There are many different forms of corruption: graft, bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, influence peddling, and embezzlement.
Most of our politicians would not consider themselves to be corrupt, but they definitely fit many of the types of corruption, particularly patronage, influence peddling and lobbying.
They do these things to protect either their position or power, or someone close to them. But it is still corruption nonetheless.
Other media are loath, indeed even squeamish, to mention the word out loud but they they’ve also been corrupted with 55 million pieces of silver.
We, however, are funded entirely by our members and so are immune to influence peddling by the forces of the now corrupt regime.
So let’s examine four pieces of evidence from the last few days that show you just how corrupt the regime has become.
There is the ongoing, simmering cover-up and corruption being exhibited by Kainga Ora that has the regime reeling as revelation after revelation leaks out.
Emails show Kainga Ora is unapologetic about covering up the fact it was using a Labour candidate in taxpayer-funded advertising.
But new emails have emerged showing Kainga Ora officials unapologetic.
“The judgement call you made was fine, I am happy to stand behind you on it,” McKenzie wrote in an email to the senior communications executive on November 11.
“This little maelstrom will pass quickly, I just hope it doesn’t make you too risk-averse!”
Newshub
High praise indeed from the Chief Executive, Andrew McKenzie. As it has turned out the “little maelstrom” is now a full blown corruption scandal. Worse still is that the Chief Executive thinks they have done nothing wrong in promoting a Labour candidate, Arena Williams, covering it up, and lying to their minister:
Prior to that, on November 10, a general manager wrote: “I don’t like the implication of apology from us when we did no wrong.”
Newshub
Then there is the now revealed clear cut case of influence peddling where special, chosen, regime friendly academics were given briefings ahead of government decisions so they could front run those decisions in the media.
“Right from the start, we identified that in order to support New Zealanders’ confidence in the vaccines we bought, there was a need to take a science-based approach using trusted voices.
NZ Herald
The media are complicit in that too because they’ve used all these so-called ‘independent academics’ who were nothing of the sort.
Right from the start the regime decided that they should get some tame, carefully vetted, Labour supporting “experts” on board to promote their plan. They offered them money for their respective research programmes and paid air-time on TV, plus glowing media coverage, in return for their co-operation. It always seemed strange to me that all the “experts” were Labour supporters with none more so than Siouxsie Wiles.
Who would trust anything Shaun Hendy, Michael Baker, and Siouxsie Wiles say now? Especially now that we know they’ve simply been useful idiots for the Ardern regime to promote their strategy and their strategy alone. At the same time these so-called independent academics have attacked other academics who were not of the chosen few.
I wonder if it dawns on them that they have all been played by the tyrant, Jacinda Ardern? She wanted to look good on the world stage, she loved the accolades, so needed ‘experts’ (term used loosely) to make her look good. She even managed to get one of her sycophants awarded New Zealander of the Year. Now it is all crumbling down.
There is no word that one can use, other than corrupt, to describe these practices.
Then we have the appalling case of Chris Hipkins leaking private details of journalist Charlotte Bellis despite being warned not to by officials.
A lawyer representing New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis says the actions of Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins were “disgraceful” after it emerged he publicly disclosed private information about her despite officials telling him it was “not for public comment”.
Bellis was unable to secure an emergency MIQ spot despite being pregnant and stuck in Afghanistan. Soon after her case made headlines she was offered an emergency MIQ place.
As criticism mounted against Hipkins over his handling of the situation, he released her personal information about when he believed she had arrived in Afghanistan and that she had been offered consular assistance without her consent.
This information turned out not to be true, as Bellis was not in Afghanistan at the time the assistance was allegedly provided.
The information was also used against Bellis; people misinterpreted Hipkins’ comments and posted online Bellis had turned down MIQ spots, which was untrue.
Bellis’ lawyer has claimed Hipkins had breached the journalist’s privacy by sharing those details, which she had not consented to being made public.
National’s Covid-19 response spokesman Chris Bishop today revealed that responses to written parliamentary questions, which show Hipkins received the information from Mfat officials but was told all personal information was “not for public comment”.
