Jian Yang: A spy in the Beehive?

Oblique strategy tip of the week: Try reading the sections of this post from back to front.

So the Jian Yang as a Chinese spy story keeps on getting more interesting the further we dig and kudos to Matt Nippert and the New Zealand Herald for continuing to run the story while the only other mainstream media outlet (Stuff) remains conspicuously silent* on what should be a red hot story.

And Nippert’s most recent update makes it clear why it’s not a red hot story: “closer engagement with China”.

However just because we do a lot of business with China does not mean that we should ignore what is clearly a potentially serious security risk or believe the ridiculous claim made by Yang that this is racially motivated just because he is Chinese as there are a few extra threads to this story which need to be pulled before we might actually get an answer to our question: Is Yang a spy?

What is a spy?

Thanks to James Bond films and TV shows like Homeland many people have the picture of spys to be tuxedo wearing, martini swigging (shaken not stirred!), STD infected men, engaging in an ongoing series of high adrenaline stunts in an attempt to stave of midlife crisis or blonde haired, neurotic and mentally unstable women who get to wear hijabs and constantly worry if their co-worker is secretly working for Al-Qaeda**.

However the reality is a lot more prosaic as most spies could be simply defined as “government workers with high security clearances”*** who sit at their desks, work through files and cases, work on policy and spend more time sitting in meetings than is good for them. In short the same kind of work that most people in government do, albeit under the shroud of secrecy.

A spy can also be someone who is in a position to pass on information and documents to another party in a clandestine manner, usually to a foreign power (although industrial spies do exist) which is far closer to what Yang might be than having to drive an Aston Martin backwards down a snow covered slope while fending off masked attackers on skis with your bullet firing umbrella.

What is spying?

Again as with Bond and Homeland the idea of what spies actually do is usually very far from the truth. Spies collect information, do research/analysis and deal with issues of security risk, which usually comes in the form of a security vet or assessment (of a person, group or situation), which will be familiar to anyone who has ever had to get a security clearance.

There are some in the trade who do engage in things more traditionally seen as spying such as surveillance (both physical and signals), black bag (B&Es and various other genuinely covert activities like wet work) however these are a small minority compared to most who work from desks in offices like other government employees.

And like the wider definition of a spy noted above, spies can also be people in far more prosaic roles such as a student or a business person who just happens to have access to the source of information that an intelligence agency wants.

This often plays out as an intelligence service going to see a particular person who is going to travel to the country of interest and either asking that person to gather some information for them; for example if the person was a student going to study at a particular overseas university they might be asked to gather information on a particular topic taught by a particular professor, enrol in that course or simply attend a lecture by that person.

Then when said person gets back to NZ they might be asked to come in for an interview or simply write a report on what they saw and learnt which means that the person who gathered the information is never in the employ of any intelligence agency (and may never fully know the extent of what they have done) and the level of plausible deniability can be maintained.

And while some staff in foreign embassies (such as a military attaché) may be spies (or at least reporting to a second agency other than their own) spies can also (as seen above) exist well outside of any official channel and are simply doing their job of gathering information quietly and surreptitiously without attracting attention.

This makes Yang’s claim that the people he taught were not spies but “simply collecting information” seem unknowingly self-incriminating and duplicitous as Yang appears to be deliberately trying to paint a “spy” as the Hollywood trope rather than the reality he would know by having taught them.

So Yang in his role as both student in Australia and MP in NZ could quite easily be a spy without having to be a card carrying member of some secretive organisation as both his positions both here and in Oz would have given him access to a high level of information which would be exactly the stuff that a foreign intelligence agency would seek to obtain.

Just looking through the list of things the select committee he sat on saw is enough to raise a few eyebrows let alone consider that if Yang had been under orders to influence a certain bill or piece of legislation to favor Chinese interests.

None of this actually means that Yang is a spy but it does dispel the image that Yang is trying to paint with his denials that he is not a spy because he only taught people who “collect information” because that is exactly what spies do.

So why Yang?

In short the following facts apply to Jian Yang as has been listed in the media:

·         Was a member of the Chinese communist party

·         Attended and taught at a school for spies in China

·         Was told not to reveal his true educational/employment background when leaving China

·         Would not say who told him not to reveal this

·         Failed to fully declare this background when coming to NZ (and possibly in Oz)

·         Has never been given a security vet by the NZSIS or any other NZ agency

·         Was directly courted by National to join the party

·         Sat on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade select committee for three years

·         Was removed from the above committee once his background was known

Yang is probably now under severe scrutiny by the NZSIS and other members of the Five Eyes, as international media interest in this story has been high (with the Financial Times in Hong Kong work with Newsroom NZ to first break the story, which is definitely worth the read), and while both National and Labour would probably hope this would go away its likely to not go away as there are far too many questions in this story and Yang’s background to just sweep it under the rug.

What questions?

In my previous work at Immigration NZ, dealing with things high risk, the main tool when deciding how to deal with any potential risk was to look over the individuals background and history, check their motivations for coming to NZ (and to go back to their home country) as well as any other clear links or issues which might arise before making a decision.

And in Yang’s case, doing things like failing to fully disclose his work and study history and the nature of his background are automatic concerns right off the bat. The fact that he appears to have knowingly withheld this information (because he was told by unknown persons not to) makes this omission even worse and makes his claim of being loyal to NZ a lot less credible.

It also raises the exact type of questions that have been raised; of exactly what he did hide; why did he hide it; who told him to hide it; how strong his links to those organisations still are, what, if any, information did he have access to which if passed to China would be of concern (possibly most if not all) and how much National knew when seeking him out to join the party.

