#Waitergate – Joined-At-The-Hip-Group

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They say in politics, it’s not the crime that gets you … it’s the cover-up.

That looks set to be what happens here with #Waitergate.

Key initially tried to front-foot allegations of some seriously creepy weirdness meted out to a waitress at Parnell’s Rosie’s Cafe on Wednesday; but when the sad spectacle of our Prime Minister appearing on the nightly news attempting to defend his inappropriate touching of hospo staff as “a bit of fun” evidently failed to wash with the electorate, his Black Ops team went into action.

The first sign that this was being taken deadly seriously by the Nats came when they deployed Rachel Glucina acting in the guise of a “PR Advisor” to go have a chat with the waitress in question. Now, most people know instantly who Glucina is – and while she definitely specializes in PR and spin, she’s mostly done that in a reasonably covert capacity as the mistress of the Herald’s Gossip pages, rather than as a professional.

Although having said that, experienced political warriors have long speculated that her lines of communication run right the way into the Beehive – allegations which were later proven during #DirtyPolitics, when it turned out she was being deployed by the Nats to run scandalous “exposes” about alleged links between Russel Norman, Winston Peters, and Kim DotCom. At the time, Winston alleged her information source must have been the Office of the Prime Minister misusing the state’s security intelligence services to track his movements.

So we can already see that Glucina’s regularly up to her gills in Nat-party covert ops.

But how did she know so instantly precisely *which* Parnell cafe the incident had occurred at?

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Or, for that matter … which waitress to call up and talk to.

New Zealand’s a small place – the well-healed east side of Auckland’s central suburbs even more so … but this was just uncanny.

Fortunately, Glucina has a brother in the know. For, you see, Rosie’s is run by Hip Group.

And guess who manages Hip Group? Why, it’s Glucina’s brother, Henry.

Well how about that.

So what I’m speculating happened here, is when Key’s team knew the hair was about to fly on this story; his shadow comms and PR team called in a previously utilized and demonstrably successful political weapon (Glucina), and told her to make the victim’s moral high ground go away.

Glucina then took advantage of her familial connection to Rosie’s afforded by her brother; and set up the interview with the victim and her immediate employers in the guise of running PR for them.

Now obviously, I can’t prove that Henry Glucina personally leveraged or convinced Rosie’s owners Grant and Brown to let his sister into their home for the purposes of running damage control … but it’s certainly not implausible.

In fact, the idea of Henry Glucina hitting up the people he works with on a day-to-day basis and saying something like “I know this looks *really bad*, and I’ve heard The Herald’s about to go public with identifiable details. Here, let me introduce you to this PR person I’ve got sitting around on retainer” and then wheeling in his sister to do an interview and photo-shoot – well, if anything, that seems scarily plausible. And would definitely explain why the Herald’s amended its own version of events to acknowledge considerable “confusion over the initial approach” while deleting Glucina’s earlier claim that “at no stage did she misrepresent herself or mislead anybody“.

This is how the Nats work. Words-in-your-ear, taps on the shoulder, going straight to your employers, and firing off falsehoods safe in the knowledge that somebody else comes along to clean up the mess afterwards.

I’m disgusted with the way Glucina and The Herald have acted here.

But if anything, I’m even MORE outraged that the only thing the Prime Minister appears to have learned from #DirtyPolitics … is that the Cameron Slater modus operandi works *really well* at skewering the innocent.

Fortunately, just like with #Watergate … this time, the crooks have been caught red handed.

18 COMMENTS

  1. I would guess that everyone at Hip Group is already aware that Glucina and Glucina are siblings. I’m sure it’s all very luvvy. Difficult to overestimate the level of interconnectedness in the swish parts of town.

  2. Can the Herald continue on this sleazy, underhand, page 3 girl, tabloid style crap and think they can remain in business as a serious daily newspaper? Do they want to piss off what impassive readers they have left with their political bias any more than they already have?

    They must have shed readers galore during the last election (100K bottles of wine anybody) as a result of their obsequious behaviour toward National and their near unquestioning approach to them over at least their first 6 years. I mean you would have to be living under a rock to not see whose political colours they fly.

    This is a damage control job for Key and as you said shoulder taps and influence is being called upon to drag this waitress into the mud anyway they can. Its bloody awful to watch this, in New Zealand of all places!

    It is becoming obvious that Key’s political star is on the wane so why on earth would the Herald want to go into bat for him again especially on this creepy weird fetish subject?

