The Standard 2.02

on February 8, 2008

in blogs and brethren

. 8 Comments

Tony Milne responds to National Party blogger, David Farrar’s recent post on push polling.

Tony points out that any push polling undertaken during the last election was most likely a three way affair between the National Party, the Exclusive Brethren and conservative political consultants Crosby and Texter.

National have repeatedly tried to distance themselves from this scandal, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

Below is Senior Exclusive Brethren leader Neville Simmons being interviewed on ABC’s 4 Corners. He tells us very clearly that Brethren participated in phone canvassing only where National Party MPs “requested services”.

Mobile democracy

Published

on February 5, 2008

in brethren and national

. 5 Comments

Another release on the state-owned telecommunications company Kordia from Murry McCully this morning which starts:

Helen Clark’s claim that Kordia’s cellphone tower work for the repressive Government of Myanmar (Burma) somehow contributes to democracy in that country is fanciful, says National’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, Murray McCully.

An astute reader just sent us a great link to this article in the Washington Post on the relationship between modern cell phone technology and democratic advocacy in the Philippines.

MANILA — Raymond Palatino’s cellphone pinged loudly, and a text message lit up the display: “Other students are already marching. Where are you?”

Palatino and hundreds of others — nearly all carrying cellphones — were on their way to Manila’s gated presidential palace for a protest rally. Palatino and what people here call a “text brigade” were still a couple of miles away, about to board buses in the steamy midday heat…

“WEAR RED. BRING BANNERS.” The messages — faster and cheaper than phone calls — went to thousands of young people, telling them to gather near Morayta Street.

“I didn’t talk to anyone,” said Palatino, 26, a university graduate who has a contagious smile and aspires to be a teacher. “All the organizing is done through texting. It’s affordable and instant.”

Cellphones and text messaging are changing the way political mobilizations are conducted around the world. From Manila to Riyadh and Kathmandu protests once publicized on coffeehouse bulletin boards are now organized entirely through text-messaging networks that can reach vast numbers of people in a matter of minutes…

“Before, we had no choice but to keep quiet and listen to the president,” Palatino said, still holding his tiny phone. “This is a development for democracy.”

In McCully’s defence, the Brethren probably don’t use cellphones.

Discussing “constituency matters” with the Brethren

Published

on January 18, 2008

. 6 Comments

Today’s Age gives a few insights into “constituency matters” the Brethren discussed with John Howard from 2003 to 2006, the last about the same time they were commissioning private investigators to dig dirt on our Helen.

Support for George Bush and the war in Iraq featured highly, as according to the Brethren “God has clearly supported and vindicated the initiative (in Iraq) and we are assured they will continue to do so as long as there is dependence on Him for guidance.” There is obviously something wrong with their line to God, as it was wrong on Iraq, and their prayers didn’t work for Brash or Howard.

They also provided political advice, cautioning Howard against changes to Medicare before the election. However they advised “If you consider it necessary to change Medicare we suggest you leave it till after the next election.” He took their advice, sacked the then Minister Kay Patterson, put in Tony Abbott who gave a cast-iron guarantee that there would be no changes before the election in 2004, then brought a levy in in 2005. The National Party also seem to be following this advice here.

Congratulations to the Age for keeping up a 14-month freedom of information campaign “during which Mr Howard’s office stalled at each step.” Once again the Aussie media do a better job than ours; nobody has so far asked Howard’s mate John Key exactly what were the constituency matters that the Brethren discussed with him in May 2005 prior to their letter offering a million dollars to campaign for National’s party vote that year.

Support for the war on Iraq perhaps?

From the archives: who said it?

Published

on December 7, 2007

. 48 Comments

In my work as a constituent MP, I have often been emotionally shocked at the dilemmas that some constituents get trapped in. However, none have matched the trauma and plight of a young married couple in my electorate who have been fighting for over two years without success for the return of their children…

At the heart of this case is the Exclusive Brethren Church. The public face of the church is a group of hard working, honest people who keep very much to themselves and do no harm. But there is a more sinister side of the church which is involved in extreme forms of psychological blackmail that is used to rip families apart in the name of Christianity.