The information, which included a briefing and media lines, was originally provided to Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta under a “no surprises” convention, given she was likely to receive media queries.
This was then passed on to Hipkins.
“The media lines provided followed established practice in noting that ‘for privacy reasons, we do not disclose details regarding individual cases’,” Mahuta’s response said.
Asked about this situation this morning before the health select committee, Hipkins repeatedly refused to answer questions about his actions, citing Bellis’ privacy.
Bellis’ lawyer Tudor Clee said that Hipkins had turned the information against Bellis as “a political weapon to smear her reputation with untruths was disgraceful”.
“By saying Bellis had been offered consular assistance twice since December – which was simply untrue – it misled the public and resulted in vicious online personal attacks.“
The sole reason for Bellis to come forward was to highlight issues with the MIQ system, he said.
“It is disappointing the response from Minister Hipkins was not constructive, relevant or even true and ultimately harmful to a New Zealand citizen.”
NZ Herald
Hipkins weaponised the information he received, shamelessly breached Charlotte Bellis’s privacy and all after he was on record attacking National over similar behaviours that he described as “dirty politics”:
Health Minister Chris Hipkins says Covid-19 patient details being leaked to the media by National MP Hamish Walker is “very disappointing” and has “a ring of dirty politics to it”.
TVNZ
Labour politicians are ever hypocrites and here Chris Hipkins has been caught out; hoisted by his own petard. Breaching someone’s privacy cost Hamish Walker his job. It should cost Hipkins his.
Labour will dig in and defend Hipkins, however, and that will just cement in the public’s mind that Labour and its ministers are corrupt hypocrites.
Finally, we have a nice piece that shows that the regime has been manufacturing statistics in order to drive the fear factor up over Covid-19 and therefore continuing the lie: the lie that allows them to continue to exert the controls over our society that helped return them to power in 2020.
The number of deaths clearly caused by COVID-19 is 34, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield has revealed, as the Government changes its “reporting approach“.
Dr Bloomfield said on Thursday the Ministry of Health would from now on report COVID-related deaths in three categories to provide more clarity about the impact of the coronavirus in New Zealand.
“I’d like to explain some changes to our reporting of COVID-related deaths. From today we will be moving to a new reporting approach. We will automatically report all who die within 28 days of testing positive for COVID-19,” Dr Bloomfield said in Wellington.
“This is the approach that’s used by the UK and many other countries and is the one that we will and have used for our official reporting to the World Health Organisation.”
– Reported COVID-related deaths will now be split into those clearly caused by COVID-19, those who died with COVID-19 but for whom the virus was not the cause of death, and those with COVID whose cause of death is still under investigation.The number of people for whom it is clear COVID-19 was the cause of death is 34
– The number of people who had or were subsequently found to have COVID-19 when they died but their cause of death was clearly not COVID-related is two
– The number of people who had COVID-19 but whose cause of death is still under investigation is 48
Newshub
Corrupt regimes suddenly change the way statistics are measured for one of two reasons: a) to cover up cock-ups or b) to get ready to hide bad news that is starting to creep into statistics. Nothing does that better than changing the definitions as we saw last week when we busted their manufacturing of statistics to hide the fact that vaccinated people are more than 2.5 times as likely to catch Covid than unvaccinated.
The UK changed their statistics at about the same time in the cycle of their Omicron outbreak when it was becoming apparent that vaccinated people were dying in large numbers. Is that the reason why our regime is now doing the same thing? Probably is the answer, because this regime has done nothing other than follow blindly what the rest of the world has done. Changing statistics is being done simply to try and shore up the flagging international reputation of the tyrant, Jacinda Ardern.
Four examples, all in the last two days show just how corrupt Jacinda Ardern‘s regime has become. Todd Muller did one good thing in his very short tenure as National’s leader: he sacked Hamish Walker and drove him out of parliament. It remains to be seen if Jacinda Ardern has the stones to sack Chris Hipkins, or will she die in yet another ditch protecting corrupt politicians?
Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
Karl Kraus
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