Jacinda-Handley vs Key-Fletcher

Newshub Editorial Office

The manner in which the NZ mainstream media have attempted to whip the Jacinda-Handley interaction into a ‘jobs for the boys’ style scandal is embarrassing when you compare it to the previous relationship of Key and his appointment of his school mate Ian Fletcher to the GCSB.

I agree that the appointment and then refusal of Handley has been a cluster fuck. Eager MPs like Curran and the PM who wanted a person of Handley’s talent helping the Government out is about as bad as this actually gets, yes Curran and Jacinda were eager and friendly, and in that haste they didn’t dot i’s and cross t’s, but that and the emails between Jacinda and Handley.

Here’s the time line of Jacinda and Handley:

April 23 – August 20th – Handley sends Jacinda 2 text messages and an email about the CTO role.  

Hardly Watergate is it? Now here is the timeline of Key appointing his school mate to head the GCSB while he was ramming through mass surveillance laws and setting up Kim Dotcom for the NSA:

March 8th 2011 – Jerry Mateparae is stepped down as head of the GCSB.
March 15th 2011 – Top NSA spook, James Clapper, flies to NZ to meet with Key to discuss ‘synchronicity’ between the NSA and GCSB.
March 22nd 2011 – High level intelligence meetings
May 2011 – McCully visits Washington
June 17th 2011 – Key meets with Ian Fletcher for breakfast at Stamford Plaza.
July 22nd 2011 – Key is invited to Washington as pay back for this new ‘synchronicity’.
July 26th 2011 – Key side steps normal protocols and appoints his old school friend Ian Fletcher to take over at the GCSB.
October 2011 – John Key, the head of the SIS and NZDF join Ian Fletcher, the MFAT Head, and the DPMC boss for a secret dinner at the British High Commissioner’s home
December 8th 2011 – A letter states that Key is going to meet Ian Fletcher on 12th December
December 12th 2011 – Key meets with Ian Fletcher.
December 14th 2011 – The Police boss responsible for spying on Dotcom meets John Key with other intelligence agencies present.
December 16th 2011 – Kim Dotcom starts to be illegally spied upon.
January 2012 – Raid on Kim Dotcom.

…I can’t take ‘jobs for the boys’ criticism of Jacinda seriously when Key broke every protocol to get his mate to head the spy agency at a time when he was gerrymandering Dotcom and mass surveillance legalisation.

If only the NZ media had spent as much effort on exposing Key’s scandal as they have on Jacinda’s ‘scandal’.