Wednesday 13 September 2006

Muted parliamentary attacks explained

Ah! The news that Don Brash is taking a few days off to work on repairing his marriage explains both the suddenly muted Questions session in yesterday's Parliament, and at least one of the buckets of slime Labour were threatening to dump over the Treasury Benches last week, as I speculated yesterday.

"As people will understand," says Dr Brash, "this is a very difficult time for me and my family. I ask that the media respect our need for privacy." I hope they do. And I trust the Labour Party does as well.

UPDATE 1: For those of you who find my comments above a little cryptic, a libertarian colleague makes everything crystal clear:
Well it seems Trevor Mallard has made good on his threat to "dish up the dirt." Labour must be getting desperate to resort to the "mutually assured destruction" political doctrine. The timing is cynical plotting in the extreme: choosing when to destroy a marriage must give one a "special" sense of power. The voting public might well be disgusted with Labour by this tactic. A very sad day for NZ democracy that we have sunk to the gutter.
Exactly.

UPDATE 2: Darnton's comment is perfect, and right on the button:
Just bloody typical. Labour are on the ropes and so National goes for it’s own jugular. Hopeless.

Although this event was precipitated by Brian Connell, and no doubt Labour are thankful for that, it was precipitated out of an atmosphere of filth created by Mallard et al with the express intention of causing a diversion from their already very public wrongdoing.

LINKS: Statement from Don Brash re request for privacy - Don Brash, Scoop
Unparliamentary punishment - Not PC (Peter Cresswell)
Labour's threat: We'll dish the dirt - NZ Herald
Trev's filthy fingerprints - Bernard Darnton

RELATED: Politics-NZ

10 comments:

Idiot/Savant said...

I was going to pointedly ignore this - its nobody's business but Brash's own.

Anonymous said...

Beginning of the end for Brash.
The only relevance is that it was his own caucus that brought it up, not Trevor Mallard.

Berend de Boer said...

Marriage is a public business.

Congrats PC, I think you're the first to blog on this.

Berend de Boer said...

By the way, Labour might not have put out the dirt. It seems the National caucus had asked some questions here. Getting nervous I suppose.

Anonymous said...

Berend: "Marriage is a public business."

What a crock. This is clearly a personal matter and any public interest in it will be only of a salacious, gossip-mongering nature. Whoever has dredged it up has acted reprehensibly - God knows I have no love for the little blokes politics, but that is a shot below the belt.

However it is also a crock to claim that 'Labour' is responsible for 'destroying' his marriage, if in fact they were the leaking party and Brash's marriage doesn't survive. If his wife decides to leave him, it will be because he chose to do something stupid, of his own volition. Not because he got caught.

Anonymous said...

The old saying is very true--it's the quiet ones you have to watch...

Oswald Bastable said...

Other people's marriage's are their own business.

Unlike stealing taxpayers money...

Anonymous said...

Ruth:

There's a couple of other old sayings that are equally true - "Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you." (That's for the benefit of the panty-sniffers in the media who aren't exactly models of uxorious probity.) And "The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business." (That's one for the panty-sniffing MPs, for whom minding everybody else's business is a commonplace.)

Anonymous said...

Two "panty sniffing" comments in one post. Yikes!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:

Funny how brave people are when they're hiding in the shadows, isn't it? Remeber how to spell your name, and I'll start giving a rat's turd about your literary criticism.