The extraordinary double standards being used against Metiria

ByMartyn Bradbury

The latest attempt to destroy Metiria Turei for daring to have the courage to highlight that people are forced to break the rules to live under our neoliberal welfare state have reached fever pitch.

Now it’s over an action she committed as an anarchist 20 years ago…

Turei admits enrolling to vote at different address in 1990s

Metiria Turei has admitted enrolling at an address where she was not living in 1993, saying she did it to vote for a friend who was running as a candidate.

The Greens co-leader has denied living with her daughter’s father at the time she was claiming a domestic purposes benefit, despite her name being listed on the electoral roll at the same address at the time.

Newshub reported that an official listing of addresses showed Ms Turei listed at the same address as Paul Hartley, in both 1993 and 1994.

Ms Turei said her name was listed at the address so she could vote in the electorate, but that she now realised it was a stupid thing to do.

“That was for the purposes of the electoral roll. I wasn’t living in that house. And this will sound really dorky, and I totally understand that, but I put myself on the electoral roll there because at the time, the 1993 election, my best friend was standing for election in that seat, and I wanted to support her.”

…surprise surprise it’s fucking Newshub doing more investigative journalism into where Met was living 20 years ago than investigating why the Auditor-General report is secret or more importantly, why the NS-fucking-A has control over our mass surveillance network!

The statute of limitations has already expired over Metiria’s rebellious act, so the actual law doesn’t judge this harshly at all.

Metiria is being ripped to pieces by a lazy and craven media who want to whip her for the audacity of inspiring other beneficiaries that they might be able to rise up against the cruelty meted out to them by social welfare agencies.

The double standards of journalism on display here attacking Metiria for events 2 decades old when we have actual abuses of real political power sitting naked without any investigation by the Newshub says more about the kind of ethically bankrupt watchdogs running that news service than it does about Metiria.

This is a good old fashioned beneficiary lynching and Patrick Gower is the hangman.

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36 Comments

  1. MSM need to do their job properly – which ain’t going to happen on Nats watch. Hope the bulk of NZ’s see through it.

  3. The pack smells blood in the water and is now actively engaged in influencing the outcome of the election
    National’s new education policy dumping decile schools and targeting “at risk” children instead takes its inspiration from the long term Dunedin study which identifies those children most likely to end up in crime statistics and to not “do well”
    No guessing that these are most likely to come from poor households
    I’m looking forward to the long term study that identifies those children who perpetrate white collar fraud(involving huge amounts of dosh)
    You know, “what kinds of families do these children come from?”etc
    “What value systems are being transmitted in these households”
    “lets target these children and turn them around”
    Something tells me I’ll be waiting a long time for that study
    The perpetrators of white collar crime indeed “do well” in the system, for themselves at any rate
    Those who decry Metiria are either woefully ignorant of those times in the 90,s when the benefit system was deliberately not fit for service, or do not have social justice high up on their moral compass

    1. “benefit system was deliberately not fit for service” as it is now, even the Maori party co leader Tariana Turia publicly acknowledged once when National was pushing through its punitive welfare sanctions.. ooops I mean “reforms” prior to her resignation that people struggling on benefits have to get help from others ie they do what they have to do to survive. No one knows this better than Paula Bennett herself. That’s what makes her the biggest hypocrite of them all. There is nothing honourable about the National govt deputy leader’s lies and double standards. She knows.

  4. I say it again, Metiria will be destroyed by the MSM and MSD, labeled ‘benefit cheat’, possibly be charged and will have to step down from politics. Newshub made a start last night:
    http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/08/more-questions-raised-about-metiria-turei-s-living-situation.html

    Now RNZ have joined in, but Metiria did not act wisely in her younger years, it seems, then again, many of us did not:
    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/336436/turei-admits-enrolling-to-vote-at-different-address-in-1990s

    Kathryn Ryan was trying to get her onto the program, but now there is talk of a press statement or something in that way.

    As much as she deserved respect for taking a stand, for announcing new social security policy of the Greens, and for admitting past wrongdoings, she is mincemeat now.

    It was bloody naive on her part to admit she had other flatmates that she had not declared in the 1990s, Metiria is out of touch with the reality among the majority of the population, who have given in to the years of conditioning, where neoliberal governments led by both Nats and Labour have in effect pitted one against the other. There is no tolerance among most for dishonesty, even if you may be starving.

    James Shaw will steer the Greens to the right again, after this, and he will reach his goal, to firmly position them in the ‘centre’, the rest will be just feel good bits of policy for the less well off.

    He and many others in the Green Party know they will never get this social policy through that Metiria announced, if in government, perhaps just tiny bits of it. It was released with the intention to gain votes, from those on benefits and so, as some middle class voters may hesitate voting Greens (those who do not already).

    1. She won’t step down – look to Corbyn for an example – the more the press attacked him the more he got support from the voters.

      At least that’s what I hope will happen here

  5. Metiria’s revelations have shown up in sharp relief both NZ’s economic/legal apartheid, and the petty, net-curtain-twitching tendencies of people who flatter themselves as being sophisticated and urbane. As someone observed last week, they are more offended at her siding with the lepers than anything else, and are tolerant of far bigger transgressions so long as the class barrier remains inviolate.

