Winston Peters ‘not genuine’ in coalition talks – Judith Collins
Judith Collins says the post-election negotiations between her party and Winston Peters appear to have been a fraud.It was revealed on Thursday the New Zealand First leader’s legal action against journalists, the head of the Ministry of Social Development, a number of National MPs and their staff was filed the day before the General Election, which was held on September 23.
I can’t believe the ridiculous argument National are trying to push that because Winston planned legal acton against them, that makes his negotiations in bad faith.
Hold on – THEY had just released Winston’s personal details regarding his Super overpayment in an attempt to kill NZ First off in a wave of hypocrisy yet THEY are the ones complaining about bad faith?
They sat there at that negotiating table knowing they had purposely abused state power to politically humiliate him, aren’t National the ones dripping in bad faith here?
Talking to insiders at the negotiating process, what National failed to comprehend was that Winston wanted actual change to the neoliberal state. all National kept doing throughout the negotiations was writing bigger and bigger cheques for Winston to cash.
They didn’t understand the heart of the man they were negotiating with because their own limited view of the world involves self bribery that blinds them to principle.
My thoughts on Winston’s legal gambit are mixed.
He is a Minister now, threatening to heavy journalists is not consistent with a liberal democracy. He needs to drop his demands on the two journalists immediately. It is embarrassing that he has gone down that path.
As for going after the politicians he blames, sure, let him fire up. It’ll keep National nervous and flinchy when ever he stands, so I like that, but the timing was inexcusable. Labour needs far more of a heads up when Winston plans his side fights.
This is the right thing to do, but he needs to plan closer with Labour about what he’s doing (through backchannels off course) and he needs to stop questioning the journalists.
The outrageous manner in which public servants alerted their political masters to a situation this large and for those Senior Ministers who have a history of leaking personal details like this to the media to get away with an obvious abuse of power demands justice.
All power to Winston’s arm in dealing to this type of dirty politics.
Just stop attacking the Journalists.
Any claim Collins makes is highly suspect as this character is a doggy piece of work and anyone called “Crusher Collins” should be taken as just a joke.
She is starving for media attention that is all it is.
Absolutely Cleangreen. She is a psychopath, pure and simple. Whilst Key undoubtedly is too, like many of his ilk he is able to use a certain charm to keep media and hangers-on enthralled. She completely lacks this facility, despite efforts by her advisors to groom her.
In some ways, I hope she realises her lofty ambitions of gaining leadership of her party. Her completely self interested Machiavellian modus operandi will only drag Nazional further into the abyss and reduce their chances of reclaiming the govt benches.
watching her on that breakfast show convinced me that she is one toxic person-proud of her staus as rottweiler attack dog;proud of her corrupt nature…I wouldn’t have her working beside me in hell.
You’re not wrong there, CG.
More on that shortly on a blogpost I’m working on.
I tell you I was furious and thoroughly disgusted with Collins,Duncan Garner and the AM show. New Government ministers shouldn’t put up with that disgraceful shit thats being served up by the sore losing msm and nat party. God Collins smug arrogance was gross.
They can piss off the lot of them – they have done enough damage to this country.
New gov needs to find some dirt on them ( im sure there must be PLENTY) that will assign the nasty Nats to histories rubbish bin.
National knew that
a) Winston’s a lawyer and
b) that he said before the election he was going to go after those who leaked his details when he had the time.*
And National still chose to negotiate with him. National trying to play the victim know is just absurd.
*August 28, 2016
“I’ve been flat out, as you know, on the campaign of issues and when I’ve got time I’ll turn my mind to it, but I’m not going to stand by and let someone get away with blatant dirty politics and breaking the law.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/96249118/Winston-Peters-has-investigators-working-on-who-leaked-info-about-his-pension-overpayment
+100
Of course national = bad faith, see the speaker debacle for the latest in a very looong list. Collins is spinning :black is white , Winston bad etc played loudly through a partisan media . result : people lose faith in politics and vote further right.
It’s much more cynical than a dumb hypocritical comment.
So two wrongs DO make a right.
If Peters really wasn’t negotiating in good faith with National because of the leak, to me this means that their dirty politics has finally come back and bitten them on the arse. This is long overdue. In a word, karma.
the leak was just a symptom of everything that is wrong with Nactional
…dirty politics and corruption and treachery
…Winston would have been an absolute fool to have gone with them and he knew it…and moreover they knew it!
“…threatening to heavy journalists is not consistent with a liberal democracy”
It was journalists who put out there the information about Peters’ overpayments. On the face of it, it seems that they connived at a breach of the Privacy Act. Even at the time, it was blindingly obvious that it was an instance of dirty politics. In my view, we citizens ought to be concerned at journalists being involved in that sort of thing. Shouldn’t we?
