There comes a time in politics when it is no longer tenable for you to continue.

Golly G has reached that point. When the NZ Herald is the last to join the fray and they bust your chops with a headline like that above, then your political career is over.

Green MP Golriz Ghahraman worked as part of the legal defence team for Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadžić, who was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.  

He got 40 years in prison and will die there.

​Party co-leader James Shaw is standing by his MP, saying her work on international tribunals as both a defence and prosecution lawyer is all part of a robust justice system.

But her profile page on the Green Party website has now been changed to more accurately reflect the legal defence work she did at the Rwanda Tribunal and The Hague, and the prosecution work she did at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

In a series of tweets ​this week, former Labour staffer Phil Quin criticised Ghahraman’s work at the Rwanda Tribunal, saying she volunteered to defend “the worst killers known to man” and calling her a genocide-denier.

“Any MP who acted as a voluntary intern to defend war criminals, and authors papers that deny the Rwandan genocide, must resign,” said Quin, who lived and worked in Rwanda for several years.

In a comment piece on Newsroom, ​he added: “It’s one thing for a UN defence lawyer to be assigned to defend ratbags. It’s quite another to seek them out in a voluntary capacity.”

Ghahraman worked as an unpaid intern as part of a team that defended Joseph Nzirorera, who died before he could be convicted of genocide, and in a paid position as part of a team representing pop singer Simon Bikindi, who was convicted for incitement to genocide.

Quin published a photo of a smiling Ghahraman with Bikindi on Twitter today.

Shaw said Quin’s attacks were politically motivated.

“I think Phil knows as well as anybody that a functioning justice system requires both a rigorous prosecution and a rigorous defence in order to make sure that the trial actually delivers the result its intended to.”

James Shaw is in full corpse cuddling mode again. Phil Quin has no problems at all with how justice systems work. What he has a problem with is the deliberate obfuscation of Golly G. He also has a problem with the dishonesty…and the fact she seems to only care about defending Hutu scumbags, including two who were hiding here.

James Shaw is about to get another lesson in realpolitik and it is coming hard.

I think, and you may shudder at this, that Martyn Bradbury is right, the Greens are shit at politics.

If this had been Judith Collins there’d be many more column inches devoted to this. The fact the Media party is now reporting it can be attributed to persitent and accurate research done by bloggers and social media commentators. The mainstream media have been found wanting on this.

Now we are also aware of massive holes in her Iranian childhood, time is ticking on her spell in parliament.

Credit: Comrade Jacinda FB page

How’s about that transparency we were told Jacinda and the Greens would bring to government?

Turns out not so much, according to Stacy Kirk at Fairfax:

The Government is facing a mountain of questions – more than 6000 to be exact.

They’ve been lodged by an army of National MPs with nothing but time on their hands and it should be no surprise to Labour Ministers, who have so far refused to release much detail, if any, about their first actions in office.

In a 100-day programme, where major reform is being pushed through at break-neck speed, that is cause for concern.

Claims of “hypocrisy” levelled by some commentators at National’s record in Government are true, but they’re no defence.We should all be demanding those answers.   

And it might be early, but on the current trend those accusations aren’t far from being squarely levelled back to Labour. They and the Greens made much of their desire to “bring transparency back to Government” on the campaign trail.

And where is it? Another bumper sticker slogan. Virtue signalling the electorate.

Labour is also yet to release what’s known as the “Briefings to Incoming Ministers” – or BIMs.

They are the documents prepared by the experts and officials, delivered to ministers in their first week to give them a crash course on the portfolio they’ve just been handed – in some cases rendering them responsible overnight for the spending of public funds totalling billions.

All of them have been requested under the Official Information Act by reporters across New Zealand. All of them have been denied by the Government on the grounds they’re about to be released publicly anyway. 

The trouble with that is the law actually applies to occasions where the document in question is yet to be printed or the minister hasn’t had a chance to read it first.

These were read by the ministers more than a month ago, and its understood to decision on when to release the BIMs – state sector wide – is to come from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Jacinda can’t make decisions? What’s the hold up, they’ve had them for a month, presumably read them? Why haven’t they been released? Why is Labour breaking the law? Transparency?

“[The section] should not be used to delay the release of information which is intended to be incorporated in other material which, although to be made public at a later date, may still require the making of other policy decisions,” is the expressed order of the Ombudsman.

Looks like transparency promises were rather hollow.

Bill English gave Labour fair warning when he said “we’re not here to make this place run smoothly”. He copped criticism, but he’s right; they are there to hold the Government to account – nothing more. 

Many are familiar with the verbal jousting of Question Time where this is publicly done. But Opposition MPs have another very important democratic tool available to them in the form of Written Questions. 

They can lodge questions to ministers on matters related to their portfolios, and ministers must respond within six working days. There is no limit as to how many questions can be lodged, they must be concise and targeted.

Undoubtedly, 6000 written questions in a month is a lot.

