A Party Of Honourable Men?

Reprehensible: There is much that could be said about Michael Woodhouse, but what would be the point?  Any man who willingly involves himself in a situation as reprehensible as the one depicted in the above photograph has already vouchsafed all that decent people need to know about his character. That there have been no reports of the National MP apologising to Clare Curran, or making any other attempt to atone for this vile incident, merely confirms the futility of pursuing Mr Woodhouse any further.

IT’S ONE OF those rules that every politician lucky enough to have a responsible political mentor learns very early. Never say or do anything that you wouldn’t be happy to see reported on the front page of the daily newspapers.

The former National Party Prime Minister, John Key, must have been blessed with such a mentor at a very early age. No matter how hard the Labour Party trawled through Key’s past (and they trawled very hard indeed!) they always came away empty-handed.

This absence of dirt was all the more remarkable given Key’s chosen profession. Currency traders are notorious for their reckless lifestyles. But, while the future prime minister’s friends and colleagues were winging their way across the Atlantic to sample the manifold delights of New York and Las Vegas, Key was on his way home to his wife and kids in the suburbs. It was almost as if he was proactively protecting himself from the sort of past his political enemies would one day be desperate to exploit.

Clearly, National’s Michael Woodhouse has never made the acquaintance of a responsible political mentor. Had he done so he would never have allowed himself to be photographed holding up a toilet seat with Dunedin South MP Clare Curran’s face attached to it.

One must assume that Mr Woodhouse is far from happy that the image in question, and all it says about him, is everywhere on-line and in the news media. Moreover, if National’s Health spokesperson really has no memory of the circumstances in which this disgusting photograph was taken – and Mr Woodhouse insists that he does not – then he is far beyond the help of any sort of mentor.

Perhaps he should learn how to pray?

There is much more that could be said about Mr Woodhouse, but what would be the point?  Any man who willingly involves himself in a situation as reprehensible as the one depicted in the photograph has already vouchsafed all that decent people need to know about his character. That there have been no reports of the National MP apologising to Ms Curran, or making any other attempt to atone for this vile incident, merely confirms the futility of pursuing Mr Woodhouse any further.

The only entity worth pursuing in this whole sordid story is the National Party itself.

The comic maestro, Groucho Marx, once quipped that he could never join any club that was prepared to have him as a member. What, then, does it say about National that eight years after allowing himself to photographed displaying that appalling toilet seat, Mr Woodhouse remains a member in good standing of both the National Party and its caucus?

More importantly, what does it say about National’s new leader, Todd Muller?

For the sake of argument, let’s give Mr Muller the benefit of the doubt and say that he knew nothing of the toilet seat with Ms Curran’s face on it: that he was as shocked and appalled by its crudity as every other decent New Zealander. But if, as we all hope, that was Mr Muller’s reaction, then are we not entitled to ask why he didn’t take the next obvious step of demanding Mr Woodhouse’s immediate resignation?

Because that is what any decent, honourable leader of a political party looking to become the next government of New Zealand would have done. Such a leader would have transformed this sordid stain on his party’s reputation into a learning opportunity. He would have made it clear to every member of his caucus and party that anyone deriving any sort of perverse excitement from such scatological misogyny had no place in either. He would have used the occasion to reaffirm his determination to elevate politics above the bloody cruelty of the bearpit. To make of the word “honourable” something more than a perfunctory honorific. And, finally, to demonstrate his bona fides, Mr Muller would have tendered his apology to Ms Curran on behalf of every National Party member.

At the time of writing, however, Mr Muller has made no obvious effort to do any of these things. Mr Woodhouse remains a member in good standing of the National Party club.

Which raises the obvious question: If this malodorous boot was on the left foot of New Zealand politics, what would Jacinda Ardern be expected to do?

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 10 July 2020.

A Bloody Great Political Story (From A Parallel Universe).

Things That Make You Go - Hmmmm: “All right. Let me come at this another way. I’m guessing that what you’ve got in that box contains names, dates, bank account numbers – all the details you need to put Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern squarely in the cross-hairs. So, the first question you have to ask yourself is: ‘Why is such politically damaging material sitting in that box-file you’re clutching so tightly?’ Cui bono, Max? Who benefits?”

MAX DIDN’T HEAR Malcolm calling his name. The contents of the box file in front of him were dynamite. Exactly what he’d been hoping for from his informant. Names, dates and amounts – everything he needed to bring Peters to book. He had in his hands the sort of story that turns an unknown young journalist into a household name. Eat your heart out Nicky Hager!

“Max! Mate! What’s up?”

The voice of his old university chum, Malcolm, was the very last thing he wanted to hear. Mad-As-A-Meat-Axe Malcolm – that’s what everyone on his journalism course called him. A crazy left-winger, forever peddling wild conspiracy theories. What the hell did he want?

Max slammed the lid of the box-file shut as Malcolm plonked himself down at Max’s table.

Malcolm raised an eyebrow.

“Something interesting? From your departing friend? He nearly fell over me on his way out? Your source?”

Max couldn’t resist the temptation to skite – just a little.

“You could say that. He’s only handed me a bloody great political story. By the time I’ve knocked it into shape it’ll be on every front page and leading every bulletin.”

“Really? Sounds interesting. May I ask what it’s about?”

“You can ask, Malcolm.” Max smiled ironically, and deposited the box-file on the seat of the empty chair beside him.

“Like that is it? Well, if you won’t tell me, Max, I’ll just have to work it out for myself. A big story you say. And it’s been given to you. What does that tell me? Given your output to date, I’m assuming it’s not an anti-National story. And anyone with a box full of evidence guaranteed to embarrass the powers-that-be wouldn’t bring it to you, they’d offer it to Nicky Hager or Jon Stephenson. Also, your informant appeared to be getting on in years. Not the sort of bright young thing you find hanging around Labour, National and the Greens these days. So, who does that leave? Huh! NZ First! Oh, Max! Tell me you’re not about to launch another donations scandal?”

Max’s mouth fell open. His grip on the box-file tightened appreciably.

“Hah! I’m right aren’t I? Your body language confirms it. So, come on, you might as well tell me.”

“What? And find some garbled version popping up on The Daily Blog or Bowalley Road. I don’t think so!”

“Okay, okay – keep your hair on! I’m a colleague, Max. There’s no chance I’m going to scoop you. I’m just a wee bit curious about your informant. What has he told you about himself?”

“What? You think I’m going to rat out a source? I may not be a trendy-lefty attention-seeker like Hager, but I’m not about to abandon the ethics of my profession – just to satisfy your curiosity.”

“Hmmm. All right. Let me come at this another way. I’m guessing that what you’ve got in that box contains names, dates, bank account numbers – all the details you need to put Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern squarely in the cross-hairs. So, the first question you have to ask yourself is: ‘Why is such politically damaging material sitting in that box-file you’re clutching so tightly?’ Cui bono, Max? Who benefits?”

