DIRT ALERT! - Are The Greens And Labour About To Become The Targets Of A Major Negative Advertising Campaign?

Deja Vu All Over Again? Are we about to see a repeat of the 2005 negative advertising campaign  launched in secret against the Greens and Labour?

 

WE’VE SEEN IT ALL BEFORE. In 2005 pamphlets began appearing all over New Zealand attacking Labour and the Greens. For a couple of days both the parties targeted and the news media were flummoxed. Who was behind such an obviously extensive and costly campaign? No one knew – until former members of the Exclusive Brethren Church recognised some of the names of the pamphlets’ authorising agents and put two and two together.

 

The exposure of the Exclusive Brethren Church’s role in printing and distributing the pamphlets, followed by the shock revelation that the National Party leader, Dr Don Brash, had been made aware that such campaign was in the offing, contributed significantly to National’s 2005 election defeat.

 

Could history be repeating itself?

 

Yesterday evening (Thursday, 28 August 2014) I received an e-mail from a sender styling himself “Charlie Taylor” advising me that “a group of concerned citizens just like you are paying for billboards like this”.

 

 

Exactly who “Charlie Taylor” is I have no idea, but the lengthy e-mail send out in his name is clearly intended to inflict maximum damage on both the Greens and, by association, Labour.

 

If I was a betting man, however, I would hazard a reasonable wager that Don Brash’s superb propagandist, John Ansell, was in some way involved. There is something in the cheeky tone of these designs that recalls Ansell’s immensely powerful Iwi/Kiwi billboards of 2005.

 

This, for example:

 



 

The other reason I have for speculating that Mr Ansell might be involved is that some of the text of the e-mail bears a striking similarity to the accusations levelled at the Greens co-leader, Russel Norman, by Mr Ansell when he was interviewed on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report recently. In the course of that interview, Mr Norman was branded a communist in language very similar to that used in this excerpt from the e-mail:

 

“Will you be happy to learn that your Labour party vote has helped ex-Aussie Communist Russel Norman achieve his ambition of becoming Mr Cunliffe’s finance minister?

 

“Will you think it a hoot when, thanks to you, ex-McGillicuddy Serious and Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis candidate Metiria Turei joins Red Russ as ‘Joint’ Deputy Prime Minister?”

 

Nor is this the worst thing the author/s of the e-mail have to say about the Greens. Apparently, they are responsible for the deaths of 50 million Third World children:

 

“Green thinking has a long and black track record of sounding heart-warmingly plausible, but wreaking death and destruction when unleashed in the real world, on real people.

 

“In the 60s, the hysteria over Rachel Carson’s green bible Silent Spring led to the banning of the mosquito-killing chemical DDT.

 

“Which led to 50 million people dying of malaria.

 

“Every day, more children die painful deaths because the Greens continue to deny them the treatment that would save their lives – a treatment that science has long since proven safe.”

 

All good inflammatory stuff! But the real sting (and true target) of the e-mail comes in its tail. The message the “Group of Concerned Kiwis” who sign-off this distribe really want you to take away with you is: “To stop the Greens, you must stop Labour.”

 

“You may think National and Labour are two sides of the same coin. And usually that would be fair comment.

 

But with the Greens now guaranteed to be 30% or more of a Labour government, the economic danger signs just got a whole lot redder.”

 

Better, one assumes, to stick with the blues.

 

Whoever Charlie Taylor turns out to be, his group of “concerned citizens” is almost certain to fall foul of the Electoral Commission.

 

For a start, the designs feature absolutely nothing in the way of an authorising statement. Without the true name and residential address of the person responsible for authorising these political messages, any billboards, pamphlets, stickers and/or posters that may appear between now and 20 September are almost certain to be in breach of the legislation regulating political communications during a General Election campaign.

 

They will also discover that any and all “concerned citizens” wishing to participate in the cut and thrust of the General Election must first register themselves with the Electoral Commission and undertake to keep their expenditure within the legislatively sanctioned limits.

