Without a trace of irony

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, October 1st, 2010 - 20 comments
Categories: accountability, Parliament, rodney hide, scoundrels - Tags: , , ,

Rodney Hide has taken a complaint to Parliamentary Services over Phil Twyford EA sending a message from his work email calling on people to vote for Len Brown

“Hide said it was important that the democratic independence of local government was protected. “As such, individual MPs should not use their taxpayer-provided resources to influence local government elections in any way,”

This from the guy who used his ministerial powers to try to gerrymander the Supercity for a right-wing coup. They minister who referred to John Banks as a ‘super mayor’ and has been pretty open in his endorsement of Banks for the job.

So a new EA writes to people and saying ‘hey, I’m voting for this guy, you should too’.It’s against the rules and the MP apologises that day. Who cares? We’ve lost nothing. Email is essentially free.

If we want to talk about abuses of Parliamentary resources, how about a minister spending tens of thousands of dollars taking his girlfriend to Disneyland on the taxpayers’ dime? Or how about the leader of his party who covered up his law and order spokeperson’s heinous criminal behaviour and lies to Court, and, when caught, tried to keep the MP on. Or how about the minister who tried to use his ministerial event as a party fundraiser?

PS. You’ve got to love how Farrar jumps all over this. Parliament makes Gerry Brownlee dictator and Farrar’s there defending dictatorship but heaven forbid that an MP’s EA mistakenly mis-uses a free taxpayer email.

20 comments on “Without a trace of irony ”

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  1. mcflock 1
    1 October 2010 at 7:23 pm

    Hide no longer qualifies for the term “two-faced”.

    He makes no pretence at all that he’s not a loathsome hypocrite, and he just can’t see why some people have a problem with it.

  2. comedy 2
    1 October 2010 at 7:25 pm

    Wow Phil Twyford has done this without a trace of irony.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10577111

    “Labour Party Auckland issues spokesman Phil Twyford said the comment passed doubt on the integrity of the Government’s reform process in Auckland.

    “You have to ask yourself is this whole exercise about the long term health of Auckland’s democracy, or is it about the Government installing its mates to rule our country’s largest city.”

    Oh to get them all the local body politicians and MPs to a meeting in Palmerston North and then nuke the fucking lot of hypocritical fucks

    • Cnr Joe 2.1
      2 October 2010 at 9:18 am

      what’d palmy do to scar you so badly our little comic friend?

      • comedy 2.1.1
        2 October 2010 at 10:04 am

        He he – worked there for a while……… I take it back it ain’t so bad – some great pubs and eateries and nice people – I wouldn’t really foist the politicians on ya !!-

  3. actoid 3
    1 October 2010 at 7:38 pm

    Hide can talk – leaked emails show staff in his office have been on Banks’ campaign. What utter hypocrisy.

    This email (final one in the post) claims paid staffers Brian Nicole (who was fired from Banks 2004 campaign for dirty smears), Chris Diack and Stu Wilson are involved in Banks’ campaign: http://whaleoil.gotcha.co.nz/2010/08/20/anatomy-of-a-failed-leak-coup-smear/

    The Twyford story is nothing. This is major. Ministerial staff working for the Local Government Minister in ACT party office are helping on a local campaign. They should be fired and Hide should step down.

    Maybe he should report himself? Maybe the media should ask him what involvement these men have had in Banks failing campaign?

    Remember – John Banks almost became a candidate and leader for ACT in 2005

  4. mickysavage 4
    1 October 2010 at 8:39 pm

    Farrar et al are beating up on this.

    It really has to be the biggest non story for a while and Twyford should have said so.

    The cost of his emails will be, after considering power, depreciation of his laptop and the Parliamentary Services server and allowing for various adjustments such as insurance and rates on the floor space that the server occupies and other stuff that I cannot even think of right now should be in the vicinity of 5c.

    Phil should pay back 20 times this amount. I will gladly dip into my own pocket to allow him to do so immediately.

  5. Rex Widerstrom 5
    1 October 2010 at 8:42 pm

    Whoever the bastard was who bought Rodney those shoes with the concentric circles on them really has a lot to answer for.

  6. Just Me 6
    1 October 2010 at 8:55 pm

    Sorry Steve but email is not free.

