# Ponytailgate

I am posting this because the reporting exceeds anything NZ Msm has come up with

Furore after woman whose ponytail was pulled by New Zealand PM John Key says she was misled by NZ Herald

Interview with waitress who accuses John Key of harrassment was published against her wishes, she says

theGuardian,

24 April, 2015

The furore over New Zealand prime minister John Key pulling a waitress’s ponytail has escalated after the woman who accused him was identified in an interview published in a national newspaper, apparently against her wishes.

Since the waitress complained of the prime minister’s harassment in an anonymous post on leftwing site the Daily Blog on Wednesday, questions have arisen about the New Zealand Herald’s actions and its links to Key’s governing National party, which surfaced in the lead-up to last year’s general election.

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The New Zealand Herald on Thursday identified the waitress as 26-year-old Amanda Bailey, in an interview which Bailey says was published against her wishes.

In a follow-up post published on Thursday, Bailey claimed she was asked to meet with her employers, Hip Group owners Jackie Grant and Scott Brown, at their home on Wednesday afternoon to collaborate on a statement that would rebuff any allegations that they failed to protect her in the workplace. A friend of Grant and Brown, who Bailey says was introduced to her as “Rachel”, a public relations professional, joined them via speakerphone to advise them on the statement and write a draft.

Bailey writes that, after a conversation which she believed to be off the record with a “public relations expert working confidentially for my employer”, she alleges she learned that “Rachel” was Rachel Glucina, a gossip columnist for the New Zealand Herald. (Her brother, Henry Glucina, is identified as working for the Hip Group on his LinkedIn profile.)

Though Bailey writes that Grant and Brown reassured her that Rachel Glucina was “doing this as a favour for them ... and not in her capacity as a journalist”, Bailey said she felt uncomfortable with the situation and withdrew permission for her comments and the photo she had allowed to be taken of her with her employers to be used.

“This must have been the ‘fun and games’ that John [Key] was referring to; and as for the credibility of the New Zealand Herald if this is how they obtain their ‘exclusive interviews’ – no comment,” she wrote.

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Bailey also denies in the post that she accepted Key’s apology in March with “that’s all fine, no drama”, as he said she did on Wednesday.

Martyn Bradbury of the Daily Blog said he spoke to the Herald editor Shayne Currie late on Wednesday after an “aggrieved” Bailey contacted him. Bradbury said he told Currie that Bailey claimed to have been misled by Glucina and that the Herald did not have her permission to publish the story.

In a statement, Currie said Bailey, Grant and Brown were aware the interview would be published in the Herald. “To further ease any concerns, we took the very rare step of agreeing Rachel should run the quotes past the parties before publication.

“By then, no one was in any doubt that the article, quotes and photograph would be appearing in the Herald.”

Screenshots taken of the Herald website by Twitter users appear to show the statement had been revised at least four times since it was published, including one revision that appears to retract the statement that Glucina did not misrepresent herself.

Shayne Currie and Rachel Glucina have been contacted for comment. Attempts to contact Amanda Bailey were unsuccessful.

It will be interesting to see which version of events is confirmed, if that ever occurs.

Last year, Rachel Glucina was among several journalists implicated in Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, which alleged senior government officials were executing smear campaigns against opponents with the help of media. Hager said he tried to avoid shaming journalists in the book, with the exception of Glucina, whom he described as “despicable”.

More evidence of Key’s hair-pulling habits emerged on Wednesday, with footage from 2014 showing him pulling a young girl’s ponytail on TV show Campbell Live. Political strategist Mark Blackham has also claimed that Key did the same to two of his daughter’s friends on a trip to the national museum: “It’s clearly a thing he does”.

Meanwhile, Key has been criticised for his treatment of Bailey by opposition MPs and human rights groups, with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters calling for a police investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday the National Council of Women published an open letter to Key, in which chief executive Sue McCabe said the prime minister “crossed a line” in his treatment of Bailey.

“Up and down this country, day after day, people are touched without giving their consent. At one end of the scale, it is an unwelcome pull on a ponytail. At the other end, it’s our shocking levels of violence against women.”

Graham McCready, a serial litigant whose private prosecution resulted in the conviction of a politician last year, has reportedly filed a complaint of sexual harassment against Key with New Zealand’s human rights commission