Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, November 6th, 2008 - 98 comments
Categories: activism, bill english, election 2008, john key, national -
Tags: national's secret agenda
The secret taper has revealed himself as Kees Keizer, a leftie from Wellington. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday encouraging Keizer to tell his story, preferably to The Standard or the Herald (more credible), and he steadfastly refused. So imagine my surprise when I see a three page article of him talking to the Herald’s Patrick Gower.
It’s a facsinating read. Keizer says he just walked in, went up to people and started talking. He gave his real name and said he was interested in joining the Young Nats. And they talked back. Kees says he was ‘appalled’ by how readily the Nats talked about their secret plans when among what they assumed were friends. He says that all it took for English to start spouting off about Obama and the EU was for him to mention his interest in European politics. And we can hear on the first tape that English is basically just talking freely when he unfolds National’s view of the ‘punters’, ‘Labour plus voters’, his view of Key, and National’s plans for Working for Families and Kiwibank.
Now, I know Kees. Which is hardly surprising. We both studied international relations in similar areas (myself democratisation, he conflict resolution), we are both into environmental politics, we both went on cycle trips last year (myself through Europe and he through Europe and North Africa) and we exchanged comments on each others travel blogs. We get along well. I wouldn’t say we’re best buddies though. Frankly, as the face of The Standard, I’ve met just about every leftie in town. If National had identified someone else in leftwing activist circles from Wellington as the taper, then they probably could have found some link between me and that person as well. It would be more surprising if I’d never heard of Kees. Unfortunately, for the conspiracy theorists on the Right, I knew nothing of the fact that he’s the taper.
I have no trouble in believing Keizer acted alone. My impression of him is he’s that kind of character: a self-starter and one for coming up with unusual ideas. This is a man, after all, who cycled North Africa, up through Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon by himself introducing himself to various government ministers, militants, and ordinary people along the way. I don’t know who he talked to about the tapes, he says he ‘took advice’ from some people but I seriously doubt it was the Labour Party. His interest is international relations and he’s well to the Left of Labour on that. Times I’ve spoken to him he has been critical of Labour sending troops to Afghanistan and when I’ve taken slightly realist positions on conflicts he has accused me of being too like Labour.
It’s interesting to see Cameron Slater admitting that he and David Farrar work closely with the tax-payer funded National Party research unit to dig dirt on people. It’s also interesting to learn that National has known Keizer is the taper for some time, probably a couple of months since the Electoral Commission finding on Keizer’s EFA regarding the Employer and Manufacturers’ Association ads. That would fit with Key repeatedly saying they knew the identity of the taper but not revealing the name. Why didn’t they? Because they knew Keizer has nothing to do with Labour. Yet, despite that knowledge, they continued to claim Labour was behind the affair. That is disgraceful. Key has repeatedly lied to the media on this issue.
Matthew Hooton has constructed a bizarro world where a grab-bag of people who have been to Drinking Liberally is somehow behind the tapes. Maybe, Hooton should come along to a Drinking Liberally event to get a firmer grasp on reality. Drinking Liberally is not some secretive set, it’s just an organisation that gets speakers along to have a talk and gives lefties a chance to meet each other. Anyone can come along and everyone does. A typical Drinking Liberally Wellington event draws a hundred people. So it’s not surprising that Hooton can look at the pics of the events and the hundreds of members of the DL Facebook group and identify a dozen people (here’s a tip, secret groups don’t have Facebook groups); just about every left-wing activist in Wellington has been along to at least one event. It’s as if I took a whole bunch of pics from St John’s bar, identified the names of a few people in a few of the pics, and concluded there was a great conspiracy between young Tory wannabes in ill-fitting suits and stockmarket wankers.
I have to say, I think Keizer has done very well. He pulled off an audacious piece of work exposing National’s secret agenda (that audacity alone was enough to convince me there was no Labour Party involvement – you’ve never met a group of people more paralysed by fear of something going wrong). Thanks to him, there can be no doubt that National is telling the pubic one thing, while planning something else in private. On that score, isn’t Key’s response when asked whether he is worried there is a tape of him enlightening? Clark would just say ‘I’m not worried because what I say in private is what I say in public’. Whereas Key, dissembles, ums and ahs, and says ‘you would have to look at the context’. What has Key been saying behind closed doors? Perhaps we’ll find out shortly. What we do know is that whatever Keizer recorded can only be the tip of the iceberg. He was one guy at one National cocktail event. Who knows what else, what worse things, they talk about when there’s no-one to expose them?
Keizer has also explained his actions very well in the Herald piece, keeping the focus where it belongs, on the politicans and their secret agendas. If I were to give him one piece of advice it would be to release the full conversations to Duncan Garner so he can be confident that they haven’t been doctored (Keizer insists he just removed his own voice from the recordings). If I have one criticism of the Herald article it is that Gower calls The Standard ‘Labour-affiliated’ when just yesterday I was having a moan to him about how, as a Green Party member, I get sick of my work being constantly attributed to the Red Tories.
Basically, good on you Kees, you’ve done this country an invaluable service. No political party should be allowed to hide a secret agenda. I suspect that I’m not alone in saying I’ll buy you a beer next time I see you.
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Coge covert taping was also attempted by Richard Nixon. J Edgar Hoover was another fan of covert taping, and of course Bill Clinton got into trouble because of it. No doubt in future more people will try to use it.
Ben R, absolutely. I’m glad that the vast majority of Kiwis find covert taping a violation of our open society. They see it for what it is. Hence such occurances are thankfully rare in New Zealand.
It’s a pity, coge, you don’t show the same enthusiasm for railing against a political party pretending to be moderate in order to gain election. Makes me suspect you’re, sort of, manufacturing this ‘NZ is so wonderful or at least it was until lately’ thing. Because that sort of thing shouldn’t happen in our wonderful and open society. Oh well, at least it is rare – there’s only one party out of all the parties in the 2008 General Election doing so.
Coge,
You clearly have never been in an authoritarian state. I have and it’s ugly. People are scared to talk about politics in public, scared to talk about politics to anybody other than a very small group of trusted loved ones. Nobody knows who are the moles and it is a sad and scary affair. Other than that everybody is shit scared of the police, the army and authorities and the authorities know everything about everybody. Every politician is on the take and everybody else is pisspoor.
A little bit like John Key’s big example: the good old US of A. Where neoliberals have ridden roughshod over the country and its economy and have eroded every basic human right in the process.
They do thinks like fingerprinting everybody, forcing people to have ID’s on them all the time and the smallest infringement can send you to prison for years.
Authoritarian governments don’t just happen. They happen when citizens don’t partake in the democratic process. That’s when the powerful elite starts to fingerprint everybody who is suspected of a crime. Hell, they’ll go even further and they’ll DNA you. They get “tough on crime”, privatise prison systems so their cronies can earn a buck or two out of every poor sod who gets in the jaws of that system. You get where I’m coming from Coge?
If politicians think it’s OK to lie it is our responsibility to find out why.
This is about keeping our society free from marauding, corrupt, lying, scumbag politicians and us free from greedy capitalist plunderers.
When meeting with a politician, any politician (Well, perhaps not Jeanette) and especially politicians with a propensity to say one thing in private and another in public, I think it should be compulsory to record everything they say.
In a truly free society it is not the citizens who are afraid of their rulers but their rulers shit scared of their citizens because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and it’s up to us to keep our politicians on the straight an narrow and exposing their lies does exactly that.
Captcha: WADSWORTH One. LOL
Which authoritarian state have you been in Eve ?
HS,
East Germany, Czechoslovakia just after the Prague spring and Russia had invaded it (bullet holes everywhere burn marks of someone who had burned himself in protest and everybody shit scared), Yugoslavia.
My parents believed in hands on political education and wanted us to know what a police state was and how it felt to live in one and since Russia was only a three day trip they got us as close to the “evil” empire as possible. It taught me well.
Will that do ya?
Trav. Why the hell do you support covert taping then?
It represents a symptom of what you decry. That’s why I say it’s not the Kiwi way, like we don’t dob in our neighbours, as totalitarians states encourage & foster. We both enjoy a free society here in NZ do we not? I imagine that’s why you choose to live here.
Coge
Ben R
Silly stuff guys. The point where your analogy falls squarely on it’s arse is that this guy is not the gov’t. If the state was engaging in illegally spying on it’s citizens the comparison would be apt. But this guy was just recording a conversation of which he was a party, as a private citizen.
Are you suggesting that he should not be allowed to do that? Is the stupid ‘target’ programme on tele just like the gestapo. No, it’s not.
Perhaps politicians have a right to lie to the public about their plans. I think they do, but I don’t like it. Citizens, have they the opportunity, have the right to ask them personally about their plans. If the stories differ, those citizens have the right to tell the public about it. Makes sense to record it, seeing the politician is a liar.
