Written By:
- Date published:
11:58 am, September 23rd, 2008 - 51 comments
Categories: corruption, john key, Media, youtube -
Tags: tranzrail, tvnz
For those who missed it, here’s the video from last night’s One News investigation into John Key’s TranzRail dealings.
The first clip details Key’s abuse of his positition as an MP for personal financial gain, and the second clip has him lying about his shareholding, then quickly correcting himself when he realises he’s been busted.
six of the last seven posts on key. ha ha funny.
It’s the big news of the day. The leader of the opposition has been caught lying and engaging in corrupt behaviour, seems fair enough. We’ll probably do stuff on this for the next few days, but somehow I don’t think we’ll reach Farraresque levels of obsession.
As we say, vto, you are more than welcome to start your own blog and post what you want there. In the meantime we will post what we want on ours. Any problem with that?
vto,
Look on the bright side, at least the discussion about abortion is confined to one post. Imagine the joy of 6 out of 7 being hijacked by discussions about abortion 🙂
or retrospective validation legislation for that matter 🙂
But back on topic… does anyone know why the Herald is not covering this heavily? I found Poneke’s explanation of the Dompost’s front page really useful, does anyone have similar insight into The Herald?
that expression at 40-43 seconds on the second clip.. revealing
for those who are arguing Key might have forgotten how many shares he had note that he knows immediately how many shares he really had and the net monetary outcome.
Also, this line he’s trying to run now: that he became aware that he had owned more shares only after this issue first came up a few months ago but no-one asked him exacly how many shares he owned and he should have gone back to the media but he didn’t… it doens’t add up. Key lied to Fran Mold’s face yesterday about the number of shares he had when he was asked and only admitted the truth when the truth was laid in front of him.
Anita…its only a lie if the Herald says it is. they think they are little tin gods and their truths are that if Key lies then he has absolution bestowed upon him by the EDITOR. Hey its no good being a post modern joutrnlaist if you cant make it up as you go along.
Ok folks I understand all of the above.
But why get het up on a POSSIBLE decit / corruption / lie when there is already one PROVEN.
and your govt is willing to keep him and his party on!
Come on – apply your standards consistently. As Pierson said this morning “”But politics is the art of the possible, if letting him (Winston) keep his warrent bt removing his portfolios lets important legislation like meal breaks/breast feeding, waste minimisation, and the ETS pass then it’s an unfortunate price to pay.’
So if it is acceptable for labour why would it not be acceptable for national?
P4? Potential free trade deal with the U.S.?
and even the Democrats may may be not dismissing it out of hand.
“a leading Democratic politician, Senate finance committee chairman Max Baucus, was reported by the NBR on Sept 12 as saying the US had to “re-engage’ with the Asia Pacific region on trade policy.”
where are the good news bears at the Standard?
The labour movement isn’t all about pooh and JK.
because winnie is a homo sapiens sapiens and keys is a replicant.
I’m not trying to antagonise or troll or etc in this I simply sincerely struggle to understand the two standards flying around on this site at the moment.
I asked SP (to no avail) this earlier – thoughts approeciated..
“SP, if you are unperturbed at having a minister effectively guilty of perjury in a labour govt in order to get laws through then why the f%@#k are you concerned about any other party establishing a govt with similar type crooks in its midst, as you intimate re Key’s share dealings?
Really, the double standards espoused here come so thick and fast that I think you’ve become completely immune to the basic norms required in people responsible for administering a society.
Tell me what I’m missing..
and please don’t divert”
[lprent: It is pretty easy. We do this in our spare time. Over the last couple of days the comments are coming thick and fast across multiple posts. Normally we have time to have a scan of all comments. But when you get a weeks worth of comments in a day (noon-noon) it gets a bit hard. You start to sample more and hope that the other moderators pick up on the ones you miss. If you hadn’t noticed, SP prefers to post rather than moderate.
However I’ll make an attempt at answering. It is called having a uniform standard. If the ‘right’ wish to use a particular standard applying to Winston and NZF, then they have to accept that their members should be judged by their conformance to their own standard. It isn’t anyone here setting the boundaries, it is Rodney Hide, John Key, David Farrar, etc.
Since JK has now admitted that he misled parliament, then he should also get referred to the privileges committee in the same way as Winston was. Hopefully someone will also refer the matter to the SFO in the same way that Winston was. In the meantime posters here will refer to it as being possibly corruption until it is proved otherwise, in just the same manner that DPF has been doing (using the guilty until proved innocent legal standard). If nothing else, we’ll have to do it until we’re confident that DPF will follow up this in the same tenacious way that he has with Winston.
