No one on the progressive side of politics should con themselves for one second that National’s powerful corporate interests will just allow David Cunliffe to waltz in and challenge the neoliberal paradigm they have been benefiting from for the last 30 years. At some stage as popular support rushes towards a left wing Labour Party, John Key will pick up the phone to the Australian masters of the dark arts, Crosby/Texter and the dirty tactics will begin.
To appreciate how dark the arts will get, let’s remind ourselves of Steven Joyce’s actions as outlined in The Hollow Men.
-In the week of the 16-20 May 2005, Steven Joyce had a formal meeting with the exclusive brethren who were organizing their despicable advertising campaign and Joyce met quietly with other pro-National lobby organizations telling them the two crucial messages were “change”. Change was the main theme the Exclusive Brethren ended up using, remember National weren’t officially having these meetings with the Brethren and Joyce was the hollow brain behind this.
-Joyce also saw the draft pamphlets and advertisements from the Exclusive Brethren before they went out, remember National initially pretended they knew nothing about the Exclusive Brethren.
-When confronted with allegations that this was a stitch up job, Joyce’s ‘response’ was that Stephen Win (the contact person on the EB pamphlets and advertising) wasn’t a National Party guy and it certainly wasn’t a National-funded campaign – that of course is a twisting of the facts after meeting with the EB and providing input and viewing all material about to be released by the EB, we can see how hollow Joyce’s response really was.
-In 2005 Joyce wrote to electoral campaign committees saying that “in this election National is planning to go close to its legal limit for Party Vote campaign expenditure (meaning $2,240,000), That has not happened previously”. Interestingly when the donation declarations were delivered to the Electoral Commission not one name from National’s largest financial backers were declared after their donations had been washed through the National Party launderette, the ‘Waitemata Trust’ so that their political influence through financial donations remained invisible. Interesting side note isn’t it, Winston was crucified in the media for something the Electoral Commission, the Serious Fraud Office and the Police cleared him on, has National’s funding ever been given that level of scrutiny?
-Steven Joyce was credited in that election by National Svengali Peter Keenan for keeping on Crosby/Texter, the Australian spin Doctors who were so good this election at spinning the ‘change’ and ‘moderation’ con job.
-Joyce went to Australia to meet with Crosby/Texter and on October 19th 2004 prepared the con job they would use to try and spin the election on, it is incredible how much of that con job was so similar to the con job the Joyce ended up using to win this election, let’s go through them…
1: Stop us going down the path to rampant political correctness.
2: Put an end to the grievance industry.
3: Make our community safer by locking away violent criminals.
4: Ensure your hard-earned tax dollars are spent on Education and Health and not wasted on Labour’s pet projects and bureaucracy.
5: Put in place economic policies that will lift all our incomes closer to those of Australians.
6: Tighten up Welfare and ensure that everyone that can work does work.
(Note, none of this is policy, just focus meeting tested bigotry.)
-Interestingly when Joyce was challenged on whether or not Crosby/Texter was giving National advice in 2005, Joyce said there was ‘some’ advice but National had no plans of bringing them to NZ, which was a clear twisting of the truth because Joyce had been to see them in 2004, when challenged again Joyce fudged the issue and pretended to not know the depth of any Crosby/Texter relationship and advised Don Brash to claim he only met them in passing.
If David Cunliffe really poses a threat, expect the fight this time to be very, very, very dirty and expect to see it on Whaleoil first.
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You’re basing this on the assumption that David Cunliffe will challenge the economic status quo of the last 30 years. He’s made a few emotive speeches, but any concrete policy?
Actions speak louder than words!
It’s not really about government folks, it’s really about corporate interest and power. It only looks like government.It’s a veneer of the corporation.
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