Seems you clowns are just trying to divert attention from English’s comments by trying to claim, outlandishly, that recording conversations that you yourself as a private citizen are having, is just the same as the government spying on third party private conversations.
Silly, dishonest, insulting stuff.
PB
Do you really think any of the recordings of Labour or National have discovered anything ?
In my opinion all of it has been nebulous boring cak, at least the British parliament and MPs know how to have a good scandal ours can’t seem to muster up much at all.
Eve
It must have been fascinating, I travelled to USSR and East Germany before the wall came down but it would certainly have been nothing on the fascinating (and scary) experience to be in those countries during the sixties.
hs, yes I do. I wish English would explain to the public what he meant by the comments so that we could know even more.
Coge,
Maybe you should get some reading glasses because you clearly missed the bit about what we as private citizens need to do with lying politicians.
compulsory recording of every thing they say
Anyone who wants to be the boss over a lot of people must do so under the gravest of scrutiny and if he is caught lying than that should make the alarm bells in the back of our heads go off.
Lying politicians are usually disrespectful politicians and disrespectful politicians are usually greedy politicians and that means they steal… from people like us.
When the state spies on us we have not done our job as private citizens: KEEP OUR POLITICIANS HONEST BY FORCING THEM TO TELL THE TRUTH AND DO RIGHT BY US
I’m just so chuffed to be part of a secret conspiracy. I’ve never been in one before. We need a handshake and trenchcoats and stuff.
(BTW, if pakeha refers only to NZ-born people of European descent, how come it was (AFAIK) used by Maori to describe the first settlers, who definitely were not born here. or has it changed meaning since then?).
PB, if you believe Kiwis are o.k with covert taping of private conversations you are both deluded and disconnected. Answer this, who stood to benefit from these recordings?
Are kiwis ok with covert video taping of tradesmen going about their business?
The ratings for ‘target’ suggest ‘yes’.
As for who stood to benefit, the answer is, obviously, everyone who cares to know that what some National party MP’s are saying to the public is not what they say to those they suspect are the National party base.
Now you answer this. What’s wrong with knowing that? Does the public have a right to know that, or do National MPs have a natural right to BS the electorate?
“exposing National’s secret agenda”!
LOL
Secret for you to pass on to Kees if you should run into him, straight from my old Nancy Drew books. Tell him should he really wish to dig the dirt and make it stick, tell him to at least get a quote that reeks slightly of right wing agenda.
You should be all very embarrassed, as if your efforts pouring over Elders documents weren’t enough of a faux pas, you consolidate your already sullied reputations with this claptrap
HS,
Having to buy money on the black market knowing you or your friends could go to jail, having to spend compulsory amounts of money each day, bringing pantyhose and chocolate to friends of friends of ours in Holland because you could only buy them with western money in expensive shops and eating exactly the same portions of drab food in state owned restaurants and most definitely not talk politics anywhere with anyone was very scary.
My biggest memory was of a frontier crossing though on the way back.
Picture an late afternoon (my parents wanted to do the drive overnight) snowy empty hills, a couple of snow laden trees and a shack in the middle of nowhere and some ten soldiers with fur heads and those typical Russian long green coats and big AK47s.
They stopped our old ford sedan and told my parents to get out of the car with their guns in their hands and they had my parents take every little thing out of the car, open everything and us kids (me 14 and my sis 12) cold in a blanket waiting for hours for everything being checked. In the end they made us spend the last of our Czech money on shit and we were allowed to put everything back in the car and continue our journey. Very scary and this was from going to Czechoslovakia into East Germany!
I returned to Berlin the winter after the wall fell and rode the subway past the station which had the entrance to Hitler’s bunker. It was a time warp HS.
However you seem to be a bit of a traveller yourself though!
Is it the kiwi way to send out death threats? ( TV3 News, just now)
Not in my book, but that’s the lardish one’s fanbase I guess. And him working with the National party too. For shame National party. Just like Hitler I tells ya coge, those tories with their pastel shirted minions. For shame.
Hey
In case you guys didn’t know, David Farrar is funding Curia Research, which conducts phone polls in Wellington. This company uses leading questions to convince people to vote for National – I got a call once, and ended up agreeing that National would be a great party in almost every area, even though I’m an avowed Labour supporter.
Nice huh? Dirty tactics, or what?
