Written By: - Date published: 5:48 pm, February 27th, 2008 - 41 comments
Categories: same old national -
Tags: same old national
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Blue Chip blues?
The company is in the news again today, and not just for allegedly breaking a sting of laws.
The couple featured in the article have lost their home and hundreds of further ‘mum and dad’ investors may still lose their savings.
The photo at left (no, it’s not from Lockwood’s infamous calendar) is of Blue Chip chairman Jock Irvine, Greg Turner, Blue Chip Managing Director Mark Bryers, Larry Graham and the Honorable Lockwood Smith.
Blue chips associations with the National Party don’t end with Lockwood though. It turns out that Blue Chip has more than its fair share of National Party connections – and not just casual ones forged over a couple of rounds of golf by the looks of things.
I wonder how much knowledge Burqa Bob had of Blue Chip’s dodgy investment practices when they sponsored his stadium. We’d certainly see his crocodile tears in a different light.
And I wonder how all these National Party connections were made… Perhaps an introduction by former National Party politician and Deputy Prime Minister Wyatt Creech who was once an independant director of the board (PDF)? Or perhaps it was former National Party cabinet minister John Luxton who served in the same position (PDF)?
I wonder if Blue Chip or the people associated with them ever donated to National Party campaign funds by way of an anonymous trust?
I wonder if they ever donated to any individual candidates?
Given National’s recent apoplexy over the non-issue of a fully disclosed donation of $8000 by Owen Glenn it would be good for the sake of transparency if National MPs came out and said what kind of contacts they have had with the Blue Chip board members.
For the sake of completeness it might also be good if the ex-National Party MPs outlined their roles in the events leading up to the collapse of the company.
The investors who have lost money are at least owed that.
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r0b – No, I still haven’t. I don’t have access to a copy in the US.
Then with respect Camryn, you don’t know who or what you are defending here.
I understand it contains emails, but that they can’t be verified.
Brash resigned for purely unrelated matters I take it?
Still, I’m open to the possibility the blind trust system was being abused
Yes, and its possible that the sun comes up in the morning too.
To be fair to Camryn he’s not a troll – he makes good contributions and I doubt very much if he is being paid for this (unlike TDS!)
Thanks Robinsod.
deemac – I’m in the US for work, but I’m 100% Kiwi and was living in NZ until 2006. I’m getting paid by a US employer to do something else while I’m doing this.
rOb – I intentionally used vague and hopefully non-inflammatory language as I’m trying to talk about the system that I thinks works best, and not get sidetracked on one instance where it may have been subverted but that I don’t know enough about. To you, who’ve read more about it, I probably sound cautious about something you consider obvious.
In light of that, I accept Matthew’s good point re: sunlight. I’m saying “I’d prefer total blind if possible” and Matthew’s say “I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s not possible so let’s go to your next best… everybody knows everything”. That’s a line of argument I can get on board with…
My issue after that becomes that people who want to be anonymous then try to find other ways to donate that aren’t donations e.g. 3rd party campaigns. Then we start to get into the debate that has been done infinitum on blogs re: the EFA period.
In that debate, I don’t particularly like either option – I don’t like that people have restrictions on what they can say and how they can spend their money, but I don’t particularly like that the alternative (no restriction) is we’re back to square one with regards to potential anonymous assistance to political parties via spending on their behalf with the added risk that politicians might actually NOT know about campaigns to “assist” them and so the messaging that would’ve been moderated through the party by an anonymous donation to the party is now going direct to the public in a more partisan or destructive form. Not cool.
So, I know it’s a tightrope, but I think the EFA erred too far in terms of restriction, and is also poorly drafted, and was pushed through in a way that was unnecessarily divisive.
Uh… I think I got off topic.
Camryn. There’s no doubt the emails in the Hollow Men are correct, no-one has ever denied their contents are true. The real questions is who inside National leaked them, bringing about Brash’s resignation: as the Romans would say Cui bono?
Uh I think I got off topic.
Agreed.
Also agreed that there are no good solutions to this mess (its politics after all), only varying degrees of bad.
But let’s get back on track, and back to specifics. Do you agree with Colin Espiner in his recent article (extract below). If not, why not?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/politics/2008/02/22/time-to-tell-us-about-your-donors-national/
Cam:
I don’t think that there is any way to prevent politicians from knowing who is giving them donations if the donor wishes them to know. It is a ‘chinese wall’ solution that relies on the donor not whispering over the wall.
If someone says I’m going to give you $500k, because I think that you’ll be nice to me (or even worse when you’re nice to me) with a date, then the money turns up around that date….
Besides you have to remember that most of the donations will be solicited – thats what party presidents spend most of their time doing from what I understand. So they would usually have a good idea about who is giving donations. A lot of the time senior politicians will be dragged along to help get the donation. It isn’t particularly different from any charity.
I feel extremely uncomfortable with that happening at the back end of the political process – there is just too much room for unsavory things to happen.
I think the only effective long-term solution is to make it that there is always a person and/or organization known to the public in the appropriate accounting cycle.