 

The revelation of such identifying details would, naturally, facilitate the full disclosure of who is behind this proposed negative advertising campaign.

 

In the wake of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, I do not imagine that the National Party will relish answering questions about the provenance of yet another example of, well, dirty politics. And if, as happened in 2005, incontrovertible evidence emerges that John Key or his party were forewarned of these “Concerned Kiwis’” campaigning intentions, then National’s chances of holding onto power will take yet another hit.

UPDATE on DIRT ALERT!

Thanks to the information passed to Bowalley Road by "Idiot/Savant" of the No Right Turn blogsite it is now possible to identify at least some of the persons involved in this latest example of attack politics. What follows is my response to Idiot/Savant's timely assistance:

Well done and thank you, Idiot/Savant!

I can now reveal more about the e-mail from "Charlie Taylor".

It was sent to a person called John Third.

Following up this detail, I discovered that a John Lawrence Third is the sole director of a registered private company called Guinness Gallagher Corporate Advisory Ltd, based in Wellington.

I acquired Mr Third's telephone number, called him, but, receiving no answer, left a message for him to call me back. He hasn't.*

I did not include this information in the posting above because I didn't want to involve a potentially "innocent civilian" in a breaking political story.

Idiot/Savant's research has, however, obviated the need for me to talk to Mr Third because looking at the latest entry on the Elections New Zealand's Register of Promoters whose name do I see in the column headed "Name of the person authorised to make the application where the promoter is not an individual" but that of John L Third - the very same person to whom "Charlie Taylor's" e-mail was sent.

How did it come to me? I have no idea. Perhaps Mr Third's name was just the first of dozens on a mass e-mail distribution list among which my own - for some unfathomable reason - was included.

Whatever the explanation, we now know that the campaign is real, and that it is being run under the collective identity of "The Opinion Partnership" among whose members are Mr Third and Owen Jennings - former head of Federated Farmers, former Act Party MP (1996-2002) and currently the joint owner (with Mr Third) of the registered private company Ideal Energy Holdings Ltd.

We await further developments.

*  I have since spoken to Mr Third who confirmed to me that he and Owen Jennings are, indeed, among the persons calling themselves "The Opinion Partnership". Mr Third also informed me that his company, Guinness Gallagher Corporate Advisory Ltd, has done consultancy work for both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

FURTHER UPDATE on DIRT ALERT!

Propaganda supremo, John Ansell, confirms his involvement in The Opinion Partnership. For more information refer to the commentary thread of this posting.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 29 August 2014.

Unimpeachable Credentials

And So It Begins: Co-Leader of the Maori Party, Tariana Turia, is "red-eyed" by John Ansell as part of his "Colourblind New Zealand" campaign. Mr Ansell has pledged to affix his red eye-patches to all those who adhere to and/or promote the bi-cultural revisioning of New Zealand history. Mr Ansell insists that he is operating independently, but who stands to make best use of the formidable political weapon he is fashioning?

EVERY STUDENT EDITOR dreams of a scoop: a major story that nobody else (especially the “mainstream media”) knows anything about. And that’s exactly what “Treatygate” is – a scoop. Joe Stockman, Editor of the Otago University student magazine, Critic, and his News Editor, Callum Fredric, were first off the mark with a story that has potentially huge ramifications.

In Mr Fredric’s own words: “Critic has obtained documents from controversial race campaigner Louis Crimp, setting out a plan for a $2 million campaign aiming to make New Zealand a ‘colourblind’ (racially neutral) state.”

According to Critic, the man with the plan is John Ansell – mastermind of the National Party’s very-nearly-successful “Iwi/Kiwi” billboard campaign of 2005. If he manages to lay his hands on anything like $2 million, Mr Ansell’s proposed campaign to “expose the 40 year state brainwashing campaign that has distorted the history of Crown-Maori relations” could gain considerable political traction. Whatever you may think of him, Mr Ansell’s credentials as a propagandist are difficult to dispute.

The involvement of Mr Crimp is another matter. The elderly Invercargill millionaire’s only foray into national politics could hardly be described as an unqualified success. The media outlets through which Mr Ansell’s propaganda would, presumably, be communicated to the public might balk at associating themselves with such a controversial duo. There’s also the very real possibility that one, or all, of the Press Council, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Broadcasting Standards Authority and the Human Rights Commission might intervene to ban or modify messages intended to: “expose the bias [in favour of Maori] and enrage the public”.

Herein lies the difficulty confronting those who remain unconvinced by the bicultural orthodoxy of New Zealand’s political establishment. It has spent the best part of forty years surrounding itself with laws and conventions, tribunals and authorities, to the point where it is virtually unassailable from without. Messrs Ansell and Crimp are, therefore, very likely to discover that any full-scale frontal assault on its institutional walls is easily repelled.

The bicultural consensus is, however, acutely vulnerable to subversion from within. Thinking back over the past eight years, Mr Ansell should ask himself: “Why was my 2005 campaign so effective?” The simple answer is: Dr Don Brash. The mass racial animus that Mr Ansell is so skilful at arousing remains politically accessible – but only to a person bearing unimpeachable establishment credentials. Someone like the former Governor of the Reserve Bank. Someone like the Leader of the Opposition. Someone the opponents of biculturalism can credibly envisage moving into a position of power strong enough to bring the forty-year bicultural consensus crashing down.

Neither Mr Ansell, nor Mr Crimp, is that someone.

There is, however, something already in the political pipeline that just might provide the impetus for a politician bearing unimpeachable establishment credentials to avail himself, or herself, of Mr Ansell’s skills and Mr Crimp’s dollars. Something that could very easily be dubbed “Treatygate”. The report of the Constitutional Advisory Panel, due no later than September 2013, may prove to be a bicultural bridge too far for the Pakeha majority.

Set up at the insistence of the Maori Party following the 2011 General Election, the Constitutional Advisory Panel is dominated by individuals sympathetic to the bicultural cause. Their recommendations are, therefore, likely to be … challenging. Messrs Ansell and Crimp would probably describe them as a ticking time-bomb. But, if so, their casualties will not be found in the National Party.

Indeed, a cynic might say that the National Party could hardly have constructed a situation more certain to rebound to its advantage. Just think about it. A report no National, NZ First or Conservative Party voter will accept, but which no Labour, Green, Mana or Maori Party MP can reject. And who bears a more unimpeachable set of establishment credentials than the Prime Minister of New Zealand?

Get ready for another scoop, Critic. The story exposing National’s 2014 contract with “Treatygate Productions” and anonymous donations totalling two million dollars.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday 17 August 2012.

Wake-Up Calls

Revolutionary And Master Propagandist: John Ansell understands that to be effective an insurgent party's propaganda not only has to be bold, it also has to be cruel. The destruction of a government isn't a job for reasonable, fair-minded people.

JOHN ANSELL doesn’t give a rat’s arse what liberal New Zealand thinks – and that’s his strength. Don Brash’s and John Boscawen’s weakness is that, deep down, they still value the good opinion of their well-educated, middle-class peers. It’s what prevents them from embracing the sort of “fuck you” revolutionary politics that neoliberalism in extremis demands.

Mr Ansell also understands that in the current political climate (i.e. where the National Party is credited with attracting 55 percent of the popular vote) a revolutionary insurgent party, like Act, has only two immediate objectives.

First: it must find a way of cutting-through the “mainstream” news media’s ideological sound-proofing. If voters cannot hear Act’s alternative ideas, then National’s overwhelming electoral advantage cannot be challenged.

