Written By: - Date published: 7:02 pm, January 18th, 2008 - 89 comments
Categories: election funding -
Tags: don brash, election funding, journalism, national, talleys, tim shadbolt
Remember how I asked who was funding Tim Shadbolt’s campaign to “bring down the government”? Turns out the Southland Times was interested too and they’ve found out his move to deliberately break electoral law is being propped up by the Talley brothers, who appear to have a bit of a history of that themselves.
Now the Talleys have a fine tradition of backing National (including offering Don Brash a million dollars and South Island use of a private helicopter for the 2005 election campaign) and are well known right-wing political activists. Most recently the Talleys have been behind a campaign to take the ACC to court – it turns out they got a cut-price ACC deal in exchange for covering all injury costs themselves. One of their workers got shot at their Wairoa plant and now they think the taxpayer should foot the bill – National has championed the company’s attempt to escape their contractual obligation.
It’s also interesting to note that Peter Talley was the guest speaker at National’s Canterbury Westland regional conference in 2004 and that they have a reputation as aggressive and anti-worker employers. After losing a case of sexual discrimination against one of their female workers Andrew Talley’s response was:
There are jobs – pole dancing being one and fish filleting being another – that have a higher predominance of either men or women. The decision is a joke.
So let’s have a look at this: we’ve got a bunch of extremely wealthy right-wing businessmen who think they are above contract law and have a very close relationship with the National Party and they’re funding an “independent” campaign by Tim Shadbolt to bring the government down. That stinks more than a Talley’s fish factory and when a veteran politician like Shadbolt claims he had no idea the Talleys were in the Hollow Men (note: he didn’t say he had no idea they were National Party activists) then he’s being more than a little bit slippery.
Tim mate – you should have learned by now that when you lie down with dogs you catch fleas.
[Kudos to Southland Times reporter Phil McCarthy for doing some real journalism - it's nice to see someone asking some awkward questions rather than just recycling press releases]
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Scoopit!
why does anyone bother responding to these lame rightwing posts that are just abuse and/or rehash points that have been demonstrated to be false dozens of times? It’s just tedious and I read this blog for news I won’t get elsewhere, not to read ravings from idiots who don’t back down even when their claims have been utterly discredited.
Barnsley Bill
Our Prime Minister, Helen Clark has been leading our country for eight years, so I presume what she has done to our country only really affects 0-8 year olds, because we all know that the first seven years of a person’s life determines their adult outcomes.
Adults, on the other hand will already have formed their beliefs and will have judged any changes according to their individual makeup.
Even then, if you hold our Prime Minister responsible for any tweens getting into trouble, you would then have to hold responsible the parents, the financial marketers who have brainwashed Kiwis into thinking they can have it all NOW, the previous money driven governments with a huge preponderance of mennnnnnnnnnnnnn, et cetera.
I assume you are over eight so please consider carefully what you feel personally aggrieved about, because we need to consider you as a person fashioned from many sources and why you as a person hate the Prime Minister so much, when there are so many other people, men and women, who consider she has brought back the very soul of New Zealand from disasters wrought upon Kiwis by Douglas and Richardson and strengthened New Zealanders against what will be a difficult future, considering current international issues.
Please list what our Prime Minister is responsible for, according to YOU BB. I’m interested to know. When you do that, please also explain when it occurred, why YOU think it occurred and how YOU would have done it better.
I also noticed your post talking about ‘having Nicky Hager on this blog site ‘ladies’. Did you mean this as an insult to the males on this site because you think that ‘ladies’ are somehow inferior? Is this part of the reason you hate the Prime Minister so much?
Jum
Helen Klark is going to be exposed for what she really is and the back lash for Labour will take decades to fix, because many voters will be disgusted when the truth is revealed .
Honesty is always the best policy, as that way you got nothing than can surface and cause impending doom. I am glad I am not in her shoes !!
Jum let’s not indulge Barnsley Bill and Dad4Justice on this one. They’re not interested in talking about the issue here, they just want to bang on about how much they hate Helen Clark. They’re ill-informed psychos and I don’t think we should let them change the subject.
