Clayton Cosgrove

ᔥ Keeping Stock

Inventory have a good summary of facts on the Bill Liu affair…this is one bone he has been chewing on and has the best coverage of the whole case:

Nine months before Liu was granted New Zealand citizenship, David Cunliffe received advice from Immigration New Zealand officials. That advise was that Liu was suspected of having multiple identities and multiple passports. On that basis, Cunliffe, then the Immigration Minister was asked to consider revoking Liu’s permanent residence. Cunliffe chose not to take this course of action.
So here are some links to ponder:

NZ Herald 7/4/2010: The citizenship was granted nine months after officials advised the Immigration Minister at the time, David Cunliffe, that dual identities allegedly used by Yan were grounds to revoke his permanent residency. 

Stuff 19/5/2012: Three months later, bank accounts he held in Australia were frozen and in June 2007, $4m was sent to the Chinese Government. Yan was not convicted of any offence – he agreed to the repatriation without an admission of liability – but allegations swirling around him were so serious immigration officials suggested his permanent residency be revoked.

NZ Herald 31/1/2009: By 2007 Immigration officials recommended Liu’s permanent residency be revoked on grounds that he had allegedly provided false information.

NZ Herald 4/7/2009: The citizenship was granted nine months after officials advised the Immigration Minister at the time, David Cunliffe, that dual identities allegedly used by Liu were grounds to revoke his permanent residency. 

And lastly, InvestigateDaily 3/12/2011:
Jones, as Associate Immigration Minister, was presumed to have seen immigration files on Yang Liu, in addition to his role as delegated Internal Affairs Minister. It was in that latter role that Jones gave Liu New Zealand citizenship, against the explicit warnings of officials who told him Liu’s identity was believed fake and that his citizenship application was fraudulent.

Internal Affairs sources have told TGIF that a recommendation also went to the Minister of Immigration recommending Liu’s permanent residency be revoked while it was still possible to do so, but the Minister overturned it.

TGIF spoke to then Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove who denied any involvement with the Liu case and said such cases would normally have been handled by the Associate Minister. Cosgrove subsequently told us this week he’d received a verbal briefing from officials confirming they believed Liu’s residency had been obtained fraudulently, and that he was under investigation. But Cosgrove reiterated he had never seen Liu’s file or received any written briefing.

Yet our OIA request to the Immigration Service for the file to Shane Jones recommending residency be revoked turned up a surprise answer:
“Papers of that nature were sent to a previous Minister of Immigration and are withheld,” confirmed Api Fiso, the Group Manager for Border Security at the Immigration Service.

With Cosgrove out of the picture, that left his predecessor David Cunliffe in the gun. It now appears Cunliffe was, like Jones, explicitly warned about Yang Liu’s fraudulent residency application, yet for inexplicable reasons chose not to revoke the Labour party donor’s visa when he had the chance.

There are plenty more links that we could list, but we reckon that we’ve risen to Judge Holden’s challenge, and then some.

Have a care for poor old Charlie Shovel as he treads where Clayton Cosgrove fears to go…Charlie really should go spend some time with Clayton to find out how far he is going to get trying to smack up Judith Collins.

He got spanked on his first supplementary, and again on his second.

Watch this 15 minutes of excruciating pointless points of order as Winston Peters and Trevor Mallard patted each other on the back as they made a mockery of Question Time.

Speaker Lockwood Smith brooks no nonsense and after describing Winston Peters slurring attempts at asking a question “unintelligible” they throw even bigger wobblies resulting in harder smacks for them bothalong with Clayton Cosgrove after his inept point of order.

It appears that Trevor Mallard and Winston Peters are having a competition to see who will get evicted first…

October 2011 – 655 Posts

Darien Fenton followed up her SMOG with a denial that she called for a boycott.

Louisa Wall joined in Labour’s hate-fest on Sir Peter Leitch.

Twitter is a fantastic tool for politicians….to tell us all how much they are troughing it up at our expense.

I blog about how I feel sorry for Phil Goff. A man so inept he deserves only pity.

Labour continued to flout the law, and I continued to report them.

I learn a new rule from Andrew Sullivan. Do not meet your enemies:

I got to know long-time personal piñatas and found that they were — can you believe it? — human beings, often perfectly nice human beings with perfectly nice families. Even worse, the first words out of their mouths were sometimes, “I admire your work” — and once an author hears that, his estimation of the person voicing this pleasing judgment immediately rises. (She thinks I’m good, therefore she must be good.) At that moment your inventory of ready-made-always-available-in-a-pinch targets would be diminished by one, and since the list is never really that long, the loss of one would be serious. Of course, it might be the case that the person you have learned to dislike in print is even more dislikable in the flesh (oh happy day!), but you can’t count on that and so it is better, all things considered, not to take any chances.

I took some time out before the election to shoot rabbits:

Lesley Soper joined in the Labour SMOG-fest. Apparently Labour supported a policy for $15 Ho’s.

Phil Goff’s winning strategy for the election was….beating Sam Morgan of Trademe fame to 5000 followers on Twitter. John Key had 28,000 followers.

