7 years of Dirty Politics – The complete list of Winners & Losers
With the final Court case against Dirty Politics now over, we can look back over the last 7 years since Dirty Politics was published to give the full and comprehensive list of winners and losers.
The naked truth is that there were so many outrageous abuses of power outed in this book that it’s difficult to highlight the worst ones because they were all so fucking uniquely grotesque!
It’s like lepers judging a beauty contest, where do you start?
WINNERS:
Big Sugar – without a doubt, Big Sugar are the biggest winners of Dirty Politics. Being able to publicly torment and molest any public health researcher who dared suggest a sugar tax was of enormous help to lobbyists Carrick Graham and Katherine Rich and the fact that we are further away from imposing a sugar tax than ever before shows how incredibly good Dirty Politics was for them as an industry. Both have paid enormous amounts in damages to the public academics who were smeared yet still Rich and Graham haven’t been dragged before any official board to demand to know what the fuck they were doing. Big Sugar are laughing all the way to the bank as your children die from their product.
Matthew Blomfield – Imagine your computer gets stolen by business associates who want to humiliate you and hand it over to Cameron Slater who then delights in publishing embarrassing emails to destroy your reputation. Imagine starting defamation action against Slater only to then have a gang member mysteriously arrive at your house, shoot at your house, beat you and drag you to the street in front of your family and put a gun in your mouth. Imagine then finally beating this prick Slater in a defamation case, bankrupting him and then taking over his toxic Whaleoil blog and shutting it down. Matthew Blomfield’s extraordinary courage in being the first one up against Whaleoil was never given the praise and celebration he deserved.
Matthew Hooton – Despite giving Cathy ‘chop chop’ Odgers Nicky Hager’s personal address so that her organised crime clients could assassinate him, Hooton became a regular on Radio NZ and still writes for the NZ Herald. It’s incredible that RNZ and the NZ Herald are not attacked daily for that decision. Hoots went on to sink the National Party by supporting the Muller Coup so it’s nice to see karma finally catch up to him, but out of all the players on the Right, from Lusk to Farrar to Odgers, Hooton is the one who has been the biggest winner.
Mainstream Corporate Media – When Selwyn Manning and I set The Daily Blog up, it was to counter the influence of the Whaleoil blog on the mainstream media because ultimately it was them that empowered Slater. None of them have been held to account for the role they played in giving him so much power to destroy NZ Democracy. Shane Currie at the NZ Herald conveniently doesn’t remember anything, Paddy Gower is NewsHubs golden child and beyond criticism and Stuff have transformed into a Woke Fourth Wave Feminist Glee Club so no one can now be held to account there. Remember how Key’s mate killed off Campbell Live and Rachel Glucina was allowed to pimp National Party spin lines? Not one of the mainstream media corporates have ever been held accountable for the media environment that allowed Slater’s malice to spread so easily.
Jason Ede – The official contact between John Key’s Office and Slater was Jason Ede. To this date NO ONE in the NZ mainstream media has been able to interview him and hold him to account. My guess is that because the mainstream media were so complicit in the Dirty Politics crimes, no journalist who wants to keep their job looks too hard to find him.
John Key – The smiling assassin managed to throw Judith Collins under the bus over the SFO allegations just at the exact right time David Farrar told him to so that the voters were sated and could go back to enjoying their house valuations increasing under Key’s regime. He has never been held to account for the malevolence he unleashed through Slater and we have never seen an abuse of political power quite like the one Key presided over.
Key’s infamous anti-intellectualism resonated with muddle Nu Zilind and they were more than happy to share a beer with him while they burned books around the BBQ. Muddle Nu Zilind wrote Dirty Politics off as the work of communist Nicky Hager and was just the moaning of the lefty whingers who didn’t know how to play politics hard like good cheating rugby players do.
I can’t remember any of the right wing trolls screaming about abuses of power when Key was in Government the way they do over Jacinda keeping us safe from Covid, and that’s why every single NZ right wing troll is a fucking hypocrite.
Labour Party – They never admitted it publicly, but when Slater and Ede hacked their server, Labour were hit hard from such an enormous loss of data and inside information. National used it to run rings around them in the 2014 election.
NZ Police and SIS – They managed to illegally search Hager’s house, illegally search my bank records and the Secret Intelligence Service got away with spying directly on Hager. Incredibly the SIS didn’t manage to catch a white supremacist terrorist planning an atrocity on NZ soil for 2 years but did have time to illegally spy on Hager because obviously a journalist who outs a Political Party’s political corruption is a threat to NZ security. Sure, they were prosecuted afterwards and made to pay us some compensation, but they knew exactly what they were doing and managed to get away with it.
Graeme Edgeler – New Zealand is pretty lucky to have Graeme Edgeler. I couldn’t have even gotten my case as far as I did without him. I’ve known him a couple of years, and he’s such decent and kind bloke with a terrifyingly brilliant legal mind. He’s one of the few whose call on a legal issue can silence Twitter which is a Herculean feat. He has a passion for civil rights and legal rights and he reached out when this case hit the media. His performance in front of the court is still my favourite moment ever.