“when there are so many other people, men and women, who consider she has brought back the very soul of New Zealand from disasters wrought upon Kiwis by Douglas and Richardson and strengthened New Zealanders against what will be a difficult future, considering current international issues”
Funnily enough she has never been able to claim to lead a majority supported government. Hmmm
Also, according to your argument we really can’t attribute much to the government since there are so many influences on human behaviour and social outcomes. Makes me wonder how YOU can imply the government is so great and villify those who might take issue with that statement.
Jum. Lemsip’s last comment is why you don’t indulge these freaks. They don’t want to talk about their hero Shadbolt’s martyrdom campaign being funded by the Hollow Men, they just want a place to relieve their obsessive hatred of Helen Clark.
Doesn’t it bother you Lemsip that Shadbolt’s campaign against the Electoral Finance Act is being backed by the very people who corrupted our electoral laws in the first place? Don’t you see a vested interest here for weaker, more corruptable electoral law on the part of the Talleys? And are these really the kind of people you want pulling the strings on the right?
James where did I say Shadbolt was my hero? How did I support any of his actions? How did I display hatred of Helen Clark?
“…the very people who corrupted our electoral laws in the first place?” Who was that again?
http://www.oag.govt.nz/2006/election-spending
As for the Affco thing, it seems more than a bit weird to me that an employer should be responsible for an inury suffered in their carpark as a result of a gang shooting. Seems like a pretty dumb contract to have entered into. Wouldn’t mind seeing what it said. Would ACC have been liable if the contract had not been signed?
Billy that link is a pathetic attempt at distraction. This thread is about Tim Shadbolt’s dodgy dealings with Talleys, not National, Labour, the Greens, NZ First and United Future’s run-in with the auditor-general. Try to stay on topic.
And the AFFCO situation is a simple case of contract law. They knew what they were getting into, and it didn’t work out for them. It turned out to be a bad business decision and now they’re trying to load the cost onto the taxpayer. They have no case, as they’ve admitted themselves, so they’ve resorted to PR. And it looks like National’s willing to back their secret donors against the taxpayer. I’m don’t know why you seem to think any of this is worth defending.
Morning Tane,
I hardly started the “you tried to steal the election” stuff. I was just trying to instroduce some balance.
As for the Affco thing, where did I say anything different to what you said? If they entered into a dumb contract they should be held to it, no matter how weird it seems.
Billy, yes ACC would have been liable if not for the contract.
lemsip: Funnily enough she has never been able to claim to lead a majority supported government. Hmmm
That’s a pretty basic misunderstanding of MMP. In any parliamentary system in fact, a government has majority support if they have the confidence of the house.
PB,
I think the question I should have asked was: would it have been considered a workplace accident for ACC purposes if not for the contract?
Well, somebody (in fact, quite a few people) have seen it but the fact that nobody except the intended recipient was supposed to see it could only indicate that it was leaked. As for it being “supposedly stolen”, well, that could only have happened if it actually existed in the first place. All this indicates that the “purportedly genuine correspondence” is, as a matter of fact, genuine and indisputable.
Funnily enough, neither has National. In fact, almost all National governments since 1936 have had less support than the Labour opposition.
Seen it yourself have you Draco? Know anybody other than hager who can claim to have seen it? No? Didn’t think so.
You clowns just don’t get it, completely fixated on how people propose to spend their own money when the real criminals just dipped into the public purse after being told not to and then when caught just ramrodded retrospective legislation through to legalise it.
Numptys one and all.
NATIONAL PRESS RELEASE JAN 2008 “Don Brash Leader of the National Party, today won the court case against Nicky Hager for the lies and half truths propagated in his book “The Hollow man. Mr Brash said I’m glad I didn’t resign, this decision shows that my stance has been vidicated.
would it have been considered a workplace accident for ACC purposes if not for the contract?
Why would this have been a better question? The point is that they signed a contract accepting liabilty for the things normally covered by ACC on their property. In return they avided having to pay ACC levies. Now they are up for monies that ACC would normally pay and they are trying to back out of the deal. In essence they are trying to breach the contract and cage a freeride off people who stayed inside the ACC system.
So how would your revised question shed any light? You may find it weird that ACC covers this type of thing, but that is an unrelated point. The only question here is are the Talley’s acting like wankers?
What I find interesting and slightly more relevent is how the supposedly left wing media have covered this case, barely mentioning the contract which is the central issue.
