Peter Goodfellow

Guyon Espiner really does nail Tweet of the day.

Gilmore says attacks were made on his integrity. The attackers who hit such a small target should be praised for superb marksmanship.

— Guyon Espiner (@GuyonEspiner) May 12, 2013

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It looks like the back-room boys have done their work after the call went out mid-week that the board wasn’t getting anywhere.

Some calls have been made, some stern words been had, and Aaron Gilmore is gone. Job done.

Disgraced National List MP Aaron Gilmore has announced he will resign from Parliament.

“It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that I announce my intention to resign from Parliament,” Mr Gilmore said in a statement.

“After taking counsel from colleagues and family in recent days, I have decided that to stay on in Parliament would only serve to cause my loved ones more upset, and cause me undeserved further stress.”

Mr Gilmore said media scrutiny in recent days since reports of his night out in Hanmer Springs where he was abusive to a waiter had “put me and those who are important to me under immense pressure with an attempt to discredit me”.

“I have made mistakes. I am human. But the attacks on my integrity have started taking a toll on those around me and this is unfair on them.”

Mr Gilmore said he’d advised the National Party’s whips of his decision.

“I also want to make clear my support for the National Party and Prime Minister John Key remains unwavering.”

Questions now need to be asked about some key members of the board and their performance over the past few weeks, notably Peter Goodfellow and Roger Bridge.

A couple of phone calls and the knifing was done…that is how it should be done not endless conference calls with yelling and finger-pointing.

Peter Goodfellow’s fundraising prowess has disappeared, with National only raising a bit over $750,000 last year, after raising more than $2.6m the year before. Anyone in the business community will not be surprised, as Peter has been lazy when it comes to maintaining relationships with donors.

Sources inside National HQ are saying that the poor fundraising performance means that the Board is seriously thinking about increasing the Victory Fund contribution from electorates.  Read more »

Jackie Blue’s resignation from parliament means that National will need another person to take one for the team in the safe Labour seat of Mt Roskill. Phil Goff holds Roskill with a massive majority of 7,271, so no National candidate has a realistic chance of winning the seat.

National’s stupidity in supporting red seat candidates means it burns through good people who will not want to take a fisting in the ballot box to help out John Key and Steven Joyce and Peter Goodfellow.  After the election the National Party was either dismissive or indifferent to those MPs likely to come back into the house or those who ran in red seats.   Read more »

Grant Robertson is the deputy leader of the Labour Party, and that means he is supposed to be the attack dog. He is supposed to sink his teeth into opponents and hang on grimly. In this role he has been toothless, and I am sure a redneck commenter will explain why.

National have handed up a whole lot of meat for Grant to sink his teeth in but he hasn’t even gummed them. He could start by asking about a senior political figure who has a suppression order over a domestic incident. He could then orchestrate a series of questions about National Party President and Sanford Director Peter Goodfellow’s business dealings starting with their $2.3m fine for deliberate pollution in the United States.

Peter Goodfellow keeps giving Labour free hits, and Grant keeps refusing. Sanford has issues with “slave labour” that are in the public domain, and these come up in the media repeatedly, yet Grant hasn’t asked the tough questions. Labour are supposed to look after the oppressed, yet one of the oppressors has escaped public scrutiny because Grant hasn’t manned up.

Grant could have also asked a series of questions about the investment in a Nelson property that left investors out of pocket for about $5m, with National Party Board Member Roger Bridge, and former Board member Craig Myles being the directors of the company involved.

This may seem a bit minor but Michael Cullen would have made National ministers look corrupt by tough questioning about Goodfellow and Bridge. Cullen would have convinced the New Zealand public that where there was smoke there was fire, and National were dodgy.

If Grant is serious about being Prime Minister he will start savaging National, holding Key to account for the people around him. That’s if he can overcome a habit of a lifetime and bare his teeth.

Pommy Bastard and Prime Minister David Cameron reckons he doesn’t have enough front bums in cabinet, or in parliament.

David Cameron has admitted he has not appointed enough women to his Cabinet and revealed his wife urges him to promote female talent.

The Prime Minister said governments and big companies alike must do much more to encourage and promote women.

Organisations that do not fill half their senior posts with women are missing out on “more than 50 per cent of the talent”, he said.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe his women MPs weren’t up to scratch, or maybe the conservative party have been dead set useless at bringing good women into parliament.  Read more »

David Fisher wrote a scurrilous article about Judith Collins on Saturday. In that story he used a photograph obtained without the consent of the family, taken at David Wong-Tung’s mother’s funeral. That photo was supplied by Clinton Neville Bowerman.

At the time Fisher defended the use of the photograph and the story with numerous tweets. In one tweet he said that this was “how a real newspaper works”. That “real newspaper” though seems to have taken down the photo that they emblazoned all over their website on Saturday…perhaps they aren’t too happy with the sleazy and underhand way with which their top “investigative” reporter obtained that photo.

They probably will be even less happy when they read the news being plastered all over other news sites about Fisher’s source.

NBR yesterday broke the story that Clinton Neville Bowerman is in a spot of bother, again for photographs or video obtained in a dubious manner.

Now I am not one to defend Peter Goodfellow in other matters, everyone knows that, but in this case I think he is being subjected to quite crazy and unhinged behaviour from Bowerman.

Matt Nippert also posted a story at Stuff:   Read more »

David Fisher is really scraping the barrel today with a massive beat up using a stolen photo provided by an alleged dog-napper to write a nothing story:

Truth reports:

The NZ Herald this morning launched an attack on Justice Minister Judith Collins and her husband David Wong-Tung using a photo taken at the funeral of Wong-Tung’s mother.

The story makes allegations that Collins appointed Robert Kee to the Human Rights Commission mainly because Collins’ husband once worked in the same multi-story office building as Kee and Collins also worked on another floor below. It is also alleged that sometime in the 90s they all had drinks together at DeBrett’s bar in the hub of the legal district, where presumably many, many other lawyers also drank.

The reporter who wrote the article, David Fisher, described the article on social media platform Twitter as “how a real newspaper works”.

Oh dear…was the photographer entitled to the photos?  Read more »

Sanford has been fined millions in the US for pollution:

New Zealand fishing company Sanford has been fined US$ 1.9 million (NZ$2.27m) for dumping oil waste at sea then attempting to cover up its actions.

US District Judge Beryl Howell this morning in a hearing in Washington DC also put the company on a three year probation from fishing in US waters.

Last year, listed company Sanford was found guilty in the United States District Court of seven charges relating to the running of its tuna boat, San Nikunau.

The charges followed an inspection of San Nikunau in Pago Pago, American Samoa, in July 2011. US Coast Guard inspectors witnessed crew clearing a bilge by pumping directly overboard without using the oil water separator

At the sentencing hearing Sanford told Judge Beryl Howell the company should be fined no more than US$450,000.

In its submission to the judge, Sanford, whose directors include National Party president Peter Goodfellow, said the court should recognise the company “has been a corporate leader in New Zealand in the development and implementation of sustainability practices”.

But the US Government said Sanford had caused harm to the marine environment in American Samoa. It called for the near-maximum fine of US$3 million, “because it is reasonable that the fine disgorge some amount of profit from defendant Sanford Ltd”.

What does John Key think?

After all, the director of this company is National Party president Peter Goodfellow, who represents the Goodfellow family as significant shareholders of Sanford….and the man John Key chose to be president

Both Brownlee and Goodfellow are muppets. The worry is both of these muppets are involved in selecting candidates, and running hostile whispering campaigns against party members who don’t fit their blinkered world view.

Cabinet minister Gerry Brownlee is ”deeply embarrassed” at getting caught up in an alleged fraud saga that has dragged in senior business figures and ex-All Black Jonah Lomu.

“I didn’t do my research at all . . . I’m just deeply embarrassed I was anywhere near it,” Brownlee said of his short tenure on the board of NZ Casino Services, a company said to be run by alleged fraudster Loizos Michaels.

He was speaking to Fairfax about a court trial where National Party president Peter Goodfellow was giving evidence in Michaels’ trial. Michaels has pleaded not guilty to 31 counts of fraud involving dozens of investors who lost more than $3 million.

Brownlee became a founding director of NZCS on Goodfellow’s recommendation but resigned after a few weeks.

Goodfellow yesterday told told the Auckland District Court how he extricated himself from a supposed casino venture after concluding that the appearance of an alleged conman claiming connections to Macau billionaires “just wasn’t up to scratch”.

The court heard Goodfellow was left $114,000 out of pocket after lending money in August 2007 to old friend and former Christchurch Casino boss Stephen Lyttelton to invest in Michaels’ schemes.

The loans included $64,000 paid in cash, at Lyttelton’s request, which Goodfellow said was “very unusual”.