“Maybe it’s from someone who is sick and tired of Peters' lies. Someone fed up with him pretending to be the people’s friend, while all the time he’s taking wads of cash from his dodgy mates in the racing and fishing industries. Maybe it’s from the sort of guy who makes copies of all the cheques, all the ledger entries, all the bank statements. So that, one day, the world finally gets to see what a fraud that bloody man and his party truly are!”

Malcolm, smiled sadly at his friend. Max, frowning, made to leave.

“Sit down, Max. You need to hear what I’m going to tell you.”

Max, hesitated.

“For a start, mate, nobody outside of Peters' most trusted inner-circle has access to the information you’re apparently carrying under your arm – and they’re not about to share it with anyone – certainly not you. It hasn’t been copied by some disgruntled party president or secretary. Unless life-long confidants and allies like Brian Henry and Doug Woolerton have turned on Peters, the contents of that box-file have been obtained by other … agencies.”

“Like who?” Max resumed his seat.

“Well, you’re spoilt for choice these days, aren’t you. Could be the Police. Could be the SIS, Could be the GCSB. Could even be a private investigation firm with close ties to all of the above. And if you doubt that such things are possible, just have a chat with Martyn Bradbury. On behalf of a friend of the National Party, the Police gained access to all Martyn’s bank accounts. Didn’t even need a warrant – all they had to do was ask.”

“Jeez, Malcolm! You’ve always been a hopeless conspiracy theorist. This is just crap.”

Malcolm gave Max another of his enigmatic smiles and shook his head.

“My money’s on the cops, Max. Or at least some rogue element within their ranks. Maybe they’re in cahoots with the Nats – maybe not. Maybe they’re working with some Black Hat hackers on a free-lance basis. The thing you have to realise, Max, is that conspiracies do happen. They happen all the time. If you knew anything about the intricate workings of the plot that got rid of Peters back in 2008, then you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the possibility that its happening again – and for exactly the same reasons. And, mate, you’re right in the thick of it.”

“You’re fucking crazy, Malcolm! And jealous. You can’t bear it that I’ve got a real story, based on real evidence. Not the half-arsed bullshit you and your commie mates spout off on blogs no one reads. You know nothing about my informant – nothing. You’re just guessing.”

Malcolm rose from his chair and leaned in close.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Max. I’m not guessing at all. I know exactly who your informant is. We’ve been aware of him for years. He’s a senior deep state operative. Yes, that’s right, Max. Your source is a bloody spook! Every one of the documents in that file-box has been obtained illegally for the purposes of ensuring the Coalition Government loses the next election. So, you go right ahead. Write your story. Destroy Peters. Smash NZ First. Smear Jacinda. I can’t stop you. But, while you’re doing it. While you’re bringing the whole damn temple down on our heads. Don’t you dare presume to call yourself a journalist!”

But Max was already out the pub door. The box-file wedged tightly under his arm. Cell-phone glued to his ear.

Malcolm pulled out his own cell-phone.

“Tell Winston – he’s got it all.”

This short story was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 22 November 2019.

Unwilling To Disclose.

Targeted: The great bundle of bearish energy that is my friend, Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury, could not understand why, suddenly, his usually supportive bank was refusing to rollover his website’s, “The Daily Blog’s”, overdraft. Bradbury was not to know that, a short time before, the Police had asked for and been given access to his bank accounts. Nor that the very fact the Police were asking had inscribed a large and very black mark against Bradbury’s name.

ONE OF THE DANGERS of keeping secrets is that the measures required to conceal them all-too-often end up revealing them. The unprecedented Police request to present secret evidence to the Human Rights Commission, for example, raises all sorts of questions about what, or who, they are trying to protect.

The great bundle of bearish energy that is my friend, Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury, could not understand why, suddenly, his usually supportive bank was refusing to rollover his website’s, “The Daily Blog’s”, overdraft. Bradbury was not to know that, a short time before, the Police had asked for and been given access to his bank accounts. Nor that the very fact the Police were asking had inscribed a large and very black mark against Bradbury’s name. Only later would he discover that his bank had not only failed to demand the production of a search warrant, but also neglected to inform Bradbury that the Police were in possession of his financial records.

If this story sounds familiar it’s because it is practically identical to the experience of another left-wing journalist, Nicky Hager. Like Bradbury, Hager was believed to have knowledge of the identity of the hacker calling him or herself “Rawshark”. It was Rawshark who, by his or her own admission, had hacked the computer of Cameron Slater, at that time the proprietor of the “Whale Oil Beef Hooked” blog. It was Rawshark’s purloined trove of Slater’s private e-mails that provided the controversial detail of Hager’s best-selling 2014 exposé, “Dirty Politics”.

In the course of their investigation of the theft of Slater’s e-mails, the Police not only sought and received (once again without the necessary authorisation) Hager’s bank records, but they also raided (this time brandishing a search warrant) his Wellington home and seized his computers.

Subsequent legal challenges by Hager’s lawyer, Felix Geiringer, established that the Police had obtained their search warrant improperly. The issuing judge had not been told that Hager enjoyed the legal protections of a journalist. Also exposed was the practice of Police investigators seeking and being supplied with individuals’ private financial information by an alarming number of the country’s biggest banks. The upshot was the return of Hager’s seized property, the communication of an official Police apology, and the payment of an undisclosed (but reportedly substantial) sum of money to New Zealand’s leading investigative journalist by way of compensation.

When Bradbury discovered that he had fallen victim to the same Police investigation as Hager, and that his reputation and privacy had been similarly violated, he laid a complaint with the Human Rights Commission. Over-worked and understaffed, the Commission took two years to get to Bradbury’s case. In the wake of the Hager settlement, however, Bradbury was confident of a favourable outcome.

His dismay upon discovering that the Police had applied to the Commission for permission to present evidence against him in private is easily imagined. Evidence, moreover, that Bradbury, the complainant, would not be permitted to view or challenge. Up until that moment, Bradbury, like most complainants to the HRC had been representing himself. Now he discovered that he was up against not only the serried ranks of the NZ Police, but also the be-wigged attorneys of Crown Law.

The question is, of course, Why? What, precisely, is the nature of the information which the Police are so determined to keep from public view?

Could it be that the information upon which the Police were persuaded to launch their extraordinary investigation had been supplied to them by one or both of New Zealand’s two national security organisations: the Security Intelligence Service and/or the Government Communications Security Bureau?

If so, then questions would have to be asked about the legal justification for placing journalists and bloggers under such surveillance. Had the requisite interception warrants been supplied – and on what grounds? That Hager and Bradbury were fierce critics of government policies? But, since when is political opposition grounds for spying on New Zealand citizens?

The suspicion arises that in 2014-2015, in some unspecified, possibly unlawful, and highly secretive way, the country’s national security apparatus was working hand-in-glove with senior elements within the police to silence and punish a couple of outspoken critics of the National-led 2008-2017 Coalition Government.