Second: Act’s messages must be as polarising as possible and framed in such a way that the voting public is instantly divided into strong supporters and (ideally) even stronger opponents. This is because many politically unsophisticated voters judge the worth and/or strength of an idea not only by how forcefully it is advocated, but also by how vehemently it is opposed.

The Act Party leadership’s decision to “tone down” Mr Ansell’s propaganda was all the proof he needed that his creative pearls were being cast before reformist swine. He might, however, have drawn some small comfort from the furore which even his bowdlerised newspaper advertisement had ignited. Mr Ansell’s strategic thinking has been vindicated in ways that Dr Brash and Mr Boscawen cannot refute.

Mr Ansell’s revolutionary temperament is also demonstrated in his conviction that, when it comes to winning power, Act should “go for broke”. Rather than accept a supporting role in what is essentially a National Party drama, he argues that Act should reject it’s traditional part as “National’s little helper” and pursue power on its own terms. Until such time as it has the numbers to form its own government, says Mr Ansell, Act should stay out of government.

Mr Ansell’s judgement as a propagandist is formidable. He is, after all, the man whose inspired “Iwi/Kiwi” billboards brought the Brash-led National Party to within an ace of winning the 2005 general election.

Central to his understanding of the Kiwi electorate is what he believes to be its profound indifference to the bland background noise of New Zealand’s mainstream parties. It’s this, the voters’ lack of political engagement, which confers such a tremendous advantage upon the incumbent party. Providing the Government of the day does nothing to really piss people off, it can be reasonably confident of re-election.

It’s why Mr Ansell emphasises “boldness” as the prime political virtue. Only by being bold can a politician and/or a political party hope to wake up the dozing colossus that is the Kiwi electorate. New Zealanders like a chancer and they appreciate plain-speaking. In their own, idiosyncratic, passive-aggressive, way Kiwis will quietly admire (and, at a pinch, even give their vote to) any politician bold and canny enough to tune them in to his or her political message.

How else to explain the phenomenon that is Winston Peters?

Or, for that matter, John Key?

The secret to the current Prime Minister’s extraordinary popularity lies, I believe, in his bold assertion that, with him in charge, Kiwi voters could quite safely forget about politics altogether.

Key’s “All New Zealand Boy” persona reinforces this. He comes across as a very ordinary person – at least in the way he thinks and talks, the way he chooses to enjoy himself, and the way in which he interacts with family and friends.

So, if you believe that New Zealand politics is fundamentally bland and unexciting, who better than a bland and unexciting politician to place in charge? (Of course, Key’s millions mark him out as someone just a little bit different, but that’s alright, because the unorthodoxy of financial success is one of the very few manifestations of non-conformity conservative Kiwis are prepared to accept.)

Even among working-class New Zealanders, Key’s ordinariness somehow manages to trump his millionaire status. He fits effortlessly into the classic Kiwi stereotype of “the good employer”, whose ownership of the shop or factory, and a big house up on the hill, in no way inhibits him from taking his coffee-break in the staffroom, “mucking-in” when things get busy, or wearing a silly apron at the end-of-year barbecue.

Crucially, this is the sort of Prime Minister that Phil Goff aspires to be: the genuinely liked, non-threatening Everyman who watches over the nation while its people get on with the things that really matter like pursuing their careers, raising their families, tending their gardens and minding the grand-children.

Phil’s (and Labour’s) problem is that there can only be one such leader at a time. The electorate seldom swaps one “Mr Nice Guy” for another. What would be the point?

“What indeed!” chuckles Mr Ansell who understands that the destruction of a government is no job for “nice”, reasonable, fair-minded men and women.

It’s what makes him so effective – and so dangerous. Not giving a rat’s arse for the opinion of reasonable, fair-minded people is just the beginning. As a revolutionary master-propagandist, Mr Ansell knows that an insurgent party’s message must not only be bold, it must also be cruel.

