Spin spins out

What seemed like an erudite and reasoned defence of the Diva showed up in comments to an earlier post today. Even we felt a little chastened. He was, it claimed, innocent in the eyes of any number of investigatory bodies, including:

3. The Local Govt Commission investigated and found that Laws had done nothing wrong.

Perhaps the onset of dementia had affected the Watchers? We're always willing to fact-check if challenged, so we did so. Not all the replies have come in yet, but we thought we'd share the first with you:

From : lgc-at-dia-dot-govt-dot-nz
Sent : Thursday, 4 August 2005 4:50:31 p.m.
To : lawswatch-at-hotmail-dot-com
Subject : Re: Report of investigation in certain matters concerning Napier City Council


Dear Laws Watch

Thank you for your inquiry.

The Local Government Commission has not conducted an investigation into Mr Laws' activities at any time.

Yours sincerely

Francis Ryan

for Chief Executive Officer

Wait... what's that we smell? Could it be some people are spinning so fast they're smouldering?

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The ship of State...

...must be sinking, if the rats are leaving so quickly.

LawsWatch hears, from normally reputable sources, that none other than Graeme "GK" Taylor is to depart both the Council and Wanganui. He's probably the Diva's staunchest and most able ally.

So, will there be a by-election?

Next highest polling candidate is former councillor Margaret Campion, who definitely won't be a forelock-tugger. Her Annual Plan submissions would not have pleased the Diva, and apparently he walked out while she was speaking.

And if there is going to be a by-election, could it be that Sue Pepperell might decide it was a good time to go gracefully?

Who would Vision put up? Not Bob Walker, surely.

More as it comes to hand, as they say...

More: Described by Laws as "an old friend of mine from Hawke’s Bay days when he was coach of a very fine first division Hawke’s Bayteam, and I was the local MP. That he has come to reside in Wanganui – and that he is chief executive of SportWanganui – is a real fillip for our region". So what does it indicate if he's decided to turn his back on the place?

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Doomed to repetition

There's been much debate in comments on various posts as to the Diva's past... shall we say... indiscretions.

One anonymii suggested: Winnie's probably astute enough to know that if the Diva is on the list, the less time the media (and LawsWatch) have to pull out the dirty linen the better.

To which another riposted: Is this the dirty linen that allowed Laws to win the mayoralty handsomely and lead a team to dominate council. We should all that kind of dirty linen ... there is a saying that misusing extreme language will eventually debase it.

Earlier, someone else said: Yes, Laws really should have taken his lumps at the time instead of weaselly pretending he'd done nothing wrong. I mean, let's face it, he'd only illegally mis-appropriated public funds and lied about it, which is pretty standard behaviour for a politician.

To which someone else rather rudely responded: No he didn't you dork. read the background & you'll find he was cleared by all agencies & no public monies were involved. Inventing history does you no credit.

And in a more reasoned tone, yet another commenter suggested: Yeah its wrong to talk illegality. If it was, it would have been prosecuted as such and no-one was. It was certainly an error of judgement on Laws' part but he took his lumps and has moved on. Some people here should too. It distracts totally from what's important.

"Moving on" is all very well, provided you find no truth in the aphorism that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". One of the raison d'etres of LawsWatch is to ensure the Diva's history is not forgotten, because past behaviour is, we find, usually an excellent pointer to future behaviour.

We were going to type up a lengthy reminder of the Antoinette Beck Affair but we'd never manage to write as well as Russell Brown (whose Hard News is now on the excellent Public Address site) who, back in April 1996 when it was actually happening, summarised the Diva's fall from grace this way:

It would be wise to put nothing past a man [Winston Peters] who can make a political virtue out of the resignation of one of his MPs on the basis that he lied, covered up a forgery and spent public money with his wife's company. All were small transgressions, but I've long felt uneasy about Michael Laws' polls, which were so frequent as to seem like a fetish. For a while there, you expected him to consult his electorate on whether he should have a crap before or after breakfast.

Anyway, for those who couldn't work out the details, what happened is this. Last December, Laws, who was a Napier City councillor as well as an MP, told the mayor his electoral office could do some research. BZZT! That's not what your electoral office funding is for, Michael. He then got Harlequin, a research company part-owned by his wife, to do the poll. BZZT! Politicians should not channel public money into family interests.

The poll is done and the report is signed off by someone called Antoinette Beck. BZZT! Publicly-funded reports should not be signed off by non-existent people. By March, the tie-up between Laws wife and Harlequin was public knowledge - and a trifle embarassing to Laws. But it got worse. Early this month, it became clear that the signature on the report was false. A director of Harlequin, Paul Sheriff, claimed the "prank" signature was his and resigned. Laws let him do this. BZZZT! Don't tell lies, Michael. Eventually, once both Parliament and the council had gotten interested, it emerged that Laws secretary did the dodgy signature. Actually, I suspect it won't end there. There are none who cop vengeance so badly as the holier-than-thou - and all the unholy will be lining up to have a crack at Laws.