Barnsley Bill
Your ability to ignore answers and repeat the same question is very amusing but hardly effective debate.
Follow link in my post above. Then acknowledge your error. Thank you.
Calm down, PB.
I know it’s not central to the issue, but as a related point, I simply wondered whether an employer who had not entered into such a contract would suffer higher ACC levies as a result of an injury of this kind beign treated as a work place accident. If they would, it is dumb.
That’s all I was wondering.
James Kearney
I see your point. I’ll just watch for a while and learn, and check in again later. But please ask Dad4Justice to spell our Prime Minister’s name correctly. I don’t want to add stupidity to his many issues.
Meanwhile, your site’s ability to put two sides to each sensationalised story in the media is great. Keep up the good work.
Thank you
Jum- I don’t write for the standard, I comment here like you do. I’m just getting sick of idiot right-wingers coming here and trying to disprupt it for the rest of us.
“That’s a pretty basic misunderstanding of MMP. In any parliamentary system in fact, a government has majority support if they have the confidence of the house.”
I wonder why they call it a minority coalition government then?
Here’s a member of the 2002-2005 minority coalition government:
“What the voting record shows is that our minority coalition government, with just 53 of the 120 seats, has gone to extraordinary lengths to reach out and build very broad-based consensus among opposition parties to advance our legislation.”
http://www.progressive.org.nz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1484
Here’s a memebr of 1999-2002 minority coalition government:
In just 10 years since the first MMP election, MMP has evolved and set new constitutional norms. Minority governments and coalition governments and even minority coalition governments have become usual.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/speech9851.html
And here is the Office of the Clerk:
Minority coalition & two or more parties with a combined total of 50 percent or fewer of the seats join together to form a Government, with an agreement with another party/parties on confidence votes.
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PubRes/About/FactSheets/0/e/7/0e7b11a6a32841bca7848ed6d9bb508e.htm
Need More Pascal? Crawl back under your rock
James please answer my questions. You accused me of something so please have the deceny to give me your rationale (other than some generic crap) or withdraw your comments.
Pascal Bookie this is how the Office of the Clerk describes a minority coalition government:
Minority coalition & two or more parties with a combined total of 50 percent or fewer of the seats join together to form a Government, with an agreement with another party/parties on confidence votes.
Please tell me how that doesn’t accurately reflect each of Helen CLark’s governments?
Lemsip I was referring to Barnsely, Dad and you. You’re better than them but my point was by answering the right’s attempts to disrupt you’re only encouraging them to go on anti-Helen rants and cloud the issue.
Back to censorship now girls ??
[Only of you Dad. Start behaving yourself.]
one slight correction – the greens were of course not part of the 1999-2002 govt they merely propped it up
suck it up righties
suck it up lemon face .
Billy,
If they had not entered into the contract, ACC would have been liable for the claim. This is because, although the shooting was, by definition, not an ‘accident’, it was an injury that occurred in the workplace. ACC’s definition is well-covered in the Public Address thread, particularly here: http://www.publicaddress.net/system/topic,901,hard_news_never_let_the_facts_.sm?p=38980#post38980
“Minority coalition & two or more parties with a combined total of 50 percent or fewer of the seats join together to form a Government, with an agreement with another party/parties on confidence votes.
Please tell me how that doesn’t accurately reflect each of Helen CLark’s governments?”
It reflects them perfectly. The bolded part means that the minority govt is supported by other parties on C&S (which is what counts).
Here’s what you said originally:
“Funnily enough she has never been able to claim to lead a majority supported government.”
It’s no biggie lemsip, and I’m sorry if I got your back up. But what you said was just plain wrong. All of Clarks goverments have had majority support, without having a majority in their own right.
“tim shadbolt’s dodgy dealings with talleys”
Fuck Tane Tutae you dumb fuck. The original post is based on a journalist interviewing their navel after reading a book predicated on dodgy evidence.
You guys really are a bad advertisement for socialism…any ism, in fact.
Bitter taste lemsip?
Could some clever youngster please list all the elections in which more people have voted Labour than have voted National?
(just think all our new-found FFFDs (freedom-fighters for democracy) might be interested – seeing as how they’re all so deeply concerned about our precious democratic system)
Crivens! Tim Shadbolt is Phil McCarthy’s navel.
Who knew?
i stand corrected