Slater has managed to implode and this latest cocktail of hypocrisy and criminal offending must signal his end of influence in civil society.
The Left constantly fails to register the brute realities of living in a society driven by the neoliberal imperatives of twenty-first century capitalism. In a world where the interests of the successful individual trump everybody else’s, avoiding and/or evading tax has become an industry in its own right.
As I have pointed out over many years, the Waitangi Tribunal itself is an agency of the Crown as part of the judicial system. Members are appointed by the government. In this Tribunal they included three Pakeha men – a Maori land court judge, a former National Party cabinet minister, and a special counsel to a major law firm – along with a kaumatua of great mana, but who is not a lawyer, and a younger Maori woman with experience in the commercial world.
Gower is on TV telling everyone that there is ‘no king hit’ in the Panama Papers. That suggests an incredible miscomprehension by Mr Gower. The ‘king hit’ is that we are a Tax Haven, Gower’s inability to understand anything that can’t be splurged out in a 30 second sound bite is a limitation we shouldn’t allow cloud our vision of what the Panama Papers have shown us.
I believe in the collective wisdom of people and the importance of democratic participation but it is easy to get disheartened about what appears to be an apathetic public fed a diet of reality TV and Government spin.
Beneficiaries swell the number of homeless unable to find a place to live alongside working class and middle class Gen X + Y and all Key can do is build tax havens.
Claiming it is ‘legally compliant’ means nothing if the crooks and the elites write the bloody laws!
Past Key’s sophistry, the simple political question for NZers to ask themselves is this…
If Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee felt nauseous when he shook hands last week with renowned war criminal and Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon he didn’t show it.
Labour’s Sadiq Khan won the London mayoralty despite anti-Muslim slanders from his main opponent, Zac Goldsmith.
Key is going to have a difficult day pretending he hasn’t built a tax haven.