I heard Tim Murphy on RNZ, being interviewed on this issue; I thought that he sounded whiny and entitled. But, since when were journalists not subject to the law?
I’d need to see a good counter-argument, to be convinced that, given the circumstances, Peters shouldn’t go after those journalists.
He has gone after the jornos which he is perfectly entitled to do.
He has also gone after (how many? 3 – 4?) senior Nats which is also his prerogative.
Interesting that he was “flat out” before the election but did find time to lay his complaint the day before the election.
We all know know Winnie carries grudges and has always looked for Utu.
Anyone who thinks that Winnie had any intention of going into a coalition with a party, where he was already committed to taking several senior members to court, is not thinking logically.
How could it possibly have worked if he took the Nat option and as deputy PM and Minister of Foreign Affairs – took senior members of his own coalition to court?
It doesn’t make any sort of sense does it.
His whole charade was to get a better deal out of the party he had already decided he would go with.
Naughty Winston.
Nah sorry Bomber NO SYMPATHY for the journos who pushed this shyte. Fuck em!
Sympathy is in the dictionary if they really think they deserve it between the word shit and the word syphilis.
NZ’s mainstream media need a large rocket up their arse and Winston is just the guy to launch it. They are a pathetic bunch of sniping sneering muckraking mental midgets.
+100 SHONA
Since when do journalists, and “I am not a journalist/reporter” loudmouth media creatures walk on water?
Media creatures are never to be questioned or held to account?
C’mon Bomber you can do better than this.
The self righteous Murphy is not a good role model.
Why does nobody get it, Winston was NOT going to go with the Nats from the word go, that is true, I believe now. First I thought myself, he may make some support arrangement with them.
But as he is a great poker faced strategist and gambler too, he played it well, talking with the Nats, to make them believe, they may get him over. At the same time his whole agenda was to extract the most concessions out of Labour, that he could get for NZ First and himself. He let them get the impression, they had to fight hard to win him over.
As for this drivel about him having been ‘dishonest’, were the Nats, or some of their allies within government departments and so not the same, when gathering information to try and smear him with the ‘revelations’ before the elections?
Indeed, the media are blinkered when it comes to the truth, or one sided in their reporting.
The true winner of the election was Winston First! And he may have another major score to settle as yet.
Thinking further, Winston has made an uncharacteristic error of judgement.
He should have waited until after the coalition had been announced, before he got the papers filed.
Jucinda is not silly and it won’t take her long to realise that this action meant that Winston never had any intention to either offer support or enter a coalition with national.
She will now know that she can’t take her deputy at face value.
By the way, Twyford behaved like a dick in that brief showing on The AM Show, sitting next to Collins the Crusher.
I do not trust Phil Twyford, once we get the picture about how KiwiBuild will really look like, many will feel cheated.
It will mostly be a bonanza for some developers, who will make much hay for years to come, while the ‘affordable homes’ will mostly be around half a million a piece to buy, at least so in Auckland.
It will be PPP all over, government and its agencies only doing bits of the planning and implementation, the rest will be done buy BUSINESS, employing also immigrant building workers and various tradies.
The idea would be to establish a pathway for the leak, ending up with the media. So this would enable discovery of documents,cross examination etc. It’s not the sort of action you could leave the critical part out, as this would lessen the chances of succeeding. The media were complicit in the alleged crime. Winston -drain the swamp. (protect the wetlands though)
No, you cannot blame the media to make a story out of info handed to them, same as you cannot blame Hager for writing ‘Dirty Politics’, based on information passed on to him.
In the Evidence Act, in the Privacy Act and other legislation, the media enjoys special protection. There has to be a high threshold to be met, to extract info from media.
But the Nats did not succeed anyway, as Winston was ahead of them, and defused the situation before it could burn out of control.
While the MSM is often biased, we cannot enforce laws and rules against media as a whole, to please the interests of some affected politicians, especially when they are in power.
Take the MSM on, where and when necessary, but do not use chilling methods to stop even illegally obtained info being published.
Where would we be now without Wikileaks, Snowden and so, and their revelations, by the way?
The journalists involved in this case, were obviously more than compliant in publicly spreading Winston Peters’ overpayment details on behalf of their master Natz!
So good on Winston for going for the jugular of media representatives, as well as the four senior Natz politicians involved! I hope he draws blood!
And if he strung Natz along during the coalition making decision process, then that’s nothing less than what the conniving bunch of crooks deserved, considering they wanted to remove NZF prior to the election, through making sure Winston’s super overpayment was well publicised!
No Martyn
The journalists if you can call them that are part of the problem we have all been talking about on the T D B for the last few years.
I hope Winston sets fire to the bloody lot of them.
Accountability must be restored to our country’s fourth estate.
They have has to much power for to long.
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