How much is a lie worth?

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, April 2nd, 2009 - 29 comments
Categories: corruption, national/act government - Tags:

Labour revealed in parliament today that Richard Worth has another secret shareholding that created conflict of interest when he carried out ministerial duties on his trip to India.

After Key gave him the famous ‘bollocking’ on Monday, Worth can have been under no illusion that there wasn’t a conflict of interest with these shares. He had repeated opportunities to come clean about them but he didn’t. Instead he kept them secret. He lied and hid the truth from the public.

As always, it’s the cover up that’s magnifies the original offence. The public of New Zealand and the Prime Minister, who gave him a final warning on Monday, can no longer have confidence in Worth. He must resign or Key must sack him. Simple as that.

Meanwhile, it seems if there’s a conflict of interest going Worth will have it. An admin on Wikipedia had to reverse edits to Worth’s page that deleted passages referring to the conflict of interest affair. The admin wrote:

There appear to have been two series of edits by a User:Richard_W_Worth who appears to be the subject of this page…The first of these has effective [sic] been undone already, but I’m about to rewrite the second, since they appear to breach Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. The user has been warned on their talk page.

LOL as the kids would say. But Worth’s failure to disclose conflicts of interest and his lies when confronted are no laughing matter. He must resign.

[update: someone has just updated Worth’s profile: “Richard Westwood Worth, OBE, VRD, KStJ, (3rd July 1948 -) is a New Zealand politician, but he’ll probably have to resign soon. He is a member of the National Party, or at least he is at the moment.”]

29 comments on “How much is a lie worth? ”

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  1. Joseph 1
    2 April 2009 at 6:02 pm

    Petty edit fight?

    On my Wikipedia?

  2. BLiP 2
    2 April 2009 at 6:19 pm

    A lawyer and former chairman of the firm Simply Grubby and he still doesn’t know what a conflict of interest is . . .

  3. gingercrush 3
    2 April 2009 at 6:26 pm

    Got good coverage by TV One. Just after the first ad break.

  4. illuminatedtiger 4
    2 April 2009 at 6:34 pm

    Anyway of finding out the IP address?

  5. Brett Dale 5
    2 April 2009 at 7:39 pm

    How much were his shares worth and was it a genuine mistake?

    • ripp0 5.1
      3 April 2009 at 9:44 am

      ask the trust.. after further matters arising on morning report this day… heh

    • Ari 5.2
      3 April 2009 at 11:22 am

      Does it matter if it was a genuine mistake? It’s hard enough to accidentally maintain a conflict of interest once, let alone fail to set it all right after being reprimanded for one.

      He gets asked very clearly to declare ALL his business interests, and has a confidential session to determine whether more complicated cases are conflicts or not.

  6. vto 6
    2 April 2009 at 7:42 pm

    we should ask winston and helen what should be done ..

    • Pascal's bookie 6.1
      2 April 2009 at 8:15 pm

      How about we ask Key or Prebble, they seemed to have quite a bit to say about it. I think you did to.

  7. justthefacts 7
    2 April 2009 at 7:43 pm

    How much is a lie worth?

    I would have thought that you guys would know the answer to this question better than any other political party in our nations history, after all, Labour had plenty of practise at it.

  8. mickysavage 8
    2 April 2009 at 7:59 pm

    The trouble with the tories is that they believe that they are born to rule. Some of them would never think of being an MP because, well, the pay is not good enough.

    They think they deserve more. So some of them think that augmenting their pay with other sources of income is OK and, hey what conflict of interest.

    All ministers should give up all business interests, full stop. There should be no distractions or personal reasons for them doing anything except what is in the public interest.

    I am interested in that Worth has declared his interest as a Barrister. Is he doing legal work on the side? What sort?

    So much for Labour lite.

  9. getstuffed 9
    2 April 2009 at 8:33 pm

    So why haven’t you boys bitched more about the cunnys tweeting and labours bleating?

    It must be really disheartening to see ole Cam Slater on the 6pm news talking smack huh?

    Didn’t see any boys from low standards responding, did i miss that?

    • Pascal's bookie 9.1
      2 April 2009 at 9:35 pm

      “It must be really disheartening to see ole Cam Slater on the 6pm news talking smack huh?”

      Not really.

      True story: I’ve got a two year old boy whose favorite book at the moment is The Billy Goats Gruff. I think it’s the sound effects and the big hairy scarey brute that jumps out from under the bridge, with the meeting of his just desserts.

      So old waleoil pops up on screen, we’re sitting there watching him talk and toddler bookie pipes up “That man’s a troll eh dad?”.

