Are Walker and Boag National’s (and the Media’s) Designated Villains?

No Other Suspects? The mainstream news media was willing to print and broadcast harsh Opposition criticism of the Government, even though they knew that the source of the leaked information was a National Party MP. Even though, by pushing the story up towards the top of every news bulletin they were stealing oxygen from the Prime Ministers keynote address to the Labour Party Congress. It’s a very strange kind of journalism that keeps more information hidden from the public than it reveals!

THIS LATEST SCANDAL will be the making of Todd Muller. The news media, up to its armpits in Hamish Walker’s and Michelle Boag’s leaking of confidential medical information, will do everything possible to deflect its impact. Radio NZ, Stuff and NZME, the outlets that received the leaked information all have a powerful interest in moving the story on.

Fortunately for them, this will not be difficult. The villains of the piece have conveniently identified themselves. Muller has ended Walker’s political career, and the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust is in the process of dealing with/to Boag. As a news story, the scandal has lost its “legs”.

Over the next few days we should expect to see the mainstream media pivot away from National’s bad behaviour and begin praising Muller for his decisive cauterisation of the Walker-Boag wound. The right-wing commentariat will already be bashing-out commentary pieces for the weekend papers celebrating the “fact” that, at last, National has put the era of “dirty politics” behind it.

Todd Muller will be hailed for seizing the moment and driving the National Party in a new direction. The Right will be encouraged to rally around its new, ethical, leader. Walker’s and Boag’s indiscretions will be presented as having given Muller his moment to shine.

As I noted in my last posting, a malign symbiosis exists between the mainstream news media and the parliamentary opposition. The passing-on of information – from MPs to journalists – constitutes a crucial stage in the production of major news stories. Journalists mask the highly tendentious nature of this exchange by invoking their core professional obligation to “protect one’s sources”.

No matter that this obligation originated from the need to protect the relatively powerless providers of information from the excessively powerful institutional players committed to its suppression. Under the current interpretation of source protection, even a National Party MP, determined to disprove the charges of racism levelled against him by breaching patient confidentially, is deemed to possess the same expectation of anonymity as a genuine whistle-blower. From an ethical perspective, however, such an expectation is outrageous. To facilitate an already powerful politician’s absurd quest for personal vindication, by concealing his betrayal of powerless Covid-19 sufferers beneath the cloak of anonymity, is morally and professionally indefensible.

Just consider the likely sequence of events in this latest case. A journalist is contacted by an Opposition MP claiming to be able to prove that his racially-charged allegations are backed by official information. Before viewing this information, however, the MP extracts from the journalist a promise that both his identity and the nature of the proof will be kept under wraps. Rather than demanding to know what he’s insisting she keep hidden from the public, the journalist gives the MP her promise – and he hands over the confidential medical records of citizens who have tested positive for Covid-19.

At this point the journalist finds herself horribly compromised. She has in her hands clear proof that not only is a National MP guilty of an appalling breach of the public’s trust, but also that someone within the Ministry of Health is passing highly sensitive information to a person or persons closely associated with the National Party. The clear public interest in her revealing these facts is obvious, but she can’t – not without “revealing her source”.

Inevitably, somebody further up the chain of command called “bullshit” on this insanely conflicted situation. The leak of information identifying Covid-19-positive patients was made public – but not the identity of the leaker. Entirely predictably, the release of this information immediately sparked yet another round of harsh National Party criticism. Once again, the Leader of the Opposition, Todd Muller, and his Health spokesperson, Michael Woodhouse, castigated the Government’s “shambolic” handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

Just think about this for a moment. The mainstream news media was willing to print and broadcast these criticisms of the Government, even though they knew that the source of the leaked information was a National Party MP. Even though, by pushing the story up towards the top of every news bulletin they were stealing oxygen from the Prime Ministers keynote address to the Labour Party Congress. It’s a very strange kind of journalism that keeps more information hidden from the public than it reveals!

It would be nice to think that Hamish Walker and Michelle Boag “came clean” because of a belated attack of common decency. More likely, however, their confessions were driven by fear of the official inquiry into the leak ordered by Minister of Health, Chris Hipkins. The powers given to Michael Heron QC, the man charged with undertaking the investigation, were certainly comprehensive enough to inspire such fear. He had the ability to subpoena witnesses and extract testimony under oath. Scary stuff.

Will Mr Heron, knowing the identity of the leakers, be content to deliver a pro forma report to Minister Hipkins? The mainstream media will be hoping so. They have nothing at all to gain from someone asking too many searching questions about the way this story was handled. The poor, misinformed public, however, has every reason to hope that Mr Heron goes hard and goes early to lock down all the elements of this scandal.

