Annette King

On July 25 Phil Goff made an extraordinary claim in the media:

Labour leader Phil Goff denies he was briefed on the SIS investigation into suspicions that Israeli backpackers were spying in Christchurch. Goff is furious over the Prime Minister’s entire handling of the affair, including claims yesterday that the Labour leader was kept in the loop. Goff insists he was not briefed before, during or after the investigation and says he has texted the head of the SIS to complain about John Key’s comments… …He said the Prime Minister has to understand the responsibilities of his office and cannot “mouth off” without checking his facts first.

Phil Goff in trying to score a cheap political point against the Prime Minister was trying to say that the head of the SIS, Warren Tucker, had not followed the law. As I wrote at the time extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Phil Goff has form in throwing civil servants under the bus in order to score a political point. It is now well known that he lied about a foreign affairs briefing to make his claims about the “gone by lunchtime” comment. Now he was saying that a senior civil servant hadn’t followed the law. I thought I would try and find out and so I sent an email to the SIS on 26 July, just the day after Phil Goff made his accusations:

Dr Warren Tucker
Director New Zealand Security Intelligence Service
Box 900
Wellington

26 July 2011

RE: OFFICIAL INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

Dear Dr. Tucker

Under the Official Information Act 1982, I request a number of documents. If you require clarification on any of these requests, please do not hesitate to contact me on021 535 xxx.

1. Copies of briefing notes and/or documents given and/or shown to The Leader of the Opposition during any briefing held in March 2011 regarding Israeli nationals.
2. Copies of diary notes made at the time or subsequent to the March briefings to The Leader of the Opposition.
3. Details of any acknowledgement by The Leader of the Opposition of having read or received any of the aforementioned briefing notes and/or documents.

If you wish to withhold any documents I request that you supply me with a list of documents withheld.

I also request that you supply electronic copies of any documents released via email to me.

Regards

Cameron Slater

Little did I know the storm that was about to be unleashed. As days went on Phil Goff dug a deeper and deeper hole with his public pronouncements on the matter. He couldn’t get enough press and he thought he was onto a king hit against the Prime Minister. I simply watched and waited, I had no idea what was going on except that which was in the media.

On August 4 Phil Goff issued a press statement that accused Warren Tucker full out of lying. He was saying that he had lost confidence in him. I didn’t know at this stage that Phil Goff had been told by the SIS that they were going to release the OIA request information to me on that day. I hadn’t heard a word at that stage and after writing that post I went my post box and cleared the mail. In the mail was a plain envelope with OHMS on it…I was gob-smacked. I raced back to the car and opened the letter. In that letter was the response from Warren Tucker to my OIA. I was sitting on a bombshell. It took me 20 minutes to drive to the office, in that time I made some phone calls to media. I agreed to release the documents to Tv3, little did I know Phil Goff at this point was busy feeding the media himself.

When I got to the office I hastily posted a few questions for Phil Goff, I still didn’t know that he had been advised by the SIS that the documents were being released. Those questions were designed to let Phil Goff that I had the documents, that they were about to be released and that they proved he had been lying. Phil Goff had a choice when he was advised by the SIS about the document release. He could have concocted a plausible story about forgetting the details, that he was more concerned with the details of Christchurch and so it slipped his mind. Or he could attack me, the head of the SIS and attempt to brazen it out. He choose poorly.

At 6pm on 4 August I dropped my bombshell and released the documents. (SIS-OIA pdf) Tv3 ran the story as their lead item. Phil Goff went on attack. Meanwhile I was on NewstalkZB with Larry Williams just after Barry Soper had run Goff’s attack lines. My segment followed.

It was now clear that Labour’s attack lines were against me and against Warren Tucker. They weren’t interested in the truth.

Labour and Phil Goff had dug a very deep hole. The hole also threatened to swallow Maryan Street and Annette King who had been put up by Goff to run the attacks against John Key. Their words were now damning them in the face of documentary evidence that Phil Goff had lied.

Maryan Street said she would apologise if she got anything wrong. I have yet to receive her apology. At this stage Phil Goff still had choices, he could apologise and move on or he could die in the ditch he had dug.

The attacks against me were flying thick and fast. For some reason the left wing elements of the media, including Scoop, Barry Soper, John Pagani and to a lesser extent Chris Trotter have all tried to say that I should never have been given the documents. They all ignore the fact that I asked for the documents under the OIA and I asked for details that wouldn’t be secret, I was very specific and not only that I published the exact questions I asked.

Some in the media were upset that I was given the documents first, ignoring that all but one news outlet hadn’t actually asked for them. The one that did asked a week after I did and only at the prompting of Phil Goff and Labour. I guess the SIS figured that because I asked first I should get them first. I found out later that despite my request for them to be electronic they inf act posted them to me. I turned into a race between NZ Post delivering to me in Auckland and Stuff getting theirs delivered in Wellington. It was a race I had no knowledge of.

Instead of apologising fro making amistake Phil Goff decided to make an even bigger issue of the story.

Phil Goff said questions need to be asked:

Labour leader Phil Goff says questions remain over how a right-wing blogger asked the SIS for a confidential document about a briefing he had with the spy agency.

Questions also remained over why the SIS released the material with such urgency – four working days after receiving the request under the Official Information Act. Most requests are either rejected outright or take at least three weeks to action.

The simple answer to the how a right wing blogger asked the SIS is that I simply asked for it. I watched Phil Goff and then Annette King change the story about the briefing he says he never had, but documents prove that he did. I was angered that Phil Goff was using the same tactics that he did when caught lying over the Darren Hughes affair, so incensed I wrote an email. That email proved to be Phil Goff’s undoing.

Their attack dogs are unleashed. John Pagani describes the SIS and a rogue agency committing treason. He and other left wing commentator ignore the fact that the SIS had to follow the law.

After I wrote that email the law took effect. The SIS had to, by law, answer my request. The leftwing, Phil Goff, the media all needed to ask themselves a very pertinent question.

Do they think that the SIS should selectively answer OIA requests based on the political views of the person asking and the political views of the opponents of the person asking?

They never answered that question because where it leads to is where they were trying to smear the SIS, that there was political involvement in the SIS when they know very clearly that there was not. If they were to answer in the affirmative then they supported the politicization of the SIS.

Phil Goff has a proven history of leaking, he has a proven history of lying and he just keeps on keeping the story alive. Phil Goff needed to accept he forgot about the briefing, got it wrong, and was wrong to attack a senior civil servant. There was a point where I could have accepted that Phil Goff just forgot. That point passed when he insisted that he and he alone has things right.

But pause for a moment and think about what Phil Goff was suggesting. If he was right and he was never shown anything, or even briefed. Remember his first contention was that he was never briefed, then it changed to he was briefed just a little bit. But think, about what Phil Goff was really suggesting.

He was suggesting that Warren Tucker had falsified documents, made up minutes for briefings that never occurred and lied about it all. That really is too unbelievable. The alternate was that Phil Goff simply forgot about it, tried to make political capital, got sprung and then made some stuff up to cover for his faulty memory.

What was more believable? That the head of the SIS falsified documents and lied about meetings, or that Phil Goff forgot.

The sad thing for Phil Goff is that when confronted with the truth he continued to lie and continued to extend the lies. Now more than a few people have accused me of using too strong a description of Phil Goff’s actions. That they weren’t really lies. I could have accepted that at the start but when he continually insisted something didn’t occur when it demonstrably did, and then changes his story from ‘it never happened’ to ‘it happened but I never got any documents‘ and an attack on the integrity of a senior civil servant then that crosses over to lies. When he says he received different briefings and documents prove he received the same briefings then yes that is lying.

This issue, started with a little email OIA request proved without a shadow of a doubt that Phil Goff was and is a liar. I believe it was one of the defining moments of the year. On top of Phil Goff’s poor handling of the Darren Hughes affair this should hav been the issue that finished him off as leader, but for the cowardice of his caucus.

I love this great quote from Michael Deacon who is a parliamentary sketch writer for The Daily Telegraph.

The great privilege of the job is that, sitting in the press gallery (located a few feet above the Speaker’s chair), you see all sorts of small but instructive details that don’t make it into news reports. News reports have to be solemn, which means it’s outside their remit to mention that Chief Warden Balls spends half his time in the chamber silently mouthing a single line over and over at George Osborne – usually “So out of touch” or “Such a charlatan”. Obviously the aim of the tactic is to unsettle the Chancellor, although its chief effect is to make Mr Balls look like someone you’d edge away from in a bus shelter.

Heh, we have similar tosspots who do this here. Watch parliament for a while and you can see them doing it. Annette King was one of the worst..her favourite epithet for National MPs is “Tory Scumbag”.

Labour were a walking PR disaster area in 2011. In compiling my Redux series for 2011 I am gob-smacked by how many cock-ups they managed and a great many of them by their strategist Trevor Mallard.

Today a list of the Top 30 PR disasters in New Zealand has been released and when you look at it you can see why Labour lost in 2011.

