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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
“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.
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”?
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.
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.
The tipline is running very hot with all sorts of information about the various factions inside labour and the battles, loyalties and muck-raking going on.
“I think there might have been a little bit of spiking of the guns by someone, I’m not accusing my colleagues here, but people put tags around for their own reasons and I’m not going to responding in kind to that.
“I know that I’ve got lots of good relationships and I’ve built a really, really strong team in my own electorate, and I think that speaks for itself.”
He really should go have a chat to Annette King and with Goff’s staffers about that, they are spending a lot of time besmirching Cunliffe’s good name to anyone who will listen. I think it is retribution for their perception that Cunliffe set up Goff in the now infamous “Show me the Money” debate.
Keep sending in the tips. It takes time to sort through them all and verify and cross check but I will get to them.
In 2008 New Zealand voted out Helen Clark and her failed regime.
She was replaced by her old failed team and they took Labour to a worse result in 2011.
Now they are talking about taking Labour through to the next election.
Supporting cast:
Jacinda Ardern: Young and glamorous. Lost narrowly in Auckland Central, but seen as a face for the future. May want to wait before she takes a tilt at the top echelons, but is being advised to grasp the chance when it comes. Could be a contender for deputy if Labour reaches for the change levers.
Trevor Mallard: Could fill in as finance spokesman if one of the other contenders bails out in a fit of pique. Strong debater and shadow leader of the House.
Shane Jones: Will probably get a prominent role because Labour is moving strongly to reclaim the Maori vote. Not in the front row of leadership contenders, and has lost many of his caucus advocates at the election. A powerful debater.
Annette King: Mother of the party and will be highly ranked – Labour needs women in high places – if she wants to stay.
Phil Goff: Can command a high spot and could take foreign affairs or leader of the House.
Only Jacinda is not a political zombie tarnished by close connections of the failed Clark regime. The others the public have decided are not for them and John Key must be thinking he is truly blessed if Labour keep King, Mallard and Goff in senior positions.
Labour need a clean out as the public have clearly showed over two elections. They need new people in senior positions so the public don’t see the same failed politicians trying to sell the same failed policies. Putting King, Mallard and Goff on the back bench would be the best thing a new leader could do to improve Labour’s chances.
Labour needs a “Zombie Survival Plan“ before they need anything else. What are they going to do with their pending Zombie Apocalypse.
Prisoners with alcohol and drug addictions have to deal with it. We don’t offer alcohol to prisoners with alcohol addictions or P to prisoners with methamphetamine addictions. This is a prison, it’s not a home. — Judith Collins, http://bit.ly/dCYt9E
