Disgraced former Labour minister Stuart Nash quoted former US president Theodore Roosevelt on his way out the door.
This quote, we are told, sums up his philosophy towards politics and man, is it telling.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Nash is effectively arguing that the media, or anyone who takes issue with his woeful judgment and repeated breaching of cabinet rules, are irrelevant. They don’t count.
It’s the powerful man with a long political career who is the great grandson of a former prime minister sitting in the Beehive emailing mates about confidential cabinet discussions that's the real man. The one who counts. The one who should be listened to.
The man who counts is the former police minister who rang up the police commissioner to “vent” his “frustrations” about a judge’s ruling and was “chewing the fat with a guy who was a mate about a decision that I thought was very bad.”
Again, breaching the rules of Cabinet.
Nash could have chosen to quote another Roosevelt, but it's obvious why he didn’t.
Franklin D Roosevelt was a ferocious campaigner against vested interests and corporate monopolies.
In his speech to Congress in 1939 Roosevelt said it was a truth that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself."
“That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
If you’d only read Nash’s political farewell note on Monday you’d be hard pressed to take away from it that he was leaving his political career behind other than to euphemistically spend more time with friends and family.
Being a politician had brought amazing opportunities to make a difference, Nash said. (For whom he made a difference fill in the blanks at home).
It had been a rewarding 12 years in parliament, and by gosh, he’s going to miss advocating for issues “important to hard-working Kiwis.”
Nash and our political leaders are laughing at us from behind their carefully-cultivated Everyman personas.
Don’t let the low-key sunglasses that Chris Hipkins’ sports fool you. He has been in Parliament as an MP since 2008 and before that was an advisor to ministers and even former prime minister Helen Clark. He is Parliament's everyman.
If you were to tune into Friday's media standup with the prime minister you would have learned that, of course, there are always improvements to make in the Official Information Act, but (smirk, intense, yet sage head nod) we’ve improved SO much.
It’s a truly galling display.
A minister of the New Zealand government, remember, emailed two donors and mates who happen to be in the commercial property game about a confidential cabinet discussion about a policy that directly affected them.
And Nash’s office refused to disclose this information because he said he emailed them as an MP not a minister about a cabinet matter - after three contacts with the former prime minister’s office to discuss.
Mr Wraparound Sunglasses says we’re all just honest Kiwis trying to make enough to buy a pie in this cost of living crisis, we’re all just hard-working professionals here in Welly who cocked up over, and over, and over again, and whoopsie, then concealed a scandal, can you pass me the T-sauce, mate.
This is what we’re led to believe. Ignore the evidence in front of you. Nothing has has happened here. Sure, incremental improvements are always on the cards...
The prime minister is standing in front of us and gaslighting us.
There are always improvements to be made, sure, but when you have the deputy head of staff in the prime ministers' office working with a ministers' office on an OIA request with an email like that, you cannot expect us to swallow this slop.
There was not only one contact with the former PM's office about Nash’s confidentiality-breaking email to pals Troy Bowker and Greg Loveridge, but three.
And now the Labour Party's podium of truth is selling that these repeated contacts that led to the email ultimately being refused were all a mistake.
These are hard working people who had no ill intent. Each time it happened.
It was a cock up, not a conspiracy. Three times it was discussed with the former prime ministers' office.
And then the decision was made to decline the request even though it was clearly a nonsense excuse.
So now we know. But Hipkins wants us to pretend we don't. You can ask for the most specific of things, and ministers will use the most daring, audacious bold-faced sophistry to conceal damaging information from the media, and by extension the public.
Finally on Monday, Hipkins offered up the most pathetic and weak intervention possible to tackle the issue that wasn’t an issue at all a few weeks ago, and said lobbyists are going to lose their swipe cards.
What horror.
And not only that, but, brace yourself, the government is going to offer support to "third-party lobbyists" to establish a voluntary code of conduct and the beginning of "long-term work on policy options to regulate lobbying."
Its business as usual. The soft-core regulatory capture of even this incremental change will come from the industry itself, as it always does.
Maybe coming in 2024. But don’t hold your breath, remember in a few weeks ago in March lobbying wasn’t even worth talking about. Hipkins will be hoping we forget.
And it really doesn’t matter which of the political duopoly are having their turn playing government.
Once they get behind the levers of power the truth goes into the shredder.
I once had an acquaintance on the inside detail what a game, such a lark it was, to think of dastardly, sneaky ways to control information and not release it to the public. The shredder was always busy.
It is all a game to many of these political people.
It’s about point scoring and winning personal victories. Look at how the Nash email was then leaked via another operative against Labour.
For the vested interests, the Bowkers of the world, it just makes good business sense to cultivate relationships with red and blue. To give them money. To take them out for dinner.
We’re mates. See you at the rugby. Give us a call on that issue, no worries mate. There is no corruption in New Zealand. Haven't you heard?
To talk with power players is to not only get what you want through policy, but to use information to wield power in direct and indirect ways and shape public discourse such as we have seen here, with Nash swiftly going under the bus once it was clear he was a dead man walking.
Vested interests can get an MP to rip into a business rival in parliament.
New Zealand's richest man Graeme Hart can slice and dice donations to political parties so we never know, unless it ends up in court, using lobbyists to set up meetings who then appear on media talking about what the Labour government should be doing.
Yikung Zhang and co got money for everyone and ended up being charged by the Serious Fraud Office. But the real truth in that trial was that red and blue all like green.
Zhang even got an MZMN from the governal-general.
As George Carlin would say, it’s a big club and you (the public) ain’t in it.
You can’t ring and get an immediate audience with a minister, or get personalised emails from a minister tailored to your specific policy wants.
And yet, the prime minister tells us there is nothing to see here. Of course, we can always do better guys. Nothing is perfect. Not even the prime minister.
The lack of respect is palpable. Our politicians hold us, the public, in contempt.
And hey, it works. They do it over and over and over. Fair play I guess. It’s your game after all.
But for the rest of us living outside of the human centipede of whataboutery that seems to capture supporters of both the big two, I sense despair and frustration.
We know now. We can see how things really work. It's out in the open.
The question is now will either of the big two, Labour or National, have the moral fortitude to really make any changes and start working for us, the public?
Looking at how the prime minister has started this week, and the fact the Opposition won't support an anti corruption commission, I doubt it.
I asked the PM's office if it will support an anti-corruption commission on Friday.
I'll let you know if they ever reply.
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