Such a pity that equivalent, over-zealous, investigative efforts were nowhere in evidence when the Christchurch Shooter was planning his homicidal attack.

Disclosure: The author is a personal friend of Martyn Bradbury, and a long-time paid contributor to The Daily Blog.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 5 April 2019.

A Burnt Child: Some Thoughts On Jordan Williams' Successful Defamation Suit Against Colin Craig.

A Burnt Child With No Fear Of Fire: New Zealanders expect their leaders to make informed and sensible political choices. We do not expect them to thrust their hands into one avoidable fire after another and allow them to be burned black.

 

COLIN CRAIG suffers from the political equivalent of leprosy. He lacks the acutely sensitive nerve-endings which allow professional politicians to avoid issues that are too hot to handle. Again and again, Craig has thrust his hands into the fire of political controversy, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly debilitating consequences.

 

An experienced politician would never have written – let alone posted to every New Zealand household – a detailed response to the accusations of his political enemies. If what your opponents are saying about you has gained sufficient currency to require such denials, then it is almost certainly too late for them to do any good.

 

And yet, this is exactly what Craig did. Worse, he wrote the pamphlet himself. Had he employed the services of a professional publicist (who would almost certainly have begged him not to do it) the excruciating embarrassment of the past few weeks could have been avoided.

 

Insulation from reality is, however, one of the besetting tribulations of great wealth. Ordinary folk must present a convincing case for spending millions of dollars. As a highly successful businessman, however, Craig possesses the resources to give his whims and fancies concrete expression. Had these been sound, he could have been another Michael Bloomberg. But, they were not – and he ended up in court.

 

In defending his reputation, the Taxpayers’ Union founder, Jordan Williams, has simultaneously driven a stake through Craig’s political heart and mortally wounded the Conservative Party. Over the weeks of Williams’ defamation action, the nation has looked on, in head-shaking disbelief, as a grown man has been forced to acknowledge, under oath, behaviour that would embarrass a spotty adolescent.

 

Day after day the public has been treated to example after example of Craig’s appalling judgement. New Zealand voters are prepared to cut politicians a great deal of slack when it comes to the sins of the flesh (just ask Shane Jones!) but they will not forgive a consistent pattern of bad decision-making. We expect our leaders to make informed and sensible political choices. We do not expect them to thrust their hands into one avoidable fire after another and allow them to be burned black.

 

But even as they write him off as a passing political curiosity, New Zealanders will likely experience a twinge of sympathy for Craig. From the moment he entered the political arena in 2009, his endearing, almost childlike, faith in the democratic process has touched the hearts of many. Unfortunately, just like Tom Hanks’ character in the movie “Big”, Craig’s teenage-boy-in-a-man’s-body pursuit of godly goals has also been the source of considerable mirth.

 

Craig professed to be shocked by the “dirty politics” of his foes. It is astonishing that he took so long to realise that there is no other kind. He knows that now. In the words of the inimitable American humourist, Mark Twain: “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”

 

This essay was originally posted on the Stuff website on Friday, 30 September 2016.

Investigating The Democratic Sausage: Ika Seafood Bar & Grill’s Table Talk No. 6 “One Year On From Dirty Politics – What Has Changed?”

The Journalist As Hero: “One Year On From Dirty Politics – What Has Changed?” Ika Seafood Restaurant & Bar’s Table Talk No. 6 featured Dirty Politics’ author, Nicky Hager; left-leaning columnist, Dita Di Boni; veteran business writer, Fran O’Sullivan; along with the evening’s emcee, the martyred and marvellous, John Campbell.

 

BOBBY KENNEDY often joked that democracy is like a good sausage: tastes great – but you really don’t want to know what goes into it. Otto von Bismarck said something very similar about the making of laws. Regardless of its provenance, the point being made is an important one. The stuff of which politics is made: self-interest, class prejudice, religious bigotry, economic and social necessity; is often ugly and disreputable. That the final product so often turns out to be publicly palatable, is proof of our politicians’ over-riding need to preserve the system’s legitimacy in the eyes of those who elect them.

 

The distinguishing characteristic of left-wing investigative journalism, however, is that its practitioners are never satisfied with just the taste of Democracy’s sausage. They will not rest until a full list of ingredients, how they were combined, and for how long they’ve been cooked, is prepared and presented to the public. As often as not this is done without the slightest public encouragement, and the results are frequently received with considerable animosity. That’s because Democratic Sausage is generally consumed by the voters in blissful (and often wilful) ignorance of its contents.

 

They really don’t want to know what goes into it.

 

The people attending the Ika Seafood Bar & Grill's Table Talk No. 6, “One Year On From Dirty Politics – What Has Changed?”, disagreed. That’s because the journalists on stage: Dirty Politics’ author, Nicky Hager; left-leaning columnist, Dita Di Boni; veteran business writer, Fran O’Sullivan; and the evening’s emcee, the martyred and marvellous, John Campbell – along with the people packing out the restaurant to hear them – all fervently believe that the voting public not only has the right, but also the duty, to understand how Democratic Sausage is made.

 

There’s no disputing that Hager’s Dirty Politics reveals an unprecedented amount of information about what was going on behind the scenes of New Zealand politics in 2014. The wealth of material contained in Hager’s book could not, however, have been acquired outside of the thoroughly digitalised society we’ve become. Thousands of hacked e-mail communications to and from Cameron Slater’s Whaleoil blogsite had been passed on to Hager, revealing a host of startling connections between Slater, the Prime Minister’s Office, Justice Minister Judith Collins, numerous journalists, and a strange coterie of behind-the-scenes movers and shakers calling themselves “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”.

 

That similar exercises in political character assassination, media manipulation, and influence-peddling went on in the past is equally indisputable. It was only very rarely, however, that evidence of such dirty deeds ever came to light. The shrewd operators of the pre-digital era took care to leave no paper trails for pesky journalists to follow. Granted, telephone landlines could be tapped, but not, in the usual course of events, by the Left. Nor was there an Official Information Act to trouble wayward civil servants and Cabinet Ministers. Dirty politics was easier to get away with in those days – and investigative journalism much harder!

 

The result, paradoxically, was that public trust and confidence in our political institutions was much higher in the past than it is today. What the journalistic eye could not see, the electorate didn’t grieve over.

 

Everything changed in the 1970s, however, when the whistle-blowing of Daniel Ellsberg, and the investigative efforts of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, forced the American people to confront the realities of Democratic Sausage-making in an unprecedented way. The Pentagon Papers exposed decades of dishonesty about the Vietnam War on the part of the US Government. And the Watergate Scandal revealed to the people of the United States that their President, Richard Nixon, was a crook. Overnight, investigative reporters became heroes, and the fearless Fourth Estate was hailed as a more effective guardian of the citizen’s rights and freedoms than any politician.

 

Heroic Journalism: The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting brought down all the President's men - and, in August 1974, the President himself.

 

Many Baby-Boomers convinced themselves that this was how it would be from now on – but they were wrong. The blossoming of media freedom in the 1970s was actually an aberration – not a new and beautiful thing. The owners of the news media, frightened by the effective deposition of a President by the news media, tightened-up their control of newsrooms and reined-in the efforts of investigative journalism worldwide. There would be no more Watergates.

 

Partly this was in defence of the beleaguered capitalist system, but it was also about giving the news media’s consumers what they wanted. And what the readers, listeners and viewers of the late 1970s wanted most was to get the hell out of the sausage factory. They had seen enough. The truth made them uncomfortable. They wanted to believe that all was well with their democracy. That Richard Nixon was an exception, not the rule. Accordingly, just six years after the villain of Watergate had been driven from the White House, a much more dangerous President, Ronald Reagan, was moving in.

 

Nicky Hager, Dita Di Boni and Fran O’Sullivan all spoke eloquently about the difficulties facing conscientious journalists in the digital era; about the proliferation of media platforms and the constant shrinkage of newsrooms everywhere. And John Campbell, just by being there, reminded the Ika audience of what can happen to a television current affairs show that strives too earnestly to reveal the composition of Democratic Sausage.

 

What they didn’t discuss, however, was the one, incontrovertible, fact about the publication of Dirty Politics. Namely, that as a political purgative, it didn’t work. Unlike Richard Nixon, John Key was not forced to resign, and his political party was not voted out of office. In fact, a year (and a bit) after the book’s release, Key’s National Government remains as popular as it ever was. The bitter truth is that an electorally decisive number of New Zealanders reacted to Dirty Politics by moving towards – not away from – the National incumbent. Outside the relatively small circle of New Zealanders who celebrated Nicky Hager’s investigative efforts on their behalf, a great many Kiwis responded to his attempt to show them what was happening behind the façade of their democratic institutions with anger and resentment.

 

They liked the Democratic Sausages sizzling on John Key’s barbecue. They did not want to know how they were made. And they definitely didn’t want to be told what – or who – went into them.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 30 September 2015.

Dissident Solutions: What's Happening To Nicky Hager?

Targeted? The actions of the NZ Police in relation to Nicky Hager are deeply concerning. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the ability of New Zealand's foremost investigative journalist to do his job is being deliberately undermined.

 

MARTYN BRADBURY’S LATEST POSTING on The Daily Blog should give every member of the democratic public serious pause. The allegations levelled at the NZ Police are serious and deeply concerning. It is very difficult, having read Martyn’s post, to avoid the conclusion that Nicky Hager may be the victim of deliberate political persecution, and that among the principal agents of that persecution may be members of the NZ Police Force.

 

With the specifics of the actions taken against Mr Hager forming a significant part of active legal proceedings, it would be improper to rehearse them on The Daily Blog. What can be examined, however, is the enormous risk posed to the integrity of our democratic institutions by the merest suspicion that senior politicians, senior civil servants, senior policemen and senior jurists might be involved in an effort to both frighten and silence what used to be called, back in the days of the Cold War, “political dissidents”.

 

What distinguishes the “political dissident” from the more familiar “political activist” is their specificity. Activists may give public voice to generalised complaints against individuals and institutions, but dissidents sharpen such complaints by supplying the public with hard evidence of specific wrong-doing – often supplied to them by a whistleblower or, in Mr Hager’s case, a hacker. Alternatively, the evidence may simply have been uncovered by applying the techniques of good, old-fashioned, investigative journalism.

 

Liberal democracies have very little to fear from activists. Objections to government policy and/or corporate behaviour based on political ideology or religious belief constitute no real threat to the smooth unfolding of long-prepared strategies and plans. After all, the actions of powerful institutions – be they public or private – are almost always undertaken within the law and are, therefore, extremely difficult to stop. Indeed, it is only when the placard-waving (but otherwise ineffective) activists avail themselves of a lawyer or two that they graduate to dissident status – at least in the eyes of their opponents.

 

Lawyers, like the best investigative journalists, have ways of extracting information the powers-that-be would rather they, their clients, and/or the general public, didn’t see. In the hands of a good team of lawyers, legal discovery can be an immensely powerful weapon. The constitutional separation of powers means that the Judiciary can require the Executive Branch of Government, or a private corporation, to divulge all manner of secret material. Discovery cuts both ways, however, so those who go after the secrets of the powerful must be prepared for the powerful to come after theirs.

 

But if lawyers pose a genuine threat to the secret dealings of the powerful, they are also extremely hazardous to their client’s bank balance. This enables the State, by dint of having its very own “law firm” – Crown Law – and a practically inexhaustible supply of funds, to adopt a strategy of litigation attrition. By extending and multiplying the mechanisms of the Law, the Crown is frequently able to wear down or financially exhaust its opponents. If an out-of-court settlement is arrived at by the contending parties it will almost always contain a comprehensive confidentiality clause. The dissident and his or her lawyers may “win” their case, but the State’s secrets remain just that – secrets.

 

What truly terrifies the wielders of public and private power are processes of “discovery” that owe nothing to the operation of the courts. Edward Snowden was able to use his privileged access to the secrets of the United States’ National Security Agency, to expose its highly questionable (and in some cases illegal) activities to the whole world. The specificity of the information he released (that the US eavesdropped on the conversations of the German Chancellor, for example) produced the most acute diplomatic embarrassment. Likewise his detailed description of the architecture of mass surveillance.

 

Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, delivered an equally destructive blow to the secret world of right-wing influence peddling and political character assassination. The hitherto unseen architecture of political manipulation in New Zealand was laid bare in a way that caught the subjects of Mr Hager’s investigation completely off-guard. It was the same with his earlier publications: Secret Power, Secrets and Lies, Seeds of Distrust, The Hollow Men and Other People’s Wars. In every case those under scrutiny had no idea that their activities were about to be exposed.

 

This “ambush” strategy has been criticised by Mr Hager’s opponents as unethical and contrary to the “rules of good journalism”. What it achieves, however, is the unimpeded distribution of his publications. Had the subjects of Mr Hager’s investigations been alerted to the fact that a book was in preparation, or, about to be published, it is highly likely that they would have attempted to legally injunct its release. Rather than offer his subjects the traditional right-of-reply, therefore, Mr Hager exhaustively checks and re-checks his facts to ensure that there is no possibility of legal restraint. That he has never been successfully sued bears testimony to the thoroughness of this pre-publication scrutiny.

 

What does a government “do” about a dissident of such consistent effectiveness as Nicky Hager? How reassuring it would be if we could answer, simply, that the powers-that-be, both public and private, redouble their efforts to conduct themselves ethically and openly. The revelations contained in Martyn Bradbury’s blogpost, however, strongly suggest that their reaction has been very different.

 

It’s as if someone, somewhere, has echoed the anguished cry of King Henry II.