If you set a standard, then you cannot discriminate where it applies. Since DPF et al probably will be hypocrites, posters here will probably just have to help them. ]
Paul. The good news bears are probably working. There’ll probably be something at some stage but bro, we’re a volunteer-run opinion site, not a news service.
vto. your gripe is with SP, no one else. Other posters and the site itself are not responsible for his personal political views.
I’m sure he’ll get back to you in due course. Despite appearances he doesn’t sit by his computer all day arguing on The Standard.
Tane, it is a view of SP’s shared quite obviously with others on here, as evidenced even by the mere existence of this thread. But it’s ok, the morning-long silence is answer enough.
There are two standards that apply.
I miss the whitebaiting and shall have to return. This is no substitute… bah.
Where is the process Steve P. Where is Felix reminding us that due process must be followed… Oh that’s right – it’s OK when Labour do it.
Anita
Yes, retrospective validation was the first real insight of exactly what depths the Labour-led govt will go to protecting their grip on power.
vto:
You’re missing the fact that what JK did bordered on insider trading and not just perjury. What JK did went much further than what WP did as he not only lied but also took action in his position as a MP that could possibly benefit himself.
I happen to think that WP should be stood down although I also think that it wouldn’t make a lot of difference at this stage in the election cycle. Actually, thinking about it, JK should also be stood down as an MP.
Anita:
I think it’s because the NZ Herald is trying very hard to make Labour look bad. They’ve added another $40m to their Porkometer. Yep, according to the NZ Herald, spending money to improve our kids education is pork.
“It’s the big news of the day. The leader of the opposition has been caught lying and engaging in corrupt behaviour,”
Oh man, almost shat myself… Funny when it suits you eh.
what JK did bordered on insider trading
You’re on your own there, Draco. Not even Cullen is willing to make that allegation.
Draco, if what you say is right then ok he should be nailed. As WP should be nailed. If, that is. Not at that point yet.
And that is my point – I think it is disgusting that WP continues given his proven conduct. Honestly, Clark has done nothing for quality governance during her term. She has lowered standards.
1. Key has disappointed me again – he’s certainly not a smart operator (odd given his background) and does have HC’s political instincts or iron fist control.
2. Likewise, many of the comments above show that the position adopted depends on who is involved, not what the issue is. Change the name from Key to Peters and the comments will change.
So much for getting back to issues.
At least we know we can’t trust any politician!
I don’t think that clip says that at all Tane because it would be defamatory to make that claim. You are sailing very close to the legal wind by saying that.
It doesn’t make sense that an MP who gives away his salary to charity would abuse his position for financial gain.
[lprent: Lange vs Atkinson. It was an interesting decision (and I bet Joe liked the result). ]
burt I couldn’t agree more.
It looks like pretty shonky behaviour from John Key but we should have a proper investigation and get to the bottom of this.
Why does JK shake his head when telling us something? Does that show he doesn’t really mean it? Any body language analysts out there?
“She has lowered standards…”
To the point where you can’t even see what Key is doing wrong, apparently.
janet.
You mean like Bill or Ben from The Flowerpot Men? I think you might be on to something. None of the three has a single cohesive thought and all three exhibit head shaking traits.
I see Key has released all of the relevant material, including a statement from the trust’s broker about what was bought and sold and when.
http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?ArticleID=28573
I predict that, after some bluster in the house today, the whole thing will go away.
Compare and contrast with Winsome’s handling of his issue.
vto…winnie didn’t know what his lawyer was doing so therefore he is not guilty of anything even though he has to carry the can. Shonkey did know what he himself was doing and therefore they are two different things. furthermore winstons lawyer was accepting money on behalf of the party not for personal aggrandisement and enrichment while john key os proven corrupt cancersous and worst of all just plain venal qwhich in case you aare not aware means corruptly mercenary.
“It doesn’t make sense that an MP who gives away his salary to charity would abuse his position for financial gain.”
Does it make sense that such an MP would claim living allowances?
People do things that don’t make sense all the time.
Read a newspaper on any given day.
we know that winnie isa bit slack when it comes to filling out the forms dtooint the I’s and crossing the t’s but that is the man. He is not an anal pathological grabber of anything he can get his hands on just so he can gloat and say,”THIS IS MINE” and nobody elses. there is a world of diference between a genuine mistake and a naked desire to own everything.
Is Randal really Michael Cullen? Is that the 9th floor link? 😉
[lprent: Nah – randal is randal…. Besides I don’t think Cullen is on the 9th floor. And we don’t have anyone here writing posts from parliament IP’s. ]
Holy shit,
I just watched the clip in which he is asked about the shares.