Did anyone check Yang’s background prior to joining the National Party?

Both Immigration NZ and Citizenship would have checked Yang when he applied for a visa and to be a NZ citizen but unless there is something obvious (like a warning from a third party about the candidate) both agencies rely on the applicant to be honest in the information they provide and for that information to be in full and with sufficient detail to do the basic checks needed to process these types of applications.

So when Yang failed to declare his full background there was a big hole in his history and while it would be nice to imagine that an eagle eyed person working on those files might have noticed that and bothered to follow it up, it’s clear that they did not*4 and accepted Yang at his word.

Then there is the issue of the statement made by National Party President Peter Goodfellow (an incredibly rich man with a background worth Googling) that while Yang has not had a security vet he was vetted by the NZ political lobbying firm Saunders Unsworth.

Who is Saunders Unsworth?

On first hearing this, my ears pricked up as the idea of a bunch of lobbyists doing a security vet seemed stupid at best and majorly concerning at worst.

And upon checking out their website stupid went out the window and in waltzed concerning with a big grin on its face.

Seems that Saunders Unsworth, apart from shilling for a lot of large NZ business and overseas multinationals (because that’s what a lobbyist is), has a very obvious connections to China as a link (in Chinese on its main page) leads to a page which contains the following information in Mandarin:

The Company may arrange to introduce you to key decision makers within the Government of New Zealand and to assist you in obtaining regulatory approvals. It is also possible to provide your organization with advice on New Zealand government or public relations decision making.

Leaders of our Chinese team are trade experts Charles Finny. Charles has served as a deputy director of the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing for four years, proficient in Mandarin, and has served as director of the New Zealand Business Office for three and a half years in Taipei. Before taking over the post of Chief Executive Officer of the Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce, Charles has been the chief executive officer of the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Trade Department during the signing of the China and New Zealand Free Trade Agreements.

Apart from the fact that the company seems to be actively courting business in China and China only (as there were no other foreign language links on the site), its staffed and run by Ex national Party members or those favorable to the party as this rather bitchy little snippet from their profile of Steven Joyce shows:

His involvement with the Exclusive Brethren led to him being named as one of the ‘Hollow Men’ in Nicky Hager’s pathetic beat-up publication.

So a National party aligned bunch of lobbyists with clear links to China did the security vet on Jian Yang and declared him safe to bring into the National party and subsequently get access to all sorts of classified information and documents as a MP sitting on a select committee, it’s the kind of suggestion that ranks up there with vampires would be ok to run blood banks.

So is this more a problem with National?

Yes it is, yes indeed as National has been so far in bed with China and Chinese influences that it’s no surprise that someone like Yang has ended up where he is as why not, it’s business as usual for National.

So far the response of Bill English has been to do what he always does and simply say nothing of substance (truly he learnt well from John Key) and stall, delay and obfuscate as much as possible.

His comments directly pertaining to Yang simply sound like Sargent Shultz shouting "I know nothing!"  but whats new in Toy Town?

So what next?

With National out of government and Yang off the select committee for the moment we could all just pretend that the problem is dealt with but as a MP Yang still has potential to get access to documents and information and until properly vetted he remains a risk and as Nippert notes:

The New Zealand SIS are said to be "extraordinarily rigid" in its approach to foreign citizenship, to the extent that marrying a foreign national - or even being born in a friendly country such as Australia - raises significant hurdles for anyone attempting to secure clearance.

I can attest to that “rigidity” as I had to fight tooth and nail to get my clearance when I worked at Immigration simply due to having lived outside of a Five Eyes country for 10 years and that the NZSIS has no direct links to verify any information or documents I provided*5.

And this is not a racial or a “Chinese” thing. While not always happy with some of the behaviours of NZSIS or the GCSB (I remain a believer in intelligence reform) I don’t balk at the idea of national security or the need to ensure the security of New Zealand by doing checks on people in certain places and positions.

So that leaves me in the same position as the Daily Blog where I would not be surprised if Yang was found to be a severe risk or even if he stood up and announced he was passing information back to China as there is far more information to indicate that he is a risk than any possible bona fides he might have.

The problem, as Martyn Bradbury notes, is that National is so infested with this issue that Yang is really just the most obvious indication of how beholden National is to China (Judith Collins and Orivida or Maurice Williamson and Donghua Liu are the next the most obvious examples but as we know the rabbit hole goes a long way down for National and China) and in fact it would not even surprise me at this point that National was fully aware that Yang had intelligence links back to China and deliberately got him into the party and onto that select committee as part of a deal rather than any “accident” or “oversight”.

At a minimum Yang needs to be fully vetted by the SIS and NOT Saunders Unsworth.

What about Labour?

The incoming Labour government gets to make hay of any bad news that Yang generates for National but in the long run they too are keen to play with China but there just might be  more scruples in Labour than National, as well as less  links to China and Chinese businesses, to be able to moderate those influences down to things that are not outright espionage, spying or criminal behavior.

Perhaps not relying on Suanders Unsworth to do their security vetting is probably a good start.

Is this really that much of a risk?

China might be a major trading partner but they are not a democracy or a place which holds any political ideals to which Kiwis might aspire (unless you are a member of National then "all aboard!") and its human rights record and history make it a risk no matter how much milk product we sell there.

Also when you consider the Chinese use of cyber weapons and cyber warfare (defined as Advanced Persistent Threats or APTs) and things like the recent hack of Australian Defence secrets (not proven to be Chinese but it nicely illustrates the risk of how close to home these things can be) and the extent of Chinese influence in NZ (and how frantic National is to deny it) and in the Pacific (defined as soft power) Yang is just one person, but one person in a key position, with the perfect training and background to hoover up information or have a detrimental (or China flavored) effect on NZ laws and legislation, and in an environment of rising Chinese influence then the answer is YES!

