Just lying around

Bigger lies than usual are forming the basis of this year’s election campaign. Hopefully the chorus of fabulists, confabulators, and downright liars will overhype things so much before November that they will be unmasked for all including the usually credulous to see.

We always get lies and half-truths from city councillors, members of parliament and heads of government departments, and election year is usually worse than other years, but this year is somewhat unusual in that our ultimate head of state is also involved.

Governor-General designate, Jerry Mateparae is right at the heart of a monstrous (in both senses of the word) cover-up over the behaviour of New Zealand troops in Afghanistan. The allegation has been made that our lads captured prisoners in Afghanistan and then handed them over the Afghan authorities and I think it is fair to say this is undeniable. But Jezza and his merry band are still trying to deny it and write off the consequences.

I gather one of their tactics has been to start arguing the semantics of the situation. Among the sillier suggestions that have been made is that we were involved in joint operations so (technically) it was our partners who were in charge and therefore guilty if anyone was of handing over people to be tortured. This is complete crap and the sort of argument one might expect from a ten year old who has been caught bang to rights.

Since Mateparae was in charge of our defence forces at the time, it is crucial we have an independent investigation into this before we even countenance having him take the job of Governor-General.

JiangQi has waded in to support the potential G-G by refusing an inquiry and throwing a few massive tito of his own into the mix. On this occasion I think his boyish enthusiasm has got the better of him and he might have just put his head in the noose with his allegations against Jon Stephenson, the journalist who broke this story in Metro. The Prime Minotaur made some pretty specific allegations which Stephenson has not only denied, but consulted his lawyer about. It would seem that he had a witness present when he was alleged to have called the PM and identified himself as Duncan Garner. Furthermore Stephenson claims JiangQi did not hang up on him at the time, but had a quite amicable conversation with him. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Stephenson taped that conversation. In fact I hope he did. I guess we’ll know soon.

So what are the other fantastical stories, fables, myths and bullshit that we have endured from the ruling party and their cronies so far this year?

Well their decision to change the rules around KiwiSaver is another example of their duplicity. This week they have confirmed what we have all been fearing for a couple of weeks; namely that the government will lower its contribution, thus breaking their contract with taxpayers ‘to make it more affordable’. That’s rich! Perhaps they could afford it if they returned their BMWs, demanded payment from Mediaworks, asked for the money back from AMI and stopped spending money on security for multi-nationals like Petrobras.

The following is a verbatim extract from the National Party policy on KiwiSaver – the one they campaigned upon at the last election:  National is committed to keeping the KiwiSaver scheme and making it an enduring and affordable scheme for members, employers, and taxpayers.

National is committed to maintaining New Zealand Superannuation payments at a minimum of 66% of the average after-tax wage.

National is committed to continuing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund in its current form and with the current contribution rate.

However what appears in our favour is that they are not planning to bring it into force until after the election. So if you want the government to hold up its end of this particular bargain, your only hope is to vote against the National Disgrace Party in November and hope like hell the other lot don’t try to pull the same stroke.

Among the other promises that are under threat is the plan to lead us to pay parity with Australia. Yeah, like that’s gonna happen while Bull Singlets is boasting to overseas investors what a great place NZ is to come to because ‘the wages are much lower than across the ditch’.

Of course most of us will have forgotten that GST wasn’t going up, either. Civil servants were being capped, but somehow (mysteriously) more than 2000 of them have gone.

Then of course we have to recall the vapid ramblings of that stupid cow Heck Yeah Parata when she was challenged about the decision to grant seismic drilling permits. She said they didn’t have the right to drill, but that is apparently completely wrong and the permit they were granted clearly states they are able to drill one well under the terms of that permit. Lady Gardiner should stick to pruning her roses.  

But to be fair, Heck Yeah was a latecomer to all of this and Jerry Brown-noser did all the really sneaky stuff like whipping this lot through without any consultation either with iwi or the general public.

So what lies in the future? Plenty more where that lot came from, I suspect. Semper Vigilans!