There appear to be two approaches to being a star of dirty politics and not wanting to answer questions about it. Both were displayed on Campbell Live last night in “Where are the Dirty Politics stars now”
The latter clip had my 76 year old father so much in fits of laughter last night, that he had to ring me afterwards to share his vast mirth.
Fortunately for NZ, and unlike most of his fellow stars of Dirty Politics, Cameron Slater is a complete sucker for getting his name mentioned in Parliament. So he fronts up to enquiries, adds to his already impressive legal bills, and advised by his lawyers, he mostly tells the truth.
Of course taxpayers have to pay for it. Andrea Vance on “Taxpayers to foot WhaleOil’s legal bills over ‘dirty politics’ probes“.
Taxpayers will be billed up to $10,000 for blogger Cameron Slater’s legal fees for two inquiries into dirty politics.
Slater’s links to the Beehive were at the heart of investigations by retired High Court judge Lester Chisholm and intelligence watchdog Cheryl Gwyn, which were published this week.
He was a witness to both probes, carried out under the 2013 Inquiries Act. This entitles his lawyers’ fees, travel costs and expenses to be met by the taxpayer.
A source said Slater’s legal costs for the Chisholm investigation – which examined a campaign to smear Serious Fraud Office boss Adam Feeley – were between $7500 and $10,000. The budget for the inquiry was $663,000, but the full costs – including Chisholm’s pay packet are yet to be finalised, a spokesman for the Department Internal Affairs said.
But it is probably worth spending tens of thousands of dollars on the lawyers feeding off of Cameron Slater.
We hear less of his braggadocio and more truth when actual lawyers advice the bullshit artist. The Chisholm report and the IGIS probe were both massively constrained by John Key’s very carefully limited terms of reference. However we received a lot of confirmation of the details in Dirty Politics. To the point that the conservative voices arguing that it never happened seem to have finally given up running that line.
I don’t expect that we will hear much from the “Taxpayers Union” about the cost to taxpayers of having to have these enquiries or paying Cameron Slaters legal bills. At least two of the participants in the ‘taxpayers’ union, Jordan Williams and David Farrar, have had quite a lot to do with dirty politics themselves. In reality the right wing lobby group appears to have been specifically set up as a mechanism to further corrupt the way politics operates in NZ.
But I expect that over the next few years and continued enquiries, we will hear more on how the arsehole of blogging and politics, Cameron Slater, has been helping damage our political system since his confidente and texting partner John Key took power. Like a moth to the flame, Cameron Slater will continue to flutter forth to damage his ‘friends’.
It is worth paying a portion of his immense legal load to continue to have a light shone on some of the crap that he has been involved with.
I’d point out that in the seven and a bit years that this site has been running, we have never had to consult a lawyer except socially over drinks, nor pay for one. Blogging doesn’t have to be about the kind of legal mire that Cameron Slater appears to wallow in.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress