Pledgegate 08: Union boss criticises Labour “information kit” scam
Former Alliance Party President and General-Secretary of the powerful and fast-growing Unite union - perhaps New Zealand’s most (only) successful union in terms of actually delivering pay rises into members’ pockets - has criticised Labour’s “information kit” scam, which is designed to raid the taxpayers’ coffers for blatant electioneering, avoid the $20,000 spending cap for local candidates and, in so doing, rort the intention of the same election spending laws that the Labour/Peters/Green Axis imposed on everyone last year.
He and I were interviewed by Carly Flynn and Oliver Driver this morning on TV3’s Sunrise programme and Matt observed that you’d think Labour would have learned from the pledge-card debacle before proceeding with this latest scam.
He said: “Perception is everything. There is nothing wrong with it as a local MP but you would sort of think that after last time - you know, they’ve been very careful, saying ‘we’ll make it orange’ - but the whole point is they’re using taxpayers’ money, with the photo, and handing it out. So you’ve got to say, are you so broke you can’t pay for it yourself, but the whole thing is why don’t they just, when writ day is called, just don’t do it: don’t send any taxpayer-funded materials out with the local MP’s face on it. Don’t do it.”
There wasn’t much left for me to say after that.
Incidentally, Oliver Driver and I have quite different political perspectives, but he is doing a very professional job on Sunrise, without “selling his soul” or whatever it is that the Left worry about, and there has already been positive movement in the ratings. TV3 always manages to be more kiwiana than TVNZ, despite all the charter nonsense for the latter and the foreign-ownership of the former. Over the next few years I expect Sunrise to move up ahead of or at least alongside TVNZ’s morning show, at least in Auckland, just as TV3 News has done to TVNZ’s 6pm product over the years.
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Tags: Alliance, Carly Flynn, Labour, Matt McCarten, Oliver Driver, pledge card, Pledgegate 08, Sunrise, TV3, TVNZ, Unite
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Good on him. It shows he can see issues beyond party preference. A lesson for many of us there. I also heard Chief Economist for the CTU agreeing with many of Weldon and Skilling’s ideas for moving out of the crisis. Could it be the Unions are much less communist blindfolded than some like to peddle?
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Well I live in the Otaki electorate and Darren Hughes just lost my vote - I was considering giving him the electorate vote in spite of my party vote going somewhere else, mainly beacuse he is pretty active and effective locally - but now: welcome Nathan Guy.