Even Kiwiblog won’t defend Joyce’s $11.7 billion claim

Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, September 5th, 2017 - 15 comments
Categories: bill english, blogs, David Farrar, dpf, election 2017, making shit up, Media, national, Politics, same old national, spin, Steven Joyce, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags:

As the dust settles and the overwhelming preponderance of experts agree that Steven Joyce’s budget hole claims are fanciful I thought it was time to hop on over to Kiwiblog to see how David Farrar was handling the issue.

It seems that he was trying in a tepid sort of way to support the nonsense that there was actually a financial hole.  He had put up a post titled “The 11.7 billion hole“.  But knowledgeable commentators not normally sympathetic to Labour questioned the spin contained in the heading and in the article.

https://twitter.com/MatthewHootonNZ/status/904796120513077248

https://twitter.com/MatthewHootonNZ/status/904827821473665024

https://twitter.com/MattW129/status/904828461558128644

Farrar then amended his post by adding a ? to the title.

In the content of the post he does not address Joyce’s primary claim, that Labour had not allowed for $9.4 billion in funding consequential to various new policies planned to be implemented. Instead he talked darkly about Labour’s inability to hold down spending which is an entirely different issue. And he links to a Hamish Rutherford article that concludes that confusion over the meaning of a phrase rather than a large financial hole is what has happened.

Not addressing the core allegation made by Joyce could be considered an admission by the Government’s chief social media cheerleader and pollster that Joyce and English have got it wrong.

And even the comments showed that even National’s supporters are seeing through the fiction.

Comments like this from m@tt:

The difference being that almost everyone agrees that there is no hole. Even I can see there is no hole.

I’ve changed my mind, Joyce should stay silent for the rest of the campaign, his brain fart is almost, but not quite, as dumb as labour’s HFee crap 9 years ago.

And ztev:

Joyce is the one claiming a hole – that no one else can see.

The only hole is the one failed economics student Steven Leonard Joyce is digging

And MGT:

So not a word about Steven Joyce?
His credibility is in the gutter now.

And Huevon:

To be fair to Labour, Joyce did overblow it. He could have just said Labour’s plan assumes no new spending for 3 years and if you believe that you’ll believe anything.

And Muttonbird:

So no hole then. Even Farrar agrees.

At least we’ve put that to bed.

Others came up with this weird conspiracy theory involving BERL without actually addressing the main issue which is whether or not the hole actually exists. But no one tried to defend Joyce’s primary claim.

It seems that apart from Steven Joyce, Bill English and the Taxpayer’s union no one believes that Joyce’s claim about Labour’s financials is true.

15 comments on “Even Kiwiblog won’t defend Joyce’s $11.7 billion claim ”

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  1. tc 1
    5 September 2017 at 12:13 pm

    The national party spinner gets caught at it again, shows how under the thumb penguin is that he posted it in true sycophant style rather than stay well away.

    Now he has to allow negative comments about his paymasters…..hilarious and just plain stupid really.

  2. Tricledrown 2
    5 September 2017 at 12:34 pm

    When Dildo Joyce announced the lie he couldn’t look the Media in the eye.
    He knows its a lie a dead cat spin.
    Jacinda should ask for specific figures specific years and say its the old Dead Cat distraction technique they wheel out every election.

  3. Tricledrown 3
    5 September 2017 at 12:40 pm

    The dead cat trick from Crosby Text or.
    Dildo Joyce couldn’t look the media in the eye as he announced his big fat dead cat lie.
    Labour should asked for specific numbers in specific spending area’s in which years Jacinda needs to get up to date with year to year spending and Nationals Policy.
    To catch them out.

  4. Sanctuary 4
    5 September 2017 at 1:15 pm

    There is a lesson to Labour’s previous tactic of barking at every car in this story. Jacinda’s tactics have been to not rise to the bait and be, as she has said a million times, “relentlessly positive”. So when she is quoted today as saying National has tired to mislead the public, it suddenly has authority. “Jacinda wouldn’t say something negative like that if it wasn’t true” one imagines Jane musing to Joe Sixpack.

    So in the end, I think this has failed as an attack angle for the Nats – in fact, it has just fed the narrative of positive Jacinda vs the negative Nats.

    • tc 4.1
      5 September 2017 at 3:22 pm

      And fed the narrative that joyce is a remorseless arrogant liar of a finance minister

      • tracey 4.1.1
        5 September 2017 at 4:13 pm

        Who won’t be hounded for days by the media until he admits it is all too much for him to have his lies revealed and so so resigns….

  5. Enough is Enough 5
    5 September 2017 at 1:49 pm

    Both sides are being very hysterical over this.

    The issue is over the different accounting methods used in relation to operating allowances.

    The numbers still add up though

    • Drowsy M. Kram 5.1
      5 September 2017 at 3:39 pm

      “Both sides” (Labour and National?) “are being very hysterical over this.”

      That’s hysterically funny. My take, for what it’s worth, is that ‘our’ Government’s Minister of Finance told an $11.7 billion dollar lie, and ‘our’ Prime Minister was happy to repeat that lie in last night’s TV3 debate.

      Joyce, English, Key, Collins, Smith, Bennett et al., supported by the MSM, equate lying with good governance and electioneering, but it’s a bit rich to expect the majority of the electorate to continue to swallow this corrupt and corrosive approach.

      The numbers add up, but National can’t wise up – not in their nature; they just don’t care.

      Time for a change.

    • tracey 5.2
      5 September 2017 at 4:14 pm

      Is this a week when lying doesn’t matter? It is hard to keep track. Cabinet Ministers lie = politics, beneficiary lies when 23 to get ahead = “off with her head”

  6. Dan 6
    5 September 2017 at 5:21 pm

    Michael Cullen earned a very positive reputation as a Minister of Finance. He got some of NZ’s debt way down. How is it that that figure is never celebrated to show how recent Labour governments, far from being spendthrifts, were careful with their $$$$
    And how is it that the Nats are able to hide their $90b debt and also set up PPP schemes to hide further debt???

    • WILD KATIPO 6.1
      5 September 2017 at 5:36 pm

      Good points there , tbh,… I’ve often wondered that myself and why there hasn’t been a more concerted effort to highlight that every time the Nats try their boring , worn out line about blaming Labour,… seriously ,… its probably the most puerile tactic ever to try and use that false scaremongering tactic.

      A short history lesson used as a reminder would set the record straight.

      Meh , … Nationals going down soon anyways,…

      So happy days,…. Mr Hosking

      🙂

  7. greywarshark 7
    5 September 2017 at 5:22 pm

    Here is a rousing and heartening speech about losing everything because of politics and bad economics and how other people react to it and rise with strength and solidarity.
    Pete Postlethwaite from Brassed Off

  8. Keepcalmcarryon 8
    5 September 2017 at 6:14 pm

    One too many sex toys to the head.