 

When confronted with further evidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s, Thomas Becket’s, political and religious defiance, Henry bellowed: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest!” Did Henry know that four of his knights had taken him at his word and were on their way to slay the Archbishop before his altar? We shall never know. He always claimed ignorance of his men-at-arms’ intent, and did penance for the crime his words inspired. At the end of the day, however, his problem had, actually, been solved.

 

Rogue elements in the Police Force? Or a carefully devised plan to bring down a dissident? Either way, the outlook for the democratic public is grim.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 13 July 2015.

Defining Dirty Politics

Permanent Interests: If the "Intelligence Community" ever came to the conclusion that an actual, or potential, prime minister is implementing, or, intends to implement, policies inimical to the general and permanent interests of the Crown, then their reaction might very well be to designate the Prime Minister/Leader of the Opposition a “threat to national security” and act accordingly.

 

LOOKING BACK over the most tumultuous election year in our recent history, one phrase in particular stands out: “dirty politics”. Yes, it was the name of another of Nicky Hager’s journalistic interventions, but it quickly became something more than that. For close to half the voting public, “dirty politics” became shorthand for everything that’s gone wrong with New Zealand’s political life.

 

But what actually constitutes “dirty politics”? Are we talking about the normal cut-and-thrust of political existence? The wrong-footing of opponents? The strategic shifts of internal support that mark the rise and fall of party leaders? The calculated exploitation of one’s opponents’ personal weaknesses to demonstrate their unfitness to hold political office? The private, off-the-record and entirely unattributable briefings of journalists to effect any or all of the above? Or, are we talking about something else? And, if so – what?

 

I believe that Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, was written to highlight something more than the normal cut-and-thrust of political life. In my view, Mr Hager’s intention was to draw the public’s attention to the deliberate use by an incumbent Government of its institutional and bureaucratic power to thwart, mislead and, if necessary, disrupt and discredit its political opponents.

 

The politicisation of our supposedly neutral civil service would be a grave development under any circumstances, but the gravity of such behaviour would increase exponentially should the institutions so politicised turn out to be the armed forces, the security services and/or the police.

 

It is especially important that those state institutions whose fundamental remit is the maintenance and protection of “national security” remain utterly aloof from party politics. Precisely because such institutions have privileged access to extremely sensitive and confidential information, any pursuit of their own or somebody else’s private political agenda could easily result in constitutional catastrophe. Those targeted for destruction would be most unlikely to see it coming and, after the event, would have next to no chance of discovering (let alone proving) from whence it came.

 

The constitutional dangers notwithstanding, there is considerable historical evidence that the national security apparatus of the State is particularly prone to developing and following its own political agenda. In the United Kingdom and its former “Dominions” (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) this propensity to politicisation may be traced back to the relationship of the “Crown” to the elected government of the day. The interests of the latter are particular and transitory, while those of the Crown are general and permanent.

 

What’s more, because the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are “realms”, ruled (at least nominally) by the same royal family, the relationship between those pledged to maintain and protect the general and permanent interests of the Crown isn’t simply constitutional – it’s personal. Governors-general, military commanders, directors of intelligence agencies and commissioners of police all swear to “bear true allegiance”  not to the Prime Minister of the day, his or her government, or even to the people of New Zealand – but “to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors”.

 

That may appear to be a purely formal constitutional distinction, but should the protectors of national security come to the conclusion that an actual, or potential, prime minister is implementing, or, intends to implement, policies inimical to the general and permanent interests of the Crown, then their reaction might very well be to designate the Prime Minister/Leader of the Opposition a “threat to national security” and act accordingly.

 

“Dirty politics”, in the form of a series of “dirty tricks” conceived and carried out by the security services and/or their agents and “assets” would be the result.

 

In practical terms, this “top-down” variety of dirty politics would entail the security services feeding their own highly disruptive and reputationally destructive material into the normal processes of party-political competition. “Politics-as-usual” is, of course, the perfect cover for such extraordinary interventions. Those who object are easily dismissed as naïve, or even hypocritical. “All politics is dirty politics”, becomes the stock reply: “Everybody’s at it.”

 

Ideologically speaking, such top-down interventions are, almost without exception, the work of the Right, and their principal target is almost always the Left, or those disposed to offer the Left meaningful support. These latter targets may include trade unions; a minor political party willing to enter into a coalition with the dominant left-wing party; a newspaper or broadcasting network commissioning investigative journalism to the Left’s advantage; as well, of course, as the unionists, journalists and/or whistleblowers causing all the trouble.

 

From the Zinoviev Letter to Watergate; from Norman Kirk’s “sinister scheme” to the former SIS Director, Warren Tucker’s, 2011 lapse of judgement; dirty tricks have a way of influencing political outcomes.

 

Dirty politics is more than “politics as usual”. Its true purpose is to make sure that ordinary politics is never seriously threatened by the success of extraordinary politics – or politicians.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 30 December 2014.

Unfretful Voters

The People's Choice: The contemporary conservative voters’ faith in the policies of their Prime Minister is no more susceptible to being undermined by dissident journalism than their predecessors’ was by militant unionism. New Zealanders, it seems, will forgive many sins in the name of maintaining stability and preserving prosperity.

 

A HOT WAR in Korea. Record prices for New Zealand’s agricultural exports. Overseas shipping companies waxing wrathful over restrictive practices and unneedful delays. A belligerent trade union unwilling to back down. A National Government slowly recovering the use of its political muscles after 14 years on the Opposition benches. Mix all these factors together and something’s bound to happen.

 

And something did.

 

The Waterfront Dispute of 1951 is remembered now (when it is remembered at all) as a mighty industrial stoush. The Watersiders and their allies squaring-off against the ship-owners and the first National Government under Sid Holland – a man every bit as belligerent as the watersiders’ leader, Jock Barnes.

 

Not surprisingly, Sid Holland won.

 

But that was then and this is now. Sixty-three years on, who cares? In 2014, “organised labour” is a fading historical memory. Today, outside the public sector, barely one worker in ten carries a union card. For young, twenty-first century Kiwis, the tales of ’51 might just as well be the tales of Ancient Greece.

 

Except it’s not the tale of the Watersiders’ heroic defeat that I want to tell. That’s an old story and Dick Scott told it much better than I ever could in his book 151 Days. No, the story I’m interested in is the story of how New Zealanders reacted to the events of 1951. And that is a story with some very distinct contemporary echoes.

 

This is how the veteran broadcaster, Gordon Dryden, remembered 1951 in his memoir Out of the Red:

 

“In my view the emergency regulations introduced on 26 February 1951 slashed at everything I believed in about journalism. It became against the law to report both sides of the story of the biggest industrial dispute in New Zealand history. It became against the law to make donations to help feed the families of workers who were on strike. It became unlawful for opponents of the Government to hold meetings.”

 

Dryden, in 1951, “was much more concerned with the issue of press freedom and democracy.”