Was there, for example, some sort of quid pro quo arrangement by which the National Party was encouraged to offer up Walker and Boag in return for the mainstream media pivoting swiftly towards Muller’s “decisive handling” of the crisis? Certainly, that would take the spotlight off the implications of the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust’s insistence that Boag could not possibly have obtained the Covid-19-positive patient’s details from them. If National, as seems increasingly likely, has a “Deep Throat” located in the heart of the Ministry of Health, or, even worse, in the Prime Minister’s Office, it will not want such a useful informant dislodged.

I am not optimistic, however, that these sorts of questions will be asked or answered. With the General Election less than three months away, it is most unlikely that anything like the entirety of this scandal’s moving parts will be examined too closely – by anyone. The voters need to be able to believe that New Zealand’s major political parties conduct themselves ethically and responsibly at all times. Bad behaviour must always be presented as the product of “bad apples”. That National’s whole apple tree might be blighted and diseased is not a conclusion which this country’s political establishment will ever allow to pass unchallenged.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 9 July 2020.

CTO-gate: Smoke Gets In Our Eyes.

To Good To Be True? Derek Handley, an old friend; someone of her generation; superbly qualified for a job that needs to be filled by someone sympathetic to her government’s aims and objectives; on his way back to settle permanently in New Zealand; gets in touch via her own party’s president. Why would Jacinda Ardern be suspicious? Where would the harm be in letting him have her private, private e-mail address?

THE BIG QUESTION is, can they pull it off? Can the National Party do to Jacinda Ardern what Labour tried, but failed, to do to John Key: destroy their opponents’ most powerful political asset? The slightly smaller question is: If this is National’s intention, then how deep does the conspiracy go?

In this morning’s edition (27/9/18) of Politik, Richard Harman reveals that, on Monday night, PR maven and former National Party president, Michelle Boag, contacted Politik and asked for its e-mail address. Within 24 hours, Harman reports, copies of Derek Handley’s e-mail messages and text conversations with Jacinda and her hapless minister, Clare Curran, had arrived in the website’s e-mailbox.

Put these facts together with Winston Peters statement, made in the House of Representatives, that Boag is working for Handley, and a number of troubling questions present themselves.

The first and the most obvious: Is it Handley’s intention to do political harm to his “friend” – Jacinda Ardern?

It certainly looks as though damaging the Prime Minister’s reputation is exactly what he’s trying to do. Why else would he release his electronic communications with Jacinda while she is in America? It is difficult to imagine he could be unaware of the effect his release of this information would have on what was shaping-up as a triumphal progress through the UN auditoria and television studios of New York.

That Handley might be angry with Jacinda is understandable. The position of Chief Technology Officer had been given to him – only to be snatched away without warning following the fall of Curran. It is entirely plausible that a person in his position would be feeling aggrieved and anxious to have people know the full story.

But why would Handley involve Boag in the process? Especially when he has his own PR adviser, Julie Landry, to handle the release of such material. Boag, in conformity with her long-standing policy, has refused to confirm or deny whether Handley is her client. It is, however, difficult – given her call to Politik – to form a more plausible conclusion.

And it’s here that the questions begin to go dark: especially for those with a conspiratorial turn of mind; because, immediately, the suspicion looms that the whole Handley-for-CTO exercise may have been an elaborate set-up.

Clare Curran was not, when all is said and done, the most robust minister in Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet. If one was looking for a politician to weave a complicated plot around, Clare would be hard to go past.

What’s more, all those National Party MPs with cabinet experience are well aware of how useful it can be to have a private, back-channel means of communicating with friends and allies. Not every person who ministers meet, and not everything they need to talk to them about, is the sort of information they want all-and-sundry scrutinising in their official ministerial diaries. For people new to high office, the temptation to direct friends and allies past the official gatekeepers (and diary managers) is very strong. Entangling Curran in a web of unwise communications would not be all that difficult: indeed, with a bit of luck she would do it all by herself. National had only to ask the right questions and file the appropriate OIA requests.

And it’s right about here that the truly nagging doubt arises. Did our millennial Prime Minister; one of a generation for whom personal networking has become second-nature; someone who lives on and through her devices; fail to perceive the risks of continuing to work that way in an environment where every form of communication is recoverable – and may be used in evidence against her?