LOSERS:
Rodney Hide – In one exchange, Taxpayer Union pimp Jordan Williams boasts about salacious text messages he apparently has on Rodney Hide and claims to use them to force Hide to resign as leader of ACT. Don Brash went on to be leader and Jordan Williams at the time was Don Brash’s numbers boy for the coup. Rodney Hide denies the text messages and then quietly fades away into obscurity.
Prisoner who committed suicide – In one charming Dirty Politics revelation, Slater tries to impress a woman he is wooing by claiming to have her estranged and imprisoned ex partner moved to a prison that is much further away from her family. The prisoner was moved and then went on to commit suicide. Isn’t that charming? This never gets investigated.
Matthew Blomfield’s family – Imagine having your dad/partner dragged onto the lawn and a gun put in his mouth as you fear he is about to be executed. On top of the humiliation of his private emails being published by Slater and the economic ramifications of that, Matthew Blomfield had to suffer his family watching him almost assassinated in front of their house at night. The man arrested never told Police why he just magically decided to threaten Matthew Blomfield. I understand this intimidation service can be bought for around $5000.
Me – I blogged in 2015 that Police could use these powers to damage activists out of spite, I had no idea at the time that I’d inadvertently predicted it by being the example. It took 5 years for me to get the Police into Court and hold them to account for destroying my credit rating and breaching my civil liberties by gaining access to my bank records and red flagging my accounts to every bank in NZ by claiming I was Rawshark and was accused of computer fraud! Once in Court, the cops tried to hold the case in secret to present secret evidence that I could not challenge or defend. The Human Rights Tribunal ruled against the cops obtaining that kind of power and heard the case which the Police immediately dropped and settled out of Court over.
Nicky Hager – He had his life turned upside down, he had Police and the SIS commit numerous breaches of his civil rights and he was mocked and defamed by the mainstream media and the Right wing trolls. All he did was his job, he outed political corruption and the State punished him for doing that. Hager did more journalism in that one book than the entire Press Gallery has managed in 7 years. Nicky is one of the bravest, best, kindest and smartest human beings I have the pleasure of knowing, what the Police, mainstream media, National Party and SIS did to him was reprehensible.
Phil Goff – Months before the 2011 election, Goff narrowly lost to Key and many on the right pointed to the smear job that the PMs Office and SIS concocted when colluding together to pretend he was briefed on Israeli spies attempting to access the Christchurch crime computer in the wake of the earthquake there. In any other country, the PMs Office and the head of the Intelligence agency colluding to smear the Leader of the Opposition would be considered a coup, in NZ most people don’t even know this happened.
New Zealand Democracy & NZ Journalism – Ultimately NZ Democracy and Journalism were the biggest losers in this Dirty Politics saga. The vast majority of New Zealanders have not read the book and still don’t know many of the details in it. Many will read through this list and not even be aware those things happened. Let’s not forget, NZ re-elected Key despite the Dirty Politics revelations because Key kept pushing their house valuations up. We are a juvenile culture with all the maturity of a can of day old coke.
Cameron Slater – Ultimately all his spite, malice and hate gave him a couple of strokes and bankrupted him. He is so radioactive now no one speaks to him on the right and he sulks on an incel blog no one bothers to read. He has become a dead version of Don Brash. He is a cautionary tale who has become as politically irrelevant as he is toxic, a poison no longer used by assassins, a monster to frighten Children if they don’t brush their teeth and pray to Jacinda before bed. He creates less fear and more pity now, which would enrage him more than our loathing or disgust which seems the perfect hell for him.
CONCLUSION:
The reason why the vast, vast, vast majority of NZ are not incandescent with rage over all the above is because Dirty Politics as a book barely sold 20 000 copies. Now, that’s huge for a NZ book, but in terms of popular opinion, it’s nothing. I have always believed that if a documentary was made of Dirty Politics and it went out to a far larger audience, Kiwis would realise what the hell happened and demand justice.
I think a documentary has to be made for 2024 to mark the 10 years since its publication so New Zealanders can appreciate and understand the obscene abuses of political power that occurred and ensure the architects of Dirty Politics are never allowed influence again.
Dirty Politics was our Trump before Trump was a thing. The toxic malice and spite injected into the NZ political body must never be allowed to ever happen again.
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‘The reason why the vast, vast, vast majority of NZ are not incandescent with rage over all the above is because Dirty Politics as a book barely sold 20 000 copies. Now, that’s huge for a NZ book, but in terms of popular opinion, it’s nothing. I have always believed that if a documentary was made of Dirty Politics and it went out to a far larger audience, Kiwis would realise what the hell happened and demand justice.’
Most people in NZ do not read. I found that out when I went down the track of writing books about the crucial issues of the times and paying to get them printed between 2001 and 2011. The total sold was way, way less than 20,000. nd of those sold, In guess about 10% were actually read.
People in NZ get their daily doses of propaganda and entertainment from mainstream ‘news’ sources, and are therefore completely clueless about the real, utterly deplorable, state of NZ; they are equally clueless about where we are headed….straight down the gurgler -financially, energetically, environmentally, socially I won’t say culturally because the hit job done in the late 1980s was superbly successful, and culture now means watching motor racing and watching corporatised sport.
