When there’s a strike on, it’s common practice for bosses to offer individual workers a bonus payment to scab on their comrades and return to work. Most workers spit on such offers, they know the best outcome in the long-term comes when they stand strong; they refuse to scab because it’s in their best interests and the interests of their fellow workers to show solidarity. They also know that scabs face social rejection if they betray their mates. Bosses still try because they think people are greedy and short-sighted, and put money ahead of dignity and honour.
Now, the bosses’ party is trying the same trick. Rumour coming from the Nats is a $10,000 reward has been offered by National for the name of the person who exposed their secret agenda by recording them at the cocktail function on Friday. They think that someone must know who did the recording, a friend, a confidante, and they think ‘they’re probably poor, a mere $10K will be enough to turn them traitor’.
This shows how damaging the revelation of a secret agenda is. After spending a year and a half on carefully staged public appearances, swallowing all those policies they hate, and spending over a million dollars of taxpayers’ money on Crosby/Textor, National has seen its edifice collapse. In John Key’s words, National ‘desperately wants to win the election’ (at 25:50), and they’ll do anything to make it happen: lie to the public, adopt policies they hate, anything, but now Key’s gone from being seen as the PM-in-waiting to being seen as a cheap con-man. They’re angry and they’re desperate, and they’ll use the one weapon they’ve got at their disposal, money, to try to find and hurt the person who exposed them for what they are.
If they really think anyone who knows whoever made the recordings will betray him for a Tory bribe, they’re dreaming.
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