And if there is a risk and it cant be mitigated then the natural response of the Squirrels (and any sane person) would be to cut Yang from seeing anything which would be of issue. The only other option is to court/allow political interference which given how this is possibly a Five Eyes issue may not be possible. This is not like an electoral secretary for an MP calling up to argue for a visa for the MP's "cousin" this is something which if allowed is a full blown risk with little to mitigate it.

So is Yang a spy?

We will probably never know for sure but you don’t need 100% certainty to have concerns about an area of risk and if the shoe fits then I reiterate my comment that if he was to be found a risk then I would not be surprised one bit.

*-another good example of why having the only two mainstream media outlets in NZ merge might not be a good idea.

**-because haven’t we all.

***-that’s a direct quote from one I know.

*4-Having seen how overstretched and often understaffed both INZ and DIA are in these roles I have some sympathy for the people completing these files

*5- To their satisfaction at least, I could prove my background but just not to their standards without going through a lot of extra hoops before I got my clearance

Elections 2017: The final analysis part II - I voted National and all I got was this coalition government

This post is dedicated to John Key; new chairman of the board of ANZ bank which recently announced record profits due to "efficiencies"

We now get to the nuts and bolts section of our analysis, the “hard” data, so to speak, because elections generate a lot of data in the form of polls, votes and policy analysis/costings.

And the most important data at the end of the day is the following:

Final vote/seat count

National –            44.4% and 56 seats

Labour -              36.9% and 40 seats

NZ First -             7.2% and 9 seats

Greens -              6.3% and 8 seats

ACT Party -         0.5% and 1 seat (good God Epsom!)

TOP Party -         2.4% no seats

Maori Party -       1.2% no seats

Mana -                 0.1% no seats

Other Parties -     0.4% no seats

First and foremost the current Labour/Greens/NZ First arrangement comes to a grand total of 50.4% and even if National got to add in Act and the Maori Party (due to their previous association) they still only get 46.1% of the vote.

So yes National got the most votes but this is not a FFP system we live in, it’s MMP and inter party politics is important here so it’s not your individual total that matters but the grand total of all parties that are forming any coalition and on that front National lost.

Also, and lets not be coy here, National was still getting such a level of votes mostly due to the fact that up to two months before the election Labour was in such a state in the polls that many voters were clearly turned off voting for them. That all changed of course after Jacinda Ardern took over (see below) and had it happened earlier I suspect there would have been a bigger shift.

Now let’s compare those figures with the 2014 election outcome:

National –            47.04 and 60 seats

Labour -              25.03 and 32 seats

NZ First -             8.6 and 14 seats

Greens -              8.6 and 11 seats

ACT Party -         0.69 and 1 seat (again, good God Epsom!)

United Future -    0.22 and 1 seat

Maori Party -       1.3% and 2 seats

Mana -                 1.42% no seats

Other Parties -     0.86% no seats

What stands out when you compare these two sets of figures is that between 2014 and 2017 is that almost every single party in 2017 had a decline in vote share compared to their outcomes in 2014.

The only major party to buck this trend was Labour.

Importantly also is the level of decline and its proportion to the actual vote base of each party. National lost 2.6%; New Zealand First lost 1.4%; the Greens lost 2.3% and Maori lost 0.1%.

While Nationals loss was the biggest in actual terms, when taken in proportion to the sheer numbers the biggest loser was the Greens who lost over a quarter of their vote base in 2017 when compared to 2014.

And this loss is even worse when compared what the Greens got in 2011 (11.6%), which should be ringing alarm bells in Green HQ as the current trend is a party haemorrhaging voters. This may be reversed due the Greens now getting into government (Eugene Sage is Minister for Conservation is a big win) but as noted in previous posts the Greens need to work hard to avoid electoral oblivion by slipping below the 5% threshold.

Also when you place this information on the political spectrum we see that there was a distinct and marked shift of voters to Labour from all other parties (or voters shifting through parties). Which in electoral terms means that Labour acted like a vote sink, sucking in voters from across the political spectrum at the expense of all other parties.

Labours 11.6% jump in vote share is far greater than the 6.4% combined losses from the main parties (and including Maori) is a massive surge which means that those voters did not just come from the current vote spread and in fact also came from those who had previously not voted deciding to vote (up to 79.75% from a nadir of 74% in 2011 and 77.9% in 2014).

Another interesting nugget is that NZ has gone from having seven parties in parliament to five and the majority of votes sit with only four of them, which leave power centralised much more than any previous time since MMP started (previous elections had either six or seven parties make the cut).

Some of this is attributable to United Future vanishing as soon as Peter Dunne cut and run as well as the electoral mauling both Maori and Mana received this time round for behaving like idiots.

Admittedly these numbers are raw and do not reflect many of the nuances that can (and have been) found coming out of the 2017 election (for example the discrediting of the rural/urban divide theory and the data for Auckland showing a marked shift towards National this election) but the data does clearly show the following things:

1.    All parties except Labour got less votes than the previous election

2.    There was a marked shift to Labour (and by extension the Left)

3.    Fewer parties made it into parliament and any previous MMP election

The first two on this list are directly connected and show a resurgent Labour under Jacinda Ardern (more on that in a moment) while the last indicates that the era of one person/one issue parties under MMP is probably over.