Comment of the day from Blair:

My favourite Kiwiblog posts are when he just copies and pastes something from Whaleoil and then puts some one sentence comment underneath it like he wants to be a real blogger.  Kiwiblog is the Lion Red of blogs – very popular, but bland and and poor quality.

Trevor Mallard, when given a choice between telling the truth or telling a lie always picks telling a lie.

Phil Goff suggests blacksmithing as the kind of jobs for the future of New Zealand. With the Greens gaining strength at the expense of Labour he may well be right.

I suggest a new slogan for Labour.

Labour bombed their website again, confusing Maryan Street with Clayton Cosgrove. A simple mistake I know, they are so similar in appearance, but proof yet again that Labour are unfit to govern.

Trevor Mallard tries to out nasty Darien Fenton on the nasty. Twitter is providing almost daily SMOG from Labour now.

Phil Goff is busted as a disaster tourist.

I compare Labour in 2011 and National in 2002. Pretty much the same result too.

I question the effectiveness of Peter Goodfellow with fundraising…it will be interesting to see the donation returns and expenses when they are filed.

On October 14 I publish details of a planned dirty tricks campaign but an as yet unknown group. I even publish the mock up of their attack and the fact they are seeking quotes. This story explodes into the media a few short weeks later.

I helpfully release Clare Curran’s and Labour’s ICT policy a day early. Clare wasn’t at all pleased.

Clare Curran continues to focus on the things that matter…her orgasm:

God I sound like Sally from that scene in When Harry met Sally #rwc2011

October 16, 2011 8:09 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@clarecurranmp

Clare Curran

Labour candidate Christine Rose blames John Key for Pike River, the Christchurch Earthquake and for the Rena running aground.

Andrew Little does his leadership aspirations a bit of harm in attacking an Auckland City Councillor.

I blog about Labour’s future women…unfortunately none of them got elected because Labour promoted their harpies, harridans and nasties above the lookers.

Carmel Sepuloni proves she is the princess of nasty. Phil Goff backs her up.

Trevor Mallard ups the ante on the nasty.

I repost my Rules of Politics.

I posted a video about Labour’s Hobbit

Phil Goff uses Twitter to continually connect with voters and tell them he cares about the things that matter…like his new red socks.

The Listener did an article about anti-depressants which I featured in.

We are still waiting for Mallard’s untold story about Rena? The man really is an inveterate liar.

There is an untold story on why @johnkeypm was so slow getting #Rena action

October 22, 2011 7:24 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@TrevorMallard

Trevor Mallard

Phil Goff still keeps voter up with the play at his hobby farm via Twitter. He even tells us he has bought a new puppy but is unsure as to the breed.

Labour and their proxies ran a nasty, dirty smear campaign in Epsom. They tried to get the media to run a particularly nasty smear but none did. Eventually I suspect that the details about the smear will get an airing and then David Parker won’t be looking so smug.

Labour and Daljit Singh continue to have a nice cosy relationship. I wonder when Daljit Singh’s court case hits the courts again?

Labour released their first campaign video and it was parodied immediately:

If it wasn’t bad enough that Darien Fenton had attacked Sir Peter Leitch then David Cunliffe goes and attacks Sir Peter Jackson, cementing Labour as the nasty party and hobbit haters.

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.

David Shearer has announced his new “refreshed” rankings:

Labour leader David Shearer has put five new people onto his front bench and given the number five slot to David Cunliffe – the man he defeated as Labour leader last week.

Mr Cunliffe has lost his finance portfolio and previous number 3 ranking to David Parker – but has managed to get the significant economic portfolio of economic development.

Jacinda Ardern has received a significant promotion from 19 to 4, and becomes Labour’s highest ranked woman. Ms Ardern will do the social development portfolio, putting her head to head with Minister Paula Bennett during a period of welfare reform.

As expected David Parker has taken the finance role, and Shane Jones has been boosted from 13 to the front bench. He will take a new ‘regional development’ portfolio and is an associate finance spokesman.

Mr Shearer said the team focused on new areas of priority including the environment – a portfolio given to his deputy Grant Robertson – and rebuilding links with business and provincial New Zealand.

“I have built a team that brings forward new faces.”

Maryan Street is a fresh face? David Parker? Clayton Cosgrove? Oh please.

The funniest appointment of all is Jacinda Ardern, she couldn’t even beat Nikki Kaye and for some reason she is going to deliver killer blows to Judith Collins, Hekia Parata and Paula Bennett?

On the surface Labour’s lowest ever result since 1928 is bad but manageable.

However if you look beyond the headline numbers and into the electorates you can see the terrible legacy Phil Goff has gifted the Labour party.

The recent result in Waitakere has only compounded the issue.

In a number of seats Labour have lost their local list MP for good. Take Rotorua, for instance, Todd McClay saw off Steve Chadwick for the second and last time. Labour’s poor showing in the party vote means Steve Chadwick is now handing in her gear and looking for a job. She won’t have an office and neither will labour in Rotorua for three years. In the local press they won;t have to go and seek comment on issues from the local Labour person because they simply don’t exist. For the next three years the only MP commenting on local issues in Rotorua will be Todd McClay.