JJ
Jess,
In the NZ electorate a desire for SOE privatisations is generally considered right wing. As is support for the Bush doctrine of ‘preventative’ war, (as opposed to the internationally recognised right of nations to engage in ‘preemptive’ war that Obama, the ‘Europeans’, and The NZ Labour Party hold to).
I agree that it is sometimes difficult to make these charges stick with people that lack the basic background knowledge of the issues, but I trust that many kiwis are a bit more knowledgeable about the issues and know for example, what ‘right wing’ means in the NZ context.
It’s a shame, and I’m sure you’ll agree, that our ratings driven media, (so intent on short cycles and silly narratives), don’t spend the time outlining some of the background facts. It would serve to better inform the electorate, and also save people from making fools of themselves. But we have the media we have, not the media we might wish to have, so informing ourselves is a duty we must be more active about.
Pascal’s bookie,
If you’re talking about the Kiwi Bank line, I have to say disparagingly say, “So”.
As for the intent and agenda implied, I would agree that most Kiwis do have more than a nodding acquaintance with a brain cell, but if there is one thing a Clark run Govt has afforded them it’s a healthy dose of cynicism.
Clark may have successfully distanced herself from her years as part of the neo-con 1980s where she reaped the rewards of acquiescence as Deputy PM – enough to to satisfy you anyway
– but those of us old enough to remember her tenure recall them pawning off the largest part of our silver.
We are also bright enough to begin to imagine say, the spitting sarcasm of an entrapped Michael Cullen discussing his enemy the Farmer on concealed tape, or perhaps Clark on her real feelings on WRP, a man she must detest personally.
This has been the most unsuccessful political beat ups I have seen, and my instinct tells me that Kiwis by and large, are sick of negative politics, are sick of the Winston connection/distraction, and that any Labour coalition will be most unhappy with any coalition it may cobble together on Saturday.
Pascal,
Very well put together comment. It was a pleasure to read, possibly the best thing i’ve read all day.
Jam Jars, i flicked over to kiwiblog a few minutes ago – will not be doing it again – the curia poll is on the site, calling it 46% National, 33% Labour, 8% Greens – not surprising but what can you expect.
So whats the difference between Mr Keizer recording this, and whale oil (possibly with the help of the national party research unit) trawling every known left supporters social networking site, taking “screen prints” of all their pages, copying all their photos, building up who knows who webs, cross referancing any number of online search facilities, cross referencing IP addresses with a number of sites, liaising with various opinion writers and reporters. (Far out, having just written all of that, which seems like only half of what he does, I can’t possibly believe he does it all himself)
KITNO,
For starters Kees does not have Labour connections it seems whereas Whaleoil and lardyman are dedicated National supporters with a known tendency to smear. I’m sure all parties research their opponents.
If National as a party does all that you claim they do than that supports my comment earlier on about us having to be extremely vigilant with them.
In other words we need more Kees’s recording every uttering of Nationals leaders
Why am I in moderation?
This is the third time in a row
ohdear Jess, “so” ?
So, there is the asked for hint at a rightwing agenda. The desire for privatisation. The point, as it were.
Neocons are not neoliberals by the way. Very different beasts. Neocons don’t for the most part, give two shits about economics. Just a means to an end for them. We don’t really have them in NNZ, to our credit.
I’m not sure what Helen Clark has got to do with it, other than to serve as a pathetic attempt at subject changing. Yes, she was a minister in the 80′s. Her leadership however has been quite different, and the neolibs were mostly gone from the party by the time Labour regained power. I’m sure you are aware of this. They mostly went to ACT, and are looking to be in coalition with Mr Key’s alledgedly centrist National party.
So there you go.
I suppose that since Keizer is the brother in law of Day who works as a laison between the greens and labour, more specifically Sue Bradford, has nothing to do with the tapes. It is just all coincidental and Auntie Helen made her campaign on “trust”. Simply all coincidence. Just like Winston Peters not knowing about Glenn Owen’s 100,000 donation and not campaigning in helicopters. I don’t think the tapes reveal much, only a scare mongering tactic by greens and labour.
jackp,
I reckon you’d be hart pressed not to know or be a “brother of” someone who knows someone in NZ. Bloody hell it’s only four million people. Even in Holland everybody knew someone or were related to someone who was someone and that is a country of 17 million people.
You sound a bit like a conspiracy theorist; this person knows so and so therefore they must have planned it. LOL