The couple I speak of were both born and bred in the Exclusive Brethren Church, were married at a young age and had three beautiful children. The trouble began for the family when the wife strayed from the strict doctrine of the church and dared dress her children in bright colours and, shock horror, denim. The husband was put under tremendous emotional pressure to control his wife and mend her “Godless ways.” The church ostracised the couple and the resulting stress caused marital problems…

…I wish to expose the Exclusive Brethren Church for destroying families… Many relationships between parents, children, brothers and sisters have also been jettisoned by the Exclusive Brethren Church. The church’s obsession in keeping these children from their parents is on the surface driven by the desire to raise them in the Exclusive Brethren faith. But there is also a more sinister underlying agenda. This case is very well known in the sect, both here and abroad, and the threat of losing one’s family is a very powerful force that can be used to maintain discipline in the church.

(Hat tip: Matthew Pilott)

Big Brother bringing in National’s cash?

Published

on December 6, 2007

. 71 Comments

John Hales, the secretive Australian world leader of the Exclusive Brethren (known as the Elect Vessel), met the elect faithful in Christchurch yesterday. According to a former member of the church quoted in the article, his main purpose would be raising cash.

But just prior to the recent Australian election, the Australian Labor Party reported the Brethren to the Police and the Australian Electoral Commission under Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering Act, alleging that $120,000 in cash had been deposited into an account used to pay for advertisements for the re-election of John Howard. The Australian Federal Police are investigating the allegations.

The Brethren have themselves acknowledged on their website that they transfer cash around the world, “to do the work of the Lord.” They say that none of this money is used for political donations. To which one can only answer - yeah right!

However it also raises another interesting possibility. The Electoral Finance Bill will severely resrict anonymous donations from January 1 next year - perhaps Hales is getting in ahead of the new law, just like Key has tried to do with National’s abortive $200,000 video.

Granny’s blue woolly slippers

Published

on November 17, 2007

in brethren, election funding and media

. 21 Comments

Granny’s campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill started with a bang and ended with a whimper. On Monday there was a banner headline “Democracy under attack”, complete with a front page editorial, a fuzzy picture of a masked woman, and a serpent cartoon. By Friday our crusading heroes had reduced the protection of democracy to the rights of cranks to spend their own money. Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan would be impressed.

And what a rewrite of history. According to dear old Granny, (and it may be a sign of early Alzheimer’s), the Exclusive Brethren were just a harmless bunch of tieless men and women with bad haircuts wearing hankies on their heads, so their money wouldn’t be a problem to anyone. And if the bumblefoot National party leader just happened to let slip what the world wasn’t meant to know, well no harm was done because we found out about it (but not via Granny).

It is a pity that New Zealanders are so badly served by the quality of most - not all - political comment in our media. The Australians do it much better. If you want a couple of decent analyses of the Brethren’s covert political activities around the world, read David Marr in the Sydney Morning Herald here, or watch the ABC’s recent Four Corners programme here. At least the Fairfax media repeated Marr’s story in the Sunday Star-Times.

The covert collusion between the National Party and the Brethren (among others) to avoid the spending limits of the Electoral Act was by far the biggest political story out of the last election campaign. Brash was caught lying in the campaign, but it took Nicky Hager to tell the full story of the extent of that collusion in the Hollow Men.

The second biggest political story of recent times is just who were the group in the National Party who provided that immense quanitiy of leaked material to Hager. Leaks of that scale and size are very rare in politics, and are evidence of deep-seated division and malaise in the National Party. Since the reef fish in our political media don’t seem interested in the really big stories, thestandard will bring you all the facts and the questions over the next little while.

Granny gulled by National and Brethren spin

Published

on November 15, 2007

in brethren, election funding and media

. 58 Comments

Granny Herald wants to run a campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill when it doesn’t understand the Electoral Act. Worse, because it doesn’t understand the Act it makes assertions that are neither true to the law or in line with the facts. So it keeps repeating National and Brethren spin.

One example is in yesterday’s editorial which says “The law also forbids others from publishing material that declares support for a candidate or party without their authorisation, lest it breach their spending limit.” What the law actually says is that “No person shall publish … any advertisement… which encourages or persuades or appears to encourage or persuade voters to vote for a party or candidate”.

Granny goes on: “The Brethren took care that theirs did not expressly support National while it attacked Labour.” This repeats the same misunderstanding of the law that Brash used in his defence - “encourage or persuade” does not need to be express in order to be captured by the law. Granny doesn’t understand the law.

Not only that the Herald’s facts are wrong. The Brethren showed draft pamphlets to the Chief Electoral Office when they were seeking advice as to how to run their $1.2million campaign in support of Brash and National without having it attributed to National.

One of these had blue ticks, similar to those used by National. The Electoral office advised that these were in a grey area and were probably captured by the Act, and care shoud be taken to avoid these grey areas. The Brethren did not take careful note of this advice and went ahead with the blue ticks which the Chief Electoral Officer decided were in support of National and referred to the Police.

Then National denied they knew about the campaign which we now know was also not true. Had this truth come out earlier than the publication of the Hollow Men the Brethren’s $1.2million would have been attriutable to National, and put it well over its limit.

New Zealand does have a highly regulated system, with low spending caps compared to other countries. We do not have political parties spending huge amounts of money as they do in Australia, Great Britain and the US where there are no limits on what can be spent to buy votes. If the Herald believes that money is not important in election campaigns, this is clearly not a view shared in those countries.

It is therefore even more important in our tightly regulated system that relatively significant amounts of money, half as much as National’s legal limit in this case, are not available under the counter to one party as was the case in the last election. It is this sort of rort that does need to stop; this is why the Electoral Finance Bill is needed.

Take the blinkers off Granny

Published

on November 15, 2007

in brethren, election funding and media

. 32 Comments

Granny Herald tries to defend itself against National Party bias by saying it ran a headline “I am not a liar” over Brash after he admitted on bFM knowing that the Brethren were going to issue pamphlets attacking labour, three days after saying he knew absolutely nothing about them.

Brash’s exact words were “I knew they were going to issue pamphlets attacking the government, and I said ‘that’s tremendous, I’m delighted by that because the government is lousy and should be changed.’”

Any ordinary person would say that amounted to consent to their distribution by the leader of the National Party.

But Brash’s was not the only National Party denial that was issued that day. Steven Joyce, the National party manager, wrote to the Chief Electoral Office that same day to say “the National Party had not authorised or consented to the publication or distribution of the pamphlets.”

That statement was all about the money. Joyce was replying to a letter from the Chief Electoral Office asking a number of questions, based on the similarity of the blue tick on the pamphlets to that used by National. One asked whether the National Party knew about the pamphlets.

We now know from the Hollow Men that Joyce did know about the Brethren’s activities and Brash and others knew about the pamphlets. Had Joyce told the truth, that the National Party knew about the Brethren campaign and consented to the distribution of the pamphlets, the Chief Electoral Office would undoubtedly have decided that their expense should be attributed to the National Party. An extra million dollars would have put National way over its limit.

National’s parallel campaign with the Brethren corrupted the 2005 election process. Also for a newspaper to argue that a million-dollar print advertising campaign would have absolutely no effect is about as silly as it gets. That is the real insult to voters’ intelligence.

The Herald can be excused for not knowing about this at the time, but not for not understanding now the implications of Brash’s denial on the National Party spending limits. The Electoral Finance Bill is needed so rorts such as this cannot happen again.

Tell the full story Audrey

Published

on November 12, 2007

in brethren and media

. 3 Comments

Grannywriter Audrey Young’s story headlined “Exclusive Brethren’s email sets stage for Electoral Finance Bill” is more National Party spin. The Brethren’s email to Chief Electoral Officer Henry on 8 June 2005 followed their letter to Don Brash and John Key on 24 May 2005 in which they wrote of a meeting the previous week with then National party manager Steven Joyce. Hickmott’s offer went to Joyce, then to Key and Brash, and he was obviously warned to check how they could do it legally without cutting into National’s spending limit.

National wasn’t spending up early because of uncertainty over the election date. It was because they knew there was over a million dollars worth of pamphlets arguing for a party vote to “change the government,” the National Party slogan, coming from the Brethren in the last week of the campaign. They thought they could spend their money and have a “parallel campaign’ to use Don Brash’s words, working for them in the last two weeks.