This political culling of the smaller players may show that after the “deregulation” of NZ politics, by the introduction of MMP in the 90s (thereby breaking the two party stranglehold under FPP and allowing many new players to enter the game), the “market” has reached a state of stabilization and cartelization with the smaller and independent operators driven out of the “marketplace” and the remaining actors operating at the level of informal agreement to “regulate prices”.

And with the heady days of early MMP behind us and the public now able to recognise a one man band masquerading as a larger political cause when they see it (are you listening Winston?) the four remaining survivors of this election (because Act does not count in any meaningful way) get to fill seats in the house previously held by now extinct political parties.

But why stop there when there is more data to crunch, so try this one on for size.

For those who bemoaned the lack of policy discussion at the expense of a relentless focus on personality there is data to show why that was.

In looking at both party and preferred leader poll data is was possible to link changes in various party personalities with clear shifts in the polls.

The most obvious example is the sudden and massive shift in polling for Labour after Jacinda Ardern took over, but we can also see noted shifts in party fortunes when Meteria Turei disclosed her benefit fraud; when Shane Jones joined New Zealand First (this was reflected in the tumble in Winston’s personal polling going from 10+ percent to five and six percent) and even in the slower and less drastic shift in National’s fortunes after John Key bailed out (although credit to Bill English for actually increasing his personal polling during the same period) and when the Todd Barclay scandal broke.

Add in the fact that this election we did not have any flashpoint issues to galvanise public opinion as previous elections (think Dirty Politics and media personalities like Kim Dot Com sucking up all the public’s attention and emotion) and it’s clear that any sudden shift in party fortunes was almost always tied directly to some individual’s behaviour or circumstances.

And while the jury remains out on the increasingly tabloid manner of much of the NZ political press as the driver of such a view it is indisputable that media coverage of the election almost always returned (like a gossipy magazine) to the person rather than the policy and usually left those who wanted the debate to be about the issues (ie policy) out in the cold.

Issues like clean water, child poverty, house prices and anything else which could have been the hinge of this election only ever got a secondary part as either some sort of political garnish to the main course of Jacindamania, Winston’s Super payments, Meteria’s benefit fraud, Todd’s criminality, Bill’s memory loss or Andrew’s ineptitude or lost in the static (or should that be statistical) haze of unfocused public discord which could never focus on an issue long enough to deal with it.

Thus in the final few weeks of the election the normal stable political polls started to jump around very wildly with National sub 40% and Labour above 40% and preferred PM polling starting to look like a coin toss as Bill sank to 28% in July and Jacinda peaking at 35% in early September (where she had been at 6% in July). Even Winston during this period skipped around like a drunk fairy (hitting 10% in July and diving to 4% two months later when National tried to take him out with their clumsy reveal of his Super data).

By election day on the 23^rd of September the polls were scrambled both for party and leader and what had been a rather staid and predictable (as well as depressing) electoral outcome of National for another three years (and possibly perpetuity) changed to a an exciting 26 day game of “Where’s Winston?”.

So at this point we have the numbers showing a shift to the Left, personality politics dominating, 1/5^th of voters not voting, the near extinction of minor parties and it’s no wonder that some people howled when National got the most votes but failed to make a government as while not a traditional FPP environment it was certainly not the MMP environment we were used to either.

Add in the backdrop for all this being 33 years of Neoliberal politics and an electorate constantly saying “F**k it!” (every six or nine years) as it tried to rid itself of the affliction that such an ideology was and what was a guaranteed win when John Key was leader had become something else with distinctly populist overtones, albeit through a Kiwi lens, when Jacinda became leader of Labour.

Finally, with National having nothing left to foil the meteoric rise of Jacinda Ardern but a table full of Dead Cats (via the advice of professional muckrakers like Crosby Textor) and it was clear in the final month, that despite its high polling, National had lost the election as scumbag moves like Steven Joyce’s outright lying about Labours costings and scaremongering about their tax plan had National starting to look like a child molester caught out on To Catch a Predator and showed that they had nothing positive to offer New Zealand and thus Winston decided to go with Labour.

No outcome is ever a given but all of the above adds up to a mood for real change, not just a change of government but one of ideology, a change away from land sales to foreigners, billionaires buying citizenship and pay as you die health care to something more for the People and less for the dangerous class of parasites whose feeding on the flesh of this nation had gone from a simple itch to full blow infestation and possible death (given how corrupt elites usually end up destroying any society they afflict).

And that’s how it happened…

Next week - Part III - We are all socialists now, Comrade   

Elections 2017: The final analysis - Part I

Brace yourself kiddies, this is going to be a wild one!

My coverage of the 2017 electoral cycle started out ten months ago in January with my first post titled Elections 2017: Ready, steady…Ugh!

It was here that I started my exploration of the topic by noting that even with John Key gone there was still a good chance that we could end up with a National government because a) Winston was going to be kingmaker again; and b) Labour had yet to atone for its piss-poor performance over the previous eight years (and thus was going to be hobbling its performance come polling day).

My summation was that the election was Little’s/Labours to loose, that the sooner he (Little) was removed the better and that Labour could do far worse than by tapping into the spirit of 72 and 84 (both watershed political wins for Labour) by making change to the status quo their key message.

Of course there were detractors (as noted in the comments to that post) to the idea of removing Little (and possibly also to jump-starting Labour) but I don’t get paid* to rehash their tepid opinions because as an independent political blogger, who makes all the money and gets all the glory, it did not take a correspondence degree from the Lionel Hutz school of Politics to see what needed to be done.

And surprise, surprise look what happened.

