Let’s do the time warp again

Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, October 26th, 2023 - 39 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, jacinda ardern, making shit up, winston peters, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags:

I am not sure that an elderly person who clearly is forgetting things should be allowed access to his Twitter account, let alone the levers of power.

But that is the situation we are currently in.

Yesterday Winston Peters tweeted this:

But dear reader there were a rather major problem with his claim.  We did not wait until yesterday to find out that Jacinda Ardern’s office had received advance notice of the Christchurch massacre.  It was published in a very prominent way very shortly after the event happened.

From Radio New Zealand:

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has accused former prime minister Dame Jacinda Ardern of “an appalling lack of transparency” over what she knew about the 15 March terror attacks before they happened.

A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office said the tweet from Peters was “clearly inaccurate” and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni has called for an apology.

A timeline of what Ardern knew – and when – was reported widely at the time, and also addressed at a press conference the day after the attacks.

…

At a press conference on 16 March, one day after the attacks took place, Ardern explained her office was sent the terrorist’s manifesto minutes before the first shots were fired.

“I was one of more than 30 recipients of a manifesto that was mailed out nine minutes before the attack took place,” she said.

“It did not include a location, it did not include specific details. I’m advised that within two minutes of its receipt in at least my office, it was conveyed directly to Parliamentary security.”

Winston doubled down by claiming he was referring to a telephone call made at the time by Ardern and that in this call she had not informed him about receiving the manifesto.  But this makes no sense.  His original claim is clearly that she kept information hidden until yesterday, not that she did not mention it in one call that was made to him at the time.

He will tough it out and refuse to apologise or even say that he got it wrong.  Which is a shame.

I suspect Christopher Luxon is crossing his fingers that the special votes end up in National’s favour.  Otherwise we really are facing the prospect of a Coalition of Chaos involving a leader who appears to have been in a time warp for the last six years.

39 comments on “Let’s do the time warp again ”

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  1. Belladonna 1
    26 October 2023 at 11:09 am

    I think that it's almost certain that Winston Peters' office also received the email (it was copied to Simon Bridges, as well as other senior political leaders).

    Perhaps we should ask Winston what he and his team did with the knowledge…. /sarc/

    Ardern's office alerted the Police. What did Winston's office do?….

    My bet is 'nothing' because it hadn't been authorized by Winston.

    His double-down over the content of the telephone call from Ardern – also begs the question of what he actually remembers of the call…..

    • Peter Kelly 1.1
      26 October 2023 at 3:44 pm

      Yes Belladonna. The inquest needs to reveal how many of the 70 recipients phoned the Police, and also if NZF's office or any other MP's were addressees.

  2. Sanctuary 2
    26 October 2023 at 11:47 am

    Indications of senility would be the Occams razor on this one.

    • weka 2.1
      26 October 2023 at 5:28 pm

      I wouldn't even call it senility, rather than forgetfulness, something that happens to many older people. High performing older people often struggle with the reality of that and being able to be honest about it. It doesn't help that we treat older people as idiots to be put on the scrap heap.

      On top of that Peters has a sufficiently large enough ego to find admitting a mistake very difficult.

      It can also be a symptom of post-covid complications. 90% of the country is in denial of that one.

      • pat 2.1.1
        26 October 2023 at 6:52 pm

        Agree his ego wont let him admit the error, however the politician in him will also realise that not backing down wont do him any harm….his support base will either agree or not care…such is politics.

        • weka 2.1.1.1
          26 October 2023 at 7:12 pm

          pretty much. It's the don't care election after all.

          • pat 2.1.1.1.1
            26 October 2023 at 7:22 pm

            A 'don't care election'?….perhaps it was a 'we care more than those running for office' election.

            Remember that NZ First received only around 7% of the vote ( and contrary to the narative of 'success' the MP only around 2%)…and turnout was under 80%, thats a lot of 'we dont like whats on offer'.

            • weka 2.1.1.1.1.1
              26 October 2023 at 7:30 pm

              I was referring to the ethos of voting National even knowing their tax plan is bogus. Or voting Peters and not caring he makes shit up.

              The whole election wasn't that. But it was a feature more prominently this year than in the past. A watershed moment.

              • pat …
                26 October 2023 at 8:07 pm

                Yes 875,000 voted for Nationals bogus plan….but what was lacking in the other offerings that around 3 million couldnt coalesce around?

            • Incognito 2.1.1.1.1.2
              26 October 2023 at 8:32 pm

              It depends on how you define ‘success’. Four, and possibly (but unlikely, IMO) five, electorates elected a TPM candidate to represent them in Parliament. The respective margins were robust to very strong. This may or may not have been more influenced by the candidates than by the party policies, but it is undeniably a ‘success’. Politics is not (yet) as binary as some think it is (or wish it to be).

              • pat …
                26 October 2023 at 8:50 pm

                Ah, we are on the binary crusade again….success in MMP is the party vote as that determines the make up of Parliament…is 2% (of votes cast) success?

                • Incognito …
                  26 October 2023 at 9:09 pm

                  In 2017, the ACT Part received only 13,075 party votes. It would not have resulted in a seat in the House by a long shot (about one-tenth of the threshold). However, David Seymour’s 16,505 candidate votes (margin 5,519) in the Epsom electorate secured him and thus his party a seat.