Napier is the same. Stuart Nash ran a robust campaign and really pushed Chris Tremain. However Tremain prevailed and Labour’s poor party vote now sees Stuart Nash seeking a job as Chief of Staff in Wellington to David Shearer. He won’t be back. Labour loses a spokesperson in the Bay and an office and Chris Tremain will now enjoy unfettered press coverage for three years straight. His majority will bounce back like Craig Foss who enjoyed a similar holiday from a Labour list stalker. Julia Haydon-Carr faced an insurmountable challenge of overcoming the man with the gay ute, Craig Foss, who did not have Julia stalking him for three years like Nash stalked Tremain.

Paula Bennett has now seen off Carmel Sepuloni in Waitakere. Labour loses an office and a list MP who can dog her every move in Waitakere. Labour again through its poor party vote loses exposure, resources and personnel and cedes the argument to National in a key electorate.

In Christchurch Central, Nicky Wagner will likewise enjoy having no Labour list MP dogging her as Brendan Burns at number 29 on Labour’s list was left stranded high and dry. Nicky will now be able to cement her position as National’s voice in Christchurch, an island of blue in a sea of red. Labour loses their office and their voice which will have to be picked up and shared by others. Perhaps Clayton Cosgrove, after his defeat in Waimakiriri might establish a presence, but it will never be a full time one.

Sam Lotu Iiga in Maungakiekie also will enjoy not having Carol Beaumont stalk his every move. He will be hoping that no labour list MPs quit and that David Shearer will tell Beaumont that the face doesn’t fit but until then he too can enjoy an electorate without a Labour office ruining the view.

Losing those resources in key areas makes it very difficult to turn things around in 2014. Labour has less presence, less resources and they must spread thinly to ensure coverage. They don’t realise the significance yet of their decision to keep Goff at the helm so that he could do to Labour what Bill English did to national in 2002. Even the leaders office will suffer cutbacks due to the reduced vote. Some in the Goffice will be very nervous, not just because they were wedded to the disaster that was Phil Goff but because there simply isn’t enough cash now to retain them all.

This is the mess that Labour has inherited, but worse this is the mess they have charged a political novice with fixing. Does David Shearer have an Orewa speech in him? I don’t think so.

Shane Jones has already broken ranks over asset sales and now David Cunliffe is chucking his toys:

An embittered David Cunliffe is refusing to rule out quitting Parliament altogether as leader David Shearer moves to finalise his front bench.

It is understood Mr Cunliffe has been offered a front bench seat and a senior portfolio but has balked at his proposed ranking.

A spokeswoman confirmed the two had talked on the phone and it is understood Mr Shearer, who plans to announce his team early next week, was late yesterday still waiting for a response.

Mr Cunliffe pledged his unconditional support to Mr Shearer after Tuesday’s leadership vote.

But yesterday he said he was “weighing up all my options” and would not say when he was likely to make his call.

“I have not made any decision yet.”

Labour has been allocated eight front bench seats in the new Parliament and it is likely Mr Cunliffe has been offered either the sixth, seventh or eighth slot.

The top places are likely to be taken by Mr Shearer, deputy Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern, finance spokesman David Parker, Shane Jones and Clayton Cosgrove with the remaining two slots open to Mr Cunliffe and his running mate, Nanaia Mahuta, or possibly Ruth Dyson or Maryan Street.

David Cunliffe is a strong, if somehwat vainglorious, performer and he will rightly feel indignant that the vacuous Jacinda Ardern is being promoted above him. The storm is coming for Labour.

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?

Phil Goff’s desperate big lie last night in the TVNZ debate has been shot down in flames. The Crusher has just given Goff a taste of what Clayton Cosgrove suffered all cycle.

National denies claims by Labour leader Phil Goff that it will put a freeze on police recruitment, saying he is “completely wrong” and “very desperate”.

Goff made the claim during the final TVNZ debate last night and said police had been told to keep the plan secret until after the election.

National leader John Key was unable to say during the debate whether Goff’s comments were true, but said any such decision would be “operational” and police had to live within their budgets, like all government departments.

Police Minister Judith Collins this morning told Radio New Zealand Goff was “completely wrong”, though she admitted the January intake would be delayed because fewer people were quitting the force.

“What has happened is because their attrition rate is so low now, so few people are leaving police. Morale is so high that in the last four months of this year, 300 extra recruits have gone through the college and graduated, so that January intake is now going to be a March intake,” she said.

“By the end of this year we will have 600 extra frontline police and we expect to maintain those levels. Phil Goff is very desperate and he is just making this up.”

Collins said the attrition rate was 3.2 per cent, requiring police to train 280 officers to cover the gap, compared to the 6 per cent rate under Labour.

“There is going to be no reduction in frontline policing under a National government. We have made this very clear,” she said.

What a stupid play by Phil Goff, he taken a piece of information whispered over coffee with a malcontent and used it as a big hit in the campaign and the reality is that the Police, with their new commissioner and supportive minister are loving the job of banging up crims so much that they aren’t leaving like they were under Labour.

It is such a dumb bad news story when he needed to be running a positive message about asset sales you have to wonder who told him to do this.