DIRTY POLITICS-PART 5 of 5: WHEN KEY SMILING ASSASSIN KILLS OPPOSITION CHARACTERS

DIRTY POLITICS - PART 5: Chapters 11 & 12

When “the smiling assassin” Key assassinated Labour’s characters, using hired hunting hounds

Thakur Ranjit Singh

DIRTY POLITICS: PART 5 OF 5: KARMA OF DIRTY POLITCS HAS COME BACK TO BITE NATIONAL’S ASS

The sudden resignation of Todd Muller on 14 July, 2020 and the mayhem within National Party shows that your past actions may decide your destiny. The dirty politicking nurtured from John Key era came back to haunt National Party.

You can judge a person by the company he keeps, his accomplices and henchman. This article and a read of “Dirty Politics” exposes why John Key did not deserve to lead us if we wished to clean up politics in New Zealand. 

His association and reliance on hired hounds to depend on power had ruled him out as an honourable Prime Minister, but unfortunately voters wanted that in 2014.

Please read on, please...

During 2014 elections, I held a desire  for our people to elect government with a respectable and credible leader to be our Prime Minister for another three years.

Coming from Fiji, dirt in politics is acceptable, but I was perturbed at naivety and gullibility of Kiwis who have passed off Nicky Hager's “Dirty Politics” as a left-wing conspiracy, with their heads in the sand. It is far from that- it reveals a face of John Key that average Kiwis do not know about or get to see. 

You can judge a person by the company he keeps, his accomplices and henchman. This article and a read of “Dirty Politics” exposes why John Key did not deserve to lead us if we wished to clean up politics in New Zealand. 

His association and reliance on hired hounds to depend on power had ruled him out as an honourable Prime Minister, but unfortunately voters wanted that. Read on, please...

Attack politics has been quite popular as many people in positions of power have benefited from this. They are mostly respectable and successful people who were willing to use the dirty and dishonest services of Cameron Slater and his colleagues, on the assumption that their crimes would remain hidden and deniable. Personal and corporate advantages trumped ethics. But the biggest beneficiary and collaborator in the attack politics was former Prime Minister, John Key.

The Master and Prime Minister, John Key (middle) with key (pun-intended) tag team of attack-right wing bloggers, David Faraar (left) and Cameron Slater, who is the leader of the attack-pack, which barks, bites and tarnishes the image of political opponents. Victims, among others, have been David Cunliffe, Winston Peters, Phil Goff and a very-badly mauled and retired Mayor of Auckland, Len Brown. Informants included prostitute friends, among others.

By early in 2014 election year, John Key was working more closely than ever with Slater and Farrar. His staff was actively collaborating in a succession of political hits and stings. At that stage Key feared a close election and attack politics was a proven powerful tool.

Yours truly also felt something dirty was going wrong with the daily postings  in 2014 with relentless attacks against Labour and its coalition partners, and type of information revealed was as if Whale Oil had its ear to the horse’s mouth.

THE OSTRICH SYNDROME: National Party and John Key hoodwinked the nation by claiming that Dirty Politics was a left-wing conspiracy. This stance appear to expose more than the butts of the Ostrich and the National Party

There was this case to smear Winston Peters with the revelation through Whale Oil about “three visits" to Kim Dotcom’s mansion. It was also revealed that John Key “regularly called” Slater, and in one conversation, agreed that he discussed Dotcom. And Cameron Slater admitted:

 If the Prime Minister says I’m the source, I guess I must have been.

As I noticed the trend of Slater to mount this attack on Labour Party on any and every small issues. It became as dirty as it could get, with hound dogs, on constant trail of Labour.

There were about 500 articles attacking Labour in the first six months of the election year. Whale Oil in fact degenerated into Labour Party smear site. If David Cunliffe and Labour felt something was wrong, they were right-they were attacked by a pack of hunting dogs, hired by John Key and his National party hangers-on.

DAVID CUNLIFFE-Labour Leader in 2014 who aspired to be PM after 2014 elections. John Key utilized attack politics and Cameron Slater to tarnish Labour's image in general and Cunliffe's in particular, trying to project him as a liar and untrustworthy person. Dirty Politics had been well nurtured between John Key, Cameron Slater and other right-wing bloggers.

There was the case of Cunliffe’s grandfather’s military records or anything that could prove Cunliffe was a liar or somebody who could not be trusted. It was similar to ways blogs were used by US Republican Party where one staff’s job was to record everything that an opposition target said, and at any time anything ’stupid” was said, it was put on internet within 24 hours to be seen by a great number of people. This was the scenario Labour and Cunliffe were placed into by Whale Oil.

When Key first arrived back in New Zealand as a millionaire businessman and jumped into a safe National party seat, it emerged that his nickname while he was a currency trader had been “the smiling assassin” During the years he built closer ties and became more reliant on his lead hunting and attack hound, Cameron Slater, and his Whale Oil blog.

Slater became a victim of his own foul-mouth with his gratuitous insult about a young man who had died in Greymouth. Slater called him a “feral’" and that the death [the] did 'world a favour.’ In the ferocious public backlash that followed, Slater’s friends rallied around him to support him. 

According to revelations in his Facebook, one of those who phoned him to commiserate (console) was John Key. When the rest of the country was feeling appalled by Slater’s offensiveness, the Prime Minister of New Zealand was calling to show support.

A two faced Prime Minister, using two-track policy of attack politics, with one face of PM as a nice, smiling person, while on the other side, hires mongrels and hounds  in form of right-wing bloggers to maul and discredit political opponents, mostly Labour Party and its Coalition partners.

Slater’s comments about the man’s death are what apparently led to his website being taken down and eventually to the leak of the information that allowed this book [Dirty Politics] to be written. 

So, it is perhaps fitting that Key should share in this political karma. The retaliation against the remarks exposed both Key and Slater, the friendly and unfriendly faces of National, who secretly collaborated throughout the period of dirty politics.

Now, from last paragraphs of “DIRTY POLITICS

Finally, political ethics. A good deal of political commentary makes the mistake of thinking that if a politician or party is successful in the polls, this equates to worthiness and virtue.

Unfortunately, people sometimes succeed in politics, as in other spheres, precisely because they are not ethical.

There are simple rules about what is fair game in politics. It is legitimate to expose deliberate untruths, hidden influence and abuse of power: things that stop political people acting with integrity and accountability for their decisions and actions. 

But attacking other people’s personal lives and denigrating them as a tactic is not fair play. An overemphasis on small errors and slips also trivialises politics.

Cameron Slater of Whale Oil Blog (left) and Nicky Hagar, author of Dirty Politics. Hagar names Slater as Prime Minister John Key's lead hunting hound to discredit political opponents, so that National Party's and Key's name remains untarnished.

All countries need and deserve politicians who respect news media independence, freedom of information and the rights of their opponents; politicians who refrain from dirty tricks and abuses of power even when these could provide an advantage; politicians who would not knowingly use something as negative and unscrupulous as the Whale oil blog.

It is never right to poison the political environment for short-term political game.

People have to make a choice whether they want this type of dirt in their government. 

[Disclaimer: All information in the above articleare either direct quotations, para-phrasing, editing or interpretations from Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics] 

[About the Author: Thakur Ranjit Singh completed his Masters in Communication Studies (with honours) at AUT on scholarship from Pacific Islands Media Association (PIMA) with the objective of adding colour to New Zealand's newsroom. But he ended up driving a bus - and is involved with community wellbeing, runs his blog, and occassionally ruffles a few feathers-AND HE IS DOING EXACTLY THAT NOW.
E-mail: thakurji@xtra.co.nz]