Patrick Gower

The Teatapes have been published. A short time ago I was sent an email that had a Soundcloud link and a Youtube link (uploaded by 2Johns2Cups) to the tea tapes. They are easily found, but I will not link to them until the legal position of the tapes is clarified, at this point in time it is still an illegal recording and it is still subject to a Police investigation.

However, I have listened to them and now you can too if you are of a mind. You will now know that in stark contrast to the sensational media reporting of the tapes at the time that there is nothing “explosive” on the tapes at all.

TV3, Duncan Garner, Patrick Gower and the staff of the Herald on Sunday should hang their heads in shame for their News of the World style  tactics in publicising this and changing the focus of the election from issues into a sideshow perpetrated and manipulated by them for political gain.

Winston Peters has been proven to be a liar. Nothing on the tape even remotely suggests what he breathlessly intimated.

This whole episode shows the parlous state of some media outlets in NZ.

It is curious that the tape has been released on the same day as the Prime Minister’s first major speech of the year. Proving that this whole stitch-up has been a political act from beginning to end, shamelessly milked by media outlets desperate for sales and corrupt politicians desperate for votes.

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:

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.

The voting has finished and the winner (and losers) are:

Rookie of the Year – Maggie Barry, for her relentless sledging of Andrew Williams and her mocking of Phil Goff during the campaign

Worst SMOG – Darien Fenton, for her stupid and ill advised attacked against a Kiwi icon. This stupidity and the resulting media storm probably cost Labour a good 2-3% of the party vote. She scored 63% in the Army vote.

Best Political Jounalist – Sean Plunket for skewering Phil Goff and his silly police numbers claims during the election campaign.

Best Political Blog – my loyal army members voted overwhelmingly for me. However I’d like to award Red Alert an award for providing me and other bloggers with endless mirth and opportunity to mock.

Worst Politician: Darien Fenton won this with 51% of the vote.  She epitomises the nastiness of Labour. Her attack on the Mad Butcher in the middle of the election campaign just shows how truly nasty she is.

Worst Political Blog: No contest here, The Standard won this despite all the self proclaimed technical genius of Lynn Prentice.

Worst Political Journalist - Patrick Gower, for his tirade against “dirty deals” under MMP, which all happened to involve right-leaning parties, whilst ignoring the fact that Labour kept Jim Anderton in Wigram for years by standing dud candidates, and that the Greens were openly encouraging people to give the electorate votes to Labour, and in the case of Kevin Hague, actually bragging about voting for another candidate rather than for himself. Had Gower been as acid-tongued towards the Left as he was to the Right, he could have been nominated for best journalist; as it stands he is a partisan hack.

Best Electorate MP – Damien O’Connor by  nose. There were just 6 votes in it and second place winner Sam Lotu Iiga. An honourable mention there for Sam.

Best Minister – Judith Collins took this out, she smacked around Corrections, implemented container cells and launched private prisons again, replaced Barry Matthews. In Police she turned around morale, gave Howard Broad his beans, sidelined useless contenders for his replacement and got in a solid Commissioner that the troops respected. She also stepped up to take the hard jobs that Simon Power refused to do, the implementation of 3 strikes, car crushing legislation and dealing with a wayward Supreme Court judge. One of the things she pushed for as well as Minister for Veterans Affairs is the funding of travel for Veterans going to commemorations. Wayne Mapp dropped the ball on that one and Crusher again stepped up to clean the mess.

Worst List MP – Darien Fenton, she takes out her 3rd Oil award. Spectacular consistency taking out all the awards for worst. Worst SMOG, Worst Politician and Worst List MP.

These awards speak for themselves. Though I must point out that David Shearer really needs to axe Darien Fenton, she has manged to become New Zealands most loathed politician, she is easily costing Labour 5 in the polls.

The nominations were unequivocal.

Duncan Garner – one commenter notes:

…knew there was nothing of note in the “tea tapes”, so while he had opportunity to do some real journalism and ask real questions that affect the nation he couldn’t get tea bags from his mind.

Patrick Gower – Inventory2 notes:

for his tirade against “dirty deals” under MMP, which all happened to involve right-leaning parties, whilst ignoring the fact that Labour kept Jim Anderton in Wigram for years by standing dud candidates, and that the Greens were openly encouraging people to give the electorate votes to Labour, and in the case of Kevin Hague, actually bragging about voting for another candidate rather than for himself. Had Gower been as acid-tongued towards the Left as he was to the Right, he could have been nominated for best journalist; as it stands he is a partisan hack.

Brian Rudman – constant whining about the spending of more and more public money on his pet projects, notably a theatre.

Barry Soper – One commenter summarises:

He has a cultivated, pompous accent, wears bow ties and has created the neologistic title of Chief Political Reporter. Just plain dislikeable as a person.

Second, he is demonstrably thick. No explanation required and his tiresome waffle which plagiarises the analysis of others dilutes the quality of the Radio Network commentary.

Thirdly he is a Helen Clark sycophant. I recall him saying on several occasions that Prime Minister Key had approached him and said “You don’t like me Barry do you” to which his sagacious and insightful advice had been something like ” you should study Helen Clark and learn how to be Prime Minister”.

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Both Stuff and TV3 are making the news not reporting it. Both organisations are talking about a leadership change within the Maori party. Stuff calls it a “leadership struggle” with no evidence to back this up and TV3′s Patrick Gower (no nickname anymore, doesn’t deserve it) uses words like rolled, challenge and the like.

Patrick Gower, especially, is now over egging a valid leadership change in the Maori party. With 3 MPs and both existing leaders signaling retirement, along with their policy of having co-leaders it makes sense to change Pita Sharples out for Te Ururoa Flavell. It is best to do it now as well straight after the election.

