FORGIVE ME, this morning, for not joining the media's gratuitous mugging of Act list MP David Garrett.
It is not my favourite party and its economic philosophy – whatever it actually is – is not mine. But the collective bullying from the press gallery seems a much greater crime than any committed by the favourite son of the Sensible Sentencing Trust.
And let's get this right, shall we: Garrett's "crimes" were committed long before he entered politics or Parliament, and he fronted his party long before they pre-arranged their party list.
It was Act and the party leadership who made the tactical decision that what happened in an earlier life stayed in that earlier life. And so Garrett was spared the embarrassment of confessing to having been a nob in his mid-twenties, and a rough and ready lawyer in Tonga in his forties. Should he have said something, at some time, to sundry members of the media and the public? Of course. One lesson I've learned in politics is to get to your embarrassment first, before your enemies do.
Hell, Georgina Beyer even managed to make political capital out of being a former drug addict and prostitute. In fact, New Zealand celebrity is littered with those who have transformed their notoriety into rehabilitative promise.
But it will be Act leader Rodney Hide who is feeling sickest this morning. If only because the Garrett resignation suits Hide's media and political enemies so well.
Indeed. There are clear and deep division within Act, and with all the dirty laundry that has been aired over the last month or so, we doubt that they are divisions capable being healed.
We have no doubt whatsoever that David Garrett's fall from grace was executed from within Act, and that a very willing left-leaning media was entirely complicit. The wording of the question that Guyon Espiner asked Garrett on Wednesday was just too cute to not be based on insider information. That suggests a party in turmoil.
And Laws draws attention to a very obvious double standard:
Yes, Garrett was a silly young man: long before he had small children and came to empathise with the pain that his passport actions might cause a toddler's parents. Even if that child died in 1962. Yes, that's right, 48 years ago.
But it was an offence – even if deemed so 20 years after the fact. The judge also deemed any punishment as spectacularly irrelevant. It was hardly booking up parliamentary porn on the contemporary taxpayer. And if Shane Jones isn't resigning from Parliament, why must Garrett?
Again, the answer is that Jones is a liberal darling – Maori, Labour, leftish, likeable – and Garrett is not. And then there's the whiff of hypocrisy: apparently, doing something bad disqualifies you from promoting something good. Bollocks.
Quite so. We hope that the journalists who have crucified David Garrett this week read Laws' piece, and then go and look in the mirror, as we have. We have not been particularly charitable towards Garrett ourselves, although we still reckon that he has done the right thing by standing aside. We hope too that anyone within (or close to) Act who has drip-fed information to media sources reflects on their actions; but we won't hold our breath.
We applaud Michael Laws for giving this perspective to what has been an eventful week!
13 comments:
We applaud Michael Laws for giving this perspective to what has been an eventful week!
+1
"Garrett was a silly young man"
That's it Invent.
Just a silly young man?
Creeping through a graveyard to steal the identity of a dead child, going through the process of manufacturing a passport (for what reason we must wonder) failing to declare past offences to the Judge (allegedly) and so on, and so on..
Silly?
Sinister!
I agree with Michael Laws, the whole affair was an overblown conspiratorial attack by the Leftwing Media none more virulent than that owned by the State.Looking at all the circumstances the offences were trivial. The hypocrites were the media themselves who through the dark Clark years turned a blind eye or sought excuses for exposed criminality, yet are now focused on destroying ACT with a unity of purpose thatis both frightening and threatening.
@ Robert; those were Laws' words, not mine. Don't take the fact that I published them verbatim as acceptance of them on my part. You'll note that earlier in the week I called for Garrett to resign, and as I said in the post, I think he's made the right decision in standing down.
@ baxter - I agree. The glee on Espiner's face as he was asking the money question was obvious. Again, the MSM seems to think its role is to invent the news not to report it, and in Espiner's case on Wednesday, it was obvious that he regarded himself as interviewer to be the centre of attention rather than the interviewee.
Invent - Hide says he knew of no details of Garrett's 'passport' case,(aside from 'It involved a graveyard') didn't ask Garrett for details when he revealed his history to him, didn't look into the matter further.
Do you believe that, even for one milli-second?
And if you do (God forbid!), wouldn't that make Hide the most irresponsible party leader imaginable?
Imagine if an employee revealed that to you. Would you then go on to asssign him a critical role in establishing the rules around law and order, one that would influence the lives of thousands of people in New Zealand for years to come?
WOULD YOU?
Hide did.
Didgraceful.
But what really made me choke on my coffee this morning while watching The Nation, was hearing Hide say that ACT were about protecting New Zealanders from thugs and bullies!
THUGS and BULLIES!!
C
L
A
S
S
I
C
Yes, there is a certain irony in that Robert, and that's a self-inflicted wound which Act will have to manage. John Tamihere amused me the other day when he was referring to Act as the Association of Criminals and Thugs.
I applaud Michael Laws, for a very well written column, on the David Garrett debacle. For me it has been blown out of all proportion. Oh my the Media's EMPHASIS on a DEAD CHILDS name. Definitley a beat up, no doubt in my mind. I think the media should be disgusted with there drama. It was stupid on Garretts part, but certainly not that bad. 10 out of 10 Michael, best I have read, absolute common sense. Now let them go and blow up Chris Carter, the little creep.
http://www.imperatorfish.com/2010/09/when-nobody-else-will-stand-up-for-you.html
True colours.
The right are more hypocritical than the left.
There is a more sinister element to Garrett's procurement of a fraudulent passport than can be explained by his claim that he was "doing it for a lark", or trying to replicate the character in "The Day of the Jackal".
In a previous career I investigated passport fraud and without exception every person who committed this offence did so with criminal intent. In other words they got themselves another identity/passport to evade capture by the authorities.
My instinct is that Garratt got this false passport as an insurance policy in case he ever needed to leave NZ when his own identity would no longer allow to him leave.
This is the sinster aspect to Garratt's actions, it maybe that he turned his life around and that is why he never needed to use the passport, but I am left wondering what was going on in his life at the time, that led him to follow in the steps, not of "The Jackal", but more in the steps of drug baron Terry Clark ("Mr Asia").
Not surprised at Laws defence of "the Jackal" Garrett.
Anyone else remember Antoinette Beck?
Post a Comment