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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Mike Butler: Deluded Greens and Nat billboards

How squeaky clean is Green Party co-leader Russel Norman over the billboard stickering, and where are the reporters asking all the questions to find out how it all happened? Compare the media reaction to the "Green delusion" pamphlets in 2005 with the current billboard stickering.

In 2005, which anti-Green pamphlets were connected to the Exclusive Brethren, and then to National Party leader Don Brash, reporters kept asking the questions until they chased the story down. In 2011, when the Green Party is under the spotlight, reporters seem quite happy to accept Russel Norman's apology and assertion that he had nothing to do with it and leave it at that.

Some questions to ask: Who paid the $500 to have the stickers printed? Where did the money come from? How were activists throughout NZ mobilised to put the stickers on Nat billboards? Was a Green Party list of email addresses used? If so, how did the self-confessed billboard sticker mastermind Jolyon White get access to that list? How much did his wife know, especially since she is the stood-down PA to Russel Norman? Can we really believe that over that time Norman did not know the plan was afoot?

Even if Norman did not know, it is apparent that a chunk of the Green Party was OK with this student-prank scheme, which is probably enough to prove what most people have suspected all along, that the Green Party is made up of a bunch of juveniles who lack the maturity to govern.

4 comments:

Ray said...

Last para sums it up perfectly. Pity that other parties would probably take them on board just to stay in power. Democracy NZ style.

Anonymous said...

Haha, think you missed the point in the final para that what the stickers said was bluntly true and stripped of corporate spin.

Anonymous said...

Strange that Norman's co-leader was missing in action for 3 or 4 days around this period. What did she know?!!!! Why doesn't someone ask Turei about her involvement?

Pearl said...

Personally, I think everyone is missing the point. Which is that in NZ, Greens can do no wrong.

Greens say what they like, no-one has the balls to challenge, for fear of being seen as anti-environment, or anti whatever is flavour of the month for first year anti-establishment tertiary students (and by wishful thinking, youthful journalists).

NZ are simply stuck with Greens for the foreseeable.