Laila gets a salary and a clothing allowance!
Life is pretty gear when you get handpicked to lead a multi-millionaire’s pet political party. Michelle Hewitson reveals:
She looked swish in the Internet Party official pics and I wondered whether she’d also been seeing a stylist but she said, no, she just “did a big shop”. Where did she do her big shop? “At Smith & Caughey’s.” Good heavens. Who paid? Dotcom? “Um, I’m being paid for the work that I’m doing.” I hope she spent a lot of Dotcom’s money. How much did she spend? “Oh, look, I don’t want to go into that. It’s expensive looking nice. You know. I’ve spent very little on clothes over the years.”
I wonder what other perks of the job she gets? Does Uncle Kim also give her a car?
She says Dotcom’s values are “aligned” to her own, but really? I asked if he was left-wing now — he did give 50 grand to the right-winger John Banks’ mayoral campaign — and she said she doesn’t go around asking people whether they’re left or right and he says he’s neither, he’s “up”.
Anyway, his wealth is okay because he made it as an entrepreneur and “I do think there’s a very big difference between the kind of person who’s climbed the corporate ladder to the top of the bank, making several million dollars a year off shareholders and workers … ” She said she wasn’t suggesting Dotcom’s money was made in an honourable way and John Key’s wasn’t. “No. But now that you mention it … “
What twisted values. She suggests that Dotcom made his money honourably despite being a convicted criminal, and facing extradition, while she regards someone who makes money for a corporate as somehow being an exploiter of shareholders and workers.
was busy biting my tongue at the time. I’d had to put the recorder back on because she’d made me turn them both off and refused to say Another Word until they were. This was over an innocent comment made by the press sec, which I agreed not to mention because it was, honestly, of so little consequence, in my view, that it doesn’t require mentioning.
But, kaboom, a tremendous fuss blew up and I’m buggered if I know how it all came to be my fault. We might have got to some questions more to her liking if not for this carry-on. But by then we were all entirely fed up which each other — at least I was — and there was little point in going on.
Sounds like Harre is getting pretty brittle. She thinks she can accept Dotcom’s money, effectively be his paid advocate, yet not answer questions about him. Doesn’t work like that.