Clark: "Bucket's of cash ... "

"Buckets of cash" ... "covert donations" ... "cash for policy" ...

Those squalid accusations above were all thrown across The House by the PM yesterday in an effort to divert attention from their own misappropriation of public money. They are all complaints she says she has against National's own "corruption." Let's have a quick look at each of them shall we?:

• "Buckets of cash...": Yes, National did have buckets of cash, and all of it (bar $10,000 they've already paid back) was given voluntarily by donors. A concept Clark's Labour has trouble understanding, so I'll just repeat the word: Voluntarily. Labour too received some voluntary donations, mainly from unions, but the issue here is that $800,000 of involuntarily appropriated taxpayer money was misappropriated by Labour to steal the last election.
  
  Both parties had buckets of cash at the last electiion. National's buckets were filled with their own money. Labour's however were filled to the brim with yours, taken against your will, and used without legal authority.
  
  
• "Covert donations...": Asked to defend that charge this morning on TV's Breakfast News, Labour strategist Pete 'I Admit Nothing' Hodgson "had a letter" sent by the Exclusive Brethren to the Electoral Commission asking for guidance on how to spend $1.2 million so as not to cause any problem with National's spending cap. Quite what he hoped to show with this, apart from showing how an organisation should go about ensuring they don't break the law, it was hard to really know. It was certainly no evidence of "covert" anything, except Hodgson's "covert" use once again of the Brethren bogie, a 'strategy' you would think a decent strategist would already have realised hasn't worked.
  
  
• And what about the charge against National of "cash for policy"? Insurance companies donated to National because re-privatising the ACC was a chief National Party platform, just as it had been for years. Was there any evidence the policy changed because of the donations? No. Was it "covert"? No. So is there a problem? No.
  
  So as a charge against the National Party this one has no more resonance than the charge that Labour took money from the unions to scrap the Employment Contracts Act (although on reflection that charge might actually have more legs...)

Three charges out of three that are just plain bollocks.

I say all this not to defend the National Party -- for whom I hold no brief whatsoever, and very little love (as most of my posts on the Nats will show) -- but to point out the measure of desperation of this Labour Party. This is the best they can do to defend their blatant misappopriation of taxpayers' money to steal the last election. They've been caught with their hands in the till up to their elbows, and they hope that if they make up tales about their opponents it might all just go away. It won't. It's nothing more than misdirection, and that it is so poorly done and so shallow is an indication of how bereft they are of any defence against the charge of corruption.

Spin is in; lies are all; anything at all to divert attention from their own corrupt practices. Eighty-one percent of NZers know they're lying, know they're corrupt ... and to those charges Labour just has no substantive answer.

As litigant and Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton says on his blog, "When Helen Clark called the election she said that it was 'going to be about leadership and credibility and values.' And it’s definitely turned out turned out that way, hasn’t it?"

There is one further charge which Labour's Darnton Darnton V Clark needs to surmount -- the 'test case' being brought by Libertarianz leader Darnton Darnton to show that there are still constitutional limits on the Government -- and that is this: the claim that the money misappropriated for the Pledge Card was not "election spending" since the Pledge Card was not part of Labour's election campaign. Once again, what Labour are relying on here is a public too ignorant to follow what's being said.

Despite the best efforts of the state's miseducation system over the years, even this electorate is not that ignorant.

On that score and as I noted yesterday, G-Man has posted a snippet from a tape he has in which Helen Clark tells a Wellington audience that the Pledge Card is the "centre-piece" of their election campaign. And this morning the boys at new libertarian blog 'Pacific Empire' note that even Brian Edwards's hagiography of Queen Helen is happy to explain in plain English how crucial the Pledge Card is and has been in delivering Labour's "election promises." How successful? As Edwards explains, "Helen believes that the card was a considerable success." A "considerable success."

As Darnton said yesterday, "Thanks, Helen. If you could just explain all that to the judge we should be able to wrap this up pretty quickly."

*** Oh, and by the way, as Helen Clark thinks the phrase "Pay It Back" is just another bumper sticker slogan, a Darnton supporter has been good enough to turn it into one. (Well done, Duncan.) You can get yours at his online store. "The target market for this product," says Darnton, "is 81% of the voting population."

LINKS: A smoking gun - Darnton V Clark
Eh? - G-Man Inc.
Pledge card most important part of Labour's campaign: Brian Edwards - Pacific Empire
Bumper sticker - Cafe Press store

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, Politics-National, Darnton V Clark