Duncan Garner writes:

Where do I start? It should have been such a triumphant week for Labour. It was all lined up. Incumbency means advantage Labour. Platform set. Pause. Touch lives. Engage the voters. 

Yep normally Budget Week is the best week of the year for the Government. It is the week where they are setting the agenda.

But then the warning lights came on and the May meltdown was under way, although not initially obvious.
The inexperience took over, the blind spots were magnified, and when a professional was needed Labour sent in a bovver boy or muppet, depending on the situation. Woeful arrived when they needed wonderful.
Amateur hour become two, then three, and then a nightmare on Molesworth St began to unfold.
Speaker Trevor Mallard should never have released his inquiry so close to the Budget. Too much risk. Too much Trevor. Only Trevor could call someone a rapist when there’s no evidence to suggest such a vile title was needed.

There is still more to come on this.

He won’t go, and the lack of even the slightest of apologies was a glaring omission showing just how arrogant Labour has got so quickly into this first term. More on arrogance shortly. 

No-one has apologised for anything.

KiwiBuild then coughed and spluttered into a shallow grave too. The last rites are expected any day now, but it’s officially called a reset and any apologies for misleading a nation look miles off, and if they come will be forced and lack the necessary authenticity to take seriously.

Labour promised 1,000 houses by 30 June, in 29 days. They have delivered 102 so need to deliver 32 homes a day or a new home every 45 minutes to make their election promise.

Then, as all this is going down, under the radar the unlikely Simon Bridges is masterfully trapping Labour in one of the most emphatic Budget smuggles ever.

A stunning but simple ho-hum entry on to a public website. Shock. Horror. So humiliated, these Labour muppets couldn’t bring themselves to accept someone might be smarter than they are, so collapsed into their default settings of saying Nasty National the criminals.
Resignations won’t happen, but Grant Robertson, Winston Peters and Treasury’s chief tool Gabriel Makhlouf​ would be leading contenders for the high jump. In the end, all ended up looking a failed three-way protection  racket for the slow and even slower.

So much to apologise for, and just in one week!

Stuff reports:

On Tuesday evening, following a series of Budget-related leaks by the National Party, Treasury secretary Gabriel Makhlouf said it had sufficient evidence to indicate its systems had been “deliberately and systematically hacked” and referred the matter to police on advice of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which falls within the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

This statement clearly implied that the NCSC of GCSB had concluded Treasury had been deliberately and systematically hacked and it was their recommendation it become a criminal issue for the Police.

But the truth is vastly different:

A Treasury staff member described the incident to an NCSC responder and asked if it was a matter for the NCSC or police, the spokeswoman said.
“Given the incident did not involve a compromise of the Treasury computer network and was therefore not the type of incident the NCSC would normally respond to it was recommended that the matter be referred to police for their assessment.”

This just shows had incredibly flawed and bad faith that original statement from Treasury was. A statement that has not yet been apologised for.

The latest UK general election poll has:

1. Lib Dems 24%
2. Brexit Party 22%
3. Conservatives 19%
4. Labour 19%

The remainers have gone to the Lib Dems and the Brexiters to the Brexit party as the two dominant parties of the last 100 years face electoral slaughter.

Mike Hosking writes:

And yet they took this week and blew it up.
The KiwiBuild confession, given the size of it, was remarkable in itself, but was the least of their problems. Given we already had been well versed on what a mess it is, adding mess on top of the mess seemed by yesterday to have been just another chapter in the saddest and most incompetent of policy attempts in many a year.
They now confess that by the time their first (and possibly last) term of government comes staggering to the finish line that they will have built 1600 houses – not the 16,000 they said. It’s laid bare, yet again, the cold hard truth about their ability to oversell an idea, and under-deliver it.
Then came the Mallard scandal. If the man Barry Soper talked to is the same bloke Mallard called a rapist, and if the man’s story matches with the investigations held, in other words the complaints were unsubstantiated, then Mallard should have quit, or been sacked, or failed a vote of no confidence – or all three.

Yep the leadup was Mallard accusing staff of being rapists and the Kiwibuild disaster.