Sorry, but that was an ooh oops I’m F*&ked now moment.
He also clearly states the he owned the second batch himself I don’t care what that little paper says. Anyone can make something like that and I prefer the Oh oops moment, no time to think often brings out the truth much better than a phone call to the PR outfit and a computer printout that can be manufactured by anybody. LOL.
LP
Not sure if anyone else has commented but heard a snippet on Nat Radio about the growing influence of the blogosphere and the impact on political journalism.
I would assume an increasing amount of traffic from parliament IP’s as parties of all flavours look to monitor opinion?
Definitely not trolling!!! But would be interested nonetheless.
Billy,
It goes like something like this:
John knows he’s fucked up and calls Textor and Cosby.
They ask him, “that broker of yours a reliable chap?”
John thinks for a moment or so and says, “well I worked with him for a good couple of years and yeah I think he’s good for his word.”
“OK”, say Cosby and Textor, “we’re sure he doesn’t want to loose your account. Are you with us John?”
After a full minute the quarter drops and Slippery John phones his broker and says, “listen mate if you value my business you are going to send me the contracts and the account information all under my Trusts name.”
And the broker says, “sure John no worries, I’m not going to let $ 50 million smackeronies walk out of my office for a couple of silly papers. What are friends for eh?”
So he prints out a couple of contracts and the bill and whatever else Key wants and faxes them to John’s office, his minions put them on his website. Sorted.
And the wonderfully naive Billies of NZ go for it. Isn’t ingnorance bliss.
For the mean time I think I will believe my lying eyes if that’s OK with you. LOL.
Francesca Mold is my hero.
By the way according to the video the Share register was were the information about John Key owning shares in his own name came from. So again for the mean time I’m going to believe the share register over John Key’s Broker’s fakes/faxes.
If you put something like this out on NZTV you really want to do you fact checking and you want to be 100% correct. Libel suits are not something they want to have to get into. So my money is on TVNZ having it right.
Daveski: There is definitely a presence coming in from parliamentary IP’s.
Cumulative (back to the start of Feb) it is the order of 1.01% of page views. Last week it was 1.91% of page views. However as a point of comparison my old university otago is just behind it with about half the volume in both measures.
I think that the major political influence is that there is considerable lurker traffic from journo’s. That is getting higher as more have their own blogs and have to produce posts more often.
Of more interest to me
MSIE 44.799%
Firefox 32.597%
Safari 13.123%
Looks like IE is less than half of the browser views on this site now.
Cheers Lynn
I saw recently that Firefox has 25% of the general market which is amazing considering how ingrained IE is into Windows.
As to the Nat Radio comments, the point was made that the blogs are contributing to more sophisticated political debate and the Standard undoubtedly contributes to that.
I disagree with most of what is stated but in general there is vigorous debate here that is normally encouraged and supported so big ups to you and the team.
Hi Iprent,
Do their IP’s end with gov.nz?
By the way I share that opinion with Daveski even though I disagree with most of what he says. Big kudo’s to you and the other Standardistas.
I do about 50% of my time in windows. So I use firefox (everything) or safari (mac/pc) or the google chrome (pc). The latter two are elegant and the last (apart from lack of flash) is awesome.
Firefox goes across all platforms. So that is the default.
The only time I open IE these days is after I’ve finished coding to the standards and open IE to fix its quirks where it deviates from standards (almost everywhere).
Sources say that IE8 is going to be standards compliant.. I might start opening it more often – when I get the linux version 🙂
parliament.govt.nz
Traveller, I think it’s more likely that Fran Mold was mistaken. She thinks you can “own” a trust, so its quite likely that when she saw his name on the share register as trustee of the trust she didn’t realise it wasn’t him in his personal capacity.
LOL travellerev 🙂
Captcha – honest way (for a righty of course!)
I-prent thanks,
I have seen those in my stats too.
No Jeeves, I don’t think so. She said that the labour researcher had found them and specifically makes the difference between the trust and the personal ones.
Fran Mold struck me as a smart cookie and bringing these facts out are generally dissected by not just one journalist. It is likely that the labour party has had lawyers look at it to make sure that they could not get into a situation that could badly backfire and it is likely the same happened at the NZTV headquarters. This is not some rookie journalist stumbling on a bit of juicy news this was well prepared. The only one not prepared was John Key.
This not your average little bit of news here this is the exposure of a major Political figure. Perhaps the next prime minister.
Added to that when confronted with the questions John Key did not say “I never bought shares”, he blurted out “yes, there were more shares”. and not, “jeez I don’t know, I’d have to ask my broker who handles the Trust shares.”