With two months to go before election day, National looked to have a commanding position as Labour wallowed in apathy and inaction. Then under mounting pressure to vacate the job, Andrew Little copped one to many negative poll results and finally stepped aside to allow Jacinda Ardern to take over as leader and actually lead the party to victory (as oppose to another thrashing on the hustings - because who wants their hustings thrashed?).**

And what flavor is that victory? Why a inimitably kiwi one of course.

But wait, what just happened? How did we get to this place? Why did things turn out the way they did and who is responsible for this? 

To answers these questions we have to travel back into the mists of time to a place that no longer exists to find the genesis of this elections outcome.

And it’s here that our story begins… so as the song says, what we’re gonna do here is go back, way back.

Part 1 – Something is not right in Aotearoa

In 1984, after nine years of National, Think Big, The Springbok Tour, Bastion Point, Rob Muldoon and Smiths Dream New Zealand finally said “F**k it!” and voted in a Labour Government under David Lange.

However if Kiwis were voting for change, any change, they were about to get more change than they bargained for in the form of Rodger Douglas, Richard Prebble and the Neo-Liberal/free market revolution which set about dismantling the welfare state and making the rich richer at the expense of everyone else.

It was change all right but not the change that they were wanting or expecting and it turned the country on its head and remains a unspoken trauma on the national psyche to this day.

Globally, right wing ideologues like Thatcher and Regan were doing (or had done) similar things in their countries and with the fall of communism and the “end of history” there was little to counterbalance their predatory and rabid zealotry.

Of course much of the western world was also going through the same things in what can only be described as an international coup attempt by the global elites to roll back democracy, restore feudalism*** and elevate the market as the one true religion.

And for a time it succeeded, by the 90s New Zealand had “liberalized”, Labour had been driven from office in disgrace (by the people saying “F**k it!” again) and the new National government decided to “roll with things” by keeping on with the “reform” process Labour had begun and setting in stone market worship as government practice (think SOEs; calling citizens "customers"; the rise of the business consultants in government etc) and thus making people surplus to requirements.

Then in 1999 the people of New Zealand said “F**k it!” for a third time, evicted National for their skeezy doings under Bolger, Shipley et al (including a younger Bill English and the corpulent mass/mess known as Jerry/Gerry Brownlee) and anointed a fair maiden named Helen as their new leader and politely asked her to fix the problems of the last 15 years.

Unfortunately by that time Left wing parties, desperate to remain relevant after their ideological base had dissolved and seduced by the siren song of corporate influence, had decided that the best course of action was to abandon their traditional values and voter bases, strap on a suit and tie and steer their parties as far right as they possibly could into the toxic wasteland now known as the “middle ground”.

It was the time of Poodle Blair and Helen Clark; dull facsimiles of those that had come before them and happy to keep their masters happy, and the church coffers full, by exhorting the masses to spend more and be happy while public services and democratic mechanisms were quietly undermined by their duplicity.

The MO for both parties in this period was to avoid any clear ideological basis and focus on the simple exhortation for people to submit to the invisible hand of the market. It was an fugly ideology for an fugly time and saw kiwi politics dissolve into a swamp of rainbow vomit as greed and personal interest captured politicians and scandals became the norm.

Then in 2008, after 24 years of the grubby antics of both parties, NZ again said “F**k it!” for a fourth time (now said in much the same manner as a person desperately trying to get a lawnmower to start) and voted for a charismatic young man with a nice suit and a full head of hair (a merchant banker no less) who would fix all their problems and lead the country into the glorious prosperity that had long been promised.

That “nice young man” was John Key and the “glorious prosperity” he promised turned out to be the marketing and selling of New Zealand to tourists and anyone but the people that actually owned it (the People) in an orgy of criminality and corruption that made concepts as pedophile operated day-care centers a plausible reality and dairy cows elevated to a status greater than that of Hindu gods.

Another side effect of the “centering” of politics and the rise of the “men in suits” as politicians was that personality became the dominant factor in politics. Principles and Policy were downplayed in favor of winning the popularity contests which elections were rapidly becoming. Who cared that the PM had been caught in lie when ... hey look the Rugby World Cup!

And as it became clear to the public (both here and overseas) that their elites were only in it for themselves and happy to betray the rest of society in order to board the luxury escape rockets (built by Elon Musk of course) to the pleasure planet (where there are no poor people) their reaction was either to disengage from politics (ie cease to vote) or treat all politicians as paid liars and simply vote for the one who lied the most persuasively (ie promised the best booty).

The result has been the decline in the number of people voting over time (now 1 in 5) and the rise of populist politics and politicians which combine to weaken kiwi democracy and embolden our elites even further in their quest to build the new feudalism. 

Come the start of 2017 the state of NZ was one of out of reach house prices, rampant child poverty, unswimable rivers and politics as the domain of the corrupt predators and bumbling incompitents.

And lo, there was much anguish in Gods own land as the people wailed and moaned with no succor from the plagues of tourists and real-estate agents which afflicted them. In desperation some turned their faces upwards and stared into the sun while others succumbed to the whispering of false prophets. And in the great hive the priests gorged themselves on the honey of the bees while erecting an idol of a golden calf, built on the backs of sweating zero hour contract slaves.

And that’s how it happened…

Tomorrow, Part II - I voted and all I got was this coalition government

*-In fact I don’t get paid for this at all. I just do it for the Lulz and grins

**-With the help of Winston Peters of course

***-Albeit in a “new and improved form”

Electons 2017: And awaaaay we go!

These are just my opening thoughts now that we know who is who and what is what. A full breakdown of the election will come a bit later.

Its finally over, as of today we have a new government.