Mallard, in further irony, got bumped out of the headlines because along came Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf, and his bumbling mates Robertson and Peters yelling hack, hack, hack.
Not only did they have no clue about technology. They, like Mallard, took a bad situation, and in a play straight out of the Mallard ‘bullying tips for all MPs’ book, dumped all over the National Party. Only to have it blow up in their face.
And do we see apologies? Of course we don’t, that’s not what bullies do.

It is incredible that no one has apologised for the massive security breach, let alone the false allegations of criminal behaviour.

The combination of the botched Budget, the Kiwibuild fiasco and Mallard crying rape really has made what should be their best week one of their worst.

The Herald reports:

Beijing has dropped a bombshell in its escalating trade war with the United States. With one shot, it could shoot-down the entire F-35 stealth fighter production program. It could cripple Silicon Valley. It could send Apple into administration.
“United States, don’t underestimate China’s ability to strike back,” the official mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Daily , writes.
And it’s all about dirt.

China has, by far, the worlds’ greatest reserves of rare earths — the mineral sands that contain the exotic elements crucial in much high-performance modern technology.

Circuit boards. Batteries. Sensors. Thrusters. All need metals of specific conductivity, heat resistance, weight, strength …
“Will rare earths become a counter weapon for China to hit back against the pressure the United States has put on for no reason at all? The answer is no mystery,” the People’s Daily declared rhetorically. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!”
And the threat, which economic analysts are calling Beijing’s ‘nuclear option’, is very real.
The equally nationalistic Chinese newspaper Global T imes warned that China has plenty of ways to retaliate against the US, including the threat of cutting off supplies of rare earths.
Rare earths are a group of 17 chemical elements which have properties key for the production of everything from satellites to jet engines.
China last year produced 78 per cent of the world’s rare earths, according to researchers at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The US relies upon it for up to 80 per cent of its imports.

Can you imagine the backlash against Trump if his trade policies lead to Apple being unable to produce any more iPhones.

I’v now had time to look at the main Budget documents. The 2019 Budget is a pretty typical Labour budget – a bit of extra money here and there, but nothing exceptional let alone transformational.

In another unfortunate incident, the woman who appears on the cover of the Budget has actually moved to Australia as she couldn’t afford the cost of renting in Auckland. And recall Labour has passed all sorts of laws that are forcing rents up.

Bomber Bradbury harshly says ” With this budget, the Government have shown us they define ‘transformational’ about as well as Treasury defines ‘hack’.”

John Armstrong says two people need to resign:

The chief executive of the Treasury, Gabriel Makhlouf, must resign.
It might have been Budget Day, thereby making his departure hugely inopportune for the Labour-led Government. That’s just tough. Makhlouf has to go. And forthwith.

He totally misrepresented what happened to the public. What was Treasury incompetence was painted as a sophisticated criminal hack.

There is another very pertinent question lingering in the background. Should Robertson also be tending his resignation as a Cabinet minister or be sacked by the Prime Minister? The answer is an emphatic “yes”.
A breach of Budget secrecy — especially one of this week’s magnitude — is something so serious that resignation is mandatory.The applicability of ministerial responsibility demands nothing less. But it ain’t going to happen.
Robertson is exempt from having to fall on his sword. That exemption is by Labour Party decree. He is just too darned valuable.

Grant is arguably their most competent Minister. If they lose him, then they’ll be down to only three competent Ministers. So no matter what, he is safe.

Few people believe the information National obtained is from a hack. In fact it is unclear there even was a hack, let alone that Treasury has had “its systems deliberately and systematically hacked”.

The reference to 2,000 attempts over 48 hours to access secure Budget material is potentially meaningless. There are bots all the time trying to access secure areas of websites.

Now if it transpires that the information did not come from any hacking, then Treasury will have huge egg on their face. But to be fair to Treasury, they never linked the material National had with the claimed hack.

But Grant Robertson did. Here’s what he said:

“We have contacted the National Party tonight to request that they do not release any further material, given that the Treasury said they have sufficient evidence that indicates the material is a result of a systematic hack and is now subject to a Police investigation.

