Grant Robertson

ᔥ NZ Herald

With Stuart Nash departing as Chief of Staff David Shearer is now left exposed to the underhand machinations of Trevor Mallard, the puppet master of Labour. It was telling that despite continued SMOGs and faux pas like his ticket scalping episode that he went completely un-challenged or even remotely disciplined. Even after falsely accusing and defaming people in parliament and then defaming a minister outside of it Labour continues to give Mallard a free reign. For some reason they think he is a strategic genius, forgetting his utterly inept performance as campaign strategist in the 2011 General Election.

You now have to question whether or not David Shearer can make it through as leader to Labour Weekend, which this year is October 22. Grant Robertson, with Mallard as his numbers man must be feeling pretty confident right now…Labour weekend for Shearer seems a long, long way away…can he make it?

James Elliot in the Herald on Sunday doesn’t seem to think so:

Which brings us back to the living or, rather, also the living dead in the form of Labour leader David Shearer.

To be honest, I felt obliged to toe tag him with the title Labour leader just to help identify him.

He seems to be the least visible figure on the national political scene.

So it was hardly a good idea for him to radically alter his appearance by shaving his head for charity. He needs to be reminded that charity begins at home but right now he looks homeless and everything else-less.

It’s as if he should be on a missing person’s list, reportedly last seen somewhere in Central Wellington with bank accounts and political capital untouched. Maybe he will be added to the drowning statistics, pulled under by one of the many undercurrents swirling around in the Labour caucus. Or maybe he could just be asleep at the wheel, in which case suddenly veering to the right will likely be fatal.

Whichever way it goes you do get the feeling that unless there’s some kind of second coming he could become just another public holiday statistic.

One wonders what odds the TAB would offer on him surviving to the aptly named Labour Weekend.

I was driving through Tokoroa today when Question Time started, and I nearly ran off the road with Question 1. Bill English was on fire.

Especially when asked about confidence in ministers by Grant Robertson:

All I can say is that the Prime Minister has more confidence in his Ministers than the deputy leader of the Labour Party has in his leader.

iPredict has a series of stocks now on the ACC Scandal.

Yesterday The Standard gloatingly claimed “You know you’re in trouble when: The bookies open a contract on you“.

Whoopsy….look who is in trouble now:

Another interesting tock is the one on Simon Lusk as the leaker…Remember Trevor Mallard, Grant Robertson and Andrew Little have all suggested he was the leaker.

Well the wisdom of the crowds suggests that they are wrong. I wonder if they have the guts to apologise to the house and to Simon Lusk?

David Shearer has claimed he doesn’t like gotcha politics, yet yesterday senior MPs Trevor Mallard and Grant Robertson, along with aspiring senior MP and former party president Andrew Little launched a disgraceful, untrue attack on Judith Collins, Simon Lusk and me. They continued their disgraceful attacks in the House today.

This attack is typical of Mallard. Make shit up, throw it, see what sticks, and brazen it out afterwards. These attacks are all based on “an anonymous email from a reliable source”.

The problem for David Shearer is while Mallard and his thuggish henchmen are running this kind of stupid, baseless attack all it does is continue to frame the Labour Party as the Nasty Party. It also detracts from Shearer’s leadership, as he looks like Goff did, when Robertson stood up to him and told him to be soft on Maoris or else.

None of this is going to go well for Labour. Ministers do not threaten defamation action without good cause, and as I know all parties involved in this dispute there is no way there is any link between Judith Collins and Simon Lusk. So school yard bully Mallard will be forced to apologise or will lose a defamation case. In the mean time his nastiness continues to brand Labour as the Nasty Party.

David Shearer’s leadership and chance of being Prime Minister is under threat by this kind of stupid attack where there is no evidence at all of what Mallard is saying. Politicians lying never goes down well with the public, as Anna Bligh recently found out.  He should take Trevor aside and tell him to apologise in full immediately, or he will be stripped of his portfolios and returned to the back bench. In fact he should strip him of his portfolios and the Shadow Leader of the House anyway.

I don’t believe that David Shearer has anything to do with these attacks, but he is as much a victim as those Mallard has accused. Just as he was the victim when Mallard got busted scalping tickets on Trademe, and Goff was a victim when Mallard chose to indulge in an asymmetrical war against me where he couldn’t win and I had nothing to lose.

Mallard has a history of defamation, and a history of scurrilous anonymous smears.

A quick search of Google shows Mallard has form.

He defamed Erin Leigh.

He also defamed Amokura Panaho along with John Tamihere. They had to pay her $7500 each for that defamation.

Then there is the case of his defamation of Rosemary Bradford. This story is interesting as there’s a claim Labour asked officials to provide the dirt on MPs spouses.  A bit like the Erin Leigh issue.

Then of course there was the American Bagman smear that went nowhere. He still maintains he was right yet hasnpt produced a shred of evudence to back up his allegations.

Now has taken a step too far, together with Grant Robertson and Andrew Little they have defamed Judith Collins, for which she is suing them, and also Simon Lusk and myself. They ar too cowardly to step outside the house and repeat the smears against me and Simon and so I am left to defend myself via the blog.

David Shearer needs to discipline all three but mostly he needs to yank Mallard back into line. If he doesn’t then his leadership is finished and we will be talking sooner rather than alter about Grant Robertson’s ascendency to Labour’s leadership.

ᔥ NZ Herald

David Shearer is trying to grab the high ground.

Labour leader David Shearer says he would expect any minister in a Government he led to step down if they made the same error of judgement former ACC Minister Nick Smith did in writing a reference to a friend who was pursuing a claim with the corporation.

Of courser he can say that, he is never likely to be leading a government. Now if Grant Robertson made that claim it might mean something.

David Carter gets worked up and sledges Grant Robertson hard:

Grant Robertson isn’t the only one looking for help. Labour is seeking assistance too.

The whole “We’re Coming to You” is very Nightmare on Elm Street.

I’m pretty sure they asked all these questions after 2008. Didn’t anyone save the answers?

No wonder Grant Robertson is de-branding already. Anyway I’m sure loyal readers wil be able to help them out:

Yesterday I blogged about Grant Robertson’s site garnering ideas for the improvement of Wellington.

Grant Robertson is Deputy Leader of the Labour party and he hasn’t got a single logo anywhere and never mentions Labour — how is that for faith in the new leadership/party?

The site also doesn’t have a parliamentary crest on it, suggesting that Grant has paid for this himself…it can;t be Labour that paid for it because there isn’t any Labour logos.

However his parliamentary staffer has designed the site:

Grant Robertson  Thanks Scott, it was designed by the fabulously talented Kurt Sharpe.

And registered it to his home address:

registrant_contact_name: Kurt Sharpe
registrant_contact_address1: ** H***** St
registrant_contact_city: Wellington
registrant_contact_province: Wellington
registrant_contact_postalcode: 6012
registrant_contact_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
registrant_contact_phone: +64 27 622****
registrant_contact_fax: +64 27 622****

Grant Robertson is seeking some help. He wants suggestions on how to improve Wellington.

It is an interesting site. It carries an authorisation statement, but not a single logo of the Labour party, nor a parliamentary crest so he must be paying for it himself which would be a first for a socialist.

It also asks for contact details. Grant has done this before. There is no privacy statement about what he plans to do with people’s emails?  Is this another of Grant’s email harvesting exercises?

If you sign up to give Grant suggestions for Wellington then expect to be spammed with begging letters from Chris Flatt and Labour.

As for ideas, here are some of mine:

via the tipline