Slater and Lusk limp again

Back in the days when I blogged on my own rather obscure website I started to receive attention because I talked about the internal workings of the Labour Party.

Then one day I received an email from someone who I will call Whaledump.  He or she started to feed me with information about Cameron Slater and someone called Simon Lusk who at the time I did not know but who subsequently became rather infamous.  The whistleblower was obviously heavily involved in the National Party and deeply upset at what Slater and Lusk were doing.

The information provided was really interesting.  Like this photo of a youthful Simon Lusk and Jordan Williams.

Clearly someone from within the echelons of the National Party knew what Slater and Lusk et al were up to and objected to what was happening.

Slater and Lusk perfected a business model around Dirty Politics and had a huge role in National’s political operations at the time.  Their behaviour should have written National off as a party, Kiwis’ innate sense of fair play should have seen National pilloried, but a docile media and John Key’s political abilities meant that the damage was minimised.

If you need a reminder about Dirty Politics just read any of the posts on this website about the subject.  It was a hell of a time.

Part of Slater’s and Lusk’s business model was to provide assistance to prospective National MPs wanting to win selections.  Mark Mitchell was one person who allegedly received their assistance although he subsequently denied that any money changed hands.

From the Herald in 2014:

National Party member Brent Robinson says he is disappointed and upset about what he calls an “atrocious” smear campaign during the Rodney candidate selection in 2011, as outlined in Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics.

And although speaking out will do the party no favours, he hopes it will see politics cleaned up.

Mr Robinson was one of five hopefuls for the Rodney selection in 2011, eventually won by Mark Mitchell, who went on to become MP.

Dirty Politics, based on emails stolen from Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater, appears to show Mr Slater collaborating with political strategist Simon Lusk to push for Mr Mitchell.

Emails between Mr Slater and Mr Lusk appear to show they wanted him to win, and discussed payments from him; Mr Mitchell has emphatically denied ever paying either of them.

Whale Oil attacked Mr Robinson for his “cult” religious beliefs that could poison the party, and accused him of stacking the branch with members of his local church.

Blog posts then turned on candidate Scott Simpson, calling him “negative”, “too old”, and “not particularly likeable”. Mr Simpson eventually left to stand in, and win, the Coromandel seat. Mr Robinson said the accusations were “absolute rubbish”.

Recently Cameron Slater has been accused of engaging in dirty politics and of interfering in a National candidate selection process.  He had been tweeting about dark happenings in an unidentified electorate candidate selection contest.  The details have now emerged and the selection he has been talking about is in the seat of Tukituki.

National candidate David Elliott who withdrew part way through the process was quoted as saying this:

In a world where people spin stories to create facts under cloaks of half-truths and hearsay, the actual truth is always the simplest form of defence and without fanfare.

“To be clear, I have not engaged, paid, nor requested anyone to investigate or ‘dig stuff up’ on anyone else – ever. Any person that tells you otherwise is being deliberately deceitful for their own purposes.”

Elliott claimed that there was some good old meeting stacking involved and this is why he withdrew.

Refusing to add a veneer of authenticity to a manipulated contest, and on the same day as the delegate list had been released, I withdrew my name from the selection process.”

National’s President Sylvia Woods has said that there had been “underhand tactics playing out in Tukituki by a small number of individuals and their proxies”.

It is good to see that Slater’s and Lusk’s destructive tendencies have again been turned onto the National Party.

The seat should normally be a slam dunk for National to regain.  Now I am not so sure.