Robertson explicitly said there is evidence that National’s material is a result of a systematic hack, a serious criminal offence.

If this proves not to be the case, Robertson is in serious political trouble.

Later today National will reveal how it got the material. To date far from there being evidence of a hack, all the evidence is that it was not. Yet Robertson smeared National by starting there is evidence the material is the result of criminal activity.

I’m not in the lockup this year as I am literally driving a car in Tasmania most of today. So won’t have any detailed article on the substance of the Budget until tonight. But use this thread to discuss and debate what is announced.

Of course I suspect most focus will be the false claims of hacking rather than what is actually in the Budget. A total PR disaster for the Government, of their own making. If they had owned up to the incompetence of having their own search engine reveal parts of the Budget the story would have been mainly over with by yesterday.

Stuff reports:

Sensitive Budget information was available early through exploiting a mistake in Treasury’s search engine – however police have advised Treasury that the actions were not unlawful.

This was incompetence by Treasury, not a hack. Their own search engine archived 2019 Budget documents from their private website and served up extracts from them.

It is disgraceful that Treasury labelled this a hack let alone referred it to the Police. The Police would be within their rights to charge Treasury with wasting Police time. Anyone with an inch of IT or legal knowledge would know what happened is not a hack, and was not criminal behaviour.

Using Treasury’s public search engine is not a crime!

The decision to describe use of Treasury’s own search engine as 2,000 hack attempts was malicious and false. A public inquiry needs to determine who made that decision, who was consulted, what they knew when they made it, and what discussions were held with Ministers before the decision was made.

Both Grant Robertson and Winston Peters have smeared National. Jacinda Ardern claims to lead a Government of kindness. Does smearing your political opponents as criminals because they used a search engine, fit with that?

Robertson may claim he acted on Treasury advice, but he didn’t. He explicitly linked National’s material to an illegal hack, which goes beyond what Treasury said. But regardless a competent Minister should push back when an agency says “hey boss, we were hacked, it wasn’t incompetence” and ask for at least some basic details of what is alleged. And when Treasury tell you these cunning criminals used Treasury’s public search engine to get details of your Budget, then you should tell them you want resignations.

The very minimum Treasury now needs to do is release immediately all internal documents and communications (including with Ministers) around the “hack” and the decision to refer it to the Police, rather than wait the maximum 20 days under the Official Information Act.

Stuff reports:

KiwiBuild is scheduled to deliver just 1535 houses in Labour’s first term in Government, a fraction of the 16,000 originally promised.
Just 101 homes have been built so far, well below an original target of 1000 built in the first year of the program’s operation.
National’s Judith Collins extracted the figure from Housing Minister Phil Twyford during Question Time on Tuesday, asking how many homes were contracted to be built before the election next year – which will occur at some point prior to December 2020.
Twyford replied that 1535 were due to be completed by July 2020 and noted this was a reason the Government was “resetting” the policy.

Good questioning by Judith.

This just shows that you can’t trust anything in Labour’s manifesto. The Kiwibuild promise wasn’t a minor pledge. They had campaigned on it for three elections.

Most voters wouldn’t know 95% of Labour’s policies. But the one thing they would know is they promised to build 100,000 affordable home, as Labour repeated this time and time again for seven years.

Now falling short of such a specific target by say 5% or 10% is not the end of the world. But to spend seven years repeating 100,000 new homes and falling short by 90% is tantamount to fraud.

Rachel Stewart writes:

Here’s what scares me. Today, most of the bile is coming from the left. I repeat. The left. You know, the liberal, progressive left. Left. Read my lips. L.E.F.T. The people currently in Government. Not content to hold the levers of powers, they want to stamp out dissenting opinions from their own. And if that’s not true, then it’s exactly how it looks.
The people wanting to mess with our free speech laws are the very people who regularly indulge in abuse and name-calling on social media platforms. Why? Because they disagree with someone. It is heinous, sobering, and scary to watch. …
The bigger issue is that we have a new left that likes to speak for the “oppressed” despite their obvious academic, privileged backgrounds. They also enjoy shrieking “bigot” at anyone who strays from the path of their righteousness manifesto. Debate is out. Vilification and public shaming are in. …
My fear, and why I’m scared, is that the left in power only despises certain hate speech. It depends for them on who’s delivering it. If it’s one of theirs calling people “scum” or “human stains” that’s all perfectly acceptable. They can’t see the hypocrisy. …
I am far from alone on this issue and, like a decent-sized chunk of New Zealanders, have spent my life leaning predominantly to the political left. We are scared. I advise the Government to think about their next move on the fundamentals of free speech very, very carefully.