                  In a typical Parliament of 120 seats, 71 seats are Electorate Seats and 49 are List Seats. One can win a List Seat by securing enough of the party vote or an Electorate Seat by winning the candidate vote in an electorate. You know these things.

                  Four Electorate Seats qualifies as a success, in my books.

        • Belladonna 2.1.1.2
          26 October 2023 at 7:21 pm

          Also, Peters had never admitted that he's made a mistake, ever. He doubles down and tries to weasel around the wording (just as he's doing here).

          • pat 2.1.1.2.1
            26 October 2023 at 7:26 pm

            Yes, thats what WP does….and hes not alone in that in the political world, however experience has shown him it dosnt matter in relation to his goals.

          • weka 2.1.1.2.2
            26 October 2023 at 7:31 pm

            he's expert in keeping this statements generalised for maximum manipulation during and after the fact.

      • Darien Fenton 2.1.2
        27 October 2023 at 10:15 am

        Winston has a history of making outrageous claims. From Matthew Hooton (forgive me!)

        "As early as 1996, the courts found in a defamation action that “Mr Peters was at best reckless or even worse he knew the words used were false. Either way he acted maliciously.”

        That case concerned one of the false allegations Peters had made over several years for which — to use his own cynical slogan — he provided “not a shred of evidence”. After happily selling the Government’s shares in Auckland International Airport as Treasurer in July 1998, he led a performative Cabinet walk-out only weeks later over a similar sale of shares in Wellington Airport.

        That forced his sacking and the collapse of the National-NZ First Coalition, in my view allowing him to play martyr. In 2008, the Spencer Trust scandal disrupted the Clark Government’s final year, with the Privileges Committee finding Peters had knowingly provided false or misleading information to Parliament and the public about an undisclosed $100,000 donation.

        Matters concerning donations to the NZ First Foundation, which marred Ardern’s first term, remain before the courts."

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  3. Corey 3
    26 October 2023 at 11:51 am

    Gen x, Millenials and Gen z sacrificed two years of our lives to keep thousands of boomers alive… And those Boomers repay us by going feral and moaning that we saved their lives, getting all tin foil hatty and voting for this pos.

    [deleted]

    [it’s against the site rules to advocate harm against groups of people, including wishing them dead for political purposes. For pretty bloody obvious reasons, including in the context of this topic of this post (the intentional murders of a specific group of people).

    From the Policy,

    Directly or indirectly advocating violence in any shape or form (including ‘jest’ and advocating self-harm) to individuals or groups is simply not allowed. Moderators will have a no-tolerance humourless response as the only possible response. If you want to talk about political conflicts around the world, then do so being mindful of this proscription.

    Further, your comment was sufficiently inflammatory to get moderated on that alone. You are a very good contributor to debate on The Standard, I’d like to ask you to rethink what you did here and consider that in a time of increasing sociopolitical tension, where we have politicians now actively fomenting harsh divisions, that wishing harm on groups of voters is going to make things worse.

    For future moderation, I consider the whole Boomer vs Young ones rhetoric to be inflammatory and prejudicial as well, that’s a wider conversation for another time, not under another author’s post – weka]

    • bwaghorn 3.1
      26 October 2023 at 12:38 pm

      I love a good rant as much as the next standard commenter but yo8ve gone a bit far there chap , i guess you can use the seymour I was only joking defense

    • Barfly 3.2
      26 October 2023 at 12:50 pm

      "In hindsight maybe we should have let covid rip through society and take as much of national and nzf's voting base as the elderly as possible"

      There you go Corey fixed it for you oh and by the way go fuck yourself laugh

    • Rosielee 3.3
      26 October 2023 at 3:18 pm

      The fact that I'm finding the term "boomers" rather tiresome I'll leave for another time. (I'm too old to be a boomer as the baby boom didn't start til 1946, nine months after the boys got home from the war.) However, I think you'll find it was the boomers who saved lives because they were diligent about vaccinations. They remember the kids in the playground in heavy duty calipers after a bout of polio. They remember families building makeshift bedrooms on the verandah because someone had TB – or in poor rural areas using tents for the same reason. They had their babies vaccinated. This is what Gen xyz etc and the millennials just don't get. Please get your facts and your history straight.

      • gsays 3.3.1
        26 October 2023 at 6:08 pm

        In the interests of keeping things straight there is a world of difference between the polio vaccine or TB vaccine and the experimental drug mandated upon us from pfizer.

        • Drowsy M. Kram 3.3.1.1
          26 October 2023 at 10:10 pm

          There is indeed a world of difference between the testing of the Salk vaccine for protection against polio, and the Pfizer vaccine for protection against COVID-19.

          The History of the Polio Vaccine
          Not long afterwards, in the early 1950s, the first successful vaccine was created by US physician Jonas Salk. Salk tested his experimental killed-virus vaccine on himself and his family in 1953, and a year later on 1.6 million children in Canada, Finland and the USA.