It must identify the source of all the frustrations and irritations of those not yet comfortable enough to tune-out of politics. And around the designated scapegoats (Jews, “Welfare Queens”, Maori Radicals) the revolutionary party must group their worthless, “women-thinking” enablers – the ones who want you to believe that “nothing’s wrong”, and that “everything’s just fine”, while all the time undermining everything you: the excluded, the over-ruled, the under-valued – hold dear.

Perhaps we should be glad that Dr Brash and Mr Boscawen are anxious to keep a foot in the reasonable and fair-minded New Zealanders’ camp. Because the day they decide to fall in step with Mr Ansell’s revolutionaries we are all in serious trouble.

This essay is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Fighting Them On The Beaches

Effective propaganda: Is it fair to condemn the Coastal Coalition for having the wit to recruit master propagandist, John Ansell, to the cause of keeping New Zealand's beaches in public ownership?

KIWIPOLITICO’s "LEW" has challenged me to denounce John Ansell’s billboards and the Coastal Coalition’s campaign against the Government’s plans to repeal the Foreshore & Seabed Act (FSA).

Were I to do as he suggests, I would be guilty of the most appalling hypocrisy. From the moment the Maori Party’s hand-picked review panel released their findings on the FSA in 2009, I have very publicly opposed the repeal of the 2004 legislation.

Why would I denounce a group of citizens for expressing views which everyone who's taken an interest in this issue knows I support?

I suppose Lew would say that it is the presence of John Ansell (author of National’s notorious Iwi/Kiwi billboards for the 2005 General Election) that renders the Coastal Coalition ideologically toxic.

I disagree.

Mr Ansell may be a formidable practitioner of the dark arts of agit-prop, but that, surely, is an irrelevant objection. The Coastal Coalition has a case to make, and Mr Ansell's assistance will ensure that it's persuasive.

Few people in New Zealand have a more acute understanding of the power of the well-conceived political image than Mr Ansell. His depiction of the Prime Minister, clad in a ceremonial Maori feather-cloak and waving a little Maori sovereignty flag, is a powerful example of his technique.

In that single image a host of National Party voters will see all their worst fears about the Government’s relationship with the Maori Party brought startlingly to life.

Persuading the Government that the repeal the FSA will cost them the support of hitherto loyal voters is, I presume, one of the Coastal Coalition’s prime objectives. Is it fair to criticise them for being lucky (or shrewd) enough to recruit someone capable of scaring the bejesus out of the Nats?

It seems to me that Lew and all the others who have thrown up their hands in horror at the Coastal Coalition’s campaign are only doing so because they're mortally afraid it will work.

Up until the appearance of Mr Ansell’s billboards, supporters of a restoration of Maori customary rights have been relying on the presence of a cross-party parliamentary consensus in favour of the FSA's repeal to starve their opponents of what Margaret Thatcher called "the oxygen of publicity".

There is, however, something rather off-putting (even sinister) about this strategy. Though a very large number (Mr Ansell cites a Stuff poll putting it at 74 percent) of New Zealanders oppose the Government’s plans to give Maori customary title to the foreshore and seabed, this informal cross-party consensus means that within the House of Representatives only a handful of MPs are willing to voice their concerns.

The frustration of FSA supporters is intensified by the fact that both major parties have reneged on their earlier, pre-election, pledges that the foreshore and seabed would remain in public ownership. No wonder the Coastal Coalition is making its appeal directly to the people.

Faced with the prospect of their parliamentary allies no longer being able to marginalise the debate, and with the appearance of the Coastal Coalition and its master propagandist, Mr Ansell, Lew and his colleagues are left with little option but to try and intimidate their opponents into silence by branding them racists.

That certainly won’t work with me, nor Mr Ansell, nor (I hope) with the Coastal Coalition. Indeed, the spectacle of so-called "21st Century liberals" attempting to silence citizens exercising their democratic right to free expression is only likely to increase the Coalition’s public support, and give its campaign to keep New Zealand’s beaches in the hands of all New Zealanders a very welcome boost.