Twenty six days is not the longest time ever but I knew people were getting truly sick of it when I opened the Listener and saw the word "interregnum"* used to describe the state of affairs and realized that people were rapidly running out of words to describe the same situation again and again**.

And the last week in particular, it was clear that the news supply had simply dried up except to report the minutest details of peoples comings and goings. Surprisingly the worst offender was not the print media or bloggers but Radio NZ who seemed, at times, to be stuck in some sort of Mobius strip of rank reportage to which they could not escape.

Another thing which had become painfully clear by the end of last week was that Winston was tearing through his limited supply of public good will when his self imposed deadline came and went without any decision being made.

One can only imagine what kind of scenes were playing out, up there in the NZ First meeting rooms, as the mood of the public started to sour when the comments in public, and media, started to note how well things were running without politicians or parties*** and the average apolitical Kiwi began to grumble about "bloody Winston making us wait".

At that point it was painfully clear that this was not another 1996 or 2008 with the cool, calm, ever smiling Winston stringing the public along while he  wheeled and dealed. Instead Peters began to look vulnerable and various apocalypse scenarios surfaced about "another election" which if designed to spur Peters into action had the desired effect of making him decide who to go with.

And the choice, which I said before the election, was Labour.

It was always going to be Labour, which is why I put down for all to see two weeks before election day. And if it was clear to me before voting day it soon became clear to others after when the media started talking about head over heart and Winstons legacy because its clear that the Old Man of NZ Politics is truly old and like all old men in power he wants to leave some lasting mark, some monument to remind future generations of his "greatness" and had he backed Bill & Co he would have obliterated any possible legacy except that of the man who denied NZ the change it needs.

Also spare a thought for Bill English in all of this. His face on election night when the polls closed, showing National well ahead of Labour, was that of a man in the throws of some magnificent, beatific, political orgasm right there on stage for all to see.

Faces like that might be common on some Ecstasy fueled dance floor but not right there with his wife and family in attendance and certainly not with the media around. Such ribald behavior is common at election time but not that stark or so positively raunchy.

Yet it was clear sometime last week that things were slipping for Bill as various hints and leaks began to nod towards Labour and away from National and some time last night Bill will have gone home to his wife and family, quietly entered the family house at some late hour, stood for a moment in the darkened hallway before turning on the light, letting his body slump momentarily under the hideous weight of knowing that his political career is now effectively over before straitening up, snapping on the hall light and making his way up to bed.

God knows what his therapy bills will add up to but one thing is clear, without the required two years in the job as PM there will be no PM pension for him.

Meanwhile over in Aro Valley, James Shaw has probably slept soundly for the first time in a fair few months, knowing that his job is safe (for now) and that with three ministerial positions (but no seat at the cabinet table) he (and by extension the Greens) are in government for real this time as long as they keep up the confidence and supply for Labour.

In the wake of his and the parties hideous screw-ups pre-election the Greens have done well and I am willing to give Shaw his dues after he stepped in to shout down what was a potentially fatal rot regarding some Blue/Green Axis of Evil but only time will tell if he actually has the brains to make it far in politics because one thing is monumentally clear and that is he only just made it this time.

Shaw was saved by the special votes, and the sickening plummet from the heights of 15% polling to 4% will go down in NZ political history as a harrowing lesson on not what to do in the run up to an election.

Had the Greens retained their 15%, or even 10%, things would have been different and Shaw's bargaining position come being in Cabinet and elsewhere, would have been much more robust.

Instead its clear that Jacinda Ardern (possibly with urging from Winston) took the tactical decision to play on the numbers realistically, ignore the urge to punish the Greens for their MOU related backstabbery before the election and cut James and Co some slack rather than settle the score now. Whats that they say about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?

As for Maori and Mana, they were wiped out and Tuku Morgan now has to face the horrid fact that his plan for electoral success was predicated on playing the same old game that Maori/Mana had played before but with a side order of Labour related vitriol which made them as extinct as the Moa. The next vehicle for Maori politics is going to have to figure out that letting the tribal elites get all the goodies at the expense of all other Maori is no longer a viable way to make it in politics.

And then there was Labour.

One person who sprung immediately to my mind when I found out that Winston had finally got off the pot was Andrew Little.

Now I bagged Little relentlessly on this blog for nearly a year as the kind of political cock-block (pardon my French but there really is no other term for it) to Jacinda Ardern (and the fortunes of Labour) and that he should just give up and go away and to his credit, he did.

Sure it was only when the pressure got so critical that you could clearly see the knives sticking out of Grant Robertson's pocket (as proxy for Jacinda) but he did and we all now know how that went. He stepped aside and in doing so ignited the fires of Jacindamania which was the main component of Labours fightback in the polls.

A lesser leader would have fought on because greed and stupidity trumps reason almost every time in politics so on that alone we can thank him for making the change possible.

And for all of those people who spent much of the campaign shouting "its the policy stupid!", well you guys now get what you want as Labours plan for the first 100 days is chock full of policy nuggets to chew over and gnaw on for many months to come.

Finally all of this would not have happened without one person, one key individual who made the right call when at the right time and has allowed for NZ to take its first steps away from the neo-liberal wasteland we were rapidly heading towards. One person whose foresight and wisdom will be a legacy that will echo down the years.

I am of course referring to John Key.

What? You were expecting me to say Winston Peters?

If Key had not made the call to exit politics in December last year none of this would have happened. Key was the champ and all contenders to the throne had to get past him and his Teflon popularity. Even Jacindamania would have been muted against him and he now gets his payoff as a crony on the ANZ board but its a small price to pay for opening the door to real and positive change.