  3. Or maybe Rachel just thought I can get the inside interview because my brother is the boss … without any influence from Key, his office , dirty politics ra ra ra left conspiracy crap

  4. It seems to me that the right wing press is being incredibly short-sighted in its attempts to white-wash this debacle away. They are assuming that they can coax the public away from this ‘unfortunate side-issue’ and life will be sweet again. What they are failing to see is that it is impossible to go back to the good old days because we cant know what will emerge from the Black Lagoon next.
    What we know for certain is that over six months John Key has been harassing this one waitress on a number of occasions. Is it inconceivable that over a six month period he might just as probably harass a number of young women a few times. Given his complete lack of remorse, this is not impossible.
    Remember that when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a high powered banker, was accused of sexually assaulting an Indian chamber maid, his supporters ridiculed the idea that he would risk his reputation in such an unnecessary way …until the stories of his prostitute parties emerged.
    Remember that the expose of Tiger Woods’ sordid hidden life emerged only after an unlucky car accident. What will the right-wing press do for an encore if another assault charge emerges? Where is Plan B?
    And the alternative scenario is hardly any better. Lets assume that for an entire six months John Key has not molested anyone else but Amanda, sweet Amanda with the ‘tantalising’ pony tail. Doesn’t the thought of this make your flesh crawl? John Key is history.

    • Yes well let us hope there are more to come forward because I agree there must be others.

      It’s time to quit the pulling of punches and slam this issue hard as it could well be his undoing.

      An undoing which is well overdue after so many cases of “I will resign if…”

  5. The bloated, rotted corpse of this affair is causing a stink and the public are just expected to put up with it. This government was elected by us, and we deserve better from them.

  6. But wait, there’s more! This story is just foreplay to the next one… the ‘very prominent New Zealander’ court case.

    Bet Grubby Glucina will target the victims in that one too…

    • Key should be made implicit in that case.

      There is no way he could not have known that he was putting S*bin in as a candidate and promoting him as a fine MP without knowing the complete story.

      His tales of not being advised are a very very thin lie to keep him isolated whereas I would fully expect a court of law to know otherwise and have the truth revealed.

  7. Who is Rachel Glucina?
    She is the woman responsible for the NZ Herald article on Amanda Bailey.
    She is the bitch who contributed to the depression that killed Charlotte Dawson.
    In an astoundingly vicious article she wrote about Charlotte she compared her to the likes of Heather Mills and Sarah Palin.

    But judge for yourself, myself I’d describe her as an unprincipled evil witch!

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10746686

    • It’s a part of NZ culture I really don’t get. Broadcast nastiness, using a major national publication to air personal grievances from the safety of a column. I don’t understand how this stuff gets off the desk.

  8. Well sussed, Curwen.

    By the way, I’ve sent this to the Herald;

    From: Frank Macskasy
    Date: Fri, Apr 24, 2015
    To: newsdesk@nzherald.co.nz

    Kia ora,

    I wish to lodge a complaint at the actions of one of your staffers, Rachel Glucina, who has allegedly misrepresented herself to gain an unauthorised interviewed with cafe waitress,
    Amanda Bailey.

    Specifically, I refer to this part of the NZ Journalist Code of Ethics which I suggest has been contravened by Ms Glucina;

    “…(h) They shall identify themselves and their employers before obtaining any interview for publication or broadcast…”

    This is a shocking allegation, and I call upon the Herald’s management to conduct a full investigation of this matter.

    Please advise what process you plan to undertake to investigation my complaint and what remedies you will apply to this situation.

    Regards,
    -Frank Macskasy

    • Good one Frank and thank you for your input here, in support of Amanda, who I feel has been very badly misled and deceived by her employers and the unethical tactics used by Rachel Glucina to get an interview.

      Hope your letter gets some positive results in Amanda’s favour.

      Cheers

  9. “have been caught red handed”.. Is that a reference to a Salvador Dali painting depicting himself with the “red hand of the masturbator”?

    Now that really does put things in perspective……

  10. A complaint to the Press Council would seem appropriate in this case. As a journalist misrepresenting yourself, hell in ANY profession, misrepresenting yourself is a huge no-no. It isn’t much different from a door-to-door salesman visiting you and claiming to be only conducting a survey or a pollster from a political party saying they are independent. Journalistic integrity (snigger, snigger) is at question here. Ms Glucina and the Nat Herald obviously don’t think journalistic and professional integrity is worth much, but perhaps others do and they need to stand up and shout it out, LOUD.

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