Memo from Crosby Textor – National’s leak problem

• notices and features
• 5 years ago
• Categories: humour, jacinda ardern, making shit up, national, paula bennett, same old national, Satire, Simon Bridges, spin, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, you couldn't make this shit up
• Tags: crosby textor, jami-lee ross, maggie barry

Memo from Crosby Textor

To senior office holders in the National Party

As part of this firm’s intelligence gathering role we have kept up to date with New Zealand politics even though our professional services are not currently required.

We have prepared this memo because the New Zealand conservative movement has become a laughing stock throughout the world, even worse than their Australian counterpart. Scott Morrison’s favourability ratings are not as bad as Simon Bridges’ and this is not a situation we ever thought could occur.

It seems clear to us that the party is in melt down, shown by the number of recent leaks that have occurred.

In no particular order this year there has been the following leaks.  The list is not exhaustive.  They include:

• Discussions concerning the replacement of Bill English as leader being well advanced.
• Simon Bridges’ travel expenses
• Caucus discussions about the leaking of Simon Bridges’s travel expenses.
• An email from Paula Bennett to Parliamentary Services staff about the leak inquiry.
• Glenda Hughes’ involvement in sorting out Jami-Lee Ross.
• Bridges using his magical prosecutorial skills to determine who the leaker was.
• Polling data suggesting that Bridges is not liked and his caucus wants him gone.
• Details concerning funding received from the Cathedral Club.
• National’s latest polling which contradicts the very favourable Colmar Brunton polling that recently occurred.  This was particularly damaging because it questioned CB’s favourable result.
• Allegations about Maggie Barry being a bully.
• More allegations about Maggie Barry being a bully.
• Yet more allegations about Maggie Barry being a bully.
• Internal talking points on how to handle the allegations that Maggie Barry is a bully.
• An email instructing a ministerial staff member to work on a letter to National Party members contradicting Barry’s claim she had not breached Parliament’s rules.

Simon Bridges’ claim that the latest leak did not come from within National is laughable and mirror his previous identical claim which was also laughable.  This is even worse than his earlier claim that he used his prosecutorial skills to ascertain that Trevor Mallard was the leaker, a claim made shortly before he announced that it was actually Jami-Lee Ross who was the leaker.

And besides it should be abundantly clear that Ross is not the current leaker.  The possibility is that there are many leakers from within National’s caucus.

We always were concerned that the evidence supporting the allegation that Jami-Lee Ross was the original leaker of Bridges’ travel information was not sufficient.  We understand that he was, but the public justification was weak in the extreme.  We accept however that if Ross’s motivation for leaking the information was exposed it would cause further reputational damage to the party.

One final piece of advice.  There has been recent concerted effort to denigrate Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on the basis she did not front up yesterday to Parliament.  She was in an important meeting with the head of South Korea. Such criticism makes the party look churlish and lacking in important matters to criticise the Government about.  We recommend that further attacks of this sort are not pursued with.

Should your party wish to engage our services again there will be a 30% premium applied to our normal charges given the enormity of the job and the potential risk to our reputation.

Under no circumstances should the contents of this memorandum be disclosed to anyone outside of the immediate distribution list. Any publication of it is bound to bring further ridicule on the party.