Philip Field

Yesterday I sat through an excruciating hour and half listening to Phil Goff parrot his strap lines like a poorly trained monkey.

When I made those 50 odd videos for the countdown, I got Goff’s mannerisms and speech patterns down pat. He hasn’t changed. Boredom was the reason I miseed this gem:

Labour’s not ruling out cutting a post election deal with Winston Peters and New Zealand First.

Phil Goff’s made the admission to Mike Hosking during Newstalk ZB’s leader’s breakfast broadcast this morning.

“Look, we’ll have a look at what the election throws up and who we need to talk to,” he says.

Asked if he did need to talk to Mr Peters, would he, Mr Goff replied “I haven’t ruled that out.”

So as we have known all along Labour are quite prepared to do a deal with the most corrupt politician in New Zealand history after Philip Field.

A vote for Labour is a vote for Winston Raymond Peters, 65, pensioner of St Mary’s Bay.

Phil Goff needs Hone Harawira, Winston Peters, the Greens and Peter Dunne to get across the line…maybe…depends on the numbers, right now they aren’t even close.

There is a word for the actions of someone who asks for money for access to or action from a minister:

A key aide to a Government minister asked for money in an email that also discussed putting “political pressure” on an issue.

Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples’ electorate manager Martin Cooper wrote to a local property owner that he wanted money, then spoke of contacting a Government minister.

It led to a call for police to become involved after details were passed to Local Government Minister Rodney Hide.

Cooper named Hide as one of the people he planned to write to as part of a campaign of “political pressure”.

“I’ve never seen a more serious situation with anyone employed by Parliamentary Service,” Hide said.

Cooper could not be reached for comment but last night had full support from Sharples.

The MP was approached with the emails but refused to read them. “I support Martin 100 per cent. He’s a leader among his people,” he said.

Emails obtained by the Herald on Sunday showed Cooper was hired to help with the sale of the former headquarters of the Auckland chapter of the Black Power gang.

That word is corruption. It is especially approriate considering it involved one of New Zealand’s largest gangs.

Pita Sharples should be distancing himself from this not supporting him. Philip Field went to jail for accepting tiling and other “gifts”.

This is why I keep calling for an Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Looks like serious trouble brewing in Labour today.

From Stuff: Labour in crisis talks over allegations against MP – sources

From NZ Herald: Labour stays silent on MP allegations

From what I understand about this story there is likely to be a resignation unless Labour goes all Philip Field again. My good Labour sources tell me that Annette King is advising to tough it out. I hope Labour and the MP concerned does that, it will mean weeks of headlines.

If a Labour Mp was going to get snapped for indiscriminate rooting I would have picked The Mangrove, but since the victim here is apparently a bloke it can’t be him. Unless he has turned.

Meanwhile iPredict stocks for Judith Tizard to return to parliament have sky-rocketed, suggesting it is a Labour list MP in trouble.

Labour better hope their secret deal with Judith Tizard NOT to return holds tight, but then again the next 5 on the list are a bunch of useless twats too.

For now I better go looking through Youtube for some old Tina Turner songs.

Good grief. If we had all believed Phil Goff and his muck-raking troll Pete Hodgson we should now be seeing a by-election in Botany. Unfortunately for Labour and its schemers they were a long, long way short on this one.

In fact if you compare the $500 odd that Pansy Wong has to pay back with say…Clayton Cosgrove and his magical missing suits at $1000 a pop, three in a year, or Chris Carter and his astounding and prolific travel arrangement you have to really wonder if it shouldn’t be Labour politicians falling on their swords.

The reports reviews the total subsided international air travel since 2003. For Pansy Wong it is $27,000 against the average for an MP of $60,000. And Sammy Wong’s travel is also below the average for a spouse – $26,000 against the average of $49,000.

What I want to know now is which MPs and their spouses are above the average…we should be looking very very closely at their expenses. If Pansy Wong is found to have breached and she and her husband are less than average spenders then pure mathematics suggests that the ones that are above average are probably breaching a whole lot more.

Phil Goff, desperate to salvage some dignity, has of course labelled the report a whitewash. Perhaps we should remind him of what a whitewash really looks like, it was called the Ingram report and was used by Labour, Helen Clark and Philip Field to claim it exonerated the now incarcerated , convicted corrupt Labour politician.