      He sure is son.

      But anyway, I think the more whale gets exposed to the general public the better. Hopefully they check out his blog. All power to him. etc, and so forth.

      • QoT 9.1.1
        2 April 2009 at 10:24 pm

        Still a fantastic example of the ridiculous mediocrity of NZ’s media though, innit?

        “Labour is accusing rightwing bloggers … but this one, single, individual blogger says it’s not him!”

        Jesus, whoever that reporter was, just tattoo “I AM MATES WITH CAMERON SLATER AND HE WANTED TO BE ON TELLY” on your forehead and be done with it.

        • Pascal's bookie 9.1.1.1
          2 April 2009 at 10:32 pm

          heh. Yep. His dolphin logo always makes me laff tho’.

          • lprent 9.1.1.1.1
            3 April 2009 at 1:18 am

            You mean that bloated thing that Cameron uses?
            Like him, full of hot air, ineffective, and a cartoon of a real dolphin…..
            Have a look at my one. Not bloated, a more interesting colour, generally more interesting, and it likes playing with old mickeysoft product icons.

      • Richard 9.1.2
        2 April 2009 at 10:33 pm

        My son saw Rodney Hide on TV and thought he was The Hood – the arch villain from Thunderbirds
        http://www.fab1.co.nz/characters/the%20hood.htm

  10. justthefacts 10
    2 April 2009 at 8:49 pm

    micky

    “All ministers should give up all business interests, full stop”

    Would that have included the ex PM and her business as a property speculator/landlord?

    After all, who needs six houses, or is that another double standard you are happy to overlook?

  11. mickysavage 11
    2 April 2009 at 9:02 pm

    justthefacts

    Being a passive landlord is entirely different to being an active Aviation School supporter. Besides, I presume that you have confirmation that HC owns 6 houses?

  12. RedLogix 12
    2 April 2009 at 9:02 pm

    Having falsely alleged ‘corruption’ in others for so long, their sense of right and wrong became dislocated, so that when finally confronted with the real thing in their own backyard …. they walked on past, all innocence and faint apologetics.

  13. Daveski 13
    2 April 2009 at 9:06 pm

    If this is true – and I haven’t yet found anything on the NZH or Stuff home page but then of course I forget about the msm conspiracy – the Key should do the right thing and get rid of him. That alone would show the difference between National and Labour’s last year when they refused to do the same.

    It is amusing to see such a change in attitude since the election and little in the way in the acknowledgement of the duplicity this demonstrates.

  14. lprent 14
    2 April 2009 at 9:45 pm

    Daveski.

    1. There is a rather major difference what a PM can do with an MP in your own party (and therefore subject to the party caucus) and a MP from another party where there is only the cabinet manual and coalition agreements.

    2. NACT defined their own standards while they were in opposition. Don’t you think that they should follow them?

    3. Has Worth made a statement to the house. If so and it if it is subsequently proved to be incorrect, maybe the Greens should bring this in front of a privileges committee.

    4. Who would be stupid enough to change a wikipedia page. It is going to be noticed… Ask Bill English.

  15. Daveski 15
    2 April 2009 at 9:54 pm

    LP

    1. To an extent but the way in which Labour went out of its way to support Winston undermined any legitimacy to their actions.
    2. Agreed and said so.
    3. If he has lied (to be proven correct), agreed he should go. Full stop.
    4. Agreed

    Happy to also accept this is a test of Key as much as an issue for Worth.

  16. Berry 16
    2 April 2009 at 10:50 pm

    the ‘they did it too’ defence is pretty weak. especially when you were howling from the rooftops at the time.

    Besides, remember Clark stood down like 16 ministers during her time in charge.

  17. the sprout 17
    3 April 2009 at 10:10 am

    Worth is finished – it’s just a matter of sooner or later. I’d say within a month.

    The longer Key puts it off, the less ‘credit’ he’ll get for being a ‘decisive man of action’, and let’s face it Key needs quite a lot of that credit after his performance in office to date.

  18. Graeme 18
    3 April 2009 at 11:27 am

    Hands up who thinks Richard Worth has heard of Wikipedia? Let alone knows he has a page on it, how to set up an account, or how to edit it?

  19. Tim Ellis 19
    3 April 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Good point Graeme.

    If it was Richard Worth who changed his wikipedia entry, it was unwise. But I doubt he did it.

    It’s clear also that there has been some efforts on the Left to deface Worth’s wikipedia entry. The update referred to here is totally inappropriate for a wikipedia entry.

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