 

But these were not the concerns of a clear majority of New Zealanders: 54 percent of whom delivered a resounding endorsement of Sid Holland’s draconian regulations by casting their votes for the National Party in the Snap Election of 1 September 1951.

 

And it wasn’t only the ordinary voters who declined to be outraged by the National Government’s sudden and unprecedented curtailment of civil liberties. In 1951, New Zealand boasted dozens of daily newspapers, but not one editor or proprietor prepared to put his freedom on the line for the freedom of the press. Nor was there a single judge willing to tender his resignation rather than enforce a law which would not have been out of place in Stalin’s Russia.

 

But, that was then.

 

In August 2014, the investigative journalist, Nicky Hager, published a book exposing the manner in which a person employed in the office of the Prime Minister, and Judith Collins, the Minister of Justice, colluded with a prominent right-wing blogger and a slew of working journalists to undermine, discredit and attack opponents of John Key’s National Government.

 

The many thousands of New Zealanders who read Mr Hager’s Dirty Politics were convinced that its revelations could not fail to erode the voters’ support for Mr Key and his colleagues. Like Gordon Dryden, their concerns were about “the issue of press freedom and democracy”.

 

But, they were wrong.

 

The contemporary conservative voters’ faith in the policies of their Prime Minister is no more susceptible to being undermined by dissident journalism than their predecessors’ was by militant unionism. New Zealanders, it seems, will forgive many sins in the name of maintaining stability and preserving prosperity.

 

Not even the news that, just twelve days after the 2014 election, Mr Hager’s house was subjected to a 10-hour search by five police officers, responding to the complaint of the right-wing blogger whose hacked e-mails constitute the core of the Dirty Politics exposé, is likely to impair the celebratory temper of the conservative Kiwi voter.

 

In his celebrated essay, Fretful Sleepers, written in the months following the 1951 confrontation, the New Zealand writer, Bill Pearson, observed:

 

“The New Zealander delegates authority, then forgets it ... There is no one more docile in the face of authority.”

 

If that was true then, is it still true now?

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 10 October 2014.

Have We Got The Right Horse For The Course - Or Is A Mid-Stream Change In Order?

“Horses For Courses”: It's an expression you often hear in the mouths of old politicos. What they mean is that some elections are better suited to demon politicians than angelic statesmen.

 

WITH JUST OVER A WEEK TO GO, the core issue of this election is at last coming into focus. It is difficult to recall a political contest so fraught with diversions and divisions as this one. Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, has told us very forcefully what politics shouldn’t be about, but it’s been nowhere near so helpful at informing the better angels of our nature. What Mr Hager has managed to do, however, with characteristic prescience, is place the issue of trust at the heart of the choices we must make in eight days’ time.

 

But trust, in politics, is not a simple thing. Like love, it is apt to be bestowed upon the most unlikely and undeserving of individuals, institutions and nations. That’s because trust is about a great deal more than simply keeping promises. Indeed, the people we trust most are often those who’ve proved that, sometimes, promises must be broken. Given a choice between an angel and a demon for prime minister, it is by no means axiomatic that a desperate electorate will always vote for the heavenly creature.

 

“Horses for courses” is the expression you often hear in the mouths of old politicos. By which they mean that there are some tasks better suited to demons than angels.

 

In the course of a lengthy political career, Winston Churchill earned the enmity of just about every section of British society. In 1904 he betrayed the aristocracy by abandoning the Conservative Party and joining the Liberals. In 1926 he helped defeat the Trade Union Congress’s General Strike. Throughout the pacifist Thirties he constantly urged his countrymen to prepare for war. And, as the arch-imperialist of his generation, he did all he could to deny the people of the Indian sub-continent their independence. In short, Churchill was a reckless egotist, an avowed racist and an inveterate warmonger: anyone searching for the angelic in his character faced a daunting challenge.

 

And yet, when the shadow of a much darker demon fell over Britain in 1940, it was to Churchill that the British people turned. Given the fateful course that lay before them, only a warhorse would do.

 

Five years later it was a different story. The “Spirit of ‘45” wanted nothing more to do with warhorses. Winning the peace could not be accomplished by harnessing the same demonic forces that had won the war. It was one of those rare occasions when, given a choice between the devil they knew, and the angels they didn’t, people voted for the angels.

 

Now, John Key is no Winston Churchill, and yet there’s no disputing that for most New Zealanders he’s been the right horse to carry them through the course of a global financial crisis. In a world teetering on the brink of economic disaster, who better than a millionaire currency trader? True, currency traders are not known for being angels. They are quick and ruthless and shamelessly opportunistic. But, for the last six years most New Zealanders haven’t cared. They’ve trusted National’s demon to take them where Labour’s angels feared to tread.

 

The questions New Zealanders must ask and answer before 7:00pm on 20 September is whether or not New Zealand is still on the same critical course as 2008 and 2011, and whether John Key is still the right horse to carry them through?

 

Labour has put up a challenger who, frankly, calls to mind Clarence, the wingless Angel in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. David Cunliffe is gentle, well-meaning and, like Clarence, just a little accident prone. He’s urging us to do the right thing by our communities: warning us against letting the country’s problems get too big to fix. But Cunliffe’s and Labour’s big problem is that New Zealanders aren’t yet sure if it’s the right time to start trusting accident prone angels. The economic recovery is, at best, precarious; at worst, over. If things, again, turn pear-shaped, is David Cunliffe really the right horse for the course?

 

Then again, just how far to the dark side has John Key already taken us? Nicky Hager has posed the question, but a disturbingly large number of New Zealanders seem too frightened to hear the answer.

 

And that’s always the trick with the demonic horses we mount in times of danger: knowing when, and how, to get off.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 September 2014.

Purity And Power: Chris Trotter Critiques John Armstrong's Advice To The Greens.

Keep Your Eyes On The Prize: Mr Armstrong counsels the Greens to make the same Devil’s Bargain that he has been forced to accept. Right and wrong, good and evil, in the revised edition of the Armstrong political gospel, haven’t the slightest purchase in contemporary governance.

WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY COLUMN from John Armstrong! There have been many this year, but his latest (10/9/14) stands out because of the amoral cynicism underpinning the writer’s political analysis.

 

“The Greens face an old dilemma”, opines the NZ Herald’s Chief Political Commentator, “remain pure but powerless. Or go centrist and compromise and get things done.”

 

A dilemma? Only if you believe that remaining true to your ideals is in any sense disempowering.

 

But there is absolutely no historical warrant for the suggestion that strongly held beliefs lack power. In fact, history testifies to precisely the opposite conclusion.

 

“Here I stand!” Martin Luther told the Holy Roman Emperor, “I can do no other.” How different the history of Protestantism would have been if he had not. “Keep your eyes on the prize – hold on!”, sang the civil rights protesters in the face of the most appalling racial violence. How different the history of the United States would have been if they had decided to “go centrist and compromise and get things done.”