The Labour Party is facing another corruption scandal and at the same time bringing their chosen candidate Len Brown into the murky midst of the corruption allegations.

We also have the ridiculous situation where Lianne Dalziel and Phil Goff say they support the the changes to the name suppression legislation and yet there is a candidate in the local body elections before the courts afraid of his own name, all while there is an election going on. The total irony of course is that “Patsy” Dalziel runs her own private name suppression against me by refusing to mention me or the name of my blog, instead calling it “that other blog”.

I would expect to see the Labour Party now trotting off to the high court in the morning seeking to lift the veil of secrecy that is now smearing every candidate in South Auckland and in particular in Papatoetoe.

Labour still has to apologise for supporting, to the bitter end, the career of Taito Philip Field, they have only so far acknowledged the verdict of the court. The court which found the former Labour minister and MP guilty of corruption and perjury. They only cut Field loose when he suggested he might go independent.

Though is it any wonder that Labour finds themselves in this predicament when their own leader (pro-tem) has authorised on their website a sign from the 70s suggesting to Vote…and Vote Labour again?

Labour and by default Len Brown have a real credibility issue in the final week of the campaign. They appear, by using weasel words and excuses to be aiding and abetting even more electoral fraud.

Labour stand accused of treating democracy with disdain, they have jacked up local selections, supported convicted corrupt politicians, used parliamentary resources to campaign on behalf of Len Brown, solicited funds using council emails (Bernard Orsman, bizarrely, even says he has seen no evidence of this) and now it appears to have actively cultivated a culture of corruption and vote rigging.

They need to do something really rather drastic to recover their shattered image. There is an old adage about Labour’s “get out the vote” strategy, and that is they like to get their people to vote early and to vote often. That certainly looks like the case here. All campaign the Labour and Len Brown spin weasels have been talking up their “get out the vote” strategy in South Auckland and just this week the media have been noticing that South Auckland appears to have voted early.

The spin weasels will be working over-time tonight for sure. The evidence has been building and has now become overwhelming that Labour has a systemic culture of corruption.

Are Labour corrupt? You bet they are.

The NZ Herald has an editorial today about the proposed Watchdog on open government.

Since its introduction by the Muldoon government in 1982, the Official Information Act has been a powerful force for transparency and accountability.

The public, as well as journalists, have benefited from the release of information detailing the inner workings of central and local government. But, as a just-released Law Commission issues paper makes clear, the legislation is due for an overhaul. Updating is essential, given the manner in which the digital revolution has driven social and culture change, including a greater expectation of openness and availability of information.

Bloggers are also increasingly using the OIA to go digging.

Equally, the law has not been free of flaws. Some public servants have been reluctant to apply it in both letter and spirit, choosing to stall or thwart public access to documents. Almost a decade ago, the Ombudsman’s alarm over this tendency sparked a call for the development of an “official information” culture that acknowledged both bureaucrats’ responsibility and the public’s ultimate ownership of information.

The Law Commission paper, entitled The Public’s Right to Know, treads a similar path but takes a different tack. Agencies, it says, should take “all reasonable steps” to make information proactively available, taking account of factors such as the information they held and the public interest in it.

This is important. In order to hold politicians to account you need to ask questions, but the hardest part is asking the right question so that you get the information you are really after. My experience with the OIA is a mixed bag. Currently I have two requests that have passed the 20 days months ago. The Police haven’t even acknowledged that they received one of the requests.

The issue paper also tackles the vexed issue of the withholding of information. The act is based on the principle that information should be made available unless there is good reason for refusing it. Commercially sensitive material or privacy issues offers such grounds, but this has always been a subject of confusion. Usefully, the paper suggests clearer guidelines could be prepared from the body of precedent, based on case notes of the Ombudsmen, who handle appeals if government departments refuse to release information.

The Office of the Ombudsman has to some degree already taken over this guidance function. But this has come about by default, rather than design.

The issues paper notes that no body is, in fact, responsible for championing open government or acting as a watchdog of underlying open government principles. It asks whether a separate body, an Information Commission, should be charged with this role. It would operate along the same lines as, and be a counterpoint to, the Privacy Commission.