A perfect summation of what is happening.

Newsroom reports:

A New Zealand agency founded by two former “Young Nats” harnessed the power of Facebook and Instagram to help the Liberals win Australia’s “unwinnable election”.
A low-profile Kiwi digital and creative agency was in the thick of the ‘miracle’, come-from-behind campaign that saw Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Liberal Party re-elected.
Topham Guerin, established just three years ago, helped the Liberals outgun Bill Shorten’s Labor campaign with high octane digital messaging, deploying videos and ads around the clock.
Founder Sean Topham was based at the party’s national campaign centre in Brisbane with members of his Auckland staff and has been credited in Australian media reviews of the campaign with helping execute a digital campaign that swamped Labor.
Topham, a former head of the National Party’s ‘Young Nats; youth wing, and fellow former Young Nat Ben Guerin, 23, set up their agency in 2016 after personal stints working on political campaigns in the UK and elsewhere.

I’ve blogged on Sean and Ben before. An awesome achievement to not just set up your own company in your 20s, but to become internationally successful in such a crucial area.

While their business based from offices in Auckland and London advises corporates and other organisations as well as political parties, their reputation in the fine art of election campaigns will have risen sharply after Morrison’s highly-calibrated comeback.
Topham Guerin was engaged by the Liberals’ federal director Andrew Hirst, now the toast of his party alongside Morrison for winning what outside pollsters and pundits considered the unwinnable election.
Interestingly, in January the Morrison team employed a former press secretary and adviser from John Key and Bill English’s prime ministerial office, Kelly Boxall. She was part of the Australian Prime Minister’s travelling group during the campaign and advised on social media.

Kelly is also very good at what she does. She’s worked with Topham Guerin before, so they work well together.

On Facebook, comments about Topham Guerin from happy campaign workers have been laudatory. “The best digital campaign company in the world. Very smart strategy (without giving anything away). So good to have you on board. Well done!” said one.  “Best. Digital. Campaigners. Ever. If you want to win, TG are the only game in town. Well done guys. Not only are you awesome at what you do, you are also great people – always an added bonus!,” said a government adviser.

TG have now been part of political campaigns in multiple countries. I look forward to them opening a Washington DC office!

Through the campaign, almost from the start, the Liberals’ social media targeting and output was at a higher volume and cut-through than that of Labor, which in the past had the reputation for social media dominance.
Bourke reports the Liberals had a critical sense of urgency. “This election, the Liberals were producing content exploiting any Labor mistakes within hours.”
Asked about that kind of attack strategy on social media, Topham says: “On digital we outperformed Labor consistently and produced more engaging content from day one. But we never felt we were out of the woods and worked right to the end. We were still placing ads and creating content in the lobby of our hotel at 11 pm the night before the election.”

With social media you need to respond within minutes or hours not days.

Stuff reports:

Shane Jones introduced Northland trucking boss Stan Semenoff to Transport Minister Phil Twyford as a possible director of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA).
Semenoff is currently fighting moves by NZTA to have the operating licence of his company, Stan Semenoff Logging revoked.
The transport safety regulator is arguing that the top management and shareholders are not fit and proper people to run a transport company, claiming the company has systemic safety problems.

Semenoff is related to Jones and also a donor to him. His company has had so many scores of safety issues over several years that the transport regulator is trying to revoke Semenoff’s licence.

Jones meanwhile is not just trying to heavy NZTA to drop the prosecution. He is also trying to get them an immigration exemption so they can hire foreigners. But on top of that he is trying to get his donor put on the board of the very regulator that is effectively prosecuting him.

No doubt once more the PM will say this is all above board and nothing unusual to see here.