An old friend; someone of her generation; superbly qualified for a job that needs to be filled by someone sympathetic to her government’s aims and objectives; on his way back to settle permanently in New Zealand; gets in touch via her own party’s president. Why would she be suspicious? Where would the harm be in letting him have her private, private e-mail address?

Unless. Unless. Unless. No, the Nats just aren’t that clever – are they? Actually, some of them – Michelle Boag in particular – are extremely clever. Chess players from way back and as unforgiving as an executioner’s axe. More importantly, they have a target with only a fraction of the protection Key possessed. The “System” supplied the Prime Minister from Merrill Lynch with the sort of impenetrable political body armour the Prime Minister from the International Union of Socialist Youth can only dream about.

When Mike Williams flew across the Tasman in search of dirt on John Key, he could not be at all certain that, even if he found it, Key’s friends in the upper echelons of the mainstream news media would use it. Boag knows full well that National can rely upon a cabal of very senior political journalists and commentators to blow the smallest misstep by Jacinda Ardern into a full-blown decline-and-fall epic. She also knows that, contrary to Nietzsche’s claims, attacks which fail to kill politicians do not make them stronger – they make them weaker. The voters cannot see smoke without thinking of fire. Blow enough smoke in their eyes and they stop seeing clearly.

And that is all the National Opposition needs.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 28 September 2018.

Victimisers On Parade: National Demonstrates Why It’s Unfit To Govern A Decent Country.

Look Who's Talking! Michelle Boag, accuses the Opposition women MPs who staged a walk-out from Parliament, in protest at the Prime Minister accusing them of "backing rapists", of "parading their victimhood". Coming from a former president of New Zealand's victimisers-in-chief - the National Party - this is pretty hard to swallow!

 

“PARADING THEIR VICTIMHOOD” is how PR maven and former National Party President Michelle Boag characterised Wednesday’s walk-out by Opposition women MPs. Justifying her lack of sororal solidarity, Boag, explained that: “Every other woman in New Zealand who’s been the subject of a sexual assault doesn’t get the opportunity to do that. They weren’t saying, ‘Look, if you've had these issues, here are all the people you can go to for help’, they were standing up and saying, ‘Poor me’.”

 

This is, of course, no justification at all, merely an attempt to divert attention from the behaviour of the Prime Minister and the parliamentary protest it inspired. The Green Party and Labour Party women who rose to take offence at John Key’s accusation that they were “backing rapists” – some of whom had their microphones turned off by the Speaker and were ordered from the debating chamber – are members of the House of Representatives. And that is precisely what they were doing. They were representing all those women outraged by the Prime Minister’s willingness to tap into the dreadfulness of rape for no better purpose than to score points off and distract his political opponents.

 

As Boag, herself, reminds us, not every victim of sexual assault gets the opportunity to do that. Or, as Green Party List MP, Jan Logie, put it: “We used what we could as representatives of others in the country to point out that to him, as a leader, he needs to take responsibility for his actions and their consequences on others.”

 

Rather than pouring scorn on the women from the Opposition, Boag should have been upbraiding her sisters in the National Party for not having the courage to join the Opposition women’s protest. Then again, perhaps the National women were happy to go along with their party leader’s cynical exploitation of such emotionally-charged words as “rapist”, “murderer” and “child-molester” to distract the nation from their government’s failure to adequately defend the rights of New Zealanders detained in Australia’s concentration camps.

 

Perhaps, if New Zealand was blessed with a Women’s Minister who was happy to describe herself as a feminist, a mass walk-out of all women MPs might have been the result. Perhaps, if the last two Ministers for Social Development, both of them women, had been willing to educate their male colleagues about the endless, wearing, anxiety of being a woman without resources or influence, with two or three children to house, feed, educate and keep healthy on a Sole Parent Support benefit of $295.37 per week, there would have been no need.

 

Because then, their empathy aroused, those National Party men would not have been willing to countenance any reduction in the monies allocated to Rape Crisis Centres and Women’s Refuges. Nor would these compassionate conservatives have tolerated for a moment a Police Commissioner who was unwilling to impress upon his senior officers the unequivocal legal and moral obligation to prosecute any young man who intoxicates, violates, and humiliates on-line, any young woman.

 

Knowing how committed his male colleagues were to addressing New Zealand’s appalling record of domestic and sexual violence, the Prime Minister would then have understood that accusing the men and women of the Opposition of supporting rapists, murderers and child-molesters was tantamount to announcing his intention of instantly surrendering the office of Prime Minister to someone more protective of its worth and dignity.

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Friday, 13 November 2015.