 

Why didn’t Armstrong remind his readers that although political movements like the Greens often have to wait many years to see their ideals accepted and their policies implemented, principled patience is almost always rewarded? He is, after all, a member of the generation that struggled to end New Zealand’s contacts with South Africa; withdraw its troops from Vietnam; end nuclear testing in the Pacific; and decriminalise homosexuality. With those (successful) examples before him, why did he feel the need to construct this false “remain pure”/ “get things done” dilemma for the Greens?

 

The answer almost certainly lies in the context of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics and the New Zealand public’s alarmingly blasé reaction to its contents. Armstrong, like many of his journalist colleagues, reacted with commendable outrage to Hager’s revelations. Like just about every other Kiwi with a conscience, he was appalled by the behaviour that had been exposed. His feelings of disgust were undoubtedly intensified as he reviewed his own experiences as a Press Gallery journalist and realised just how often and how ruthlessly he and his colleagues had been played.

 

The problem for Armstrong and others like him was that pretty close to a majority of the voting public found nothing very much to get upset about in Hager’s book. Their opinion of politicians was already so low that the revelations of Dirty Politics, if they were accepted at all, were taken as a vindication of their long held prejudices. No big deal.

 

What to do? Confronted with the seemingly indefatigable cynicism of their readers, how should Armstrong and other mainstream media commentators respond? Should they unload upon these morally inert electors the full weight of their journalistic scorn? Should they openly challenge their fitness to cast something as precious as a ballot? Seriously, if these “so what” National supporters are able to absorb, with apparent equanimity, the news that their democracy is riddled with political cancer, then can they even be called citizens?

 

It’s happened before, this unexpected and, therefore, shocking disjuncture between the judgement of journalists and the perceptions of their readers, listeners and viewers. The most famous example is the US news media’s reaction to the police riot that erupted at the Democratic Party Convention in 1968. Mayor Daley’s brutal Chicago cops not only billy-clubbed and maced and tear-gassed the young demonstrators outside the Convention, they also attacked Convention delegates, trashed one of the presidential candidates headquarters, and beat-up any journalist foolhardy enough to attempt to report their illegal rampage.

 

Outraged, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger of the New York Times, Katherine Graham, of the Washington Post and Newsweek and many other publishers joined with the heads of the major television networks in telegramming Mayor Daley and protesting that newsmen “were repeatedly singled out by policemen and repeatedly beaten … the obvious purpose was to discourage or prevent reporting of an important confrontation between police and demonstrators which the American public as a whole has a right to know about.”

 

But the American public didn’t want to know. In the words of historian, Godfrey Hodgson:

 

“Almost to a man, the journalists had been shocked by what the police did. To their astonishment, the polls showed that a large majority in the country were shocked by the demonstrators, and sympathetic to the police. Nine out of ten of the seventy-four thousand letters sent to Mayor Daley in the first two weeks after the convention, commended the police. And bumper stickers blossomed across the country: WE SUPPORT MAYOR DALEY AND HIS CHICAGO POLICE.”

 

It was to be another six years before the resignation of President Richard Nixon finally convinced a majority of Americans that people in authority are not always worthy of their support; that, sometimes, the journalists are right.

 

And maybe that will happen here, too. Maybe, in the months ahead New Zealanders will find out just how deep the cancer has burrowed into the bones of the nation. But, in the meantime, the advertisers are not going to spend money purchasing time and space in media businesses that excoriate their customers. Like the American journalists of 1968, the New Zealand journalists of 2014 have little choice but to adjust their ethics to fit those of a majority which long ago forgot the meaning of the word.

 

And that is why, in today’s column, Mr Armstrong counsels the Greens to make the same Devil’s Bargain that he has been forced to accept. Right and wrong, good and evil, in the revised edition of Armstrong’s political gospel, haven’t the slightest purchase in contemporary governance. If you want to “get things done”, then compromise is the only game in town.

 

The only problem with that advice, John, is that once Russel Norman, Metiria Turei and the Greens start compromising, how will they know when to stop? Purity, once abandoned, is very hard to recover. And, if Dirty Politics has taught us anything at all, it is that power without purity is Democracy’s most dangerous enemy.

 

This essay was posted on Bowalley Road and The Daily Blog on Wednesday, 10 September 2014.

The Race Is On: Will Enough New Zealanders Believe Nicky Hager And Reject John Key?

No More Mr Nice Guy: In terms of sheer explanatory power Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, is without precedent in New Zealand's political history. That's why the Right is doing everything within its power to discredit it. If it succeeds, National will retain power. If it fails, New Zealand will have a new government.

 

WE ARE IN A RACE. It’s a race between those wilfully ignorant and deliberately spiteful New Zealanders who make up such an alarmingly large fraction of National’s electoral base, and that steadily growing percentage of the electorate who understand that the shocking revelations contained in Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, require an electoral response. If the latter overtakes the former by 20 September, New Zealand can breathe a mighty sigh of relief. If not, then the next three years are likely to be ugly – very ugly.
 

Just how real and significant this race is was brought home to me by an article posted on the Stuff website. Headlined “Voters Divided Over Who Plays Dirtiest” it quoted an elderly Taranaki woman who had been sent a copy of Hager’s book. When asked for her opinion of Dirty Politics she replied:
 

“I think it’s disgusting. It doesn’t surprise me at all from the author. He’s just a communist and that’s just the way he is. He’s just trying to unsettle the National Party.”
 

Remember, this woman had a copy of the book. She’d been given the opportunity to absorb its contents – to form an opinion. We must, therefore, hope that her stated view that Hager is “just a communist” whose only purpose in writing Dirty Politics was “to unsettle the National Party” means that she felt under no obligation to actually read the book. Because the alternative explanation, that she had read it and that this was her considered response, is just too depressing to contemplate.
 

The elderly voter’s response does, however, demonstrate how important it has been for politicians and mainstream journalists of both the Left and the Right to demonise Nicky Hager.
 

Ever since the publication of his first book, Secret Power, in 1996, people in both the parliamentary arena and the mainstream news media have been conscious of the enormous challenge his internationally celebrated investigative journalism poses to both institutions. It’s why they have so relentlessly attacked his credibility. Politicians and journalists, alike, understood that Secret Power and its successors exposed not only the misdeeds of legislators from both sides of the House, but also the consistent failure of mainstream reporters to uncover the stories that have made Hager’s reputation.
 

Nowhere was the undermining and diminishing priorities of this parliamentary-media nexus more in evidence than following the release of Hager’s fifth book, Other People’s Wars. A work of extraordinary thoroughness, born of superlative investigative skills, this book exposed the moral, military and diplomatic failings of both Labour and National in Iraq and Afghanistan. In doing so it also exposed (in the manner of collateral damage) the cover provided to successive governments by New Zealand’s largely uninterested and easily reassured news media.
 

