Hager expects leaker of Whaleoil documents to release them separately; Key still defending Ede and Collins, and won't criticise Slater; Green plan for tax hikes

By Bernard Hickey

With less than five weeks to go until the September 20 election, here's my daily round-up of political news on Monday August 15, including the hacker behind the leaked Cameron Slater documents beginning to drip-feed them to the public by a twitter account called Whaledump.

The documents were released onto Mega.com, but appeared to have been deleted by late on Monday evening. They were also released onto Imgur.

They show Prime Minister John Key's then Press Secretary Kevin Taylor saying to Slater in May 2008 Key would not do a video interview with Slater as the office "planned not to engage with bloggers", however he said fellow National staffer Jason Ede would give him a call. They then show Ede coaching Slater in June 2012 on how to make an OIA request aimed at embarrassing MFaT officials opposed to a restructure.

John Key had previously challenged Nicky Hager to release the documents underpinning his 'Dirty Politics' that has dominated the election campaign since it's publication last Wednesday.

Earlier, Key again defended Ede's downloading of data from a Labour website and stood behind Justic Minister Judith Collins, despite her acknowledgement she had given the details of a former Labour staffer to Slater. Key also rejected criticism of his earlier comments that he did not approve an accelerated OIA request on whether the SIS gave a briefing to Phil Goff. 

He said it was "spooky" that the leaker had put the documents on Mega, which had been originally built by Kim Dotcom. Hager has denied the leaker has anything to Dotcom, as has Dotcom.

Key told reporters in Petone Ede's role was to brief right wing bloggers.  "I am absolutely confident you'll find when you go look at the Labour party over successive Labour leaders they'll have exactly the same position. We have to deal with the media," Key said.

Later on Monday evening, the SIS appeared to contradict Key's earlier view that he was unaware of the OIA request. The SIS said it had informed Key's office that it was responding to the OIA request. The response within 24 hours was seen as unheard of by other media, who also said they had unsuccessfully made OIA requests over the same matter.

Key again attacked the book.

"He got one series of selected emails which were hacked, which today are getting put up on a site which arguably was established by Kim DotComm which is a little bit spooky, and now what we've got is a situation where we are meet to believe that verbatim it is right even though most of these stories are dissolving before Nicky Hager's eyes," Key said.

He defended the actions of National staffers in downloading information from a National website.

"If they leave the security off the site and if they choose to want to do that, that's their mistake. It's not the National party's mistake," Key said.

"If the Wallabies go out and they name their starting side on their internal site and they leave their security off, are you really telling me that the All Black management wouldn't go and have a look? Of course they would," he said.

Key was announcing with Gerry Brownlee that the Government planned to spend NZ$100 million over four years on urban cycleways. It is being managed separately from the Land Transport Fund, where other cycling spending is grouped with spending on motorways and public transport.

Earlier denials

However, Collins' identification of a former Labour staffer and current official to Slater remains a live issue, as does the identity of whoever at National Party head office downloaded details from Labour's computers, and the speed of a successful OIA request by Slater to the SIS.

The details quoted from Slater's email and Facebook traffic are damaging revelations about the views and activities of Slater himself, Judith Collins, National Party campaigner Simon Lusk , PR man (and son of former National Cabinet Minister Doug Graham) Carrick Graham, National Party PR man Jason Ede , Taxpayers' Union Executive Director Jordan Williams, Auckland National Party figure Aaron Bhatnagar and National MP Mark Mitchell . Former National MP Katherine Rich has yet to answer questions about whether the Food and Grocery Council used Graham to plant and pay for articles on Whaleoil that personally attacked anti-alcohol campaigners.

John Key is not directly linked in any of the quoted exchanges, but he said last week he spoke on the phone to Slater three or four times a year and had texted him on occasions.

Key again stood behind Collins and Ede in a combative and compelling interview with Guyon Espiner on Radio NZ's morning report . Key declined to criticise Slater, simply saying: "He's not my guy." Key compared National's briefings of Slater to the ones it gives to journalists in the television, radio and print.

Anyone who doubts the damage to these people and the scale of the problem for National and Collins in particular should read the quotes in the book, none of which have yet been challenged by Slater. Strip away the overlay put on the quotes by Hager and it reveals the character of Slater, Collins and Lusk in particular. Regardless of whether any criminality or ministerial impropriety is shown (and that is far from clear), the tone and the content of the conversations revealed in the book is shocking.

Toxic brands

Key's continued contact with Slater and his support for Collins creates the risk his #TeamKey 'brand' will be tarnished by the toxicity revealed in the quotes in the book. For those who doubt this, they just need to read the book and the notes that go with it. It makes for sickening reading. Again, Slater has not denied any of the quotes, and neither Ede nor Lusk have commented to deny the quotes.

John Armstrong commented in the NZ Herald on Saturday that Key is putting himself at significant risk. "It only requires someone connected with one of the incidents in the book to dispute and disprove the Prime Minister's assertion that it all has 'nothing to do with National' for Key to be in serious trouble credibility wise," Armstrong wrote.

Interestingly, Key has previously distanced himself from Lusk, saying in May last year: "I think I once described (Lusk) on a scale of 1 to 10, as minus-1." Here's an excellent backgrounder on Lusk last year by Fairfax's Andrea Vance, , which shows Lusk lined up alongside Collins in an intense factional fight with Steven Joyce.

One definite result of the book's publication is to reveal the bitter factionalism within National underneath Key and the lack of a clear successor. The risk for the Government is that this bitterness rubs off onto public perceptions about Key himself. So far, that is not clear.

