Making a mockery

Written By: - Date published: 12:55 pm, December 15th, 2008 - 19 comments
Categories: Media, national/act government - Tags:

Shock news as Key’s media trainer praises Key

Bill Ralston thinks Key is doing just super, which is perhaps to be expected since Key employs Ralston’s company for media training.

He also thinks this whole ‘democracy’ thing is a bit of a pain in the arse and it’s great that National/ACT is ignoring it:

“Where is the debate, the argument and the painfully slow progress of legislation through select committees? Thankfully missing.”

Public and expert input, the opportunity to iron out flaws, yawn. So much better to have laws tabled one day and passed the next. I’m surprised Bill doesn’t just promote secret laws. Why bother with the tedium of making them public at all?

Oh, and Bill, the cynical ‘Governments never do what they promise’ smugness is real cool. Keep it up.

Back in the real world, the Herald on Sunday has a devastating editorial:

[National/ACT] has adopted a bulldozing approach that is disturbingly at odds with democratic Government. Gerry Brownlee would not even name the bills to be passed under urgency, but only the subject areas that they canvassed. Worse, he refused to give Opposition parties advance copies of any of the bills, until just before they were to be debated in Parliament.

The fact that the matters were being dealt with under urgency already meant that there would be no chance for public submission; there is no room in the action plan for tedious details such as the select committee
process, by which interested parties get to express their view about
proposed legislation. But the public was denied the opportunity to even see the legislation, because the Nats were producing for debate law that had not been completely drafted and officially tabled and therefore, under Parliament’s rules, cannot be formally published.

Extraordinarily, it was left to the Greens to scan paper copies and, in a samizdat-style operation reminiscent of the gulag-era Soviet Union, publish them on its own website. It is a state of affairs seriously at odds with the notion of a Parliamentary democracy.

19 comments on “Making a mockery ”

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  1. Daveski 1
    15 December 2008 at 1:27 pm

    Your arguments would have been more compelling if you had been as direct in your criticism of the EFA on similar grounds.

    FWIIW, I agree that the undue haste hasn’t helped National unless they plan to conduct some type of blitz and get all of this out of the way before resuming BAU next year. At the same time, Rolston does have a point about a govt following its promises which were debated in depth throughout the election.

    And while we’re at it – I’m really confused. When is it safe to accept what’s in the NZH and when is it a puppet of the right-wing MSM conspiracy?

  2. Steve Pierson 2
    15 December 2008 at 1:35 pm

    The EFA went through select committee. Daveski, don’t try to run the line that the 90-Day Bill was debated in depth during the campaign. come on, you’re better than that.

  3. Daveski 3
    15 December 2008 at 1:39 pm

    Agreed SP but flawed law is flawed regardless of the process.

    I’ve agreed with your substantive point and have said so elsewhere here. Frankly, there was no need for it particularly when they had played their cards a lot smarter than they were expected to.

    However, the willingness of many here to accept vast limitations in the EFA on the basis of the fact that they agreed with the intent makes it difficult for those to then accuse the Nats of lack of regard for democratic process.

  4. Peter Johns - bigoted troll in jerkoff mode 4
    15 December 2008 at 1:39 pm

    SP – the EFA went thru SC alright. A vast majority said it was bad legislation but Lab?Grn/NZG voted for it anyway for political gain only.
    90 day bill was always Nat policy.

  5. northpaw 5
    15 December 2008 at 1:41 pm

    SP, Thanks for this one, I didn’t know that Ralston was in the pack, as it were.

    That said, we might go to the fellow’s mid-section since much of the remainder amounted to much ado about ifs, bus, maybes..

    Right now there is burning rubber coming off the tyres of John Key’s hot rod government, but I expect by the end of the 100 days it will settle into cruise mode. That’s probably when the rot will set in and it will begin to reaffirm my faith in the essential untrustworthiness of governments.

    A self confession to bald tires, if you were to ask me. Will the vehicle stay on the track.. even at a slower pace..? What about wet days..?

    Skidder kidder key in the cockpit… imagine..

    BTW lprent, why two encryption challenges to make one comment.. something slipped..

  6. Tane 6
    15 December 2008 at 1:54 pm

    Northpaw – Ralston denies he “personally” trains Key, but not that his company (which he runs with his wife) trains or has trained Key. When asked by the Herald’s John Drinnan, Ralston replied: “I’m not a public figure, I don’t have to answer your f****** questions.”

    So he’s certainly not being entirely honest about his business/media dealings with John Key, a figure he seems to spend an inordinate amount of column space praising.