‘National believes the Exclusive brethren cost the party the election” parrots Audrey - well in a funny way it did, as the campaign was a complete fizzer - but it was their own fault. And the Brethren aka “Christian businessmen” - Audrey’s also into a bit of Brethren spin - didn’t out themselves. It was the Greens - the Brethren had used identical pamphlets complete with the same grass leaf against the Greens in Tasmania the year before.

And nobody should think that we have seen the last of them. National has recently re-appointed Steven Joyce as campaign chairman, and the Brethren in Australia have been in to discuss “constituency matters” with John Howard in Australia in the last month or so. Joyce was the author of the National slogan, and anyone who thinks that the Brethren just happened to think of it all by themselves is playing with the fairies.

More lies from National and their Brethren

Published

on October 19, 2007

. 8 Comments

Last year Gerry Brownlee told TVNZ that there was “no formal connection” between National and the Brethren. Last week John Key told a meeting on London that “there were no alliances between National and the Brethren”.

Yet Andrew Simmons has just told the ABC that telephone canvassing done for National during the campaign was done “by volunteers at the request of individual MPs”. You can watch him below.

Simmons also maintains the Brethren Church line that their activity in the election had nothing to do with the Brethren Church, and was all done by individual volunteers who just happened to be Brethren Church members. You can watch the whole video here.

Yet the Brethren volunteers, some as young as fifteen, campaigned extensively in at least fifteen electorates. In some cases the phoning was done from the Westmount schools, owned by the Brethren Church.

Ask yourself how God will judge them.

Cash in envelopes and the Brethren in politics

Published

on October 17, 2007

. 2 Comments

A fascinating piece from the ABC programme Four Corners details exactly how the Brethren funded ads in support of the Liberals in Australia. After an initial whitewash from the Austrlian Electoral Commission, the source of the money paid in cash into a front company called Willmac enterprises is now under police investigation. This company paid for ads in Tasmania that were invoiced to the Liberal Party.

Kiwi watchers will note the same pattern of patter from John Howard and Peter Costello as used by Don Brash and John Key - “I was just meeting constituents and it would be a sin if I didn’t.” Yeah right.

The story also details Brethren activities in the US and New Zealand. Its a really good piece of investigative journalism.

You can visit the site and watch the video and other interviews here.

The real crime with the Brethren spending

Published

Eddie

on October 12, 2007

. 35 Comments

I want to clarify the major difference between the Brethren spending money to elect National and the union’s spending money to elect Labour. The Brethren spent $1.2million and National didn’t have to account for it. Whatever the unions spent on Labour came under Labour’s spending cap. So in fact the National Party got what was in effect $1.2 million EXTRA to spend on election advertising. That’s half as much again as they were allowed. If it had been attributable it would have put them way over their cap and in deep donkey do with the law.

We know for certain as a result of emails in “The Hollow Men” that the Brethren wrote to Don Brash and John Key seeking to support National’s campaign. We know for certain as a result of the documents released at the conclusion of the police enquiry that the same Brethren spokesman later wrote to the Chief Electoral Officer informing him that the Brethren wished to spend $1.2 million in a campaign to elect Don Brash. He and others sought a meeting with the Chief Electoral Officer as they had a number of questions they wished to put to him about the legality of their campaign, particularly in relation to whether or not their spending would be counted as part of the National Party’s expenditure limit.

The Brethren took three different examples of advertisements to the Electoral Office. The advice they were given was that if advertising was negative, that is it did not advocate for a political party, it did not need authorisation and would not be attributable, but that there were grey areas in what might “appear to support” a Party and care was needed.

One of the ads was purely negative and not attributable, one was clearly advocating for Don Brash and would be attributable, and the Brethren were advised that the third one because of its use of blue ticks, was considered most likely needing to be authorised and to be attributed.

So what did the Brethren do? After having received this advice from the Chief Electoral Officer, they produced at least seven separate ads, all with the National Party’s blue ticks and the National Party’s election slogan & Party vote, change the government. So the $1.2m they spent should have been authorised as advised by the Electoral Office, and therefore attributed to National.

We know National and the Brethren were complicit. But none of this shows the Chief Electoral Office in good light either. They either pulled the wool over the Chief Electoral Officer’s eyes or he was deliberately looking the other way.

Video: John Key meets Brethren

Published

on October 12, 2007