The enormity of how far the State spied on citizens is only now starting to emerge…
… can we actually trust what has been revealed when Peter Hughes himself employed these tactics?
An ironic case of foxes and henhouses
The Government’s spooks and snoops have obviously been getting a bit cocky. But the announcement to investigate their use by government departments is highly ironic.
Because the guy calling the inquiry, State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes, was in charge of MSD when it was using private investigators. Particularly in court cases where the state was on the hook for serious liability. Like, say, when children in state care have been raped.
Hughes was the boss at MSD when the Crown defended the White case in 2007. The civil case was about many things but it was essentially a test case about the Crown’s liability for abuse of children in state welfare institutions. Crown Law and MSD chucked millions of dollars at defending it because they knew if they lost there were thousands of other victims they’d be paying out substantial damages to.
The Crown won on statute of limitations, although the judge accepted the allegations of sexual abuse by one of the main plaintiffs. This judgment set the precedent the Crown wanted and allowed the state to pay negligible amounts to claimants on terms that suited the Crown’s budget. If victims don’t like what they are offered, their only option is to go through the invasive interrogation of a QC acting for the Crown in a court, with little to no chance of winning. Despite a Royal Commission of Inquiry that’s still their only option.
The case received no media coverage, probably because of heavy suppression orders. But there were all sorts of details that didn’t appear in the proceedings.
…MSD HAD to win the 2007 case because they had been using so many corporate spies and mass surveillance powers in so many other cases, if they lost the 2007 case, it would have exposed them to multi-millions in damages.
So the person who was deeply involved in using corporate spies, is now all of a sudden reviewing what those corporate spies have been doing?
How hard has Peter searched?
These pieces of filth spied on abuse victims so that they could trip them up in court…
Physically, sexually and psychologically abused in state care, two brothers sought legal redress and damages from the Government.
Rather than take responsibility and show contrition, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and Crown Law hired private investigators to dig up dirt on witnesses.
This is one of the most shocking findings of an inquiry into the use of external security consultants by government agencies, like Crown Law and MSD.
The brothers – abused by a cook at a state-run school – were subjected to courtroom questioning which suggested they consented to abuse in receiving cigarettes.
MSD’s boss at the time was Peter Hughes. He is now head of the entire state service.
…this demands a far deeper question, who actually runs things here? The politicians or the Public Servants?
Just like $120m Meth Hysteria that saw hundreds homeless, no piece of public service filth will be held to account because Governments of all hues are too gutless!
Is this Government too spineless and frightened of the PSA to sack public servants?
Are our politicians merely a facade of democracy while the unaccountable Ministries really run things?
After seeing how Housing NZ destroyed lives based on a myth, after seeing MSD attempt to imprison and damage beneficiaries by defining loans as income, after seeing the cruelty of the state in dealing with the most vulnerable amongst us time after time after time – learning public service scum have spied on us the people should be the final straw!
The Left look at the State as the great leveller of unregulated Capitalism, but what if the State is part the bloody problem in crucifying the poorest and weakest amongst us?
The neoliberal revolution that occurred in NZ changed our public services from being the instruments that facilitated egalitarianism into psychotic corporations focused on making rather than doing. The neoliberal welfare State is there to punish and damage, it is not there to look after the welfare of those people.
The radical Left needs to consider targeting the State for an existential change.
For all the crocodile tears – which public servant will be sacked?
Fuck the ‘it won’t happen again’ bullshit!
Sack the fuckers!
Now!
Thompson & Clark only employ NZ born scum, that must be jailed for selling New Zealanders out for a few dollars as they are just the most offensive scum on God’s earth.
Straight to the point but spot on Cleangreen. Well said. See my response to Martyn’s Blog – Breaking: State Spied on Greens, Mana Movement, Greenpeace & Maori.
Thompson & Clark need to be prosecuted but the very state , including Crown Law, that should bring the prosecution also used them to spy on decent law-abiding people who were simply exercising their lawful rights, in particular the right of freedom of speech, expression, thought and conscience. So are they really going to prosecute them???
Martyn is spot on especially his comment – “For all the crocodile tears -which public servant will be sacked?” As I said in my earlier response there has been only one obligatory resignation. Just a token gesture before Christmas. The remaining pestilence will continue on, spying and harassing with that contemptuous sneer etched permanently into their wretched faces in the brainwashed twisted belief they are doing good for society and their masters, to whom they bow down in front of and to whom they are totally beholden.
cleangreen 10
19 December 2018 at 10:14 am
We need all decisions over the last nine years re-examined to see whether this rouge agency MBIE and their spies have corrupted the decisions made by those “advisers – and their (so called experts)” the John Key Government have relied on to make there decisions upon.
This scandal may eventually dwarf the ‘deep lengthy congress run ‘Mc Carthy Inquisition’ of many public over the ‘communist infiltration inquiry.’
MBIE now must be under a deep held inquiry and must be broken up into fully separate entities again as it was under the Helen Clark Government, as it was safer than the ‘mega agency Steven Joyce constructed to ram his toxic policies through.
