Shocking new GCSB claim – only Herald’s PayWall can save the Government now

1. Those “comrades” on “the Left” who have been peddling the Hack narrative are neither “comrades” nor on “the Left”, are they Bomber?

   • They are just very invested in the current administration, having worked to assist each other for years and they are not giving up their cushy places to anyone now for any reason including truth, justice or accountability.

2. Is this a War on fucken terror or dads army.

   • More like Mum’s UnderArm.

3. On behalf of myself and my degree in keyboard warriorship, I apologise. Bye Gabriel.

4. So, what exactly are you trying to claim Martyn Bradbury?

   That the government of the day is somehow to blame for the possibility they were mislead by a very senior Treasury official who would normally be relied upon by any government for accurate information?

   Based on your comments above (I have yet to buy a Herald), to suggest this is the fault of the PM and Finance Minister is absurd. I applaud both of them for refusing to take any action until the findings of the SSC inquiry is complete. That is the appropriate course of action for a government to take.

   Given the outcome of the inquiry is not far way, it’s a pity some journos and others are not prepared to show similar integrity and patience.

   • Kia ora Anne, I don’t think for one second that that the Government are responsible for this Treasury Official going rogue, but what it demands is them standing him down until that report comes out because if this is all true, there is something deeply rotten in the highest ranks of the public service and that urgently needs to be addressed. Pretending this is all about a hack seems to miss the incompetence at leaving a google search function live on the Treasury site in the first place and then bypassing GCSB concerns to tell the country the Treasury had been hacked.

     I mean – sweet Jesus, do I need to wrap a bow and a ribbon on this? It’s what the government does next that will save or damn them.

     • Thank you Martyn.

       Your point about Makhlouf being stood down in the meantime is a good one.

       I may be wrong, but I should have thought the jurisdiction for such an action lies with the State Service Commissioner (or whatever his latest title is) and not the government. That person has chosen not to stand him down… maybe because he is leaving in a couple of weeks.

       Whatever… I expect he has been relieved of most of his responsibilities anyway.

     • National wants a head now, but there is due process to go through. Patience while awaiting gratification is a midlle class virtue and a necessary politeness, if trust is to be maintained.

5. Bit more infö on Gabriel Makhlouf, when you look at what the UK has become with Brexit, you have to wonder why is NZ obsessed with recruiting these international ideologists who don’t care about inequality and have such market driven, international focus and have no interest or experience of the country they ‘reshape’ into their screwed up image of one large economy where all the countries are essentially the same.

   https://www.noted.co.nz/archive/listener-nz-2012/interview-gabriel-makhlouf/

   It is pretty easy for any government or organisation to ‘save money’ but when looking at the long term you can see if it has been successful or not.

   Countries that sell off assets. kill local industry by allowing the large multinationals to be advantaged for everything, be easy on tax havens that enable the multinationals to do better and not pay the same level of taxes in the country, and do not care about their own nationals as short term money is more important, think trade deals are successful and happy to have the unsuccessful bits buried under the carpet, has become the norm with both Left and Right governments and dominant thinking in organisations.

   This has led to social dysfunction aka Brexit in UK and US has Trump. (in part because people are so sick of the Democrats and Blairite approach to international money and networking) at the expense of their own people who can’t afford to live anymore.

   Formally rich countries people’s standards of living are falling while billionaires are rising and all the left do, is demand more from the middle and upper middle classes which in part creates the inequality and taxes on taxes like user pays which makes them poorer and often don’t effect the super rich domiciled else where…

   The wake up call for NZ is that our health and education and welfare per capita is decreasing aka $3700 per person for health down to $3000 per person by 2024, (when it should be increasing due to inflation) and the money is not being spent on maintaining and increasing standards but on new infrastructure for the demand driven more hospitals and schools (aka construction not the actual people) low wage economy here. (Apart from Southland as DHB’s seem happy for the women to give birth by the side of the road in the consolidation of maternity there. sarcasm . )

   If you have a look at kids books and educational resources in schools, it’s pathetic. Bits of photocopied pieces of paper and dog aired resources in ‘shared’ classroom with 60 kids… no wonder so many kids are on the scrap heap… and teachers don’t want to teach… then the parents are paying for it as part of ‘activity’ charges and donations.

   NZ’s obsession led by power interests such as Treasury, with bringing in lower waged workers to be supported by Kiwis so that private profits can be made, lower wages become the norm and ignoring the side effect of destroying local industry as nobody wants to work in.

   Also creases other ripples such as in NZ other investment are not made in transport aka rail gets sidelined because the ‘labour’ is so cheaply available in NZ when bought in from overseas, it delays investment in more productive ways of transport, like rail. The costs of this are transferred to user pays, aka more council fees for maintaining roads, more charges for petrol, more time lost commuting, higher costs for public transport etc

   https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/bus-firm-ritchies-denied-migrant-drivers-over-pay-and-conditions/ar-AACrQte

6. I’m an old lefty. I cannot understand why Makhlouf hasn’t already been stood down. It appears that he lacks the moral compass to see that he should have voluntarily stood aside as soon as the details of this story became public.

   “The only thing protecting the Government from this latest shocking allegation is the Herald’s paywall.”

   I don’t have a Herald online subscription. Am I to understand from the above statement that members of the government also knew what had really happened, before Makhlouf made his claim?

   If that’s so, it isn’t just Makhlouf who needs to do the decent thing.

   • How would they know before, apparently GCSB informed them only after the Treasury Sec told them there was a hack?