It is this potent cocktail of political fear and professional jealousy that has produced a public image of Hager so frighteningly negative that a little old lady in Taranaki felt justified in dismissing Dirty Politics without reading it. Ever since 1996, the unrelenting hostility of politicians – amplified and uncorrected by journalists who should have known better – has very effectively inoculated a depressingly large number of New Zealanders against anything and everything Hager might have to say.
 

They had help. Ever since the publication of Hager’s second book, Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign, he has been the sworn enemy of the powerful public relations firms which play such an important role in rendering the most distasteful government and/or corporate policies more or less palatable to the general public. The representatives of these firms – like the man who appeared on television the night Dirty Politics was released, telling New Zealand there was “nothing in it” – have never lost an opportunity whether in public or behind the scenes to attack both Hager’s credibility and his character.
 

I well remember crossing swords with a young journalist in the Green Room at TVNZ after she blithely dismissed Hager as an inveterate conspiracy theorist and looney lefty. I asked her if she had read any of his books. She Hadn’t. I asked her if she was aware he had won international prizes for investigative journalism. She wasn’t. It hadn’t stopped her from casually defaming him, however. It never does. When John Key dismissed Dirty Politics as the work of “a screaming left-wing conspiracy theorist”, he knew there would be many thousands of Kiwis who would accept his characterisation without experiencing the slightest pang of doubt.
 

Will it be enough? That is the question upon which the result of this General Election now hinges. Is Dirty Politics strong enough to defeat the Right’s inoculating slanders? The evidence, to date, suggests that it just might be. The Colmar Brunton polling agency reports that the number of New Zealanders who believe the “suggestions” contained in Hager’s book has shot up 13 percentage points since the question was first asked of voters on the 14-15 August. Back then just 28 percent said they believed him. By the 27 August, however, the number was 41 percent.
 

It is its power to convince that is making Dirty Politics so influential. It’s as if all the warnings Hager asked us to take from his earlier books have been vindicated. Indeed, in this latest description of the way political power is wielded in New Zealand the themes of all his previous work have flowed together into an overwhelming torrent of evidence. In Dirty Politics we see them all: the security agencies; the public relations firms; the politicians; the journalists. And, of course, that latest manifestation of the will to power – the right-wing bloggers. In terms of sheer explanatory power Hager’s book is without precedent in our political history. It’s why the Right is doing everything within its power to discredit it.
 

The race is on.
 

This essay was posted on the Daily Blog and Bowalley Road blogsites on Wednesday, 3 September 2014.

A Not-So-Foreign Country

The Shadow Of The Past: The only positive aspect of Watergate was the way in which the venerable US Constitution was able to defuse what could have exploded into a full-blown “legitimation crisis”. Is New Zealand’s unwritten and historically untested constitution capable of rising to the challenge of this present political scandal as effectively as America’s rose to the challenge of Watergate? Can the Prime Minister and his Cabinet be relied upon to pass judgement on themselves?

 

I’M WRITING THIS COLUMN on the fortieth anniversary of Norman Kirk’s death. As someone who cast his first vote in 1975, it is tempting to eulogise the New Zealand of forty years ago and to compare it, favourably, with the scandal-ridden country of today. Certainly “Big Norm” was an extraordinary political leader against whom very few – if any – of today’s politicians could hope to measure up. One has only to watch his 1973 interview with David Frost (available online at NZ On Screen) to realise just how much the New Zealand electorate once demanded of their prime ministers.
 

We must, however, be cautious, and not only because, as L.P. Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
 

Beset as we are with a rapidly spreading and intensifying political scandal, we would do well to bear in mind that although the New Zealand of forty years ago was very different from the New Zealand of today, it was also, in “dirty politics” terms, surprisingly similar. Hartley’s caution notwithstanding, they did many things the same.
 

Forty years ago, far from being the preferred weapon of the Left (as today’s Prime Minister, John Key, alleges) the political smear campaign was the speciality of the Right. When the newspaper Truth (the Whaleoil blog of its day) published a front-page story alleging Kirk’s involvement in a sinister plot to socialise the New Zealand economy, it was written in exactly the same belligerent style as Cameron Slater’s postings.

Another instantly recognisable aspect of “dirty politics” 1970s-style was the Security Intelligence Service’s leaking of sensitive information to right-wing editors and journalists. Then, as now, they needed no further instruction on how to put such material to good use.

Most of all, however, the period leading up to and following Kirk’s death was characterised by a sense of powerful yet unidentified forces moving unobserved behind the scenes. A very similar characterisation of the political zeitgeist was one of the most memorable parts of Nicky Hager’s speech to a packed hall of interested Aucklanders last Wednesday. In explaining his reasons for writing Dirty Politics he referenced exactly the same feeling of unease about the way politics was being conducted; the same conviction that apparently isolated political events were, in some unrevealed and sinister way, connected.
 

The anxieties of the “screaming left-wing conspiracy theorists” of the mid-1970s concerning the malignant political machinations of the “Kirk Years” were eventually proved right. Fortunately, Hager has not had to wait forty years to have his worst fears confirmed. Thanks to the intervention of a “White Hat” hacker known as Rawshark, New Zealand’s foremost investigative journalist has been able to demonstrate that the dark arts of attack politics are being applied in 2014 with no less devastating effect than in 1974-75.
 

The unfolding revelations, in which so much of the action has been concentrated in the offices of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice, have inevitably invited comparisons with the Watergate Scandal. That story also reached its crescendo in August 1974 when, for the first and only time in US history, a serving President was forced to resign his office.
 

It is worth recalling, given the proximity of our own General Election, that the exposure of the Watergate burglary in June 1972 had no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the Presidential Election held in November of that year. Indeed, President Richard Nixon was emphatically re-elected – winning 49 of the USA’s 50 states. The slow unravelling of the scandal and its subsequent cover-up did, however, transform Nixon’s second term into a political and constitutional nightmare. As a result his administration was effectively paralysed and the USA gravely weakened.
 

The only positive aspect of Watergate was the way in which the venerable US Constitution was able to defuse what could have exploded into a full-blown “legitimation crisis”.
 

Democracies, much more than other political systems, depend upon their citizens’ belief that the people they elect to public office are decent, conscientious and law-abiding. If high ethical standards are not maintained; if citizens become convinced that their elected representatives are engaged in large-scale and largely unreproved corruption; then the legitimacy of both the government and the state is called into question.
 

Is New Zealand’s unwritten and historically untested constitution capable of rising to the challenge of this present political scandal as effectively as America’s rose to the challenge of Watergate? Can the Prime Minister and his Cabinet be relied upon to pass judgement on themselves?
 

Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974. Norman Kirk died 22 days later on 31 August. That’s when it began: forty  years ago; that’s when the poisons currently disfiguring our body politic first entered the nation’s bloodstream.
 

In the polling booths on 20 September can we purge ourselves of those poisons? Will we vote to impeach?
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 2 September 2014.