But is it fair to demand those answers? Absolutely. Is it hypocritical of National to be complaining they’re being blocked? You bet. Does that matter? Not one bit.

Because the answers, or at least the willingness to provide those answers, benefit New Zealand as a democracy. 

Finally a Media party member who knows reality when they see it.

In July 2010 Labour asked 8791 questions in a single month.

More than 7000 of those questions came from MP Trevor Mallard alone.

Now in the Speaker’s chair, it’s his jurisdiction to force answers where they are not fairly being withheld if a complaint is laid.

Labour is getting off to a poor start on transparency. 

What goes around, comes around.

Heather du Plessis-Allan looks at Jacinda Ardern’s first month on the job.

She starts by recounting the mis-step of pretending that Trump didn’t know who she was. HDPA reckons it wasn’t that big a deal world-wide or diplomatically, except:

For Ardern herself, though, this is a personal mistake she couldn’t afford to make. The risk for her is that this misstep adds to the growing impression that she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

And not just Ardern, but the rest of Labour too.

At any stage in a Government’s life — but especially at the start when we’re first getting to know the characters — there is the risk of a narrative taking hold. All that requires is three or more balls-ups that seem similar enough to look like a pattern.

Once there’s a pattern, anything that looks even a tiny bit similar only reinforces it further.

So far, the pattern is that Labour is out of its depth.

Their talent pool was as shallow as a car-park puddle, so it is to be expected that anything deeper than a bird bath would put them out of their depth.

First, there was the extremely clumsy moment in Parliament when National tricked Labour into striking a deal it didn’t need to strike to get Trevor Mallard elected to the Speaker’s job.

The error was so simple as to be embarrassing: no one in Labour appeared to have counted the MPs in the debating chamber.

Next, Kelvin Davis showed he’s not up to the job of filling in for Ardern. While the grown-ups were out of the country, it fell to him to be acting PM, but he couldn’t even answer questions in the House without colleagues first whispering the answers to him.

And then there was Ardern’s handling of our offer to take Manus Island refugees.

Some may see Ardern as ballsy for pushing Australia around a bit, others see her as naive for failing to realise how much she was pushing Australia around, and how it was annoying Malcolm Turnbull.

That’s a pattern alright. Spot on Heather.

The risk of a narrative is that, once it takes hold, it’s hard to shake.

George W Bush became the stupid guy, Al Gore became the lying guy, Helen Clark became the matron of the nanny state.

It’s never entirely true, but if enough people think it is, the damage is done and it punishes you forever.

Ardern doesn’t deserve this narrative to take hold. She’s articulate, a fast learner and is actually getting things about 98 per cent right. That’s no easy task.

After that brutal summary it seems HDPA needed to sprinkle just a little bit of unicorn farts and pixie dust around.

Labour leaders before her took months just to learn how to look at TV cameras and talk at the same time. But now the narrative is pencil-sketched waiting for Labour to colour it in. It would do Labour good to avoid the errors it’s making. That will avoid something inane like Ardern’s travel yarn getting blown out of proportion like it has.\

Wait until Manus Island blows up in her face, which it will.

Jacinda Ardern says it is possible to exist in politics without lying and says she has never told a lie.

Has she now been caught in a lie over Manus Island ratbags?

The Prime Minister has repeated her stance that New Zealand is willing to take 150 refugees from Manus Island, but that it would need to be approved by Australia.

Jacinda Ardern fielded questions at Auckland’s Grey Lynn festival around midday on Saturday, where Labour had a stall among the bouncy castle and go-karts.

The offer for New Zealand to take 150 refugees after Australian approval remained unchanged – despite revelations on Friday that Papua New Guinea police were using physical force to evacuate refugees and asylum-seekers.

When asked if she would consider by-passing Australian authorities and approaching PNG authorities directly, Ardern said no. 

“The advice that we’ve had from a range of different sources is that we’d need to go via Australia.

“Whether or not Australia takes up our offer to take 150 refugees continues to be a matter for Australia.

“We’ve made it very clear that we’re more than happy to assist but that ultimately is a matter for them.”

Interesting. Then why is MSD leaking like a sieve contradicting everything you’ve just said?

I have several sources in MSD. They advise me that; The PM’s office asked the Housing department to ‘make ready’ housing for at least 150 refugees and their families over the next 6 weeks. MSD replied saying that there’s a general shortage of houses for Kiwi homeless. The plan now is to find motels that will house refugees and their families. There is also a request for Punjabi, Bengali, and Farsi translation services.

There is apparently an email trail to the PM’s office. The email was sent from the PM’s office on Monday last week. These emails will be subject to the OIA.

My sources feel that the PM’s office is bypassing the proper internal process whilst the plan entails direct negotiations with PNG.

The basics of this have been leaked on Twitter.

Further another source tells me that last week there was a huge MSD IT planning meeting at Westpac, it’s called a programme increment…essentially, going through the IT requirements of the ministry for the next 3 months or so…in the process of the meeting, they were informed that they needed to implement one of the software systems used by the department responsible for resettlement, because MSD will be helping resettle some refugees…and part of the project initiation documentation displayed was an email from the PM’s office, sent Monday last week, making the request.