Winstons role in this is in the end minor. He was nothing more than the hand of fate and he knew it. He fought against it but as they say desine fata deum flecti sperare preccando.

Enjoy the long weekend.


*-Which was nice in a way because my perspicacity had been flagging a bit after the election
**-And again, and again. I am looking at you in particular Stuff. What, a possible Chinese spy in the Beehive was not something you could get your head around? The NZ Herald at least gave it some lip service coverage, but you guys just ignored it, like WTF?
***-Which if I recall happens every time we get some pause between elections but a lot faster and a lot louder this time round

Hostage situation in Parliament continues

When the going gets boring the bored turn to satire*.

The hostage situation in parliament entered into its second week today after an elderly man entered Parliament and took the nation hostage on the Sunday immediately following the election.

Two weeks ago, on September 24^th, a man armed with a 7.5% vote share, identified as Winston Raymond Peters, of no fixed political abode, invaded the Parliamentary complex in Wellington and took hostages claiming political relevance and wanting his old job back.

Peters is believed to have been responsible for the death of at least two political parties so far while a third remains in critical condition at the political ward of Wellington Hospital.

Both of Peters victims appeared to have died instantly after polling closed while the third, a resident of Aro Valley in Wellington, was wounded by fire from Peters but managed to escape to safety, however their condition remains critical at this time.

So far Peters has issued no formal demands and it remains unclear what may have triggered such behaviour with Peters only communication being a series of vague and unclear statements shouted from the windows of the Beeehive at anyone who will listen.

Several hostage negotiating teams have been sent in to try and defuse the situation but were unsuccessful after Peters claimed to be waiting for “The Specials”. At this point it’s remains unclear what connection the 1970s Ska band from the UK has to Peters but Parliamentary Services manager Barry Smallgrope said they were not ruling out an ideological link.

Meanwhile the Special Task Force Unit (STFU) based at Police Headquarters in Wellington has compiled a profile of Peters describing him as a “lone wolf, probably driven by a messiah complex and delusions of grandeur”. The Police have also stated that they believe Peters to be acting alone at this time but that he may have had help in planning and preparing for his actions; an investigation has been launched.

Police spokesperson Basil Weasleface also noted that Peters appeared to be under the influence of an illegal substance, known by its street name of NozTalJa, which creates a feeling of “the past being so much better than it actually was while blinding the user to any sense of the future”. Police have noted the effects of this substance to be 50 times stronger than P or synthetic cannabis and with an almost 100% addiction rate.

Additionally Police have warned about the danger of a 7.5% vote share noting that while it is of a smaller caliber than some of the vote shares available to the public, such a weapon can still cause damage or even the loss of life and advise no members of the public to approach the Parliamentary complex.

Currently the standoff situation ensues with Peters and the hostages remaining inside Parliament while members of STFU wait outside, maintaining a cordon around Parliament with only negotiators, the press and members of Parliamentary Services Special Catering Unit (PSSCU) being allowed onto the grounds: The black berets and aprons of this elite unit being familiar to the public after an incident involving Gerry Brownlee at Bellamy’s a few years back.

Commentators have blamed the lack of political security at Parliament as being responsible for allowing an individual such as Peters to gain access to Parliament without having to pass though security checks with Council for Reforms Under Democracy (CRUD) spokesperson Bruce Snodgrass taking to social media to say that “Peters was a known threat yet he simply walked on in without any checks and started blasting away at anyone who got in his way.”

In such a charged atmosphere the internet is abuzz with various conspiracy theories about Peters and his motivations. The most popular stating that Winston Peters is actually a pseudonym and that the individual who has taken over Parliament is the son of Joe Bloggs; an individual who was politically active in New Zealand during the 1970s and early 80s before dying in mysterious circumstances in 1984.

Elsewhere in Wellington a memorial was held for the two victims of Peters with members of the Miramar Children’s Ragtime Choir singing a rendition of …And Justice For All by Metallica, to the small crowd of mourners while a mysterious figure cloaked in a black hooded robe and mask, known only as “The Leader” capered around in a macabre dance which some onlookers interpreted as having “evil intent”.

With no end to the hostage situation in sight and authorities refusing to comment if any special measures will be taken the country remains in stasis, however a special commission is being set up to investigate the circumstances that lead to these tragic events with retired high court judge Boris Fudgezonkalis to chair.

*-I am working to finish my post about Tunisia but got sidetracked this weekend.

Elections 2017: The temptation of James Shaw

When the Devil had finished all his tempting, he left him until an opportune time – Luke 4:13

It’s been interesting over the last week to watch the mainstream political media in NZ twist desperately as they try and fill their daily news quota because Winston is simply stalling for time and there is almost nothing else to discuss in politics until parliament starts up.

Thus it’s been right royally entertaining and somewhat depressing to see the slew of articles coming out discussing James Shaw taking the Greens over to National.

Now to be fair it’s a prospect I have also raised in the past but the difference is my portrayal of the situation (which I shall elaborate on a bit below) was always based on the impulse of Shaw himself and not via any conscious decision by the party, its vote base or some sort of policy pragmatism.

No, what’s being hailed here is something very very different. What is being set up here is the pre-greasing of the public to accept a Green/National government, via a strangely compliant media, based on the rational (and dare I say public choice) idea that who cares about principles or where you are on the political spectrum just think about the what you will get if you do!

Normally dependable reporters like Stacey Kirk and Tracy Watkins on Stuff have been busy shoveling the kind of half-baked analysis that is more at the level of my standard stream of consciousness rot than their usual astute analysis and reportage.