No Jeeves, I don’t think so. This was professional journalism done by a smart lady and properly backed by team work at TVNZ.
Cheers Daveski,
I like making people laugh even if they are righties.
Traveller: Your argument is essentially: UBS (Key’s broking firm) would publicly commit fraud for a single client (albeit a wealthy cleint) and this is more likely than anyone else being mistaken?
I admit it is POSSIBLE they forged those documents or crested them after the fact, but that seems less likely than someone making a mistake (even someone who has a lawyer). If you honestly think otherwise, then I really don’t know what else to say.
The other possibility (in my view the likely one) is that there was an innacurate entry on the share register. Given the records shown by Key’s broker, and taking Labour’s research at face value, it seems likely that the other two trustees were erroneously missed off the register.
No Jeeves,
I don’t know if his broker would commit fraud for him.
What I do know is that John Key was lying about secret shares in his possession in a situation which was clearly a conflict of interest.
What I do know is that John Key an National have been less than forth coming with that transparency JK was blabbing on about.
What I do know is that John Key and the NZH have seriously misrepresented John Key’s career timeline to avoid vicinity with the emerging derivatives scandals and his involvement with Andrew Krieger when he was making 300 million dollar of the almost collapse of the NZ economy in 1987 and what I do know is that the investment banking world and Merrill Lynch in particular in the last twenty years have been riddled with scandals, fraud and now the final financial collapse.
So what I do know in short that John Key was a serious shark in a shark eat shark world and familiar with the nasty fraudulent Wall street investment banking culture. The fact that he can say I will truthfully answer every question while lying about his shares gives me reason to think that perhaps he will do what it takes to get out from under this including asking a little favour of his broker who after all manages oh $50 million for him.
What I do know is that brokers and bankers have been dishonest and fraudulent before are in fact at the moment.
With his usual MO John Key have made a stink about the wrong news in the news coverage and would not respond to the questions with, “I don’t know I’d have to ask my trust manager,” and only came up with these pieces of paper and put them on his website.”
He knew he was f*&ked and he couldn’t think of a lie fast enough so he blurted out the truth. And the truth is that he knew about the shares and he knew how many and under whose name.
Captcha: on owning. Whoa
Oh I see, so your claim can only be supported by conspiracy theories. Thought so.
Jeeves,
The one time I don’t put any links in to archives in order not to go to purgatory and I get this so OK here we go again.
Here is the “unauthorised” biography.
This is part 1 of my response to it.
Notice that every conjecture I make is based on the website of the NZFR
and the online archive of the New York times. These sources prove that John Key could not have worked with Andrew Krieger after the attack of ’87. Andrew Krieger left the Bankers trust in February 1988 just after he made 300 million of NZ’s currency and was paid a paltry 3 million for this. He did a short stint with George Soros and from March until June and left trading altogether until 1990 after he left there.
The Bankers Trust did not register it’s holdings until late July 1988 and did not open for business until late August 1988 so John Key missed being able to work with Andrew Krieger by about a couple of months.
Not theory, fact supported by Newspaper articles from an archive that chronicled events on Wall street were Andrew Krieger was a legend after the spectacular attack, not one but several.
Again what’s with you guys and the conspiracy theory shit is it is a supported and proven fact.
He could not have worked with Andrew Krieger when he said he did because the man no longer traded in currencies. fact.
So if this was simple to check by the three journalists who wrote the puff piece (I did it sitting on my bed with my laptop and a wireless internet connection) than either they didn’t do their job or they were naive, thought that John was the chizel wrote the piece to put John Key out there as a nice dude whom we can all trust and should vote for or they wilfully lied and put together a story that they hoped we would swallow (in which case that would be conspiring)
What they didn’t do was check John’s time line and hold him accountable for the fact that the only time he was working with Andrew Krieger when he was in fact attacking the NZ$ almost to the point of economic collapse and John Key was his account manager who helped him. Facts Jeeves facts, you may not like them but this is not a theory these are facts. And since they are facts what we have here seems to become a pattern.
He helped someone make a bundle and in the mean time it made him a whole lot richer too and he did so with total disregard to the NZ people and the possible outcome for the country he wants to lead to greatness. What’s more he did not find anything wrong with it in this interview and a couple of months later 20 years after the events took place he still has no compunction to lie about it three months after that interview in the NZHerald when he senses that his involvement would not be looked kindly upon.
Now he has had to come clean about lying about his secret shares while he was trying to enrich himself again via the power vested in him by his constituents to represent their interests and not his own. Again facts Jeeves, you may not like them but there is nothing theoretical about it.