That is easily solved, and this blogger has constantly called for the establishment of just such an independent institution. In Australia they have the Independent Commission Against Corruption. We should similarly have one here. There have been many examples where a truly Independent Commission Against Corruption would have been able to act and get better answers than the faux investigations intimated at the time.

An ICAC could have looked into things like the pledge card and the Owen Glenn donations, Taito Philip Field, like inappropriate use of computers and using parliamentary services staff to campaign, as well as the scandals like in NSW.

As is usual these days with the Law Commission, they made a good start, but lacked the bottle to further where needed. One such extension would be to apply the OIA to parliamentary services spending. The politicians will never let that open as long as their troughing arses are pointing at the ground. Labour especially, but all parties want OIA requests on their spending like they want to catch cancer. Yet there really is no other way to hold them to account and waiting 3 years to toss them out is far too long.

Coupled with the extensions to the OIA and the establishment of an ICAC the next step to improve accountability of politicians at all levels from local body to parliament would be the power of recall.

Could Chris Carter win a by election as an Independent? Probably.

The logic is pretty simple. If Labour put up a candidate, Chris stands, and National’s vote stays where it was in 2008, National would win. So Labour would not run a candidate, as National did not against the un-flushable grogan, Winston Raymond Peters, 65, Pensioner of no fixed abode, in 1993 in Tauranga.

Te Atatu is definitely in play now, either immediately in a by-election or next year in the general election. In 2008 the party vote in Te Atatu was:

Labour 13,171
National 13,183

That Chris Carter won handily with a greater vote than Labour itself shows how effective as a local MP he is compared with the tide running out on Labour. He is now in the same position as Taito Philip Field was when he openly declared war against the party. If Labour chucks him out, remember corruption is ok, but disloyalty gets you chucked out, then Labour has more than a couple of problems.

1. They need to select a new candidate, Phil Twyford is the obvious choice, but then again he has had 4 cracks already and a fifth would be the death knell for him. He is disliked by the union faction though and would struggle to gain selection.
2. Peter Kaiser, Chris Carter’s partner is also the chair of the LEC. This is problematic in trying to pick a new candidate, because the electorate organisation is solidly behind Chris Carter and if they stay put then Head Office faces an embarrassment in over-riding the democratically elected LEC.
3. If Twyford, by a minor miracle did end up winning a by-election then Labour has the Tizard effect come into play again.
4. Chris Carter will not be alone. That he got sprung and blew the coup before they all lined up behind Cunliffe is problematic. But you can be sure that Carter’s thoughts are not alone. Phil Goff is only leader today because the leaked letter was supposed to run a few days in the press in order to de-stabilise, all ready for caucus on Tuesday when the knife would have gone in. Goff has only postponed that. It is inevitable that he will be knifed, it is now only a matter of when.

National too has problems. If I was Chris Carter contemplating sticking it up Labour then I would resign right now and force a by-election. Tau Henare can’t beat Chris Carter and right now he is the only person named for Te Atatu. If National decided on selecting another candidate then time starts expiring pretty quickly in sourcing a quality candidate who could take on Chris Carter in Te Atatu. If National ran Tau Henare then Chris Carter would be returned as an independent easily defeating anyone Labour cares to put up.

Politics just got very, very interesting.

As for Chris Carter, I extend to him a free post, unedited, on whatever her would like to say, in order to get his story across without spin. Take this offer as part of my mea culpa for my previous error over the phone bills affair. I’d love to present his story un-filtered by the constraints of the MSM formats.

Philip Field has been jailed for 6 years after being found guilty of corruption and bribery whilst a Labour Party MP.

The Labour Party has issued a pathetic press release. They should be apologising to all the people Philip Field ripped off and rorted while he was corrupting and bribing his way to power.

Helen Clark described Philip Field as being “guilty of nothing more than being helpful”. Labour are vicariously liable for his actions by condoning and supporting and defending his actions for so long.

Remember too that Labour never threw him out of the party until he transgressed by saying he “may” stand as an independent. Until he said that he was getting the best defense from the highest office in the land.

