The
1982 Split Enz’ song, ‘Six Months in a Leaky Boat’,
sounds like it was written as a celebration of the European colonisers’
pioneering spirit. And to a degree that
is right. But it was also written as a metaphor for lead singer Tim Finn's nervous breakdown.
During the 2014 general election,
with the change of just one word, it was also an apt metaphor for the
jaw-dropping ethical breakdown behind the National government’s shonky overview of
key political portfolios and systems in this country.
Initially, after the release of Nicky
Hager’s book ‘Dirty Politics’,
which revealed a previously secret series of emails between right-wing attack
bloggers and right-wing Beehive insiders, the public's focus was on the security
and intelligence system, for which John Key was the overseeing Minister. Next to come under
scrutiny was the justice
portfolio under Minister Judith Collins.
Although in the book it was Collins who was shown to be the plug-in plug-out point for how attack politics had poisoned New
Zealand’s political environment, it was Key who was shown to have been the
biggest benefactor of that poison. That fact was confirmed by his first response to the book.
Without having read it, he called Hager a ‘screaming left wing conspiracy theorist’ and labelled the book as nothing more than a selective compilation of illegally hacked and leaked emails from an unknown source, which he said Hager had strung together with lies and supposition in order to show National in the worst light possible.
Without having read it, he called Hager a ‘screaming left wing conspiracy theorist’ and labelled the book as nothing more than a selective compilation of illegally hacked and leaked emails from an unknown source, which he said Hager had strung together with lies and supposition in order to show National in the worst light possible.
Hager’s politics remain unknown ot this day, but in 2014 he was
an internationally renowned and respected investigative journalist who has already shown his willingness to expose the shady dealings of any government; for example his 2002 ‘Seeds of Distrust’ earned him Helen Clark’s undying enmity.
In any event, to prove
his points about Hager and the book, all Key had to do was release all the emails between Beehive insiders and the attack bloggers that
showed National in a positive light.
But he didn't do that. Instead, whenever a microphone came near him, he just chanted a litany of lines that pretty much boiled down to “The New Zealand public aren’t interested in dirty politics. Nothing to see here. Move on.”
To his credit, Radio New Zealand’s Guyon Espiner was one
of the few MSM
journalists not to have let Key get away with that.
But what completely undermined Key were
two stubbornly irrefutable facts. First, the leaker released into the public domain not only all the emails behind Dirty Politics, but thousands of others which were not used in the book. And second, contrary to Key's line, a large section of the public were intensely interested in reading, digesting and understanding the dirty politics exposed by both the book and the emails.
The impact was domino-like. Within a week, Judith Collins resigned as the result of another email leak - not from the original leaker but from one of the attack bloggers. The email showed that Collins was gunning for the Director of the SFO at the time, who happened to be investigating her richlist chums in Hanover Finance. It also showed that Collins and her chums were interested in taking down the FMA for the same reason.
Apparently the blogger thought that his email was about to be leaked anyway by Nicky Hager's source and wanted to give Key a headsup that more grief was coming his way. Key then released the email and used it as his excuse to finally dump Collins and make it look like it had nothing to do with Hager's book.
Ironically, it turned out that the email wasn't one that Hager's source had anyway. But its release by John Key meant the public's focus then widened to also include the finance system and its regulatory bodies the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Markets Authority.
Of course the finance portfolio was supposed to have been under the oversight of then Finance Minister, Bill English. But it seemed that Collins and her crew had done a better job of watching it then he had
Apparently the blogger thought that his email was about to be leaked anyway by Nicky Hager's source and wanted to give Key a headsup that more grief was coming his way. Key then released the email and used it as his excuse to finally dump Collins and make it look like it had nothing to do with Hager's book.
Ironically, it turned out that the email wasn't one that Hager's source had anyway. But its release by John Key meant the public's focus then widened to also include the finance system and its regulatory bodies the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Markets Authority.
Of course the finance portfolio was supposed to have been under the oversight of then Finance Minister, Bill English. But it seemed that Collins and her crew had done a better job of watching it then he had
To paraphrase Split Enz, ‘Ship-wrecked love can be cruel. Oh come on, don’t be fooled. We just spent six years in a leaky boat. Lucky just to keep afloat.’
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