Tag: skycity

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John Key has funny ideas about what fundraising means

I caught our esteemed Prime Minister on Firstline this morning, looking defensive over revelations that he attended a fundraising dinner at Donghua Liu’s house a mere two years ago.

Besides his snippy refusal to give any details – acting like “it was at his house” is a minor detail on par with “did we have fish or chicken” – the truly interesting thing was this:

I personally don’t involve myself in fundraisers, if you like, in terms of the sense of raising money; I never talk to people about money, I don’t receive donations, wouldn’t have had a clue basically how much he and the other guests were giving, whether it was a lot or nothing – I just go to a series of dinners.

Ah yes, from time to time I go to dinners, and from time to time people pay an awful lot of money to my political party to go to those dinners too. The fundraising aspects are obviously nothing to do with Key, and in fact he’d totally go to Donghua Liu’s house even if there weren’t fundraising going on!

… Actually I’m not sure if that line would make it better or worse.

This is the spin we were also meant to accept over National’s dodgy little Cabinet Clubs – that the Ministers who attended, who were advertised as attending, and who spoke to high-paying donors about their portfolio areas, at events called Cabinet Clubs, were somehow not really involved in fundraising in their ministerial capacity.

But maybe the Prime Minister should be a little more careful about these farcical distinctions, given how well they worked out for John Banks, who seemed to be under the impression that if he didn’t actually open the envelope, he can’t possibly be expected to know what it contained.

I don’t know if state funding of political parties is the answer to this; but we can at least stop talking politicians seriously when they’re openly disingenuous about why people pay a lot of money to attend events at which they’re the main event.

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QOTD: Gordon Campbell on SkyCity

At Scoop:

For the record, we started out last week with (a) Prime Minister John Key telling the public that a $402 million convention centre would be only an ‘eyesore’ in downtown Auckland with the clear signaling that (b) the extra $128 million was probably necessary and justified under the contract. Within 24 hours and driven by the potential risk to his own credibility, Finance Minister Bill English became (c) the first Cabinet heavy hitter to break ranks and question the extra spending which led to (d) Key suddenly agreeing that he’d need a lot of convincing to spend the extra millions which led to (e) SkyCity agreeing to go back to the drawing board and (f) design and build a new convention centre for the original price that would (g) somehow be just as good. Yeah, right. Clearly, the screeching U-turns were being driven by nothing other than the public’s outrage at gifting SkyCity with $128 million on top of its other goodies.

There’s been some great campaigning by Labour and even the Taxpayers’ “Union” on this issue – essentially coordinating the increasing concerns people have felt about the SkyCity deal ever since it was first announced.

You can spin any number of theories out of the Government’s, and its Ministers’, behaviour. Is this yet another move by English to set himself apart from his Dirty-Politics-stained colleagues? Is Key afflicted with third term arrogance, unable to recognise that many people are tiring of the “actually quite relaxed” approach he takes to governing the country? Has Joyce’s bungling of SkyCity opened up a new path to career redemption for Judith Collins? Will everything be forgotten as soon as the flag referendum gets a definite date?

Whichever’s your favourite, 2015 is not shaping up to be a good year for National.

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QOTD: Hide on Sabin

From Rodney’s latest in the Herald on Sunday:

The date of any briefing is explosive. It’s certainly not nitpicking. Sabin chaired the law and order select committee, which oversees the police. He was hopelessly conflicted. So, too, was our Parliament and justice system.

How could the chairman be holding police to account when he himself was under police investigation?

We deserve to know who was responsible for such dreadful judgment and management.

It’s true, and very amusing to me, given how many rightwing commenters at blogs like The Standard have been trying their usual “this is just a beltway issue” or “this just proves Labour isn’t focused on the real issues” lines on it. Sorry, people, but even stalwart rightwingers can tell when something stinks.

As with Matthew Hooton’s scathing NBR piece about the SkyCity deal – in which he makes such damning statements as:

The origins of this fiasco lie in the close private relationship established between John Key and SkyCity in the mid 2000s.  When he became prime minister, Mr Key surprised many when he appointed himself minister of tourism but it was old news to SkyCity. Its executives had advised business partners well before election day that things were looking up because Mr Key had “agreed” to become tourism minister.

… it’s important not to get too excited. Neither Hide nor Hooton* have suddenly seen the light and realised that our government has been running the country for the benefit of an undeserving few, motivated entirely by self-interest. As Danyl notes at Dim-Post, Hooton is deliberately targeting his business rivals with this one.

But we can still marvel at the fact that only months into its third term, the rightwing fanboys are starting to turn on Key. Perhaps they’re hoping to resurrect the Act Party by getting enough rightwing folk fed up about National’s centrist ways. Perhaps with the discrediting of the Taxpayers’ Union there’s thought of creating yet another far-right front

What I’m saying is, their motives are far from pure. But most people aren’t as cynical as me and don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about that kind of thing. What the general public are seeing is their sensible, authoritative** rightwing columnists in sensible, authoritative publications disagreeing strongly with the PM and questioning his “relaxed” attitude on serious issues of conduct and selling out to big business.

That ain’t good for the government.

 

*Now I’m picturing a series of kids’ books about politics, following the magical adventures of two political hacks on a neverending quest to capture the mystical Thorndon Bubble.

**Because they’re published in our Paper of Record so what they say must be important.