Elsewhere Isaac Davidson over at the NZ Herald has not been immune to “going with the flow” and turning out something that is similar to his counterparts over at Stuff.

Meanwhile leave it to Martyn Bradbury over at the DailyBlog to get to the point (also here) and explain why a Green/National coalition would be a toxic result for Greens.

Because what would happen if James Shaw, and I mean James Shaw, not the party, took the Greens over to the other side would be for all intents and purposes and the end of the Greens.

It would be the birth of the very short lived James Shaw party which would live and die in exactly the same fashion as the Maori Party did when it cozied up to National and then got obliterated at the polls for essentially betraying its core vote base.

Because what Shaw would be attempting to do is pole vault the Greens over two other parties on the political spectrum (Labour and NZ First) to place it next to National, as long term coalition partner or just for some casual confidence and supply (the political equivalent of friends with benefits (or should that be benefits?), at the expense of any solid understanding of how democracy works.

Shaw, like Winston in my last post, is not free to buy and sell, horse trade or even prostitute his vote share to any and all parties that come a courting, despite what the media is trying to say. It not only betrays the democratic mechanic and spirit, its also just plain stupid.

And the alarm bells that should be ringing in Shaws brain right now do not stop there as the only actor in recent NZ political history I can think off of that managed to pull off that trick is Richard Prebble when he went from Labour to ACT, and we all know how that turned out.

Prebble, the golem of the Treasury Trokia from the mid-1980s, who, along with Roger Douglas and David Caygill* had their names etched forever in infamy as men who poisoned the well in NZ left-wing politics and set NZ on the unwholesome path it is treading today is not a good example of how to manage your party, its brand or its future.

What Prebble is a good example of, is one individual selling out his constituents and party (Labour Leaning Auckland Central in the 70s and 80s) for his own personal gain and in doing so being remembered only as scumbag political hack who once lead ACT.

And Shaw could have all of that if he takes the bait and goes to National.

Sure it makes all the policy sense in the world, when Stacey Kirk phrases it along pure policy lines, but it would be a very personal and very short term gain for James Shaw; and those lucky few high enough on the party list to get into parliament, who get a few years to play in politics while the Green brand goes from skating just above the 5% threshold to the same level as the Maori Party today (essentially 0%).

But given how bastardized the Green party is at this time, with its skew towards social justice more than the environment and their feet suddenly feeling the chill after having come down from the lofty heights of Mt Morality it is a possibility that could happen but what the media is not making clear is what happens to little green fish that swim with the big Blue Shark.

Sure the Greens were kept in a rather limited bowl by Labour but they were never threatened with annihilation (just subservience), as they would be for sucking on the teats of National.

So while we can blame the dictates of Winston Peters (and his refusal to ever work with the Greens) for being the primer for nudging Shaw along this path, that is the only rationality which would justify such a move and, as noted above, it would be purely short term and purely personal gain.

If Shaw needs any evidence of what decrepit fate awaits him its right there in the now vacant offices and work spaces of the Maori Party in Bowen House and Parliament.

Of course if Shaw is a corporate Trojan horse or Security Service mole, like has been speculated for some time in Wellington, then his going with National would lock those theories into pole position on the grid as Shaw is not stupid enough to think he could salvage the party from such a fate that has befallen so many in NZ politics and around the world but he might be willing (and stupid) enough to sell the party down the river for his own gain (or that of his masters).

The track record for voter betraying minor political parties is not good and if Shaw was a deep cover operative then this would be the perfect time to follow his MK Ultra programming and take the party over to the dark side.

However what sits in my mind now is not some political parable but the story of St Paul who started out his career as hunter of Christians but was struck down and blinded, on the road to Damascus, by the glory of Christ, and spent three days blind and suffering before a Christian healer made the scales fall from his eyes (hence where the saying comes from), he “saw the light” and converted to Christianity.

If the story stopped there is would be warm fuzzies all around but it doesn’t, what happened after is that St Paul went on to become one of the most prominent of the Apostles and his works and thought dominates early Christianity and the New Testament as one of the most rabid evangelists for Jesus Christ.

In short Saul became a “prisoner of Christ”, suffered Stockholm syndrome, changed his name to Paul and then became a Jihadi proselytizer for the JC Franchise.

And if that is not making it clear enough then I will spell it out. If Shaw goes to National then he will spend the rest of his days as a raving believer for the rightness (pun intended) of his dark deed, religiously defending his actions because his total reversal for all that the Greens stand for will require a stupendous level of missionary zeal to convince, even himself, that his deal with the devil was worth it.

This is the temptation that James Shaw is facing because just as the Maori Party constantly kept referring to how they were doing it "for Maori" the end result was they really were doing it for themselves only and Maori in general got little to nothing from the bargain that Maori struck with National; and Shaw & Co will have to utter the exact same lines and platitudes as the Maori Party did while National gets a free pass for another three years***.

For the Aro Valley** champagne environmentalists, which now make up the limited core of the party, they might feel good for the initial moment when the Greens get to lick the lever of power in ritual subservience the the Great Wyrm but as they say, revenge is sweet but not fattening, and election 2020 will probably be time enough for Shaw to become as toxic as dairy stream in voters minds and as popular as Clitter.

So if Shaw wants to kiss the devils buttocks so be it but the media should not be trying to fool people to which way he is really going.

*-(Douglas as Hitler, Caygill as Gobbles and Prebble as Himmler)

**-And I should know because I lived just up the hill from Shaw for five years
***-To be fair a NZ First/Labour/Greens govt has all sorts of potential issues lurking just below the surface but its still better than another three years of National at this point