National’s Budget Pre-Game Is Double Standards All The Way Down

So let me get this straight:

1. the National Party somehow acquires Budget 2019 materials two days early;

2. Treasury reports it’s been hacked and that they’ve referred the matter to the NZ Police’s special cybercrime and security department.

3. National claims that it actually got the papers “lawfully”; Simon Bridges states that Grant Robertson should resign as Finance Minister because of National’s receipt of them

Both stories can’t be true. But what I found rather interesting was the quite drastic difference between how National’s reacting to a potential hack of the Government (which has given them a temporary political advantage – it meant they had a big Distraction for their announcements of the outcomes of their internal review into bullying culture within National, and Alfred Ngaro’s Tamaki-inspired backdown on setting up a sidecar support party with which to game MMP) …

… and National’s own screeching vituperation when it came to their *own* instances of themselves or their (Cetacean) subordinates/black-ops crew being hacked in years past. Then, it was quite a different tune – anybody even suspected of knowing who the hacker(s) might be finding themselves with sketchy police search sprees, bank service impairments “just in case”, and the high hell-raising that some sort of massive attack upon the very political and social fabric of this country was immanently in progress. [by hackers exposing what National and its cronies had been up to, I mean – not, you see, by WhaleOil, the PM’s office, et co, themselves. Funny how that works]

I know it’s a truism to state, but it’s almost like nobody actually cares about “the rules” over there, and that the only principle they hold dear to is the “Power Principle”, the desire to “win” at all costs, and somehow make it look like their own leader isn’t in a near constant state of Schrodinger’s Resignation, via scalp-demanding from just about anyone and everyone else.

Meanwhile, I was also rather surprised to see the National Party attempting to attack the Government for an increase in Defence spending. I mean … this is not what you’d expect from National – especially given their rather flagrant over-enthusiasm in years both past and present to deploy the NZDF in support of American military adventurism in the far-flung reaches of the world.

I thought the National Party were supposed to be at least somewhat keen on having a useable and fit-for-purpose Defence Force? But, then, I guess not. Looks like the only Defence they’re really seriously interested in, is against the Government’s incumbency, by any means necessary. Typical.

The overwhelming impression one gets when looking over the Nats’ Budget pre-game, then, is very much the same as that which we’ve had by looking at them in Opposition these past eighteen months all up.

Namely – it’s double-standards, all the way down.