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| So very, very close |
Published alongside other Newstalk ZB headings with friend Barry Soper's (“Grant Robinson has broken his promise by increasing bright-line test”), and his wife Kate Hawkesby's ("Everyone's ready for travel - except the PM”), his further article (“Delaying the travel bubble is a control exercise, pure and simple”) — both articles were written a few days before Queensland's new outbreak of the virus! — and the man again (“More broken promises and lies from this Government”), his "worst week for government" is riddled with innuendo, personal attacks, what appear to me to be libellous statements, and swear words. Here's the whole article, with offensive words and phrases highlighted, and a final comment:
Could this be the worst week for the Government?
“Was the tantalising prospect of a travel bubble with Australia, shattered by yet another vacuous, hyperbole filled sermon from the pulpit of bollocks and BS the biggest let down? Or was it the lie about the brightline test? Or was it the lie about the lie about the brightline test? Or was the government's insistence that Trevor Mallard is a good bloke they like to defend and the fact he's a bully isn't really an issue?
The fact all this unfolded in the one-year anniversary of level 4, just reminded us what a shambolic, disorganised, unprofessionally, ill planned for year this has been.
The upside is the bubble will come. It's close. It's late. Appallingly, economically ruinously late, but at least we'll have an actual real date soon.
I am convinced we are only here because of another lie. The one they told about Australia holding us up on reciprocation. It was busted by Scott Morrison the other week, thus sending our lot off on a mad scramble to try and save face and look like it wasn't them all along holding us up.
That would have been bad enough, but then came the brightline and its adjustment. The next lie was laid bare, and you had to remind yourself it was only Tuesday.
Given Grant Robertson was caught on tape saying what he said, that was bad enough. But for the Prime Minister to then lie about the lie and say they stayed silent on the issue defied belief. And then Robertson tried to squirm his way out of a lie by saying it was simply being too definitive. I mean, honestly, did they workshop that bollocks without going beetroot red?
This all makes Mallard sadly less of a story than it deserves to be. Pre-Covid, we would have been aghast. Not just at Mallard obviously, but the fact his party can continue to support a bloke so lacking in morale fortitude.
He knew he'd done wrong, but doubled down on it publicly, hired lawyers at our expense, still didn't back down, only to settle having wrecked some man's reputation. And then it was exposed that you threatened him in the process, at a point where you knew you were wrong.
After all that to refuse to walk and have your party mates run defence for you, exposes not just Mallard as the morally vacuous dead weight he is, but also the Labour Party. Headed by the Prime Minister acting more like a mafia enforcer than a woman whose forged support based on the facade of kindness.
What a week. What do they say about fish rotting from the head?”
In Hoskingspeak changing an opinion when circumstances change is a lie and admitting a mistake is squirming out of a lie. In such a world we are all sinners.
Expressing a different political opinion is fine; swearing, accusing your opponents of lying, and calling the Speaker a morally vacuous dead weight, the Minister of Finance a liar, and the Prime Minister a mafia enforcer and rotten fish head is not.
Hosking should be taken before the Media Council and, if these words were also used on air, before the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
– ACW
1 comment:
Yes they're an odd bunch, Croz. As you pointed out yesterday. Grateful the govt had the grist to make the decisions on Housing. Not that they are the whole answer but it takes time to negotiate the land and density issues, which it seems to me are the answer. But at least the interest expense restriction will slow the demand for property to some degree.
I think so many, not all of them journalists, are expecting a return to 'normal'. Can't see that ever happening. The vaccines will help but quite soon floods and droughts will be our regular experience. David Attenborough's last film, 'A Life on our Planet' is helpful and hopeful too - if we actually work to allow the wilderness to return. From memory Earth was 67% wilderness when he began his career in 1937; today its 34%. He shows how Chernobyl has returned to nature since mankind abandoned it.
Peter
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