Friday, June 27, 2014
Aunty Herald a bit on the touchy side this morning...
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| David Cunliffe at the NZ Open Source Awards, 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Let’s start with the editorial’s headline: “Cries of bias will not stop reporting”. As if somebody, somewhere was threatening to stop the Herald from reporting the news! No one, especially not the leading complainant, David Cunliffe, is demanding that the publication be closed down. All that the Leader of the Opposition asks of the Herald is that its reporting be factual. An understandable concern, given that amidst all of Mr Donghua Liu’s claims of donating upwards of $100,000 to the NZ Labour Party, hard facts have been very difficult to find.
The Herald virtually acknowledges this singular deficiency when, after its lengthy parade of straw men and non-sequiturs, the editorial finally declares: “We regret having reported inflated and conflated dollar figures.
- See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/27/true-to-form-deconstructing-this-mornings-herald-editorial/#sthash.l0MB9PEc.hHJXGBiu.dpuf
Thursday, June 26, 2014
A National shame...
In its decision on the Tukituki River Plan, the Board of Inquiry agreed to strong limits on nutrient pollution - a smart move. Isn't it time that our Government did the same, with limits to pollution that will give us clean and swimmable rivers?
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Donghua Liu: All talk and no proof...
Controversial businessman Donghua Liu has issued a new statement to the Herald confirming "close to" $100,000 in total payments to Labour and its MPs – including anonymous donations - but clarifying that the money was not for one bottle of wine.
Liu, who Labour gave permanent residency against official advice, says his earlier signed statement on the wine auction was "capable of two meanings" and after repeated inquiries from the Herald he says he wants to clarify what he spent the $100,000 on. The signed statement obtained by the Herald on Sunday said that at a 2007 Labour Party fundraiser, he "successfully bid on bottles of wine including one bottle signed by the then Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon Helen Clark, with a contribution of close to $100,000".
The previous sentence in the signed statement said dinner and a boat trip on the Yangtze River in 2007 with a group including Rick Barker, the Minister for Internal Affairs at the time, which Liu estimated to cost between $50,000 to $60,000.
Today, Liu said: "I did say I made a contribution of close to $100,000 and that is my closing comment in my statement…that is how much I believe I have donated in total to Labour and some of their MPs during their last term in Government."
He said the figure was the total payments to Labour and its politicians which included the wine auctions, a $2000 donation to the Hawkes Bay Rowing Club, the Yangtze River trip and anonymous donations to MPs.
"I have no reason to inflate this number. It's as best as I can remember," said Liu.
The signed statement makes no mention of Liu winning an auction for a book, although Herald sources said he paid $15,000 for a book signed by Ms Clark.
"Again, as a private donor I donated to both Governments in good faith and without expectation. It is not my responsibility to make the appropriate political declarations," said Liu.
"Some of these donations were made anonymously which was perfectly legal and so such donations will only ever appear in some individual donation returns as anonymous."
Seems a lot of bulldust to me!
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Sounds like a load of bulldust to me John Key and Auntie Herald
David Cunliffe has the last laugh!!!
Key and Herald embarrassed as Liu statement changes
After a sustained week of media attacks on the Labour Party it now transpires that the NZ Herald and John Key claims about Donghua Liu’s donations to the party are, shall we say, inaccurate.
This has just been published on the Herald website:
Controversial businessman Donghua Liu has issued a new statement to the Herald confirming “close to” $100,000 in total payments to Labour and its MPs – including anonymous donations – but clarifying that the money was not for one bottle of wine.Liu, to whom Labour gave permanent residency against official advice, says his earlier signed statement on the wine auction was “capable of two meanings” and after repeated inquiries from the Herald he says he wants to clarify what he spent the $100,000 on.The signed statement obtained by the Herald on Sunday said that at a 2007 Labour Party fundraiser, he “successfully bid on bottles of wine including one bottle signed by the then Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon Helen Clark, with a contribution of close to $100,000″.…The previous sentence in the signed statement said dinner and a boat trip on the Yangtze River in 2007 with a group including Rick Barker, the Minister for Internal Affairs at the time, which Liu estimated to cost between $50,000 to $60,000.Today, Liu said: “I did say I made a contribution of close to $100,000 and that is my closing comment in my statement…that is how much I believe I have donated in total to Labour and some of their MPs during their last term in Government.”He said the figure was the total payments to Labour and its politicians which included the wine auctions, a $2000 donation to the Hawkes Bay Rowing Club, the Yangtze River trip and anonymous donations to MPs.
Labour would say that it had never heard of the Hawkes Bay Rowing Club branch of the Labour Party nor of the Yangtze Concrete Factory Branch of the Labour Party. The payments to these entities account for about $60,000 which is most of the money. The boat trip was clearly not a political donation to the Labour Party. The degree of change in Mr Liu’s story is significant as is his lack of understanding of what the Labour Party actually is.
And the question must be who prepared Liu’s original statement and did they know it was, shall we say, inaccurate? And why did the Herald accept the first statement at face value and did it seek any verification of the claims before bursting into print?
Labour trusts that a few commentators including John Armstrong and Bryce Edwards will now reflect on their comments. As Danyl McLaughlan has said this is a fucking joke.
Finally Labour would say how impressed it was by the recent Standarnista crowd sourcing effort to work out the details of the photographs and the possible location of the auction.
lprent: Rob Salmond has some commentary on this complete screwup by The NZ Herald journalists and editors in “Completely unravelling” and “New Zealand Herald tries to cover its butt; gets shit on its hands“. Be warned. He starts to swear (although less than I did when reading the self-justifying waffle from the Herald story)
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