I hope Judith Collins has arranged a nice cold container cell for the criminal ex-Labour MP.

Still labour and Philip Field go down in history as having the first ever MP convicted of bribery and corruption, the pity is it probably shouldn’t be the last either.

Michael Earley has conveniently supplied me and others with a fisking of Jetstar’s response to their abysmal service thus far. Notye to Jetstar, don’t piss off people who know how to effectively use social media and are friends with nasty bloggers.

Over the past 4 days, Jetstar has had multiple opportunities to come clean in the media.  At every opportunity Jetstar’s Australian PR office has lied to the NZ Media about what happened in the vain hope that the story would not blow over.

This incident could have been fixed had your staff behaved appropriately and within the terms and conditions as outlined on the Jetstar website.  It did not help that your staff attempted to get my property confiscated, prevented me from leaving the building, called the police and security on us, and to top it off – your staff member “Alfred” (he was attempting to hide his name badge from view) even challenged us to go to the media.

So far your PR team have lied at every opportunity – and have been caught out at every opportunity:

Jetstar Comment: “but the airline says they were eight minutes late – arriving 22 minutes before departure time.”
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10580230

Our Comment: we were at the airport at approximately 3:05pm, and I received a phone call at 3:14pm from a friend in Australia that I had to drop due to your staff refusing to serve us, 18 minutes before you first claim that we were even in the airport. I am happy to provide Vodafone records that will back this up.

Jetstar Comment: “Cann says Jetstar carries out two mandatory PA announcements advising the check in is shutting. “
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10580230

Our Comment: These announcements were not made until we informed your staff member (Alfred).  He then proceeded to announce that the checkins were closed while we were at his counter.

Jetstar Comment: “She says Jetstar also closes its check-in barriers and moves any passengers in a queue on a closing flight forward.”
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10580230
Our Comment: No barriers were closed, and the only passenger who was moved was a middle aged man in a blue jacket with full beard, who was directly behind me in the Queue.  He was checked in but we were not, even though we were shouting ‘we are going to Wellington too!’

Jetstar Comment: “Jetstar spokeswoman Simone Pregellio said staff told her that when they closed for check-ins there were no other Wellington-bound passengers visible “in the vicinity”.”
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/2524842/Travellers-stranded-by-check-in-rule

Our Comment: We were at the front of the line, making it very clear that we we were going to Wellington, as were numerous other passengers behind us.

Jetstar Comment: “Ms Pregellio said staff had been verbally abused and felt threatened enough to call airport security.”
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/2524842/Travellers-stranded-by-check-in-rule

Our Comment: No passengers threatened Jetstar staff, but Jetstar staff did behave inappropriately.  A Blonde staff member in black jacked tryed to force me to give up my cell phone, and an island woman in an orange jacket attempted to physically block me from exiting the building untill I informed her if she touched me I would press charges.

Jetstar Comment: “Jetstar spokeswoman Simone Pregellio acknowledged having issued incorrect information initially about how late the passengers arrived, but insisted they were all too late.

Although she told the Herald on Sunday they arrived 22 minutes late, and eight minutes before departure time, she said yesterday she had incorrectly transposed the figures.

That meant the passengers arrived eight minutes late, and 22 minutes before departure.”
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10580182

Our Comment: I was already on the phone to the media, earlier than Simone Claims we were even in the building.  She is clearly lying.

Jetstar Comment: “Jetstar corporate communications manager Simone Pregellio said the first contact anyone had with the stranded passengers was eight minutes before the plane was to take off.”
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10579751

Our Comment: We were in the airport at 3:05pm.  I have phone logs at 3:14pm which is 26 minutes prior to the plane taking off.  Simone is lying.

Jetstar Comment: “She said a service announcement was made saying the flight was due to close and no passengers made themselves known.”
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10579751

Our Comment: No Service Announcement was made, and we were at the front of the queue making it VERY clear where we are going. Simone is lying.

Jetstar Comment: “The manager did a “queue comb”, asking if anyone in line was waiting for the Wellington flight.”
Source:  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10579751

Our Comment: This is actually correct, the Manager did go through the queue and chose to check in the Middle aged male behind us.  He later denied it.

