You’re too kind

Written By: - Date published: 7:51 am, October 28th, 2008 - 16 comments
Categories: john key, Media - Tags:

Audrey Young is now acknowledging Key’s reflexive tendency to lie, but she is incredibly soft on it:

I was intrigued at Key’s suggestion that cutting Kiwisaver to fund tax cuts had been part of National’s response to the economic downturn because that has been the plan all along.

I was also intrigued by his reasoning for having ruled out Peters from a deal with National – he said Parliament had censured him – excepting Parliament censured him on September 22 and Key had ruled him out a month earlier.

He also talked about recruiting an extra 600 more cops – which is over-inflating National’s policy – to recruit an extra 224 officers over the 376 already planned by the end of 2011 – a total of 600.

That’s a little bit like saying – as he did – that National’s tax cuts would deliver about an extra $50 a week to the average worker – which it included Labour’s October 1 tax cuts, and the gains were worth much less to earners entitled to Working for Families.

I’m sure his head is swimming with facts at present and it would be easy to get confused.

Key is not confused. These are the same lies he repeats each time he speaks. It is a purposeful attempt to over-state his policies. One should not be intrigued, one should be outraged and ready to insist on the truth instead. Young goes on to say:

Clark was criticised for not pulling up John Key on things he got wrong on the One leaders’ debate. But after last night’s experience, of a fast moving live show, I have a bit more sympathy for her.

Well, I’m sorry, Audrey, but you and Clark are professionals in the political arena. You should have the facts at your fingertips and know a stock spin line when your hear it. It was entirely predictable Key would repeat the same lies he has been stating before. In letting him get away with it, you fail in your duty to inform the public.

16 comments on “You’re too kind ”

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  1. Kerry 1
    28 October 2008 at 8:09 am

    Hey has anyone heard the rumours…..the naughty nats are about to come a cropper…

  2. illuminatedtiger 2
    28 October 2008 at 10:25 am

    My experience of Key so far has been that he’s a pathological liar. Certainly not fit to hold the top job.

  3. Steve Withers 3
    28 October 2008 at 10:29 am

    The Herald wants National to be the government – alone, preferably – so we should be grateful (in a way) that they even mention these things. Voters who are paying attention will be able to decode the content.

    Whereas Winston got 47 front page articles detailing his (claimed) perfidy, John Key gets a sympathetic “must be confused” euphemism for systematically misleading people…..repeatedly.

    It would be funny if there was another – honest – newspaper in Auckland. Sadly, there isn’t.

    Balancing Young’s column we have the front page story from John Armstrong about how National have finally got their campaign up and running in the “fast lane” with the same economic package Young raises questions about.

    More wishful thinking from the Herald.

  4. Steve Pierson 4
    28 October 2008 at 10:43 am

    Steve. This is Young’s blog, it doesn’t even get published. Young and others use their blogs to criticise Key safe in the knowledge that most people don’t read them.

  5. forgetaboutthelastone 5
    28 October 2008 at 10:48 am

    John Armstrong with the classic hedged bet as well as the claim of “insider knowledge”:

    “Insiders say considerable and careful thought has been given to all this. If it is popular, the package could give Key unstoppable momentum. If it is not, it could throw the campaign wide open.”

    Thanks for the insight there John Armstrong… not.

  6. gobsmacked 6
    28 October 2008 at 10:56 am

    Here’s another one Audrey Young might like to follow up on. If she wants to check it out, it’s from a report by … Audrey Young (Herald, today).

    “National leader John Key says the financial support scheme to be unveiled this week would most likely be a grant, not a loan, to people who lost their jobs in the recession and could not meet their mortgage payments. … He said the scheme would not differentiate between people who lost their job through incompetence or through the downturn.

    (my italics)

    Woo hoo! Free money for losers! From John’s money tree!

    (c’mon boss, I’m wasting time on the net, hurry up and sack me, I need the cash …)

  7. randal 7
    28 October 2008 at 11:02 am

    just finished listening to simon power on natrad
    every time there was a vote in parliament for more police the nats stymied the vote just to frustrate labour
    when Phil Gough asked him why he just went completely off topic and started to talk about bail laws
    what a complete dork

  8. Ianmac 8
    28 October 2008 at 11:16 am

    Audrey may have a conflict of interest. Write publicly in print that which she believes to be true and risk her job, or restrict herself to just writing in her blog out of sight? Mmmmm….
    Audrey did give us “Transrail eyes” though. Great!

