found indulging in an act of bestiality, rather than doing what politicians do, that is acting rationally and legally in taking advice from a variety of sources on how to win.

That is what party leaders are supposed to do – win elections.

Textor and Crosby are centre right campaign and research advisors. In some countries they actually run the campaign (such as in the UK), while in NZ (as far as I know – I am not privy to exact details) their role is far less. National has its own Campaign Manager and campaign staff.

The only documented wrong doing was an alleged push poll in 1995 – 13 years ago. Now I think push polls have no role in politics or market research (but make sure you do not confuse push polls with testing attack lines) but their real sin seems to be that they are often sucessful, rather than one mistake in 15 years.

The Hive also highlights an apology to Crosby and Textor from Crikey in 2007.

David Cohen notes that Crosby Textor offered some blunt advice last year to Australian Liberal Party:

Still, last year’s Australian federal election campaign does offer a useful test of the article’s overall judgment.

This was the same federal election, of course, in which at least one political pr outfit famously advised the ruling Coalition that it had left voters disillusioned over broken promises and dishonesty, even while Labor leader Kevin Rudd was acquiring a deserved reputation as compassionate, human, genuine and likeable. .

Excellent advice, that; honest, open and straightforward, too. Unfortunately for Hager, it also came from Crosby/Textor

Colin Espiner also looks at the fuss:

So far National’s leader John Key has not denied he is using Crosby Textor, and indeed his staff are confirming it, off the record. National is playing down Hager’s story, and indeed there is a “so what?” component to it. More than 70% of respondents to a Stuff poll this morning agree with them.

Let’s be honest – all political parties use polling companies and image consultants if they can afford to. Labour uses UMR. The companies road-test ideas, probe communities for hot-button issues, test the weak spots of opponents, and help political parties form an attack plan for election campaigns.

Colin then looks at Crosby Textor specifically:

However I think his decision to continue using Crosby Textor was a mistake, for a number of reasons. If he was trying to rid the party of the remnants of the Brash years, why use the same image makers? Why use a company that has a controversial reputation in Australia and Britain? A company that has been involved in scandals such as push-polling over a candidate’s mythical support for abortion to the ninth month of pregnancy? Who wants to be involved with a company tied up with stories about baby killers and the children overboard fiasco in Australia?

On top of all this, for all its fearsome reputation, Crosby Textor’s results are mixed at best. It has advised National in its last four campaigns. National has lost three in a row. It advised John Howard last year. Howard lost. It advised Michael Howard in Britain. Howard lost. Its sole recent success was Boris Johnson in the London mayorlty, and Red Ken was history after introducing the congestion charge.

I think Colin is off the mark here somewhat. First of all it is simplistic to judge campaign advisors simply by the result. Minor little things such as leaders, policies, political and economic environment all affect the result – not just the campaign. In the US people like Bob Shrum are well respected as campaign managers despite not having advised a winning presidential campaign.

But even if one does want to look at results, then Colin should not just quote the 2007 election loss for Australia but also the four previous wins. Likewise in NZ, Mark Textor had a role (going off memory) in the 1993 and 1996 election campaigns, so their record is a positive one, and the fact they are in demand is because they are very good at what they do.

The real irony is that I have heard from a friend of a friend who has taken part in a recent focus group for what was obviously the Labour Party. The entire thing consisted of testing attack lines against John Key. They were left in no doubt that Labour will be using their research to try and undermine John Key on all fronts. Watch this space.

Tags: Crosby/Textor, Lynton Crosby, Mark Textor, National, Nicky Hager, SST

A few people would have seen stories about pages being ripped out of the SST magazine Sunday, because of the editor’s letter from Emily Simpson. So what was it that is so bad?

All Emily did was quote a few lines from sex blogger – Always Aroused Girl. She even asterisked out the really naughty words, but did leave in scream, ecstasy and spit. Oh dear – the horrors.

The deleted editor’s letter is here.  Can’t say it seems too over the top for me, but I guess the SST were more worried about a commercial backlash.

Hat Tip: Editor’s Weblog

Tags: censorship, Emily Simpson, Media, SST