From Cock-Up To Conspiracy

The Minister Is Not Amused: Determined to proceed with defamation actions against Trevor Mallard, Andrew Little and Radio New Zealand, Judith Collins is but one of many National Party grandees caught up in the unedifying, fratricidal political scandal arising from the inadvertent release of 6,700 ACC files to National Party activist, Bronwyn Pullar.

A HARRIED EMPLOYEE of the Accident Compensation Corporation, attempts to focus on the next complaint. It’s already past six o’clock and she is worrying about her family. She texted her husband an hour ago that she was going to be running late, and would he pick up something for tea, but he hasn’t replied. She’s worried about her nine year-old daughter – it’s more than three hours since school got out and there’s nobody at home but her.

Damn these bloody complaints! More and more of them every day and the Corporation’s already seriously understaffed. She skim-reads the e-mail from Bronwyn Pullar, her fingers fly over the keyboard, calling up the requested information from the Corporation’s complex data management system. Her cell-phone beeps twice. She picks it up. It’s her husband. He’s also stuck at work. Dammit, dammit, dammit! She hits send.

Could’ve happened like that – couldn’t it? The unauthorised release of more than 6,700 ACC client records is much more likely to be the result of a simple cock-up than a deep and dark conspiracy – isn’t it? And if that cock-up had sent those 6,700 records to anyone but Ms Pullar’s computer, wouldn’t they, almost certainly, have been sent back to ACC by the person who received them, accompanied by a strong recommendation that the Corporation upgrade the security of its database?

Of course they would. But, they weren’t. And Ms Pullar was on a mission. Ms Pullar had been trying to get the ACC to do something to upgrade the security of its database for years – to no avail. So, when 6,700 unauthorised files arrived in her In-Box, Ms Pullar: ex-National Party activist; friend of Cabinet Ministers; former corporate communications manager; and long-time client of ACC, following a severe road accident; required no assistance in recognising the huge, bureaucracy-shifting lever that had serendipitously fallen into her lap. Nor would she have hesitated to contact her close friend, supporter, PR maven and National Party insider, Michelle Boag.

And its right about here that things begin to turn very murky. So murky, in fact, that its easier to believe that what we’re witnessing is the unfolding of a fully-fledged political conspiracy, rather than a simple bureaucratic cock-up. Because somewhere between ACC headquarters and the Beehive, somebody decided that the actions of the person who alerted the news media to the unauthorised release of 6,700 ACC records – and those of her “support person” – should be placed in the public domain.

Just think about that for a moment. Because what we’re looking at now isn’t the easy-to-make, hard-to-forgive error of a harried and momentarily distracted civil servant. No. What we’re looking at now is a cold-blooded act of political demolition. An act fraught with multiple and serious political consequences – up to and including the resignation of a hard-working and widely respected member of the National Party-led government. Whoever released the details of Ms Pullar’s and Ms Boag’s interactions with the ACC must have understood that it could lead the news media straight to Nick Smith’s door.

Clearly alarmed at the potential damage this information could inflict on the National Party, Ms Boag contacts the Minister responsible for ACC, Judith Collins, and informs her of her own and Bronwyn Pullar’s involvement in the case. Ms Collins immediately passes on Ms Boag’s communication to the ACC Board Chair, and to its CEO.

In very short order the names of Ms Pullar and Ms Boag appear in the news-media. As feared, a letter written by Dr Smith, on Ms Pullar’s behalf, whilst he was the Minister for ACC, is released and he is forced to resign.

The National Party is thrown into considerable confusion. No one seems to know whether the leaking of the information concerning Ms Pullar’s use of the 6,700 inadvertently released client files (by now the subject of both a Privacy Commission inquiry and a Police investigation) and the subsequent exposure of Ms Pullar’s and Ms Boag’s identities (also the subject of a Privacy Commission inquiry), are part of a single conspiracy, or whether multiple conspirators are at work.

Speculation, fanned to red-hot levels of intensity by the parliamentary opposition parties and an odd assortment of left- and right-wing bloggers, advances the idea that what the country is witnessing is a “faction-fight” to secure the post-2014 succession. According to this version of events, National’s leader, John Key, has decided not to seek a third prime-ministerial term, and his two most likely successors, Judith Collins and Stephen Joyce, are vying with one another for the title of heir apparent.

More leaks, followed by counter-leaks, have exposed to public view an alarming and hitherto unacknowledged world of political cronyism and influence-peddling. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the original, almost certainly inadvertent, bureaucratic snafu, this whole affair has now become a single, unedifying, fratricidal, mess.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 April 2012.