     • SPC: “How would they know before, apparently GCSB informed them only after the Treasury Sec told them there was a hack?”

       Did you not read the linked article? That part of it before the paywall cuts in is pertinent. I quote:

       “The Government’s spy agency made urgent calls to the Beehive before Makhlouf’s public statement – we reveal today what they told at least one senior Government Minister.”

       Does that not sound to you as if somebody in the government was forewarned regarding Makhlouf’s claims?

       If that’s so, it isn’t just Makhlouf who needs to stand aside. Or resign.

       • Think.

         How did the GCSB know what Maklouf was going to say?

         • Think about the implications if they didn’t know. I’d rather see them fighting rather than just kicking back like they did for the past 2 years.

7. “Jacinda and Grant will be ‘paying’ for it to be behind the PayWall today”.

8. So now the GCSB is the font of truth telling? I’d be just as cautious about promoting their version of events on anything. Even without this Makhlouf should be gone. He knowingly claimed a false crime. Simple as that.

   • If GCSB knew it was not a hack, did they also know that it was National Party staffer’s computer that was accessing the information by searching the Treasury site yet not tell the Treasury Sec or the government about this at any point?

   • Are you telling me that the GCSB doesn’t have a direct line to the Minister Andrew Little. I do not believe that for one minute. I would never trust those bastards anyway.

   • I would normally share your skepticism SPIKEYBOY about GCSB, but apparently all this is about lying and arse covering from Treasury.

     What I heard was that Treasury put the budget documents on an internal server then accidentally allowed them to be indexed by their search engine which published summaries of each document on their public web search. It was this material that National accessed legitimately. This is a total rooky IT mistake that is easily preventable and easy to discover and bigwigs in treasury should be held accountable, for the mistake and also more seriously, tried to cover it up at the highest level.

     They then tried to cover their asses by pretending they had been hacked. First they contacted GCSB who told them they ‘had not been hacked’, so then Treasury went to the police to ‘pretend’ that it was someone else’s fault and lied about it to government even after being told by GCSB they were NOT hacked.

     Apparently quite serious to release the budget early because shares and so forth can be effected, so it was complete arse covering and lying to cover up their mistake.

     They also then wasted police time with a false complaint. When ordinary people waste police time they are prosecuted and I don’t see why treasury that bought the fake complaint to police after GCSB told them they had not been hacked, should not be prosecuted for wasting police time, as well as whatever consequence of lying to politicians and effecting markets by releasing budget information too soon.

     From what I heard absolutely nothing to do with government and everything to do with public servants who are incompetent and dishonest and try to lie to cover it up and blame others for their mistakes, which symbolises a very arrogant and toxic culture with no accountability in treasury.

9. This is a complete beat up and yesterdays news. Yes the Treasury website was easy to get into, yes National trolls did so, yes they undercut the budget release. So what?
   In my view the person to blame is Simple Soimon. If he had a thread of integrity he would have alerted Treasury of the problem. Instead he chose gotcha politics. No surprises there!

10. This is a complete beat up and yesterdays news. Yes the Treasury website was easy to get into, yes National trolls did so, yes they undercut the budget release. So what?
    In my view the person to blame is Simple Soimon. If he had a thread of integrity he would have alerted Treasury of the problem. Instead he chose gotcha politics. No surprises there!

11. The way I see it is, who needs a gullible, scaredy cat Finance Minister? Foreign Bankers will be like “Do what we say, or we’ll crash your currency” and he will be like “Oh shit, oh shit, just give me the wish list! Please don’t hit me again!” , tremble, quiver etc

    It was Grant who upgraded from hacking to pointing the bone at National. He got punked. He got hysterical. He let go of the verifiable hand rail. All in a huff. I invite you to agree that’s significant. It isn’t that I despise National any less folks I just want to watch Grant sweat while I have my tea and scones baha

    • All he did was advise National not to use the information they had (from the Treasury site).

      National had illegally obtained confidential information about the budget (albeit not by “hacking”) and any further release of it would have added to their crime.

      It was good advice.

      And saying that the Treasury had passed on allegations of hacking to the police (he wqas Minister) was part of his job.

      The added advice was generous to those who were complicit in the obtaining of the information.

      • wasn’t illegal, was publicly available

12. An outline of the argument that National’s actions were illegal.

    Something that our right wing friendly media studiously ignores.

    http://www.medialawjournal.co.nz/?p=717

13. I think the GSCB and the Treasury are talking about hacking if different terms.

    The GSCG thinks of hacks as using sophisticated software to beat the security system while the Treasury is thinking of it as anything that reveals confidential information.

    It wasn’t a computer hack in the sense that ordinary features were used to get at the info i.e. the hackers didn’t break the system to get in, but it was a hack in that unauthorised people got information they were not entitled to – and did so knowingly and over a prolonged period.

    I’m with Keith Ng on this one.
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12236128

14. Every time, ie every day, that the news centres exclusively on the ‘leaked/hacked/whatever’ information, instead of concerning itself with the information itself, is another day closer to our MSM going full Wurzel Gummidge.

15. It’s on WWW. Newshub for free.

    (Herald paywall stuff usually appears elsewhere reasonably soon. )

16. Personally I think Robertson was donkey deep this and maybe Adern too.
    They have proven themselves in the past to be as slippery as every other politicians the possible exception of Peters

17. meh

18. It would appear that the Government have one eye on Makhlouf’s new position and dont wish to be responsible for him losing said position with the Irish…why they should harbour such a sense is anyones guess but there certainly appears no love lost between Maklouf and National

Comments are closed.