4. Darren Hughes. In early March the police receive a complaint from an 18-year-old male. The incident is reported to be of a sexual nature and alleged to have occurred at Labour Party deputy leader Annette King’s home, where Hughes lived. Witnesses report seeing the complainant outside and naked that morning. Although Labour Leader Phil Goff knows about the police complaint for two weeks he takes no action and his office tells the media that no Labour MP is involved in any such complaint to Police. During this time both Darren Hughes and Annette King participate in a debate performed in front of the entire press gallery with the moot “Politics is a grubby business.” After being grilled by the media Phil Goff then admits Darren Hughes is at the centre of the Police investigation but defends Hughes stating it is a matter for the Police. He then refuses to accept Darren Hugh’s resignation (but changes his mind later on). Labour Party President Andrew Little only finds out about the matter when it hits the news headlines.

8. Phil Goff and the numbers. During The Press debate and in interviews on both Q&A and The Nation Labour Party Leader Phil Goff bumbles the numbers and fails to respond to questions with accurate figures that are the very basis of his party’s policy proposals.

13. Darien Fenton. Labour MP Darien Fenton launches a personal attack on Mad Butcher founder and philanthropist Sir Peter Leitch because he said something positive about Prime Minister John Key. She says that because he is “sucking up to John Key” and is a “sycophant” she is never going near him again and will be boycotting Mad Butcher stores. She then goes on to say she won’t buy anything from people who support Tories. After Darien Fenton apologies for her public outburst, Labour MP Louisa Wall quickly negates the apology by justifying her colleague’s attack on Sir Peter Leitch by stating:”We would have assumed Sir Peter was a working-class champion…if you look at what the National Government has done, it has taken workers’ rights backwards.”

25. Ruth Dyson. Labour MP Ruth Dyson uses tax payer’s money for a private trip for her and her husband to Ethiopia. She then agrees to refund the $16,000 once the media question her about it – stating she planned to refund the money all along.

26. Trevor Mallard. Labour MP and Election Campaign Manager Trevor Mallard accuses political strategist Matthew Hooton, Kiwiblog owner David Farrar, Minister of Finance Bill English and the PSA of apparently paying for Otago University political analyst Dr Bryce Edwards to make attacks against the Labour Party. The attack is launched after some political data showed Labour was down in the polls. Labour MP Clare Curran then joins the conspiracy theory adding that the young Nats and ‘non-Labour left’ are suspiciously ‘cosy’ with the academic Dr Bryce Edwards.

27. Carmel Sepuloni. Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni insults National MP Paula Bennett after she thinks she has won the Waitakere seat off National. However, five days later once the special votes are counted Paula Bennett wins back the seat for National leaving Carmel with egg on her face.

Heh, I caused a fair few of those.

July 2011 – 309 posts

Phil Twyford started stealing underpants, I had to ring Rodney Hide for confirmation and after he got done with abusing me sorted out Phil Twyford’s strategy for him.

I busted Marlene Campbell for comparing Anne Tolley to Goebbels.

Trevor Mallard again makes defamatory and racist remarks on Red Alert. Not only that he is actively repeating gossip supplied to him by the same board member who actively manipulated events in Rodney and Coromandel. National will at some stage have to deal with this board member and his pals in Auckland. It is unconscionable that people in that position leak to Labour MPs so they can help their mates get selected.

I blog about the origins of the Asymmetrical War.

In July Labour released their capital gains tax and I took great delight in quoting their luminaries previous opposition to the tax.

Phil Goff’s and the NZEI’s contention that they don’t work together is well and truly busted.

Labour were referred to the Police after a complaint by me to the Electoral Commission. The Police have yet to announce any details. Labour have actually got away with repeated breaches of the Electoral Act. I point out why Trevor Mallard couldn’t front for Labour, because he had been warned before. To have him front meant they couldn’t use their lie about not knowing the rules. Their continued ignoring of the rules amounts to willful disobedience.

Labour bombs another campaign launch. Plus they steal the intellectual property of a photographer.

Their website woes continue.

Trevor Mallard sends an email to supporters imploring them not to panic, that their campaign is going brilliantly and to use patsy lines in Twitter. Unfortunately the intellectually infirm Labour supporters use the lines word for word and Twitter looks like a redux of Mallard’s email.

Labour didn’t want to get into details about their Capital Gains Tax plans. They didn’t want that because they simply hadn’t done the work. Almost every question was met with a response that the “Expert panel” would be looking at that. Unfortunately for Labour the public very definitely wanted details.

Mallard’s email was picked up by the media.

Labour start bombarding the public with taxpayer funded electioneering. I start writing letters. Still more letters.