Never mind, there are food and wine festivals to be attended, and McDonalds and KFC to be bought and consumed, and Warehouse and Briscoes ‘bargains’ to be bought, and petrol to be converted into CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 is ‘only’ about 420 ppm, and we’ve still got an allowance of 30 ppm to squander before the Earth becomes largely uninhabitable. At the current rate of carbon dioxide generation that’s at least another ten years, maybe twelve, in which to behave absolutely ridiculously.
At 4.3 ppm, the current daily CO2 difference is unusually high. It is usually 2 to 3 ppm per annum.
Daily CO2 (CO2.earth)
Mar. 6, 2021 = 418.53 ppm
Mar. 6, 2020 = 414.23 ppm
Losers:
Anything to do with the National party.
This is what they stand for, think Michael Woodhouse, Hamish Walker and Michelle Boag etcat the last election. It is systemic within the party.
Despite all the bad shit key did he still got a knighthood, pretty disgusting really and it says a lot about the unfair bullshit society we live in and how it panders to the rich and powerful. Why in a country like NZ do we still have knighthoods this needs to be gone. I am sure there are other ways to reward people who have worked tirelessly for nothing for their communities, not people getting paid for playing sports or doing there job that they are well enumerated for.
Loser:”New Zealand Democracy & NZ Journalism”
“Hooton became a regular on Radio NZ and still writes for the NZ Herald. It’s incredible that RNZ and the NZ Herald are not attacked daily for that decision. ”
Meanwhile, today RNZ pronounces:
“An end at last to the dirty politics saga”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018786302/an-end-at-last-to-the-dirty-politics-saga
I guess they’re heaving a sigh of relief because they don’t have to do further investigation or look at their failings in covering Dirty Politics…?
‘I understand this intimidation service can be bought for around $5000.’
That is way cheaper than I imagined it would be and it gives me some entrepeneuric ideas.
If Daily Blog readers each contributed a few dollars would we raise enough for the fee necessary to intimidate the Labour Party into doing something about poverty, homeless people and public healthcare?
After all voting for the buggers does not appear to be working.
Does anyone know if competition between intimidators helps to reduce consumer cost and make the service more efficient? ( as the ‘free market’ is supposed to). Can you collect quotes? Is immigrant or local talent best?
The Chinese Communist Party regularly uses thugs to intimidate people who challenge the government. We should ask our Daily Blog Chinese Correspondent, Mark, for some pointers on the best way to get a good deal from your local hoodlums.
If we wished to import any how many points would they need under the temporary work visa scheme? Have the local Chinese business community( all loyal party members) already got some contacts we can use?
worth thinkin’ about I reckon.
Wo
Martin,
The truth was entertaining enough; why do you feel a need to make stuff up?
This is simply not true whatsoever. Are you dibretely dishonest, or does your memory just run away with you?
@Jordan Williams. I believe Martin way ahead of you but why are you complaining? Assuming you are right, which I absolutely do not assume in reality, now you know what it is like to have an untruth said about you – a practice that you carried on for so long against so many good people as you sneered at and defamed them.
You call your group the Taxpayer’s Union to hold the Government to account but it is nothing other than an attack machine to defame good decent people once you are paid to do so.
Bert is spot on in his comment about you finding an outrageous abuse of power (perpetuated by you, Slater and others) entertaining.
My New Zealander of the year is Matthew Blomfield. What a brave and courageous man.
The truth was about outrageous abuse of power, yet you find it entertaining. I guess that says a lot about you.
If we had a proper public television service instead of the “Women’s Wankly/No Idea” ratings driven rubbish we are dished up (think BBC Panorama/ABC 4 Corners or even heaven forbid PBS US)
we just might get there!
Current affairs journalism in this country is non existent & that’s the way they like it.
Keep the plebs in their place, more sport, more rubbish like The Project/Seven Sharp, ooh’ property has gone up again, all sponsored by the ASB.
Schedule investigative programs when nobody is watching, ie Saturday or Sunday morning.
In Oz on the ABC we used to have 4 Corners, Media watch & QandA all on a Monday night, all in prime time, no ad breaks, nowhere to hide, excellent programs that took no prisoners.
Thank god for “Al Jazeera” if I want to find out what is happening in World that’s where I go!
This is not “an end at last to Dirty Politics”. Hooten, Walker, Boag, Woodhouse and no doubt others tried it but led to the downfall of Muller and Bridges and the party bottomed out. Wait for the next wave of dirty politics of digging up dirt on labour/Act/Maori Party mps and leading up to the next elections. Collins wont be able to hold back and will wake up and be replaced. The right-wing are so dirty and what a good conclusion to that rat pack. National is now only a party of sad old men (and a few women).
I always felt sad about Phil Goff being demonised for his honesty, have yet to see a copy of Hagar’s book in the library or bookshop so very much appreciate your commentary on the Daily Blog which is the most egalitarian read around. Anyone who says New Zealanders don’t read are a bit up themselves, I reckon. Cheers.
Cannot wait for the film.
Oamaru library has a waitlist for this book and still re-elected Nat candidate.