Anything that Steven Joyce did during the last decade now must be placed under deep scurrility in the inquiry into this Thompson /Clark scandal.
Steven Joyce tried to make Ministry of transport defunct and put then road his controlling authority (NZTA soley as the principal ‘transport agency to push through all his roads of National significance, as ‘Ministry of transport was then the actual “Principal agency advising Government’ and were pushing for more rail freight rather than his ‘roads’ so he tried to destroy MoT and make NZTA the only transport agency so he could control them for his roads plans.
NZTA do not manage rail freight in this country so we may now save our rail system.
Yep, bang on again. MBIE – what a crock of a name that is. Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment – like some sort of bright light leading us all out of the misery of darkness. In reality just another bully boy outfit.
‘Are our politicians merely a facade of democracy while the unaccountable Ministries really run things?’
Yes.
But don’t overlook the banks, corporations and opportunists that have the ears of the ministries.
How long have we been talking about this? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? And what changes for the better? -nothing.
And, sadly, nothing will change until there is a massive global crisis which clobbers business-as-usual so hard it cannot recover. That crisis is coming, but apparently not just yet -fortunately, because when it does arrive our so-called leaders won’t cope, and nor will the bulk of the populace.
And who did all this happen under, the national government of course spying on its own citizens sick o’s and at a time when they were down very sad indeed. What type of people are they obviously they have no principles or ethics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnxZK2_eytU
Who actually runs things in N.Z.? That’s easy. It’s the deep state. So, who brought us to this state of affairs? We were once nuclear free. Until we joined the five eyes. Until we expanded the GCSB. So, thank you Aunty Helen, John Key, and Jacinda Blair! We are now on course , thanks to the Huawei incident ,with our membership of Five Eyes, to be in the epicentre of a trade war with China.The five eyes members are at the forfront of the military confrontation with China in the South China Sea. The Five Eye members are at the forfront of the confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine situation, which was started of course by the U.S.Empire coup that toppled the Democratically elected Ukrainian Government, hence threatening Russia’s borders and their warm water Naval base in the Crimea.
This makes us now a nuclear target, of course. So we go from plucky little NZ with an independent foreign policy punching above its own weight, to a country that is so plucked its f*cked !!!
Sadly.
It is not surprising that this was a spying fungal outgrowth of the putrid noxious corrupt jonkey Nactional Party
….the only solution to ensure this fungus never rises again is to expose it to the bright sunlight of total exposure…there must be no hideaways for the people involved from top down
A Commission of Inquiry is needed…and then charges
And Brownlee knew all along…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/109485520/gerry-brownlee-knew-southern-response-hired-private-spies
Fat fuck!
I fear there is more to come. We are witnessing only the proverbial tip of the iceberg of frozen faeces.
Martyn is right, we need a commission of enquiry. We need people to be named. We need indictments to be issued . Those responsible and those who participated should be held to account and if necessary, sent to prison.
I don’t think people undersrand how perilously close we have come to the rise of a secret proto fascist state.
This must be nipped in the bud. Now.
The Sleepy Hobbits are busy playing computer games, licking ice cream, going on holidays, getting the barbeque out and making holiday dates on Tinder.
Our anger is restricted to the few of us who care about what goes on, most do not give a rat’s arse about all this, as per usual.
My young neighbour is now driving a huge Toyota ute, which he uses for work and for private outings, it seems climate change is the last think on his mind.
And GCSB, SIS, those are not agencies most bother with, they are too brainwashed to consider them a threat, they are the firewall against the cyberwarfare they fear from China, Russia and a few others. The Five Eyes members are the friendly guys, most in public think, the NZ spies are the really good guys (noble ‘warriors’), and the others outside the traditional friendly ‘west’ are the ‘bad guys’, easy, black and white, we have it all worked out.
They are waiting for the next series of The Block, that is what matters, not what activists and progressive little parties fear from Big Brother watching and listening in.
However . There is some good news! Russia has just announced the deployment of their new hypersonic missiles that are so fast that no country on earth can stop them! It is no coincidence that the U.S. Empire has announced overnight that they are leaving Syria immediately! It’s either that or get their planes shot out of the sky. Harrah! Harrah! Clever Jacinda, with the foresight and wisdom of an aardvark, has enthusiastically harnessed N.Z to the dying U.S. Empire.Cracks are appearing in this Western conspiracy.[France, the U.K.] Blowback from the crimes ,the invasions, the false flags, the criminal surveillance of the Five Eyes U.S. Evil Empire is coming !!!
gerry was making excusing for the spying on RNZ this morning he seems to be very flippant about laws and upholding them we all know he has form in this area.
national are saying dismiss Haumaha when he hasn’t actually broken the law unlike them. I hope the Maori council pursue this national lot they are a law unto themselves and we want to see heads roll for such unethical and illegal behaviour. They (national) have shown they have a pattern of inappropriate behaviour right down to a fetish for touching peoples hair, breaching security and peoples privacy it time to rein these mongrel in.
These people should face the guillotine.
The French have only got it right once and that was in 1789 when they relalised who their enemy really was and did something about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GevIpluFA3g
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