Labour meanwhile, after insisting that they would start following the rules breaks them yet again with another mail out. I complain to the Electoral Commission who subsequently refer labour, again, to the Police. The Police still haven’t done anything. Labour calculates that the Police won;t do anything and continues to break the law knowing that there are no consequences for them ever.

Trevor Mallard says “Labour can steal the election and they will”.

I bust the Kindergarten Associations and their millions of dollars of retained funds, at the same time they are crying poor.

Phil Goff says that he wasn’t briefed by the SIS about some Israeli tourists in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake. Things are about to get interesting which I will detail in a separate post. This becomes my second big story of the year.

I write yet another letter to Lockwood Smith about Labour’s spending rorts. And another one.

I start my countdown to the last possible day that Labour can roll Phil Goff before the election. I make a video a day highlighting the terrible inconsistencies of Phil Goff.

My son is assaulted at Rainbows End. The offenders have never been caught.

The SMOGs start to flow from Trevor Mallard. I still don’t know why politicians use Twitter.

August 2011 – 449 posts

Annette King goes nasty on Ali Ikram, Deborah Coddington and Patrick Gower on Twitter.

I announce NZ First’s North Shore candidate before NZ First does.

Sue Moroney provides yet another SMOG.

Winston Peters blames the media for Andrew Williams bad press. Of course it was actually me that caused all his bad press.

Stuart Nash provides a SMOG.

I publish my letter to Dr Tucker, the head of the SIS, this signals the opening of the SIS story I am about to unleash on Phil Goff. This will be covered in a separate post.

I explain what Colin Craig needs to do to win. He ignores every single part of my advice. He is now over a million dollars poorer and still not in parliament.

On 7 August I quit Citizen A and blogged about why. I have never once regretted quitting and resisted the constant begging to return.

I capture the Minister of Twitter in mid tweet at the National party conference.

The Electoral Commission refers the Labour party brochure to Police for breaching the Electoral Act. The Police still have not done anything.

I highlight a NZEI and Labour party nasty, their Whangarei candidate Pat Newman. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Darien Fenton embarks on her campaign of nasty by calling for a boycott of the band that played at National’s campaign dinner. She will do much worse in coming months.

Malcolm Harbrow tells Trevor Mallard what he thinks:

There was a problem with the blakbirdpie shortcode

The Electoral Commission refers Charles Chauvel to the Police on the basis of my complaint. The Police are yet to do anything.

Trevor Mallard won the bike race. Meanwhile I won the war, having Labour campaign strategist focused entirely on beating me in a bike race for 6 weeks. I managed to come second in a 60km race against a professional cyclist and part time politician.

Clare Curran attacks the Greens for stealing Labour’s votes. Labour are in meltdown as they start to realise that their social media campaign is failing.

Just after Phil Goff declares that Labour will focus on the things that matter Sue Moroney lets rip on Twitter.

I blog about anti-depressants and how ineffective they were for me.

September 2011 – 530 posts

Trevor Mallard continues to show the nasty and delivers up another SMOG.

Clare Curran continued to show that Labour was focussed on important matters….like volume on adverts.

Trevor Mallard compares John Key to mass murdering dictators, proving that Twitter and politicians are the gift that keeps on giving.

I blog about Jim Anderton and his illegal letter to constituents. I complain to the Electoral Commission and they later refer the letter and Jim Anderton to Police.

Clare Curran continued to focus on the things that matter…like teletubbies.

Trevor Mallard and Clare Curran had a twitter fight about Cheese Rolls.

Jacinda Ardern complained about the congestion around the toaster at the airport lounge. Letting all us peasants know how important she is that she is in the lounge and troughing it up at the same time.

Labour’s new election posters were begging for a photoshop.

I blog about hugs being banned at my daughter’s school.

I introduce the concept of the Blink Test. Which politicians pass the Blink Test?

I suggest that Labour is waiting for the Langoliers.

I bust Greens candidate Max Coyle for the sad little story in the Waikato Times that he fed to them. The Greens withdraw Max from their candidate list. Tim McIndoe didn’t need a Greens candidate to win handsomely, he was benefiting from The Moroney Effect.

I wonder whether John Minto will get a 1000 votes. It turns out he couldn’t, getting just 461 people to vote for him.

Trevor Mallrd starts a smear campaign against Bryce Edwards. It ends up being called #bryceedwardsconspiracy on Twitter and shows Labour and Mallard are all at sea with their election strategy.

Chris Trotter asks why Trevor Mallard is Labour’s campaign strategist. The question remains unanswered.

