If she is I can’t say I have ever noticed her at a meeting of the People’s Republic of Aotearoa Tamaki Makaurau branch (this will get the right googling furiously). But Matthew Hooton, the person that (Red) Radio New Zealand trusts to comment on how the right wing see things is on the face of it convinced that she is. At least according to Radio Live:
Right-wing PR man Matthew Hooton told RadioLIVE Drive there is a “despicable smear campaign underway” against the National Party leader.
“Aid and abetted by an extreme left-wing, anti-National Party journalist called Tova O’Brien, who is a disgrace to the profession and a disgrace to Newshub, and is running a personal campaign to get rid of Simon Bridges.”
The degree of hyperbole is exceptional, Fox News like in its quality. The sort of thing Donald Trump says on a bad day. And totally lacking in analysis or that rather important quality called evidence.
And attacking the messenger is pretty bad form. I mean which self respecting journalist, leaked documents to show that Simon Bridges had spent a small fortune of taxpayer’s money on touring the company seeking votes and support, would not report it?
To check on the allegations I had a quick quiz through the Standard’s earlier posts. Tova is not someone who has attracted much attention either way in the past although there is this post when she described Bridges’ comments about baby Neve loutish, transphobic rubbish. But so did everyone else.
And on another blog it has been reported that she is anti Jacinda.
So what evidence is there that she is an extreme left-wing, anti-National Party journalist? Nil, nada, zip.
Maybe this is a big Mediaworks clickbait exercise. Getting us all to furiously click on various Mediaworks’ sites as the story unfolds.
I think the story about Bridges’s expenses has some way to go still. I am pretty sure that Trevor Mallard has very cleverly gazumped National and either a National caucus member will be discovered to be the leaker or enough of them will refuse to sign a waiver to make identification of the culprit impossible but show Bridges to be weak. Clearly Mallard is convinced that the form of the information (digital) is such that it had to come from within National’s caucus and not from Parliamentary Services.
Getting National to require all of its MPs to sign a waiver is a stroke of brilliance on his part.
I still do not get National’s rationale for asking for the inquiry. Maybe Bridges and co are willing to run the risk of a National MP being outed, then they can summarily disembowel him or her and enhance their standing. It worked for Phil Goff and for David Shearer at least for a while. Tough guy routines tend to go down quite well with the voting public. But time will tell.
The next time I am at the Tamaki Makaurau branch of the People’s Republic of Aotearoa party meeting I will say hello to Tova. Somehow I don’t think this is going to happen.
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