Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, April 29th, 2008 - 59 comments
Categories: national -
Tags: john key, national, New Zealand, opposition
Strangely, given the fact the National Party is doing so well in the polls and looks to be the favorite heading into the election, things seem to be coming apart for them. We’ve heard a few stories about tense caucus meetings and divisions but mostly only as rumour and, in an election year, that sort of rumour is often a matter of someone’s wishful thinking or a bit of wedge politics. Except this time it’s different. We’ve had information leaked to us from a source within the National Party about what John Key is doing over recess.
I don’t think the information we were given is that big a deal as we were simply told he’ll be shipping off to his new Hawaii holiday home on Thursday. While that’s probably not the best look when he’s claiming to speak on behalf of struggling middle New Zealand, it’s also not exactly a capital offense. What is interesting is that this confidential and potentially embarrassing information was provided from within the National party’s caucus, and apparently not just to us.
In an election year knowing that the leader of the opposition is unavailable can be very useful. If for example the Labour Party was interested in launching a major policy they would know that he would not be able to respond. Equally the leaker may have just decided it could be embarrassing for Key to be seen to be off cavorting in his Maui mansion when he’s whinged about the government forgetting about ordinary New Zealanders. Either way there is someone in National who has deliberately set out to disadvantage Key. Given the fact National is doing so bloody well at the moment that’s very strange indeed.
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Was he also out of the country after New year when Hillary died?
That was in addition to the time in Hawaii in August
wow. we’ve been getting denial of service attacks since these last two posts went up. Sorry about the interruption of service. Lynn’s got it under control.
what’s up with the site?
it’s pretty rich of Key to complain that the government isn’t doing anything about rising prices when he’s jetting off to his million dollar bach in Hawaii.
This is outrageous. He should have his bloody passport confiscated and bank accounts turned over to the sallys. Whats next thats what I want to know..
Ah the politics of envy.
The post is about why this kind of information is being leaked.
Clearly, inside National there is a desire to damage Key.
Ah the politics of envy.
I have a particular dislike of that phrase HS. It makes as much sense as saying of the other side “Ah the politics of greed.”
mike and hs – you’re missing the point. As is made abundantly clear in the post, this is more about the leaks than the Maui mansion.
Anyway, I love that he’s a jetsetter. I’m just hoping he got my email request for some duty free colby on the way home…
Tough r0b that’s exactly what this post is about trying to portray Key as the uncaring rich prick.
no, hs. the leak is about trying to portray Key as the uncaring rich prick. this post is about why there would be a leak.
Agreed r0b. It implies that everyone who believes in any form of collectivism/socialism is poor, envious of their betters, and believes in such a political system purely to punish those who have done well, as opposed to hoping that it can improve the lot of those who have not.
So all HS saw here was that IrishBill is poor (at least relatively to Key), jealous of his Hawaiian hoilday house, and thought he would put up a post because he’s bitter about it. Nice.
ayb
IB makes the assumption that it is a leak but at the same time comments that.
I don’t think the information we were given is that big a deal as we were simply told he’ll be shipping off to his new Hawaii holiday home on Thursday.
What evidence do you have that the information is confidential and why is it potentially embarrasing ?
I went to my holiday home last week all my staff knew I was there and I wasn’t embarrased at all.
Tough r0b
You are feeling feisty today HS! Too much coffee? Steve and a_y_b have carefully explained what didn’t need explaining (the original post is perfectly clear).
MP
No completely incorrect – my point which you have missed entirely is as per my comment that the point of this post is to utilise the politics of envy against Key.
“Clearly, inside National there is a desire to damage Key.”
Or could it be thats a not as big a deal as you think – ie why keep it a secret.
It also says a lot about how the party is travelling in election year. If there was strife as you say – he wouldn’t be going anywhere.
I think the “mole” got you good this time SP
I mean IB
r0b
No more grouchy than feisty.
After the excellent posts on GST and Child poverty earlier today the last couple have been disappointing.
It’s because you don’t agree with them hs. Try to see it from other people’s perspective sometimes.
HS, I don’t give a toss if Key is in Hawaii (although I suspect a lot of people would). What I find interesting is that someone within the Nat’s caucus would make a specific effort tell us this.
Mike, Key is well known for taking time out from politics and he drops out of the game reasonably frequently.
I think Key is safe for now because he has been dynamite for National in the polls. I also think there will be more than a few in the National party who are concerned he is locking them into too much of a Labour-lite position.
To be honest I don’t know why someone would leak this information and without knowing what is going on in the National party caucus I guess I won’t ever know for sure but every way I look at it it seems like an attempted attack on Key from the inside. In my opinion that’s not particularly smart.
