Legal advice on Key comments sought
The prime minister says he does not know whether Kim Dotcom was behind a video of youths burning an effigy of him, as a Facebook group claims responsibility for the stunt.
The Internet-Mana Party sought legal advice yesterday over Prime Minister John Key’s comments made on TVNZ’s Breakfast show yesterday morning.
Key was shown a video of a group of seemingly intoxicated youths dousing a huge wooden model of him with flammable liquid and setting it alight.
One onlooker commented: ‘‘[Key] is about to get f...... fried as’’.
‘‘At least John Key’s giving us one thing, and that’s warmth. Warmth for the next . . . 10 minutes,’’ another man commented.
The group repeatedly chanted ‘‘F... John Key’’ and cheered as the effigy burnt.
After watching the video, Key immediately associated it with German entrepreneur Dotcom, the founder of the Internet Party.
A week ago, another video was posted on the Internet-Mana Party YouTube account of Dotcom rallying a crowd of young people, who started chanting ‘‘F... John Key’’ at an InternetMana Party event.
The description posted with that video, which also featured Internet-Mana branding, reads: ‘‘The spontaneous chanting from the crowd said it all. They too want to change the Government.’’
Key said yesterday that the first he saw of the effigy-burning video was on Breakfast yesterday morning.
‘‘They were chanting the same thing as the other one but look, I don’t really know,’’ Key said when asked if he thought Dotcom was behind it.
A Facebook group named National Party Billboard Makeovers has posted online, saying Key was distracting the public from the real issues by claiming Dotcom was behind the effigy-burning video.
‘‘[T]hose of you who were here on Saturday night know how this really unfolded,’’ the post on Facebook said.
The administrators of the group page were a ‘‘diverse bunch of people’’ with no affiliation to any political party, it said.
Key said his comments made on Breakfast were ‘‘really around the [video] that Internet-Mana put up on their site that they actively encouraged people to go and watch.
‘‘I think New Zealanders will judge all of those things themselves, they’ll decide whether they think it is a positive step in New Zealand politics or not,’’ he said.
Key said on the Breakfast show that New Zealanders would make their own decision on whether they wanted someone in the political system that did ‘‘this sort of stuff’’.
The young people in the Internet-Mana ‘‘Party Party’’ (F... John Key) video were being used as pawns in what Dotcom was doing, Key said.
‘‘They’re the same students if I went to Canterbury University the next day would be wanting to take selfies.’’
Key also incorrectly said Internet-Mana had put together and promoted both videos under their banner.
Internet-Mana spokeswoman Pam Corkery said she was ‘‘gobsmacked’’ at Key’s comments on Breakfast yesterday morning.
The party had not posted the video online, and it was not associated with the group that burnt the effigy, she said.