Regan at Throng comments on the difference between the way the media are ass-kissing Labour for their leadership change but spiking the Maori party:

Patrick Gower’s story only covered the potential negative aspects of a change in leadership within the Maori Party and none of the potential positives. At the same time, the Labour Party leadership changes are being reported as a potentially positive rejuvenation. Prior to this election, it was common knowledge that Pita Sharples would be retiring at the next one. Phil Goff, on the other hand, never hinted that there would be a change of leadership within the Labour Party after the election. What is the big surprise here then?  And isn’t straight after an election the best time to make changes?  What is the media’s agenda in presenting the stories like this?

Regan makes valid points. When you look at the electoral activism, by TV3 in particular, in the mainstream media you have to wonder whether or not they do actually have an agenda, even if that agenda is simple nihilism and chaos.

Fresh from savaging Patrick Gower, Karl du Fresne looks at the parlous state of TV3 and wonders if there is a campaign being run.

Now I don’t normally subscribe to the theories fo the either the left wing or the right wing nut jobs who think that this paper or that paper is bias for or against them. I know enough people on both sides or the argument that assert that the NZ Herald is bias against them to know that the NZ Herald sits fair and square int he middle. Sure they have left wing columnists and also right wing columnists, but the fact that equal numbers of people say the NZ Herald is bias against their point of view tends to support my view that they are ok. Now I Must say the same cannot be said of the Herald on Sunday.

Anyway a professional journalist like Karl du Fresne is likewise loathe to point the finger so things must be really bad at TV3 for him to be prompted to write about it.

I should state here that I am not a supporter of Key or the National Party (I’m certainly right of centre, but I’ve voted for Labour far more often than for National), and I repeat that I’m not in the habit of alleging institutional editorial bias based on one or two examples. Now and again a report may lean one way or the other, but generally things balance out in the long run. What worries me about 3 News is that a persistent pattern seems to have emerged. And what finally convinced me that the channel has abandoned all semblance of political neutrality was its screening last night of a pseudo-documentary entitled Inside Child Poverty, written and presented by Bryan Bruce.

I say pseudo- documentary because it was an undisguised, overwrought piece of hand-wringing political polemic that made no pretence of objectivity or balance. To screen it at any time would have courted controversy, but to show it in prime time just three days before a general election couldn’t be construed as anything but a deliberate attempt to tilt the political playing field in Labour’s favour.

That couldn’t have been clearer than when the host – who clearly aspires to be New Zealand’s answer to the sanctimonious John Pilger – genuflected, metaphorically speaking, before the Michael Joseph Savage monument and reminded us of Labour’s proud historical commitment to feed, clothe and house the poor. Another overtly political moment occurred when Bruce asked rhetorically: “Who builds state houses? Labour. Who sells them? National.”

I waited at the end for the announcement that this had been a party political broadcast. It never came.

I wonder if Patrick Gower will go poke a camera in Jacinda Ardern’s face with evidence emerging of a dirty deal between the Greens and Labour? Fat chance he only wants to abuse and door-step Nats and Act candidates.

Here’s more proof of the hypocrisy of the Greens and Labour. Couple this with the video evidence of Greens campaigning on behalf of Jacinda.

This is from Jacinda Ardern’s latest pamphlet.

Karl du Fresne writes about Patrick Gower:

He is a journalistic picker of scabs, a scavenger who swoops on the wounded. He scans the political landscape looking for any story that, with judicious editing and sneering voice-over, can be manipulated for maximum effect.

The Gower approach illustrates two trends in modern political journalism. One is to strive at all costs for what former British prime minister Tony Blair called “impact” – something to excite the public blood lust.

The other is to put the journalist at the centre of the story. The modern political reporter is no longer content to be a passive observer, but wants to be a player – a maker and breaker of careers.

Despite all their efforts to help Winston Peters and promote themselves, Duncan Garner and Patrick Gower must be a bit disappointed with their efforts.

This is the second poll today that also shows Labour still slipping and the Greens hoovering up their support.

Labour must be despondent, there isn’t a single thing they can do to lift their ratings despite the best efforts of the media to assist them this week.

This storm in a teapot story is making me angry.

TV3 is milking it for all its worth, and the tipline is telling me that Bryce Johns  from the Herald On Sunday has been bragging about the illegal taping. Perhaps while he is bragging about that he might enlighten the media to the complaints he has had to deal with regarding the Prego incident and Bradley Ambrose/White.

It’s beginning to look like a personal crusade from some in the media who clearly want to spice up the election campaign, boost their personal profile, and sell a few newspapers or advertising minutes.

Thanks to the illegal behaviour of those with the tapes, we now all know that John Key appears to have said Winston’s support base is dying off. Um, hello – this is not news.

As for the media behaviour, I guess this is what we should come to expect.  TV3 and Campbell Live are big fans of the secret recording – Garner played it for all it was worth at the last election and took tapes from a Green activist who he refused to name.

Why did Garner refuse to name Kees Keiser?  Because Garner loved the attention and didn’t want to have his source challenged before he’d created as much mess as he possibly could.

Garner and his mate Gower are off down the same path this election. Forget the European crisis, let’s make the election all about us. Forget the Greens illegal promotor statements, this is all about us.

As self-appointed TV personalities, Garner and Gower could themselves become targets for people with secret recordings in the future – and they’d only have themselves to blame.  Someone with Garners predilection for the ladies could well be caught in a secret recroding stings pants down.

Public interest?  Give me a break.

Well I certainly hope for their sake that they remember the way they’re behaving if they ever go to a bar or restaurant or some chicks hotel room and have a private conversation or worse that gets taped.