Q+A review: Has anyone contacted slave pen crusader Matthew Hooton yet?
Excellent Q+A today. Bill English was so frightened of appearing live he only agreed to a pre-record with Corin Dann who grilled him mercilessly over his Todd Barclay falsehoods.
Bill’s constant flip flopping on what he knew when and his ever desperate attempts to explain himself went into overdrive in the last 24 hours as he first tried to claim the tape might not exist to admitting today that Todd Barclay offered to play him the tape……..that supposedly doesn’t exist.
This is dangerous for National now because in English they have leader who looks like he is lying. With Key, you guessed he probably was lying, but you appreciated that he made every effort of allowing his dead eyes to deny it straight to our faces.
Middle NZers don’t mind our Leaders lying to us as long as they can do it convincingly, but having a Leader who is obviously lying and struggling with the telling of the lie, we don’t like that at all.
Andrew Little was on the show, he made a very powerful case against English and managed to kick student intern issue to touch. It was funny watching the TVNZ journalist admit and acknowledge that the student intern ‘scandal’ was actually a media beat up and that on reflection, Labour had over reacted.
Oh I laughed long and bitterly hard over that comment.
The best part was the spokesperson for Awataha Marae going on the show to point out that while they had 1 broken shower, they actually had 8 showers there and that the majority of Interns loved their experience.
Which makes comments like this…
…seem terribly racist and political…
…have NZers admitted yet that the entire Labour sweatshop slave scandal was a manufactured scandal?
…this Labour ‘slave scandal’ proves the ease with which a Right Wing blog can still manipulate the NZ mainstream media.
This ability to manipulate the mainstream media is as cancerous in 2017 as it was in 2014.
Thanks for this again:
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/06/23/why-the-labour-party-student-intern-scandal-is-a-smear/
Thanks for the reference in it – to this report:
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/06/revealed-grand-plans-behind-labour-s-intern-scheme.html
And thanks for this post about Q+A, which I watched. Here a transcript of the interview with Andrew Little:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1706/S00330/qa-anthony-wilson-and-andrew-little.htm
“JESSICA Watching this play out, what did you personally learn from this?”
“ANDREW That I think it’s—You do have to step up and take responsibility straight away. I mean, that’s what I was confronted with – a situation that I was frankly horrified with in our party earlier this week. When I heard about the complaints of those students about the way they were being treated, found out that they were here because people closely associated with the Labour party had got them here and made promises to them, I said to the party, ‘We must take moral responsibility. We step in and we clean it up.’ We didn’t wait until the media story broke to respond. We responded straightaway. The story came out, but leadership is about taking responsibility and doing the right thing.”
But this disturbs me:
“JESSICA It was called the 2017 Labour Campaign Fellowship.
ANDREW Yeah, because people closely associated with the Labour Party were involved. Without approval, authority or any mandate, they went ahead and did stuff. The next I became aware was about May this year, when the party was getting messages from students within days of arriving. The party then stepped in straight away to people who are associated with it, said, ‘What is going on? There is no approval for this. This is not the party thing.’ The party was given assurances, ‘We’ve got funding. We’ve got a programme sorted out. Nothing to worry about.’ ”
MY comment:
So first issues appear to have come to Andrew’s attention in MAY this year? Yet we heard the first public comments from Andrew two or three days ago, not in May.
Also:
“JESSICA But there was something to worry about, wasn’t there?
ANDREW There was, yeah. And we got the complaints this week. And the minute that happened, because we were aware that the Labour Party name was associated with it, it’s not about legal technicalities – I take a very dim view of those who hide behind legalities – and say it is moral responsibility that is the most important thing. We take responsibility.
JESSICA But Matt McCarten has been a bit of a fall guy for you guys this week. He’s been mentioned a lot taking responsibility for this. Have you talked to him about that in the last few days?
ANDREW I haven’t personally spoken to him about it. And, yeah, he has been. He’s been involved in it.
JESSICA Is he the fall guy?
ANDREW I don’t know what you mean about ‘fall guy’.”
“JESSICA Has he taken responsibility for how this played out?”
“ANDREW I haven’t spoken to him. I’m sure others have. I haven’t spoken to him. The priority – and I said to the party right from the outset once we got those complaints last weekend – the priority is the wellbeing of those young people. That’s what we focus on now. That’s what this week has been about. Next week and the weeks that follow, there are still questions to be answered. We’ll get on top of all that.”
My conclusion:
So it was all known before, but someone acted without authority, and left a mess?! And questions are still to be answered, I note.
Sorry, not quite good enough, I must say.
The criminal activity of the National Party, the covert recording, the lying, the cover up, the hush money, the don’t cooperate with the police or else, versus the situation Labour found themselves and came out and fronted could not be more diametrically opposed.
Hooton is a disgrace and I for one have had a guts full of the misinformation that pours from his lips with such ease. He must have rolled around in his slum marae comments like a dog in Horse shit.
And I note over at the Standard, John Drinnan, if it is the real one, saw no connection between putting the boot into Maori and this “scandal”/non event. He must have missed Matthews toxic comments.
I heard creep Hooten spewing his shit on RNZ yesterday. I heard him say outright lies a few times before & Kathryn Ryan has to shut him down. I can’t understand how he gets away with it. It was Lyn Freeman on today.