  9. randal 9
    28 October 2008 at 11:31 am

    not only do they lie but they are stupid.
    Just heard Rod Oran on natrad talking about the inability of federated farmers to write a proper r&d policy.
    they are so busy promising everybody everything and being cute that they just dont seem to understand what it is that really needs doing

  10. idiotic ak 10
    28 October 2008 at 11:46 am

    “National leader John Key says the financial support scheme to be unveiled this week would most likely be a grant, not a loan…

    Potential disaster for the NACT here. This has all the hallmarks of yet another off-the-cuff blood-rush by the Gambler, akin to the KillWinnie classic. The clue was in the “details in a week or so” throwaway and the “most likely” above.

    Right now some very worried young tory pen-pushers will be desperately trying to get their heads around current benefit law (including the notorious Temporary Additional Support) in an attempt to add some faintly acceptable flesh to this brainfart while Bill English gazes on laconically thinking “he’s done it again….told ya” (and struggling to hold it in – someone should interview him).

    Not only does it betray a pitiful naivety as to the most basic mechanisms of the benefit system (which already caters in excruciating detail for any area of need) from one so “concerned for the underclass”, and a desperate attempt to milk the fears of the middle class: it also clearly exposes the Slipper’s total lack of political nous and conviction.

    Expanded NANNY STATE welfare hand-outs from the Right? But only TARGETED at those with mortgages? Won’t this require many more EVIL BUREAUCRATS? And aren’t we expecting a BRIGHTER FUTURE any more?

    Can’t wait for the details on this sucker…..

  11. Dom 11
    28 October 2008 at 11:50 am

    Key is definitely confused about road safety.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diAXfbISefI&feature=channel

    Yet ANOTHER ad where he doesn’t wear a seatbelt! I guess he was just following what it said in his diary…

  12. Dom 12
    28 October 2008 at 11:53 am

    Key is definitely confused about road safety.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diAXfbISefI&feature=channel

    Yet another ad where he doesn’t wear a seatbelt…

  13. Shonkey 13
    28 October 2008 at 12:39 pm

    There are so many overstatements, now and in his past.

    Here a few doozies:

    – the idea in his Herald profile that he was global head of forex for most of his Merrill London years. In fact it appears from trade press reports that he only held that position for about 2 1/2 years (1998-mid 2000) one of a string of global heads at Merrill that never quite managed to get it right as Euromoney reports.

    – the claim on his parliamentary biography that he was on the Foreign Exchange Committee of the Ferderal Reserve of New York for three years. The FEC’s annual reports show that he was appointed for a three year term from 2000 to 2003 but quit the FEC in March 2001, and so was on the committee for 15 months, not three years. He would have attended at most 11 meetings.

    – and one I find the most distasteful of all, trading off the tragedies of two Merrill families for political aggrandisement. In 2003 debate on the border security bill, Key told Parliament that on September 11, 2001

    my boss, Michael Packer, died. He was giving a speech on the 108th floor, at Windows on the World. He perished with another two employees from Merrill Lynch, both of whom worked for me and whom I had recruited from the private sector.

    Packer probably was the now Australian-domiciled Key’s boss in e-commerce but I doubt he had anything to do with the other two Merrill employees killed on 9/11. One was 26-year-old Robert McIlvaine, hired only in July 2001 for New York based communications jobs (Key’s already in Australia by then); the other was David Brady, a 16-year veteran at Merrill and a New York based private client advisor who looked after about 150 wealthy families. Key had barely made his first forex trade in 1985 and he’s claiming he hired this guy…

  14. Ari 14
    28 October 2008 at 12:46 pm

    Dom, he’s clearly wearing a seatbelt there.

  15. Swampy 15
    30 October 2008 at 2:34 am

    Audrey Young is one of the best political commentators in the print media. I wouldn’t even know what her own political persuasion actually is, and that’s the way it should be. It makes a refreshing change from the very obvious politically motivated comments of others.

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