Jetstar Comment: “”They did not identify anyone else. When they determined there was no one else they closed the flight,” she said.”
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10579751

Our Comment: Again false, as per earlier comments, security camera footage will confirm this. 

Jetstar Comment: “But Pregellio was adamant staff made “every effort when the flight was closing to see if anyone else was there.We’re in the business of carrying people and we want people to make every one of our flights.”"
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10579751&pnum=2

Our Comment: Jetstar made no effort whatsoever to do so, we were clearly telling staff we were on the flight and they deliberately ignored us.

Jetstar Comment: “The airline says it is standard practice and staff tried to find anyone still queuing at check-in.”
Source: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kiwis-struggle-with-Jetstars-tough-check-in-policy/tabid/423/articleID/109585/cat/64/Default.aspx

Our Comment: as per our comments above, Jetstar made no such effort

Jetstar Comment: “A Jetstar spokesperson says the group arrived much too late to board the flight.”
Source: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/06/21/1245b656bc74

Our Comment: as per comments above, incorrect, refer to security footage and timing of media phone calls.

Jetstar Comment: “Jetstar spokesman Simon Westaway said that during boarding of Saturday’s 3.40pm Auckland-Wellington flight “a number of people arrived 22 minutes after the scheduled close-out of the flight”.”
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2522882/Jetstar-unrepentant-about-leaving-rugby-fans-behind

Our Comment: Again this has proved to be false, Jetstar have revised their timing but it is still incorrect.

Jetstar Comment: “As long as passengers were in the check-in queue 30 minutes prior to the flight departure time, they would be processed and allowed to board, he told Radio New Zealand.”
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2522882/Jetstar-unrepentant-about-leaving-rugby-fans-behind
Source: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/06/22/1245b6641526

Our Comment: We were in the queue 35 minutes prior to departure time. We were not processed or allowed to board

Jetstar Comment: “Mr Westaway said Jetstar made public calls warning a flight was about to close and undertook “queue combing” looking for any remaining passengers still in the queue.”
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2522882/Jetstar-unrepentant-about-leaving-rugby-fans-behind
Source: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/06/22/1245b6641526

Our Comment: No such call was made untill after we made it to check in and Alfred told us the desk was closed. He then made the call after we mentioned no announcemnet was made. Again Jetstar lying.

Our expectations – none of these are unfair or unrealistic:

• Jetstar release the security camera footage to the media
• Jetstar admit that their staff did not follow proceedure
• Jetstar PR admit that they have lied about the incident to the media on multiple occasions
• Jetstar offer all affected passengers full refunds
• Jetstar offer compensation to all those for actual costs incurred (i.e. additional flights rebooked, accomdation required, loss of income etc)
• Jetstar staff apologise for lying to the media
• Jetstar staff apologise for refusing to serve paying customers
• Jetstar staff apologise for acting in appropriately towards customers (i.e. trying to get phone confiscated, refusing to let members of public leave buidling etc).

That is a fairly comprehesive destruction of the pathetic PR job Jetstar has done. my advice to them would be to STFU and start hiring people who are effective with Social Media, blogging and Twitter to start mitigating your PR disaster.

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

Even the Police are in line with the the rest of mainstream New Zealand in not believing the Crime Statistics.

The problem is clear to all, the statistics are for recorded crime, but Kiwis are now becoming so used to cops not turning up that they don’t even bother “recording” crime anymore.

Senior Constable Craig Prior of Christchurch said he had criminals in his car admit to carrying out 100 car break-ins in a night, but only three complaints arose.

Mark Leys, a Police Association representative in Counties Manukau, told of a man linked to 15 burglaries in Manurewa who admitted carrying out a further 60. Most had not been reported.

Mr Leys himself had not reported two thefts of property from his car, and an experienced Christchurch officer, whose vehicle was hit three times, reported none of them.

“I know there’s so little chance of catching the person. I think that would be the line of thinking for many people,” he said.

This is in line with drops in recrded crimes like burglary, I know for sure that the Police in Counties Manaukau have discouraged the local business associations from reporting suspicious activity etc so their stats don’t blow out.

Hhowever the galring statistic which no one except astute bloggers have reported on was the increase in violent crime.