Labour making it up
Good God, I never realised that Labour’s regard for the truth was so remote that they literally just sit around and invent things. Labour has put out the press release quoted below:
National begins dirty tricks campaign in Mt Albert
Press Release by New Zealand Labour at 5:37 pm, 28 Apr 2009
National’s dirty tricks have started even before Labour has selected a candidate for the Mt Albert by-election, Deputy Leader of the Opposition Annette King said today.
First of all don’t you enjoy the hypocrisy of the party that was behind the attempted H-Fee smear, to talk about dirty tricks. Did Annette never notice Mike Williams over in Melbourne?
National and John Key’s dishonest attempt to discredit one of eight potential Labour candidates shows the Government’s eyes are off the ball when they should be focusing on peoples jobs and the upcoming budget.
“National has trawled through research papers written by David Shearer dating back to 1998. The papers looked at the use of private security in war torn nations where innocent civilians, mostly women and children, were dying and there were no better alternatives.
“They’ve fed this information to their right wing blogging friends.
Amazing – she just invents this from thin air. Let there be no mistake, I got the material from no one in National, in Parliament or the Government. I would be very happy to swear an affidavit before a JP to this, or undertake a polygraph. No one in National even pointed me towards this, and the first John Key would have known about this I suspect is when the media asked him for comment.
It amazes me that Labour is so embarrassed by these revelations, that they feel the need to just invent whoppers.
“Instead of this, John Key should be getting his staff to tackle real problems like job losses and the struggling economy.
Again nothing to do with the PM or his staff. Annoys me when people always credit them for our work! I know Labour is anti private sector, but maybe they can not comprehend the idea of people doing stuff on their own initiative.
“Why are they trying to dig dirt on one of the nominees, I predict that by the weekend they would have gone through the whole eight. Unlike National, we don’t yet know who our candidate will be. We are having a competitive selection process which will not be completed until this weekend.
And I urge all Labour delegates to vote Shearer. Far from this being dirt on him, I think it is great he supports a role for the private sector in wars and the military. The problem of course is that his sensible views stand in stark opposition to Labour who are against the private sector being involved in most things.
And I am also bemused how it is considered “dirt” to re-publish an article Mr Shearer wrote in a publicly available journal. Does Labour think there is something wrong with people knowing the views of its candidates on important policy issues? This is not some personal private issue which is embarrassing to Shearer – it is not digging up share transactions – it is a public article on a matter of public policy.
“I hope it’s not a sign of the tactics National plans to adopt for the campaign. Labour is committed to fight a strong, clean and fair by-election
Insert Tui billboard – just like their general election campaign no doubt.
“John Key should stop spending his time on negative politicking and concentrate his efforts on how the budget can address the real problems facing New Zealand,” Annette King said.
Annette – nothing to do with John. Honest. Ask him. Ask me. Give us a polygraph test. Drug me with sodium pentothal. You’ll get the same answer.
The articles by Shearer were found almost by luck in fact. Someone mentioned something to Whale about something Shearer had once written. He mentioned something to me. I asked a couple of friends with access to academic databases to try and fnd something, and one of them found it on an academic database and sent it to me. Total time on it was around ten minutes.