  7. northpaw 7
    15 December 2008 at 2:05 pm

    tane,

    got that, thank you..

    I guess he is a principle – silent or otherwise – in one of those less than 20 employee companies… 🙂

    ps: well done… back to one challenge.. for one comment

  8. the sprout 8
    15 December 2008 at 3:33 pm

    Bill really has become a bit of a parody of himself.
    As the next generation’s Garth George I would have hoped Bill would modernise the lies a bit, but I guess that’d require some effort and thought.

    And considering the Herald is happy to cut and paste National press releases, and obviously happy to not ask any embarrassing questions about its sources’ conflicts of interest (at least those who reinforce the Herald’s editorial stance), I guess there’s no incentive for Bill to do any different.

  9. Lew 9
    15 December 2008 at 4:08 pm

    Incidentally, research by U of Canterbury PhD candidate Nathan McCluskey suggests politicians do in fact tend to keep their campaign promises.

    L

  10. Kerry 10
    15 December 2008 at 4:15 pm

    Bill’s abit of a loser really…i mean look at TVNZ!

    I was surpised by the Editorial from the Herald…..but would have been nice to see more this sort of stuff during the election campaign rather then waiting til they got there cronies in power before deciding to be decent.

  11. ianmac 11
    15 December 2008 at 5:36 pm

    Also from the Herald a clever “apology” hahaha by Tapu Misa about the week in Parliament.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10548017

  12. ianmac 12
    15 December 2008 at 5:45 pm

    I wrote to Ralston despising his work in helping discredit Peters. Regardless of whether we support Peters or not I still think the process used to eliminate him bodes badly for democracy. The Meet the Leader run by Sky/Prime was disgraceful the Sunday night that they eviserated Peters in his absence. Ralston lead the charge and the so-called jounalists attending were disgraceful in their words and actions. I very nearly voted for NZF in disgust and reaction to Ralston.

  13. the sprout 13
    15 December 2008 at 5:57 pm

    ianmac
    I saw that show, it was the lamest circle-jerk of has-beens and never-wases I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe it went to air.
    The only good thing was that it guaranteed Ralston’s consignment to the scrapheap of TV failures, even for desperate stations.
    All we need now is for the Herald to develope journalistic standards. I guess that could be a while.

  14. deemac 14
    15 December 2008 at 6:04 pm

    Ralston may be a PRINCIPAL but he wouldn’t know a PRINCIPLE if it bit him on the arse
    Anyway, credit to Granny Herald – more joy in heaven, etc etc…

  15. northpaw 15
    15 December 2008 at 6:32 pm

    deemac,

    sorry buddy, did I misplace the wrong vowel.. 🙂

  16. gobsmacked 16
    15 December 2008 at 6:39 pm

    Ralston’s very touchy about his links to Key. Though that doesn’t stop his slobbery tongue having an extra large helping of buttock every time the Parnell Pretender is on his Radio Live show. It’s quite entertaining listening to those encounters. Key does his usual thing of gabbling his talking points and Ralston has to help him out, to make sure the message gets across. It’s like a radio infomercial (“And what else do you do for all your satisfied customers? You don’t say!”).

    Note the defensive tone in his blog post here:

    http://www.stuff.co.nz//blogs/mediascrum/2008/11/26/setting-the-record-straight/

  17. Rodel 17
    15 December 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Ralston is just a celebrity-famous for doing nothing useful or productive- remarkable similarity to the substance of Paris Hilton.
    As a journalist I’d be embarrassed to put trash like that out in public.
    As a politician I’d cringe if anyone wrote that about me.

  18. isra 18
    16 December 2008 at 7:46 pm

    i hate prime minister JOhn Key is not our polity way is going because
    he to us tht he tell New Zealand as Australia money but he didnt change anything abt the he was  going the rule shit i want ask John key privency Question then  be it so it he should remove from the prime minister of NEw Zealand  it should Helen Clark back in the prime Minister Of New Zealand

  19. Django 19
    18 December 2008 at 7:11 am

    Please spare us more of your hypocrisy. Let’s not forget that Dr Brian Edwards was tirelessly quoted by the media for his commentary on all things Clarkian and Labour luvving in general, while all the while he was Ms Clark’s personal coach and advisor. For decades we have had to put up with his partisan and utterly biased commentary hither and yon, even to the extent of cluttering up the “Letters to the Editor” with his sycophantic claptrap.

    Feels shitty to have the boot on the other foot doesn’t it