The email trail may well prove that our PM can lie just as well as other politicians.

Refugees and asylum seekers protesting inside the Manus Island immigration detention centre

Muriel Newman writes in her email newsletter:

Over recent weeks the plight of Manus Island refugees and the Prime Minister’s offer to take 150 of them has been dominating the news. The media’s obsession with the refugee issue is reminiscent of their incessant promotion of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party in the run up to the election.

It has only been since the Australian media released details from the Papua New Guinea authorities outlining how the Manus Island detainees regularly travel into town to allegedly have sex with underage girls – some as young as 10 – and buy and sell drugs, that some balance has finally entered the news coverage.

Given the interest of the New Zealand media in this issue, quite why they didn’t find and publish this information – which was reported to the Australian Government in mid-October – is not clear. The 161 offences the detainees are alleged to have committed include sexual assault, assault and aggressive behaviour.  

If our media had been doing their job, they would have provided New Zealanders with balanced reporting from the outset. That would have indicated there are serious problems in taking these men.

If our media were doing their jobs they’d be reporting on the MSD leaks that Jacinda Ardern has gone around Australia and is negotiating directly with Papua New Guinea. Not only that she has demanded houses and other accommodation be made available, along with fast tracking welfare and arranging translators. She has denied this to media, but the email trail will reveal that lie in due course.

What was also not reported by our media was the fact that under normal circumstances, every asylum seeker has access to accommodation, utilities, food, and a fortnightly allowance. They are free to visit nearby villages to shop, to go to the beach and to mix with locals. In addition, they are able to apply for permanent resettlement in PNG at any time.

Australia’s position on this matter in understandable. The Australian Government has always refused New Zealand’s offers to take boat refugees for the very good reason that we could be used as a backdoor route into that country – unless visas are re-introduced for Trans-Tasman travel. The concern is that if any of the refugees did end up in Australia, it could trigger a resumption of the disastrous people smuggling trade that led to the deaths of over 1,200 asylum seekers before the hard-line approach was adopted.

Australia now has a strict policy of turning back asylum seekers’ boats in order to discourage them from even trying to reach Australia. Not only that, but any asylum seekers, who do manage to arrive by boat, are banned from ever being settled in Australia. Instead they are held in detention camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea, from where any genuine refugees are given the option of being resettled, but not in Australia. Alternatively, they can opt to be returned to their home country.

Our Prime Minister should stop meddling in Australian affairs. An offer has been made and that’s where it should lie. And the media should provide balanced reporting, not try to exert influence through PR campaigns masquerading as news.

If Jacinda Ardern really has gone behind Australia’s back then expect Australia to reinstate visas for travel to Australia.

Word from inside Labour and the government is that Ardern is hell bent on bringing these 150 ratbags here, genuine refugees or not. That includes their families. It is all about her PR and not at all about the fact Kiwi voters don’t want a bar of them.

Labour appears to be in full “reverse ferret” mode over immigration.

Stacey Kirk from Fairfax explains:

They stood on an immigration crackdown, but reality hit first. 

If voters were lulled into thinking their new Government would make ardent strides to turn around Johnny Foreigner en masse at the border, the rhetoric of the past week might be a sharp wake-up call.

Annual migration fell to a 10-month low of 70,694 in the year to October, down from a peak of 72,402 in the year to July, according to the latest Statistics NZ update.

Economists have forecast the drop to accelerate to varying levels, while the Government’s synchronised backdown from a key election policy to reduce migration by 20,000 to 30,000 has been swift.   

Immigration is a tightrope, stretched over a churning lagoon of gnashing jaws with big teeth. Walking it can be an art form: let your weight fall too far either side and you’re in trouble.

It’s no surprise to see Labour winding down its messaging on immigration. It may even be a relief to the regions and business, as well as to the party itself.

On one hand, it’s an assurance the Government is prepared to forgo populism for pragmatism, while the positioning also sits more naturally with Labour’s core principles.

Importantly, if immigration numbers began to fall for reasons outside the Government’s control, then a Government espousing a tightening of the tap would be taking that trend and making it worse.

And it’s clearly aware of the stakes. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters were all singing from the same song sheet the past week, saying there will be a reduction in immigration, “but we’re not fixating on the numbers”. 

Because if it appears to be tightening the screws, while they’re tightening anyway, the Government risks choking the supply of workers businesses say they need and regional New Zealand will fare worst. 

In Timaru, factory expansions are crying out for more workers – two major fisheries and a Fonterra mozzarella plant have faced months-long staff shortages, unable to fill hundreds of positions. 

Labour originally promised a huge reduction, down to about 20,000 immigrants. They’ve been walking that back ever since.

Laobur’s policies never got much scrutiny during the election with a tame Media party basking in the glow of the Jacinda Effect.

Those chickens are now coming home to roost.