    1. Olwyn, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head
      Nobody went after Bill English in quite the way Metiria has been attacked

  6. If Metiria was a blond haired blue eyed natzie , would this still be front page news, just a thought.

    1. Well the media did the same sort of smear job on Cunliffe with the letter he didn’t remember signing 11 years earlier. So race certainly isn’t the issue. Political colour, well… it’s pretty obvious.

  7. Morning report on RNZ has joine the Wolfpack. The media pack scent blood.

    No wonder Americans took Trump’s side over the media.

  9. A media investigation into Meteria Turei’s activities over twenty years ago. Pity the same media doesn’t do the same into Paula Bennett’s past DPB life, considering there is an allegation out there about her at the time.

    1. Bang on Mary but it shows by Bennetts silence how guilty she is. You would think Bennett would be jumping from the tree’s with this but no, nothing.
      The likes of Hosking and Richardson and Gower won’t go after Bennett because she won’t admit to anything, which just makes Bennett’s perceived fraud worse.

  11. Patrick Gower should resign. He is not a journalist and any notion of impartiality is a fake concept.

    This is no longer about gathering news, this is a media pack-hunt.

    As Samwise said,

    #gowermustgo

  12. The problem with all your outrage is, the whole situation is a self inflicted own goal, and if she or anybody else didn’t realise the media would have a field day with this then they are naive at best.

    1. Can’t fix something that ain’t broke. Even National is getting dragged into it. So blinglish shows up yesterday at Southern Health DHB in a sector he has no ministerial responsibility and Benifit is missing in action along with tod Barclay also having image problems. There is only so much face time blinglsh can put into sectors he has no ministerial responsibility before Blonglish gets knifed.

  13. Not to mention that the Double Dipper from Dipton ripped off the taxpayer and yet still stands as Prime Minister.
    Then lies to try and cover up the Todd Barclay affair and gets found out .
    But that apparantly is o.k….not worthy of any real digging…well Winston Peters has dug and found heaps… more to come….
    I think Metiria should stand down from the leadership though and Julie Anne Genter should take over the shared leadership role….otherwise this is going to go on and on and overshadow or completely drown out policy….

    1. The Rat Pack

      We have slips; we have quakes; we have disturbed children;tremendous drug problems. But our biggest handicap is the slime of Gower, Espiner, Soper and Garner.

      Guided by stale old Armstrong and shit struck shocking Hosking with his little Girlie Assistant.

      Collectively, this mongrel mob knows NZ is in big strife. It has been stolen by Wealthy unscrupulous mates of National. But The Rat Pack does not give a fig.

      Lets get rid of theses mongrels !

  14. Everyone needs to do themselves a favour and switch the MSM OFF – then it doesn’t matter how loud they bark, crow, howl – NOBODY will be LISTENING and they become powerless.
    Meteria is a NZ hero – the MSM are paid dogs by this corrupt government.
    SWITCH THEM OFF.

  16. Metiria’s admission about enrolling in an electorate where she didn’t actually live is not a good look.
    However it is not actually all that much different from the way both Labour and National gerrymander electoral boundaries to increase their vote in marginal seats. More so in pre-MMP electorates because they were smaller and easier to manipulate.
    And what about the thousands of university students who spend most of the year outside their electorate but still vote in it? Aren’t they technically doing the same as Metiria?
    I think that this sort of thing probably used to happen more than we would like to think, because there is effectively little scrutiny and enforcement of rules.
    The Electoral Commission, I think, has leant too much to the notion of doing everything they can to get people to the booth, as opposed to making sure the people who do go are correctly registered and correctly identified.
    I tell you, our election day training goes that we are not supposed to deny anyone who turns up a vote. If they don’t appear to be correctly registered they are offered a special vote. The mentality is vote now in the understanding that the special vote verification process will weed out the pretenders.
    I always wonder just how many of these are playing the system, because we never know and the system is not robust enough to catch them out.

  17. So impressed with Metiria at her press conference
    I’m mightily pleased she isn’t leaving. I had tears in my eyes listening to her, remembering the absolute terror when I too had to take risks to keep a roof over our heads and the bills paid
    Waking up in the night worrying about paying for uniforms and whether the car would keep going.Living in a rural area everyone knew or imagined they knew your business and there was an active policy being pushed of dobbing in a beneficiary.
    That was when the nastiness in our society began, the likes of Lindsay Perigo, and Ruth Richardson, Jenny bloody Shipley causing huge divisions in our society that have never healed
    Go Metiria, you are a wonderful inspiration

  18. Plain and simple – She did it long before she was an MP. English did it while he was the finance minister. Good for the goose, etc.

  19. Francesca

    Beautifully written.
    Took me back to Katherine Mansfield – The Dolls House.

    I am so sorry you had to suffer under the slime of our cruel wealthy political Bastards.

  20. I agree Martyn. If the media is going to hound Turei over a couple of minor transgressions when she was in her early twenties then we are headed for the US system of politics where you are painted as either good or evil. This creates a government of lying hypocrites that either never had a life or are open to blackmail because they are hiding their past. This is sort of what Donald Trump has been subject to over the weeks since his election. He has many imperfections but at least he did not want war with Russia.
    The media is the problem here. They get to comment and moralise on politicians but their private lives, connections to lobbyists and intelligence agencies are off limits. Once again the electoral process in NZ is being shafted and sometimes I think the left are willing dupes.

  21. I think she overestimated the NZ appreciation of honesty. Especially of the MSM. A good woman, who should stay a spokesperson for the poor and down-trodden.

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