Well it is hardly the most insightful leak following news that he has brought a condo in Hawaii, that he wishes to take his family there during school holidays and parliamentary recess…
I guess it just shows he isnt as hard working as the likes of Judith tizard, who i am sure nevers takes a day off or goes on holiday…..
If he’s so rich, why does he drink the cheap pinot noir at The Matterhorn then, that’s what I want to know?
Seriously, too close to the election to roll a seemingly popular leader without a really good excuse. Nope, they’re locked into the Labour-lite and there’s nothing the neoliberals can do about it for the time being. There is some solace to be had when the polls come out.
“I think Key is safe for now because he has been dynamite for National in the polls.”
What startles me is that Key has been generally inept. It tells me that the voters have just had enough of Labour. I suspect that National would be enjoying this level of support with Britney Spears at the helm.
HS – that doesn’t add up when you look at the content of the post – you can’t claim that based upon your ‘general impression’ of the post either. I suppose (reaching here) you could draw a long bow and claim that while the post is putatively about dissent within the NP ranks, it’s actually a dog whistle against Key being rich – but that would be a long, long bow indeed.
“what’s up with the site?”
Not too sure. Just at present it looks like it simply ran out of memory. It’d run out of all RAM and swap space. I had to reboot from a command prompt. I’ve curtailed the number of processes available for the web server to prevent it happening again.
It is incredibly active right now. I’m tailing the access_log and it is servicing requests continuously. I’ll look at client side caching. It seems to be sending too much out that should be cached at the client side. That defines what I’ll be doing tonight.
Probably related to the new version of wordpress. I’ll analyse the logs after work.
Lynn
Billy, I don’t think his ineptness is necessarily a bad thing for National. It may simply be that it helps his everyman image in much the same way Bush’s gaffes helped him seem less “elite”.
I don’t actually think that having his Hawaii holiday home made public will hurt him either because I don’t think Kiwi’s are particularly envious people. We like everyone to get a fair go sure, but my reaction when I heard about the Hawaii home was pretty much “good on him, I’d do the same if I could” and I reckon most Kiwis would feel like that.
If he’s seen as having all of this and then wanting to take a fair go from others however, then he’s in trouble.
Oh wow. Definitely something was hitting us. Just downloaded the logs. Yesterdays log was ~3MB. Todays log so far is 19.5MB.
Now we see where it was coming from and what they were accessing. Question is if it was deliberate or someone had an out of control system doing something like trying to suck the entire site. Seen that before.
How strange that John Key would want to take his kids to Hawaii during their school holidays. He’s going to be pretty busy over the next few months so I guess he wants to spend a bit of quality time with them. Good that he finds time for his family as well as being a fairly high profile politician.
Gee. Big conspiracy. Huge. This will shake the foundations of our political system to the core.
How about this. Tell us the source or shut the hell up. Otherwise you’re just talking spin as usual.
IrishBill says: How about this: we keep our sources confidential in line with journalistic ethics and you take a week ban.
How about this. Tell us the source or shut the hell up.
Know anything about journalism infused? Didn’t think so.
Incidentally, I think what The Standard is doing these days warrants the tag of “journalism”. Great work guys and gals, this place is going from strength to strength.
Well, we’ll see if this one pans out
As reliable as the leak appears you can never be 100% sure until it happens.
IB
I hope you are right and that NZers are maturing into as you put it a non envious people. It is a pity that this behaviour is not modelled by the current Minister of Finance.
Ok, this one’s coming completely out of left field in my brain, so bear with me while I explain this – I’ll even type it slowly so you can all keep up.
1) Someone in National – probably a few of them actually – keep a close eye on TheStandard to see what’s happening in the militant left of the blogosphere (know your enemy…)
2) they see that you’re sending out questions to the leaders of political parties
3) they conclude that it would not be a good look if John didn’t respond, or took a longer time to respond than the others
End result; this person decides to be helpful, and let you know John’s not going to be checking his inbox while drinking Pina Colada in the sun.
Unless you’re willing to quote from the email verbatim, I highly doubt the conspiratorial tone you suggest is really there at all
Or alternatively Phil he’s just going on Holiday with the kids.
I would be amazed if he gave a crap about responding to questions from The Standard.
hs,
I would be amazed if he gave a crap about responding to questions from The Standard.
Bu-bu-but, rOb said “this place is going from strength to strength”. Are you telling me it’s not the greatest blog in the history of the world?!
It can’t be. Otherwise I wouldn’t have to analyze why it went down today, and how to stop it in the future. Somewhere, someone will be wearing the consequences of wasting my time today.
Oh – you’re talking about the other side of the blog………
Have to say they’re getting better. I’ve been reading old posts from last year looking at how to clean up the utf-8 junk. Their writing now is of a much higherstandard (with apologies to the holder of the name) now than it was them.