Thanks to the Daily Blog
EXCLUSIVE:
Dirt Alert! Are the Greens and Labour about to become the targets of
a major negative advertising campaign?
Chris
Trotter
Yesterday
evening I received an e-mail from a sender styling himself “Charlie
Taylor” advising me that “a group of concerned citizens just like
you are paying for billboards like this”…. -
30
August, 2014
WE’VE
SEEN IT ALL BEFORE. In 2005 pamphlets began appearing all over New
Zealand attacking Labour and the Greens. For a couple of days both
the parties targeted and the news media were flummoxed. Who was
behind such an obviously extensive and expensive campaign? No one
knew – until former members of the Exclusive Brethren Church
recognised some of the names of the pamphlets’ authorising agents
and put two and two together.
The
exposure of the Exclusive Brethren Church’s role in printing and
distributing the pamphlets, followed by the shock revelation that the
National Party leader, Dr Don Brash, had been made aware that such
campaign was in the offing, contributed significantly to National’s
2005 election defeat.
Could
history be repeating itself?
Yesterday
evening I received an e-mail from a sender styling himself “Charlie
Taylor” advising me that “a group of concerned citizens just like
you are paying for billboards like this”.
Exactly
who “Charlie Taylor” is I have no idea, but the lengthy e-mail
send out in his name is clearly intended to inflict maximum damage on
both the Greens and, by association, Labour.
If
I was a betting man, I would hazard a reasonable wager that Don
Brash’s superb propagandist, John Ansell, was in some way involved
with all this. There is something in the cheeky tone of these designs
that recalls Ansell’s immensely powerful Iwi/Kiwi billboards of
2005.
This,
for example:
The
other reason I have for speculating that Mr Ansell might be involved
is that some of the text of the e-mail bears a striking similarity to
the accusations levelled at the Greens co-leader, Russel Norman, by
Mr Ansell when he was interviewed on Radio New Zealand’sMorning
Report recently.
In the course of that interview, Mr Norman was branded a communist in
language very similar to that used in this excerpt from the e-mail:
“Will you be happy to learn that your Labour party vote has helped ex-Aussie Communist Russel Norman achieve his ambition of becoming Mr Cunliffe’s finance minister?
“Will you think it a hoot when, thanks to you, ex-McGillicuddy Serious and Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis candidate Metiria Turei joins Red Russ as ‘Joint’ Deputy Prime Minister?”
Nor
is this the worst thing the author/s of the e-mail have to say about
the Greens. Apparently, they are responsible for the deaths of 50
million Third World children:
“Green thinking has a long and black track record of sounding heart-warmingly plausible, but wreaking death and destruction when unleashed in the real world, on real people.
“In the 60s, the hysteria over Rachel Carson’s green bible Silent Spring led to the banning of the mosquito-killing chemical DDT.
“Which led to 50 million people dying of malaria.
“Every day, more children die painful deaths because the Greens continue to deny them the treatment that would save their lives – a treatment that science has long since proven safe.”
All
good inflammatory stuff! But the real sting (and true target) of the
e-mail comes in its tail. The message which the “Group of Concerned
Kiwis” who sign-off this diatribe really want you to take away is:
“To stop the Greens, you must stop Labour.”
“You may think National and Labour are two sides of the same coin. And usually that would be fair comment.
“But with the Greens now guaranteed to be 30% or more of a Labour government, the economic danger signs just got a whole lot redder.”
Better,
one assumes, to stick with the blues.
Whoever
Charlie Taylor turns out to be, his group of “concerned citizens”
is almost certain to fall foul of the Electoral Commission.
For
a start, the designs feature absolutely nothing in the way of an
authorising statement. Without the true name and residential address
of the person responsible for authorising these political messages,
any billboards, pamphlets, stickers and/or posters that may appear
between now and 20 September are almost certain to be in
breach of the legislation regulating political communications during
a General Election campaign.
They
will also discover that any and all “concerned citizens” wishing
to participate in the cut and thrust of the General Election must
first register themselves with the Electoral Commission and undertake
to keep their expenditure within legislatively sanctioned limits.
The
revelation of such identifying details would, of course, facilitate
the full disclosure of who is behind this proposed negative
advertising campaign.
In
the wake of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty
Politics,
I do not imagine that the National Party will relish answering
questions about the provenance of yet another example of, well, dirty
politics.
And if, as happened in 2005, incontrovertible evidence emerges that
John Key or his party were forewarned of these “Concerned Kiwis’”
campaigning intentions, then National’s chances of holding onto
power will take yet another hit.
BREAKING:
UPDATE on DIRT ALERT!
Thanks
to the information passed to Chris Trotter by “Idiot/Savant” from
No Right Turn it is now possible to identify at least some of the
persons involved in this latest example of attack politics. What
follows is Chris’s response to Idiot/Savant’s timely assistance:
Thanks
to the information passed to Chris Trotter by
“Idiot/Savant” from No Right Turn it is now possible to
identify at least some of the persons involved in this latest example
of attack politics. What follows is Chris’s response
to Idiot/Savant’s timely assistance:
Well
done and thank you, Idiot/Savant!
It
was sent to a person called John Third.
Following
up this detail, I discovered that a John Lawrence Third is the sole
director of a registered private company called Guinness Gallagher
Corporate Advisory Ltd, based in Wellington.
I
acquired Mr Third’s telephone number, called him, and, receiving no
answer, left a message for him to call me back. He hasn’t.
I
did not include this information in the posting above because I
didn’t want to involve a potentially “innocent civilian” in a
breaking political story.
Idiot/Savant’s
research has, however, obviated the need for me to talk to Mr Third
because looking at the latest entry on the Elections New Zealand’s
Register of Promoters whose name do I see in the column headed “Name
of the person authorised to make the application where the promoter
is not an individual” but that of John L Third – the very same
person to whom “Charlie Taylor’s” e-mail was sent.
How
did it come to me? I have no idea. Perhaps Mr Third’s name was just
the first of dozens on a mass e-mail distribution list among which my
own – for some unfathomable reason – was included.
Whatever
the explanation, we now know that the campaign is real, and that it
is being run under the collective identity of “The Opinion
Partnership” among whose members are Mr Third and Owen Jennings –
former head of Federated Farmers, former Act Party MP (1996-2002) and
currently the joint owner (with Mr Third) of the registered private
company Ideal Energy Holdings Ltd.
According
to Daily Blogger, Frank Macskasy, the first of these billboards has
already appeared in the Wellington region.
We
await further developments.
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