Dimpost provides the comments of the week:

Oh the hours of endless speculation? Personally, I reckon Labour’s campaign strategy is being run by a crew of demented P-addict gerbils with a KFC fetish, whilst playing Elton John and Queen simultaneously. Of course, the gerbils could be running ACT’s campaign; Labour may be guided by a crack team of lemmings…

Darien Fenton launches her now infamous attack against The Mad Butcher.

Trevor Mallard continued to prove that his personal demeanour was more suited to drunken pub brawls than to Twitter. Yet he was trotting along to caucus and telling everyone that Labour would win using Social media.

On September 28 I relaunched the site with the help of Cre8D Design.

Sir Peter Leitch calls me to talk about Darien Fenton’s scurrilous attack on him. He says he was “gutted” by her comments.

John Key mentioned Labour’s real problem yesterday in his address in reply speech:

“David Cunliffe doesn’t like David Parker. David Parker does not like Grant Robertson. Grant Robertson does not like Clayton Cosgrove. Clayton Cosgrove . . . he’s not real fond of Andrew Little. Andrew Little doesn’t like Shane Jones. Shane Jones doesn’t like anybody in the Labour Party. Phil Goff does not like David Cunliffe, and Annette King doesn’t like anyone that Phil Goff doesn’t like. And I say to myself, it’s not hard to see why they chose someone who’s spent half his life in war-torn places like Somalia and Bosnia, because that’s what the Labour Party’s like now.”

It might sound flippant but it shows that Labour after a term without the steel of Heather Simpson to control caucus and the ambitions of pretenders Labour is now akin to street gangs with knives drawn giving each other the eye.

There isn’t any caucus unity, and just watching their body language yesterday as David Shearer stuttered and fumbled his way through 30 minutes of yawn inducing faux-rhetoric said more than their silence during the speech.

David Shearer might have stared down armed Somali warlords but having the big guns of UN peacekeepers or US Marines at your back in no way prepares you for the sharp shanks of political competitors waiting for you to trip up.

Trevor Mallard has gone dog on his mates:

I spent three years as a whip which included cabinet committee experience in the 1980s and the nine years as a Minister in the Clark government.

I saw lots of weak, and some frankly useless Ministers. Most, but not all, were in the second half of the rankings. They often caused more work than they added value. There was an enormous amount of time wasted explaining what was either obvious or buried in papers that if they had been read hadn’t been understood.

Trevor should name names.

Previous Clark government ministers still in caucus are:

Phil Goff, Annette King, Trevor Mallard, Parekura Horomia, Ruth Dyson, Lianne Dalziel, Damien O’Connor, David Cunliffe, David Parker, Nanaia Mahuta and Clayton Cosgrove.

Which ones is Trevor talking about?

Which of his current caucus colleagues who are former ministers would he classify as “frankly useless”?

Who was the worst of them?

via the tipline

Yesterday I blogged about Clark ministry retreads and staffers now ascending to the leadership of Labour. Cactus Kate has a name for them.

The Helengnomes:

Labour threw out their Leader, ran a Primary for a new one and aren’t finished yet chucking the baby out with the bath water by biffing out all the oldies and simply replacing them with less talented and remarkable new Helengnomes. I mean really who can say Ardern (dropped 9.4% party vote and lost seat despite Greens helping her) Hipkins (least he won his seat) and Robertson (complete focus on winning seat and came 3rd in party vote) are the new Goff, Mallard and King? And this is somehow evolution for the Party? At least King, Goff and Mallard had jobs and some life experience outside Parliament before super gluing their backsides to the institution.

The Helengnomes are humorless, talentless generalists, privileged and lacking in life experience party hacks to the outside world. And that’s before they even got selected in safe seats or in on the favored positions on the list.

In the meantime those who should be there as Labour’s future to appeal to middle progressive working New Zealand like Davis and Nash, are sitting at home on their backsides contemplating what they did wrong.

Not signing up to be a Helengnome pretty much sums it up.

I’m not sure David Shearer is thinking straight in wanting the backing of these three:

Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson, who was previously linked to Mr Parker’s bid as his deputy, is believed to be lining up as Mr Shearer’s deputy. But his name was also among those initially thought to be planning a tilt at the leadership. He refused to comment yesterday when asked if he had withdrawn his name from the leadership hat.

The Shearer bid has the backing of a powerful faction within caucus, including outgoing leader Phil Goff and deputy Annette King, and party strategist Trevor Mallard.

A turncoat and traitor in Robertson, he is sitting there lurking waiting for his turn with the knife.

But seriously backed by a loser, the loser’s deputy and the inept campaign strategist? One would hope that Shearer isn’t using Mallard to plan his strategy for leadership.