But he resigned. And Winston Peters was quite right to point out that that simple fact set him apart from anyone else in the current government. Lockwood Smith did not resign over student fees, despite his signed promise to do so; Simon Upton did not resign over the bad blood scandal which saw haemophiliacs infected with HepC; Denis Marshall did not resign over Cave Creek. Peters needed Laws to fall on his his sword to maintain New Zealand First's credibility and Laws, the good soldier, did so with a flourish - quitting the council, parliament and his newfound party in one fell swoop.

(Our emphasis) Those statements were made 9 years, 8 months and 4 days ago. If they were untrue they'd be defamatory, and we all know just how litigious the Diva is.

And as for a lack of a prosecution - name the last time any politician was held accountable in the courts for any act committed as a politician. NZ is a land where you can order your motorcade to get you to a rugby match (in which you have utterly no interest other than it's vote-getting capacity) and then feign surprise as they're prosecuted for speeding, remember. But only if you're a politician.

As to what "cleared by all agencies" means, we have no idea. A Papal conclave? No "agency" investigated, other than the Council (from which he ended up having to resign), Parliament (ditto) and the media, which hardly "cleared" him.

In fact, a senior TV journalist confided to LawsWatch that on the morning of Resignation Day he spent several hours in the Diva's Parliamentary office having various excuses bounced off him: "what if I said...", "no, we'd still savage you...", "well what about...", "no, that won't wash either..." Having exhausted every possible variation of spin, the Diva finally, and very reluctantly, went to meet his fate.

Brown and one of the anonymii are right, of course. The Diva did, after much pressure, eventually resign, whereas any number of other politicians responsible for arguably worse infractions of law and duty and haven't offered a decent "mea culpa" let alone a resignation, so some credit where it's due.
But then set against that is an even older aphorism, one we're sure your mother (not to mention Your Mother) has used on occasion: two wrongs don't make a right.

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Potency posited

Oh dear. It seems that, despite our allegedly helpless impotence, we have obtained a copy of the Westgate letter. Right off the Diva's desk. You'll find it here.

The crucial sentence isn't any of the ones selectively quoted by the Diva (now there's a surprise) but that which says Westgate "can not deal with them (PoW) without Council's indication that they want us to do so".

Not "don't wish to" deal with PoW. Not even "don't favour" dealing with PoW. Just can not, without Council permission. And that's likely to be forthcoming - not.

Then again, that interpretation of the law is probably based on the Port of Wanganui Act, which we've already discovered is hopelessly out of date.

Which is not to say LawsWatch thinks Westgate ought to deal with PoW, or that PoW's plans are viable, superior or anything else. Frankly, we don't give a damn, since we're not PortWatch. We'd just like some accountability from all involved.

So thanks Diva, Westgate, PoW and the rest, for your sterling efforts in keeping Wanganui informed. Your behaviour over this matter towards the citizens who put you where you are today reflects perfectly your real attitude toward them: not so much "eat cake" as "bite me". But you'd do well to remember, being bitten can be a very unpleasant experience.

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We're in a spin

So it seems Westgate have expressed a preference for dealing with the WDC over the port. Which of course they have every right to do. LawsWatch has never expressed an opinion one way or the other in terms of whom Westgate ought to talk to. We have, however, repeatedly sought transparency in the process. This is, after all, a public asset the operation of which has far-reaching economic effects throughout Wanganui and beyond.

Publishing selected quotes on the Council website isn't open government, it's spin.

Section 7 of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act provides that information may be withheld only to:

(a) Protect the privacy of natural persons, including that of deceased natural persons; or
(b) Protect information where the making available of the
information —

(i) Would disclose a trade secret; or
(ii) Would be likely unreasonably to prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied or who is the subject of the information

Undoubtedly some of the negotiations between the parties may reasonably be captured under S7(b)(ii), especially when things reach a greater level of detail than at present. But that doesn't justify the selective release of only that information which bolsters the Diva's personal standing.

How about a section on the Council's site devoted to the Port development, with pdf files of documents not captured under Section 7 and a list describing those documents that are considered commercially confidential?

It seems, however, that websites controlled by the Diva aren't about information - they're entirely about spin. The Vision Wanganui website, referred to by LawsWatch just a few weeks ago has disappeared. Visitors are now redirected to MayorMichael.co.nz - yes, a site devoted entirely to the Diva (with a few of Dotty's columns thrown in for good measure).

Visitors can "Listen to Me" find out "About me" and of course browse a gallery of photos of well... yes, him (assuming the five on the front page aren't enough for you). Gone is Vision Wanganui and their democracy policy, which fortunately is archived here, and which said:

"...communication between Council and citizens is poor. Too little accessible information is made available to Wanganui people... [we will] perform an immediate review of the Council’s communications policy with the aim of making it more relevant, immediate and informative [and] immediately improve the Council’s website and aim to develop one internet portal..."

