Dishing the dirt obfuscates harsh realities
The furore over donations to the Labour Party by the wealthy Dong-hua Liu will either go down in our political history as a cunning piece of political trickery or an appalling act of media hysteria, possibly both.
One thing’s for sure, the story has kept other stuff off the front pages. Like the story that about half of all employers are not planning on any pay increase this year even though we are apparently set for even higher economic growth than last year when nearly half of all workers didn’t get a pay rise.
Or the story of a couple of weeks ago, still not widely reported, that Minister of Labour Simon Bridges is changing the minimum wage laws so that farm workers employed on 12 days ontwo days off arrangements with a fixed weekly pay can have their pay averaged over the two weeks rather than each week. This means for the week they work seven days their hourly rate is less than the minimum wage.
Yes, you’re right. Dairy farmers who have enjoyed some of the best returns in more than a generation will be allowed to avoid paying the $100 a fortnight it might otherwise cost them.
No wonder the National Party wants to run the donations story up. Let’s have a close look. Liu is the man National Cabinet Minister Maurice Williamson tried to ‘‘help’’ during a police investigation into a complaint that he assaulted his wife. The police were asked by Williamson to check that the case would stand up because Liu was a big investor. This was a phone call from a Cabinet Minister to a police officer. The message was obvious. Williamson was in a position of authority and putting subtle pressure on local police.
Williamson lost his job as a Cabinet Minister as a result. All of this was played out against a background of the Judith Collins issue where she spent days and weeks refusing to give straight answers on activities on her trip to China last year which included a questionable dinner between directors of a company her husband is also a director of and a senior Chinese Customs official.
Getting back to Liu;, it turns out he donated handsomely to the National Party. The party was tarnished. National wanted utu. Liu must have said he also donated to the Labour Party. A sum of $15,000 for a book was mentioned. But the story would change. It was for a book. It was for a bottle of wine. The amount of the donation would grow as if it was the subject of a fishing story about the one that got away. John Key teased the issue on for a couple of weeks, but mainly when he was in the United States this month. Key hasn’t said much about it since his return this week. It now turns out that during the month of May the National Party had at least two documents in its hands. One was a signed statement from Liu, presumably including his claims about donations to the Labour Party. The other document was a copy of a letter written 11 years ago by David Cunliffe about Liu’s residency application, and asking how long before it might be decided. The National Party wasn’t the only one in possession of the signed statement. The New Zealand Herald had it too. I would hazard a guess the Herald got it from the National Party. At some point the Herald also got the 11 year-old letter. They got it under the Official Information Act, but I bet they were told to apply for it to ‘‘cleanse’’ it of any improper actions by ministers or public servants.
Cunliffe was duly asked whether he had anything to do with Liu, and he denied he had. Cunliffe’s mistake, if there was any, was to be too emphatic in his denial. The trap was laid. Next day, the Herald publishes the 2003 letter Cunliffe wrote as a backbencher. Boom!
Cunliffe’s failure to remember the letter was talked up to something way more sinister than poor memory.
Next came the claims about donations in the order of $100,000 or more. But Cunliffe’s denials that he knew about these, even though they were in 2007, looked less credible because of his failure to recall the letter.
The signed statement containing the allegations still hasn’t been released. This sort of trickery can be expected from a political party, but not usually a prime minister trying to look statesman-like. And it definitely shouldn’t be accepted from a socalled neutral news source like the Herald. My take on events is that I’m yet to be convinced Cunliffe has done anything wrong. But I’m sure convinced this is going to be one dirty election campaign. I hope the people of Taranaki will be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.