Stuff reports:

Treasury has referred the apparent leaking of Budget information to police, saying it has sufficient evidence to indicate that its systems have been deliberately and systematically hacked.
But National leader Simon Bridges has hit back very hard, saying National had acted “entirely appropriately” and that Finance Minister Grant Robertson was attempting to smear him to cover up incompetence – and would need to reisgn.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf said Treasury had taken immediate steps to increase the security of all Budget-related information and would be undertaking a full review of information security processes.
“Following this morning’s media reports of a potential leak of Budget information, the Treasury has gathered sufficient evidence to indicate that its systems have been deliberately and systematically hacked,” Makhlouf said.

Here’s my guess at what happened. I am guessing, and have talked to no one on this. In fact I’m not even in the country.

But when I worked for the Opposition in 2000 or 2001, I recall waiting for the Government to release the Police crime stats. They always put a positive spin on it.

I went to the Police website and looked at last year’s stats. I also looked at the previous year. They had the same URL format. I changed the year to the current one, and hey presto I had the official crime states four hours before the Government was due to release them. I gave them to the Shadow Minister and they happily released them before the Minister. Hawkins was reportedly furious about the “leak”.

Around six months later I was chatting to a friend in the Commissioner’s Office and asked him if the early release had caused any problems with the Minister. I was amazed to find out the Minister had ordered a leak inquiry and even had private investigators searching the computers of the Commissioner’s office to try and find out who the leak was. I burst out laughing and told the friend that there was no leak, and I merely guessed the URL as someone has stuck them up early on the Internet. The leak inquiry was then terminated, but I am told the relationship between Police HQ and the Minister never recovered.

So my guess is something similar has happened. That possibly the material was put up on a website of some sort and someone found it. Treasury are calling it hacking because they didn’t think it was open to the public. But there is a difference between hacking a secure computer system, and locating information that is on the Internet (even if hidden). Was there any cracking of passwords for example?

Now I’m guessing about this, but the strength of the reply from Bridges suggests it was something along these lines. I’d be amazed if it really was a hack of Treasury’s internal computer systems.

I guess we’ll find out soon.

UPDATE:

My guess is looking good based on this tweet by No Right Turn:

One News reports:

National claims it has leaked parts of the 2019 Budget, the highly secretive details of which were to be released this Thursday. 
Party leader Simon Bridges said the Government are set to put $1.3 billion into defence, an extra $139 million into forestry, $744 million for District Health Boards, $740 million for international aid.
They have released 22 pages with details of many Budget portfolios. 
“It makes a mockery of the Government’s inability to settle the teachers strike and refusal to fund more for dentistry,” Mr Bridges said. “There’s money for tanks but not for teachers, there’s money for trees but not for teeth.”

I can’t recall a leak of this magnitude before. This Government seems to be leaking a lot – the cannabis cabinet paper leaked also.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern denied there had been a leak to the National Party. 

What colour are the flowers in Jacinda’s world?

Gavin Evans writes:

Eugenie Sage’s use of the Overseas Investment Act to constrain gold mining at Waihi marks a new low in an increasingly bitter, oppose-at-all costs planning environment.
The Green Party minister – against the advice of officials and her coalition colleagues – rejected OceanaGold’s bid to buy farm land for a new tailings dam. She saw no economic benefit in extending the life of the mine – and the jobs of its 360 staff – by up to nine years.

Hey they’re just jobs that provide income for 3660 families.

He says there was no logical, evidence-based construct on which it could have been made. That makes it worse even than the government’s ill-conceived ban on new offshore gas exploration, which is expected to prolong industrial coal use in New Zealand.
“It looked like the reasoning of someone who had decided an outcome, and then put words around it to allow that outcome to still pop-out,” Baker said of Sage’s decision.
“It’s a gross abuse of power.”
Another disturbing aspect of Sage’s decision – also being displayed by protestors aiming to “stop” the New Zealand Minerals Forum in Dunedin this week – is a tendency to blanket her arguments against mining with the language of climate change.
Yes, more mining will mean more emissions, but only in the same way that trucking more rock, or more logs, or more milk, means more emissions.

