Maybe it is a tactic or an attempt to emulate Donald Trump’s approach to politics? But it seems strange that Judith Collins should have chosen to disparage Nicky Hager on the campaign trail in a most inappropriate way.
At a recent Grey Power meeting during question time she was asked to be more Crusher than nice person. And she replied by making a thinly veiled threat to Nicky Hager.
From Craig McCullough at Radio New Zealand:
Queried about Hager’s books The Hollow Men and Dirty Politics, in which Collins features, the National leader did little to hide her contempt.
“He is a dreadful man and what he wrote about me was disgraceful,” Collins spat out.
“He still needs to meet his maker.”
Holy mixed metaphor. Is that what she meant to say?
It is apparent that Dirty Politics still brings out a sense of anger and frustration in Judith which is funny really because it does the same for me. The attacks on innocent people doing their job and being hung out for public ridicule just for political jollies I can never forgive.
This 2015 video from one of her speeches in Parliament for me displays a concerning lack of perspective, not to mention self control.
She has announced National’s Law and Order policy this morning and this is included increased funding for the Serious Fraud Office which is pretty funny really given that she was sacked for her role in dirty politics relating to an attack on the SFO. And it is worth while to take a trip down memory lane to review the background to this.
Matt Nippert at Stuff said this in 2014:
Hacked emails appear to show Hotchin secretly paid bloggers Cameron Slater and Cathy Odgers to write attack posts undermining the Serious Fraud Office, its director Adam Feeley, and the Financial Markets Authority, who were probing his collapsed Hanover Finance in 2011 and 2012.
The emails indicate the campaign was orchestrated by Hotchin’s then spokesman Carrick Graham, a PR consultant and tobacco lobbyist.
Hotchin is a former part-owner of the Warriors league team who built New Zealand’s most expensive residential home in Auckland. Hanover Finance collapsed in July 2008 owing $465 million to 13,000 investors.
Knowing Fairfax was investigating the hacked emails, it is believed Odgers (known by the blog name Cactus Kate) went through her own emails and found some that could be seen as implicating Collins. This correspondence then found its way to a Beehive staffer on Friday.
“I take it you found the smoking gun,” Odgers said in an email to Fairfax shortly before Collins resigned. She declined to comment further yesterday.
Collins was then sacked or at least forced to resign.
Collins resigned after Prime Minister John Key confronted her with the email yesterday morning. She denied any involvement in the campaign against the SFO and Feeley, saying the allegations were “extremely distressing and disappointing” and that she had been the victim of a two-year smear campaign.
One possible explanation was that Cameron Slater big noted her involvement when she actually did nothing.
The “smoking gun” email detailed how Slater was briefing a number of journalists, including this reporter, about the anti-Feeley campaign.
Slater wrote: “I spoke at length with the Minister responsible today (Judith Collins). She is gunning for Feeley. Any information that we can provide her on his background is appreciated.”
Slater said yesterday the line about Collins gunning for Feeley wasn’t a lie, but “embellishing is a good word”.
She was subsequently cleared in an inquiry conducted by retired High Court judge Lester Chisholm who found there was “no probative evidence that Ms Collins undermined or attempted to undermine Mr Feeley”.
But you get the impression that she was at least on the perimeter of some pretty unsatisfactory behaviour.
This may help explain why she said what she did about Hager. But harbouring a grudge for six years against a reporter doing his job and reporting on a particularly unsavoury aspect of New Zealand’s history and saying what at least could be construed as a threat is not a characteristic I would want my Prime Minister to have.
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