Then again, in DivaWorld spin is all that's relevant, so perhaps they're living up to their promises after all.

Perhaps the Mayors of other small cities may come to realise that personality is more important than substance. The Lord Mayor of some place called London is part way there. His homepage has a single photo of himself, but his name isn't even mentioned, let alone included in the web address. And there's far too much information about Council business and not nearly enough about Celebrity Treasure Island and other vital matters of state.

And some out-of-the-way place like New York, for instance, doesn't even have the nous to plaster the Mayor's face on his homepage. No wonder, when it's cluttered with irrelevancy like links to budget reports and something called an accountability document. Thankfully, Wanganui isn't distracted by such trivia. Not when we have the Diva's school photos to keep us entertained.

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Democracy on 35 cents a day

Several interesting facts emerging in comments on the last post, proving that LawsWatch is much more than just the people who post these articles - exactly as we hoped it would turn out to be. We are not "the Laws Watchers" - you all are.

One commenter, however, sent his dummy flying across the room to splutter:

Question to LawsWatch. You say you've asked all these questions, but how? Through this bog (sic) (in which case don't expect an any answers), formally by letter, or under the Official Info Act (which wouldn't apply to Westgate because its a commercial entity). Why are you trying to bullshit us that you have any influence at all?

As another commenter surmised, we use the same methods any media might. And before the dummy takes another unscheduled flight, we can point you to any number of articles citing the legitimacy of online media, and indeed some which suggest it is superseding older forms, such as this analysis from Wired.

Unlike most other media, however, we generally inform our audience as to who we've asked and what we're asking before we know whether we'll receive a reply, because oftentimes silence speaks louder than words. Older media, deprived of the ability to get considered answers to legitimate questions, tend to fill their pages with PR bumpf (or pointless fluff often designed to blatantly sell stuff) rather than admit "no one would answer our questions" because they feel they'd look impotent.

But whereas shamelessly flogging books written by a millionaire is one thing, recycling the Spin Fairy's view of the Council's activities is quite another.

We ask on your behalf, and our influence derives completely from the fact that in asking, we represent you. Yes, even you, whose dummy we can see quivering with barely suppressed disdain.

We'll ignore the comments debating the merits or otherwise of a gallery extension and instead pick something from the comments attempting a rudimentary psychoanalysis of the Diva's modus operandi:

I'm not sure that your mayor doesn't reflect what his community wants. As an interested observer, he latched onto the unpopularity of the Sarjeant Gallery project, clearly read the time for a change theme, targeted arts activists (who are never mainstream), said only what any pollie would say over POW (remember the whole council rejected POW, not just his Vision colleagues) and his nil rate increase is what all ratepayers want everywhere. It's called populist politics.

Indeed it is, learned at the knee of the greatest populist of them all, Winston Peters. (Where is that party list Winston? Did it blow out of your pocket on the back of that bike?). And as the rates demands flutter into letterboxes all over Wanganui, some people are finding they are indeed saving money. As another commenter said:

I'm paying $127 less than last year. If this is populism, then give me more.

So... time for another poll. First, though, cast your minds back to a Simpsons episode (repeating somewhere on a TV channel as you read this) in which teachers strike over the dreadful condition of buildings and equipment. There's a scene at a town meeting which sums up politics in a nutshell:

The debate quickly descends to Mrs Krabappel saying "More books" (crowd: murmurs of support, "books... good"); then Principal Skinner says "More taxes" (Crowd: "taxes.... bad"... and so on, over and over).

Of course that essential dichotomy can be finessed a little one way or the other, but The Simpsons did a pretty good job of illustrating the public's attitude to spending on services - it's absolutely essential. Just so long as it's not my money.

On the other hand, surveys repeatedly show a surprisingly large number of NZers are prepared to pay more taxes if it would mean better services and infrastructure.

So what of the people of Wanganui? Do the majority agree with anonymous - if it means an extra 35 cents a day in your pocket, by all means squeeze the budget so tightly that even fixing roads becomes unaffordable?

Or that a rates increase might be alright if services and facilities were improved (and let's leave aside for now the question of what facilities and pretend that it's either demolishing the Sarjeant and building a stock car track, or gutting the Mayoral offices - complete with luxury WC - and turning it over to candle making workshops, depending on your preference).

Or that things were about right as they were?

I'd prefer:
Higher rates and better services.
Lower rates and fewer services.
To keep things as they are.


Free polls from Pollhost.com

And by the way, does the whole Mayoral toilet saga remind anyone else just a little of that classic farce, Clochmerle?

Comments on this post are now closed. The poll remains open.