Going to work means more emissions. Having a meal means more emissions.

The UK results for the European Parliament elections are:

1. Brexit Party 32%
2. Lib Dems 20%
3. Labour 14%
4. Greens 12%
5. Conservatives 9%

The Conservatives face extinction unless they get their stuff together. They need to elect Boris and exit the EU, with or without a deal. A failure to exit will doom them.

A reader pointed out the article on anti-Semitism in Germany I blogged yesterday didn’t have any evidence about which groups were responsible – just allegations.

A 2018 survey of Jews in Germany found ” 41% of attacks were committed by extremist muslims, 20% by far right and 16% by far left extremists, according to the study”

Anti-Semitism seems to be one of the few things that unites the far right and the far left.

Barry Soper has interviewed the man who has been associated with Trevor Mallard’s claims that there is or was a rapist at Parliament. As one will see, a very different picture is painted from the man stood down.

Barry Soper reports:

Referring last week to the alleged assaults, Mallard said: “We’re talking about serious sexual assault. Well that, for me, that’s rape.”

In a two-hour sit down discussion in his home, the devastated man said: “The accusation of rape has put me in a very dark place.
“I was driving to Parliament the day after the bullying and harassment report on the place was delivered and heard on the radio that a ‘rapist’ could be stalking the corridors and it disturbed me greatly,” he said.
However early that afternoon he realised he was the so-called “rapist” when he was summoned into the office of the Parliamentary Service boss Rafael Gonzalez-Montero to be stood down.

I suspect hundreds of people at Parliament know who he is, as it is easy to work out who is not at work.

“It’s ironic that the review was about bullying and harassment. I feel I’ve been bullied out of Parliament and harassed within it, particularly by the Speaker’s claim,” the teary-eyed man said.

Ironic is one word for it.

The complaint was ruled to be unsubstantiated last year, laid two years after the incident happened.
The man said it resulted from working alongside a colleague at Parliament when a clipboard was lost.
“We searched for the clipboard which was important and with great relief we finally found it. She gave me a high five but being a little old-fashioned I hugged her back, that was honestly all there was to it,” the man said.
Two years later he said she laid a complaint and both of them were interviewed. In a written decision after the investigation last year, her claim that he hugged her from behind, pushing his groin into her, was found to be unsubstantiated and no further action was warranted.

One can’t know exactly what happened, but certainly what is described sounds very different to rape. An unwanted hug is not rape.

Immediately after that he was sent packing from Parliament, with Mallard summoning the media to declare: “I don’t want to cut across any employment or possible police investigation, but I am satisfied that the Parliamentary Service has removed the threat to the safety of women working in the Parliamentary complex.”
The Speaker understood the same man was responsible for the two other claims of serious sexual assault. He later added one of the key dangers is no longer in the building.

Describing someone as a threat to the safety of women is very unwise, when they effectively work for you.

After talking to the man, NewstalkZB saw the finding of the investigation against him, a finding that would usually be kept under wraps by the unimpeachable Parliamentary Service. The finding bore out everything the man had claimed and found the claim against him was unsubstantiated.

Yet he got labeled a rapist.

An experienced defamation lawyer, Hugh Rennie QC, was asked whether the man had been defamed but wouldn’t personalise it to the Speaker, preferring to make his comments in a general sense.
Rennie said the statement that a “threat” has been removed is an allegation of continuing risk which is unjustified on the facts stated. There is no evidence stated of a continuing
threat and to suggest there is, and that the response needed is to be barred from the workplace, is defamatory. …

“There is a public interest in receiving correct information but none in receiving incorrect information. The serious allegations that have been made against this man – not named but readily identifiable in his workplace – are defamatory. On the facts stated it is very unlikely that a defence that this was done in the public interest would succeed,” Rennie said.

And no parliamentary privilege on this.

The distraught man said: “I never thought I would ever find myself in this situation, it’s not who I am, I’m thoroughly devastated. I would like to be able to return to work to clear my name and I expect, at the very least an apology from the Speaker for labelling me as a rapist which I most certainly am not.

The handling of this has been an absolute mess.