          The results were announced on 12 April 1955, and Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was licensed on the same day. By 1957, annual cases dropped from 58 000 to 5600, and by 1961, only 161 cases remained.

          Salk was committed to equitable access to his vaccine, and understood that elimination efforts would not work without universal low- or no-cost vaccination.

          In Dec. 2020 the MHRA (UK) and FDA (US) authorised the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for emergency use. Imho, those authorisations were timely, given the then (tragic) 80,000+ deaths in the UK and 300,000+ deaths in the US.

          It's not all about life and death, but certainly those deaths contributed to decisions to prioritise health, in some jurisdictions.

          Lives saved by COVID‐19 vaccines
          COVID‐19 vaccination altered the pandemic course, saving tens of millions of lives globally. However, vaccines had less effect in low‐income countries due to inadequate access, emphasising the importance of global vaccine equity.

          Maybe we will be in a position to do better next time.

    • theotherpat 3.4
      26 October 2023 at 6:14 pm

      you would not know what self sacrifice is.

    • weka 3.5
      26 October 2023 at 6:16 pm

      mod note. Please let me know you hare read this.

    • Darien Fenton 3.6
      27 October 2023 at 9:50 am

      Yes ; it is so offensive. Thank you mods.

    • Darien Fenton 3.7
      27 October 2023 at 10:19 am

      One day Corey, you will wake up (if you are lucky) and find yourself with grey hair and wrinkles looking back at you. As one of those, I will not take the blame for being so, and nor will I criticise “the young people these days: – as happened to all of us when we were young and full of spirit and judgement like you..

  4. lprent 4
    26 October 2023 at 11:55 am

    Damn, I wanted to write that post. Such an opportunity to be sarcastic.

    I was also planning on pointing that I'd hope that I wasn't going to be as forgetful as Winston in another 14 years. Even I watched Jacinda the following day (I usually don't follow most live news) saying that her office had received the manifesto beforehand. But Peters as deputy PM hadn't?

    Winston doubled down by claiming he was referring to a telephone call made at the time by Ardern and that in this call she had not informed him about receiving the manifesto.

    Not to mention that when that call was made, it is unlikely that Ardern had known that her office had received the manifesto.

    Damn this is going to make for a government in chaos. Between them and historically inaccurate bigots in Act… They make National MPs look sane in their matching clone army genders, ethnicity, apparent ages, and regulated blue suits.

  5. Stephen D 5
    26 October 2023 at 1:23 pm

    The way WP is behaving is getting dangerous. He’s obviously swallowed the Trump playbook. Tell a lie, deny the truth, call it false news.

    Unfortunately there are now enough bewitched voters who will believe him.

    What will be interesting to watch is whether the media amplifies the lie, or calls him to account.

  6. Obtrectator 6
    26 October 2023 at 1:46 pm

    Not being made under Parliamentary privilege (and WP is not technically even an MP yet), surely this is actionable?

    • Anne 6.1
      26 October 2023 at 2:25 pm

      This is another example of Labour letting an opposition politician get away with a serious allegation. To my knowledge the only remarks have come from the current PM's Office describing the accusation as "inaccurate" and the current Deputy PM saying it is "a bit bizarre". Rather than a couple of timid responses there should be action considered.

      Peters is playing the wounded victim knowing he is out of order. It is highly unlikely Ardern knew the manifesto had been emailed to her office, so to claim he should have been told while the massacre was actually taking place – and in the immediate aftermath – is beyond the pale.

      The narcissism in his character is very strong.

      • Tiger Mountain 6.1.1
        26 October 2023 at 2:36 pm

        Agree, it is the worst type of revisionist attack on Jacinda Ardern. A strong response is needed from NZ Labour and anyone else not keen on MAGA style politics. The posts will just stay there unless he has to back down. “Inaccurate” will not induce that.

        The irony is that some of Peters’ current supporters, members, and candidates are not at all friendly to muslims or non white migrants or gun control.

      • Louis 6.1.2
        26 October 2023 at 4:04 pm

        "This is another example of Labour letting an opposition politician get away with a serious allegation." Yes, and in these instances, I don't know or understand why Labour doesn't take a stronger stance.

    • mary_a 6.2
      26 October 2023 at 3:35 pm

      Obtrectator (6) … Very good point there.

      Having been a lawyer, you would have thought WP might have given that fact some consideration, before rushing to make public statements at this time.

  7. Patricia Bremner 7
    26 October 2023 at 2:09 pm

    Did anyone else notice the Royal "We"?

  8. Thinker 8
    26 October 2023 at 4:20 pm

    So much innuendo and so many memories with this one…

    "Do the Time Warp" – naturally, given Winston is the protege of Rob Muldoon, the famous Narrator… https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/28177/with-the-rocky-horror-show-cast

    and

    "The country votes with its feet,
    And takes a step to the right
    And when the leaders move their lips
    it makes us shiver with fright.

    But it's the absurd coalition
    That's going to drive us insane
    Let's do the Time Warp again
    Let's do the Time Warp again"

  9. newsense 9
    26 October 2023 at 7:45 pm

    Damian Christie and Ian Lees-Galloway?

    The answer to who’s with Wallace on Pub Politics 20 years ago?