    It may be cheap but there is a cost associated to providing the hardware, bandwidth, technical skills etc to provide this service. In this case those costs are paid for you and I the tax payer.

    As for the comments re Rodney and Disneyland please correct me if I’m wrong but while it may have been a politically idiotic thing for Rodney to have done after positioning himself as Parliament’s Perk Buster, he neither broke any rules or claimed anything he wasn’t legally entitled to.

    • Eddie 6.1
      1 October 2010 at 11:32 pm

      The marginal cost of an email is as close to zero as you can get. the computers and internet services are being provided and in use anyway. a few kbs of data is nothing.

      the disneyland trip violated the rules that key had just laid down. they weren’t cabinet manual, they were the pm’s personal code of conduct for his ministers.

      nice to see you’ll defend hide and go batty over a few emails.

    • burt 6.2
      1 October 2010 at 11:47 pm

      Be careful comparing something not illegal but repugnant to Labour vs something illegal and apparently done by Labour. Last time somebody did that we got the EFA to shut down the EB and to legalise the pledge card type spending.

    • Vicky32 6.3
      1 October 2010 at 11:58 pm

      Yeah, the taxpayer will go broke over one email! I hear Bugs Bunny again…
      Deb

  7. Armchair Critic 7
    1 October 2010 at 9:12 pm

    Well if it’s against the rules,it’s against the rules and Mr Twyford must accept the consequences. I’d like to know why it is against the rules before being too harsh.
    The trip to Disneyland is peanuts in comparison to Mr Hide’s $100million for reorganising Auckland, especially considering the lack of any cost savings.

  8. toad 8
    1 October 2010 at 9:26 pm

    Have to say this is a stupid Parliamentary Service rule. Phil Twyford boots up his laptop, and sends the message from his personal email account, and all is good. But do it from his Parliamentary email account, and all hell breaks loose.

    Just plain silly. All it saved was about 2 minutes of Phil’s time, and it cost next to nothing. Parliamentary Service really does need to get up to speed re technology. I can understand that if an EA spent hours sending letters through the post it would be an abuse of Parliamentary funding. But FFS, this was a couple of minutes at most on an email, that may well have been sent during the EA’s lunchbreak or teabreak.

    • burt 8.1
      1 October 2010 at 10:59 pm

      Silly rule eh, well lets just ignore it and if we ever get it called against us we say the ref made a bad call and retrospectively validate ourselves. Doooh – oposition now Twyford, nobody riding shotgun for you this time. Only option is to find a National or ACT MP doing it and say ‘they did it too’.

  9. Drakula 9
    1 October 2010 at 9:30 pm

    I am with mcflock here , when I heard about this on the radio today I thought what a bloody hypocrite!

    To have the audacity to even comment on this is absolutely ludicrous, no with his lack of credibility Hide is not in any position to comment.

  10. gobsmacked 10
    1 October 2010 at 9:42 pm

    The magnificent mind of Rodney Hide:

    When he hears about an MP’s office sending e-mails, hurting nobody and costing nothing, Rodney leaps into action. He is a Man on a Mission – no, nothing gets past Rodney! The nation must be told about this “crime”!

    But when an ACT candidate tells him he stole the identity of a dead child, Rodney forgets all about it immediately!

    Act leader Rodney Hide said he wan’t sure if disgraced MP David Garrett had told him how he obtained a fake passport in the name of a dead child.

    ”I actually couldn’t remember if he declared it, how he did it to me,” Hide said. “I don’t know what level of detail I knew.

    ”I think I remember that he got something off the cemetery. I didn’t know the age of the child.”

  11. ianmac 11
    1 October 2010 at 11:08 pm

    The strange thing is the way in which the MSM has made so much of it. It can’t be the cost. Practically nothing.
    To embarrass Phil for the future election? After all the general population will be reminded of the “crime” in due course and the gravity will be lost. Is a Phil a threat? Must be.

  12. Jum 12
    1 October 2010 at 11:24 pm

    Don’t apologise Phil; we need all the help we can get to rid New Zealand of this global disease gone viral called JKeyll and Hide Kiwi betrayal.

  13. Trevor Mallard 13
    2 October 2010 at 8:58 am

    All this shows is that Phil has got under Hides thick skin. Well done. ps this is from my parliamentary computer which I regularly use to draft speeches designed to undermine Nact. The rule is a nonsense.

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