Poll shows some impact

TVNZ released a snap opinion poll by Colmar Brunton on Saturdayshowing 43% of voters did not believe the allegations in 'Dirty Politics' about the involvement of Prime Minister's Office, while 28% did believe them and 29% did not know. It found the book had negatively influenced 9% of the respodents' views about National, while 4% said it had improved their view of National and 82% said it made no difference.

Interestingly for those watching the turnout and fearing it may cause a 'plague on both your houses' reduction in turnout, the poll found the book made 12% of respondents more likely to vote, while only 1% were less likely to vote.

Both Hager and Cameron Slater were interviewed by both TV3's The Nation and TVNZ's Q+A .

Slater said he had received death threats and that he was not a National Party member. He he regularly spoke to political figures on the left and had helped in their campaigns. He said he wanted Stuart Nash and Kelvin Davis to do well in their campaigns. He said he expected to keep corresponding with Key, but that if he didn't, he wasn't bothered.

David Cunliffe later said Labour candidates should not be in contact or talking "to someone of Mr Slater's ilk."

Meanwhile, Nicky Hager told Q+A he had gone back to the source of the leaked documents to ask if they could be released.

Hager said he believed his source had decided to release the documents himself, but he reiterated he had asked the source to redact the names and details of non-public figures to avoid "collateral damage." Hager again denied that the source had anything to do with Kim Dotcom.

He said in all the documents he had read there were no indications of Slater talking to Labour party figures, although there were mentions of contacts with left-wing bloggers. For quite some time Slater appeared on a cable television political chat show with blogger Martyn Bradbury.

Opinion poll results

Two opinion polls showed the debate over foreign ownership of land in the first two weeks of the campaign has appeared to cut into National's support, although Labour has not necessarily been the beneficiary. Both polls were completed before the release of the book.

TVNZ's Colmar Brunton poll of 1,000 voters from August 9-13 found support for National fell 2% to 50% from a month ago, while support for Labour also fell 2% to 26%. Green support rose 1% to 11% and support for NZ First rose 1% to 5%. Internet Mana rose 2% to 4% and Conservative was flat at 2%. Maori and Act were unchanged at 1%. The poll has a 3.1% margin of error at the 95% confidence interval and 15% of those polled either had no view or were undecided.

TV3's Reid Research poll of 1,000 voters from August 5-13 found support for National fell 1.9% to 47.5% from a month ago, while support for Labour rose 2.3% to 29%. Green rose 0.6% to 13% and New Zealand First rose 0.3% to 4.6%. Conservative fell 0.2% to 2.5%, Internet Mana fell 0.3% to 2%, Maori fell 0.3% to 0.8%. ACT rose 0.2% to 0.3% and United Future was flat at 0.2%. The poll has a margin of error of 2.1% at the 95% confidence interval.

Elsewhere, Judith Collins told Adam Bennett at the NZ Herald that her husband David Wong-Tung's office was burgled six weeks ago and his laptop accessed. This followed break-ins at Mark Mitchell 's Parliamentary and electorate offices almost a year ago.

Green Child Poverty plan

Metiria Turei launched the Green Party's Election Campaign with this speech , which included its policy for reducing child poverty. This included a new 40% top tax rate for those earning over NZ$140,000 a year and an increase in the trust rate from 33% to 40% to raise NZ$1.12 billion per year. That money would then be redirected into various measures to reduce child poverty.

"Ensuring that every child in New Zealand has enough to thrive is one of the biggest moral and economic challenges of our times. One in four kiwi children now live below the poverty line," she said.

"For a quarter of the price of National’s tax cuts to the wealthiest New Zealanders we can reduce poverty and its effects amongst our poorest children," she said.

The policy included:

• extending the NZ$60/week In Work Tax Credit (IWTC) to those 130,000 to 150,000 families currently not receiving it, where the parents are not working 20 hours each or a combined 30 hours a week. This would cost NZ$400 million a year.

• providing a parental tax credit of NZ$220/week for newborns of beneficiaries in their first 10 weeks of life. Currently beneficiaries do not receive this. This would cost NZ$29.4 million per year.

• investing NZ$500 million a year in children's health and education, including through establishing school 'hubs' at decile 1-4 primary and intermediate schools where the health, social and welfare needs of children, and their families could be met on-site. Each hub would employ a coordinator, offer free after-school and holiday care programmes, offer a national school lunch fund and include dedicated school nurses.

The costings over the first three years of the policy detailed on Page 18 show the policies would cost NZ$2.866 million in the first three years, but the revenue measures would raise NZ$4.111 billion, leaving a net gain to the Government of NZ$1.96 billion.

Steven Joyce said the Green and Labour recipe of higher taxes would stall New Zealand's economic recovery.

"We've been here before. A 40 per cent tax rate is damaging to the economy because it increases tax avoidance, penalises hard work, and sends some of our best and brightest offshore," he said. "And it is of course just another in a long list of new taxes Labour and the Greens want to introduce including a capital gains tax, a big carbon tax, taxes on water use, higher personal taxes, and regional fuel taxes."

Annette King announced Labour's Health policy on Friday, including a national bowel screening programme, a review of ambulance services and an independent review of clinical thresholds for elective surgery.

(Updated with Whaledump leaks, Key's comments and cycleway announcement)

I'll update this regularly through the day.

See all my previous election diaries here.

See the index for Interest.co.nz's special election policy comparison pages here.