Helen Clark practices gutter politics

Colin Espiner blogs about Helen Clark’s attack on John Key in the House this afternoon.

Now Espiner points out that Clark got it wrong. Clark alleges that Key was guilty of effectively insider trading and that when a director of Bankers Trust he benefited from the sale to TranzRail.

Clark’s allegation re the share trade was

She further claimed that Key’s family trust owned 30,000 shares in TranzRail at a time that Key made comments as Opposition associate transport spokesman in 2003, in which Key made disparaging remarks about the Government’s offer for the company and suggested Toll was more likely to win the bid.

As he writes:

The only problem is that Key’s family trust had already sold its shares before Key made his comments. He has told Parliament this afternoon (and so I imagine he must be very certain of this) that neither he nor his trust held any shares in TranzRail at the time he made his remarks in June 2003.

I’m also told by his office that while Key was a director of Bankers’ Trust in 1993, he was involved with the bank’s trading arm, not its merchant division that handled the sale. His office says he had no involvement in the sale and did not profit from it.

This rather takes the wind out of the Prime Minister’s sails, although her office is attempting to argue that her central point was that Key was in favour of privatisation. I don’t accept this. Clark was clearly trying to smear Key by implying that he had engaged in improper behaviour by talking up the share price of a company he held shares in. Except that he didn’t.

Adam’s emphasis not Colin Espiner’s. Espiner sees this as a deliberate attempt to smear Key.

I think Clark owes Key an apology for what is an extremely damaging claim. Her other allegation is more difficult to prove either way – her office argues that as a director of Bankers’ Trust Key would have benefited regardless of whether he was directly involved. This is still a little spurious.

Unlike Mr Espiner, Adam considers this to be more than a little spurious. Bankers Trust was an investment bank. Investment banks exist to make money from a wide range of activities. They made a profit in 1993, which presumably included an amount in respect of their work on the sale of Rail. So what, that was what they exist to do.

In 1993 John Key was not in politics, so what does it matter that a company of which he was a director, carried out it’s lawful business in a manner that enabled it to make a profit.

Clark’s attempted smear in this regard was, per Espiner:-

Clark alleged, for those who weren’t watching, that Key benefited financially from the sale of TranzRail while a director of Bankers’ Trust, which advised the former National administration on the privatisation of the state asset NZ Rail in 1993.

“Bankers Trust pocketed $39m in profit. Ask yourself the question: who benefited from the sale of TranzRail? Mr Key and his friends,’’ she told Parliament.

So now it is wrong for a company to carry out it’s lawful business and make a profit?

So it is wrong for a director to perform his/her functions within the company?

Clark here also adopted the Goebbels technique of the Big Lie.

Clark said in effect that Key and friends unnamed personally benefited. Well that does not wash. The fee will have gone to the company, from that fee various fees to other parties may have been due,profits will have had tax paid on them. From the after tax profits, struck after paying any applicable bonuses for those involved in the deal, dividends will probably have been distributed to shareholders.

Bankers Trust will have charged a fee to the then government, usually based on a percentage of the transaction, at the same time it is probable that if the deal did not meet various criteria they may well have had that fee severely curtailed. Adam suspects that the $39 million Clark refers to was the fee, which is not the same as profit. If someone knows different let him know.

All perfectly legal and in accord with business practice.

What Clark was attempting to here was to imply that Key and ‘friends’ pocketed the money personally. That people involved in making profits for their business were somehow evil and corrupt. That in effect doing your job was somehow wrong. That carrying on a lawful business enterprise is evil.

This attempted smear exposes Clark on a number of levels:-

• she is the one who is constantly stooping to personal attacks
• she is the one seeking to manufacture smears, indeed as the self proclaimed chief strategist for Labour, she must take personal responsibility for the failed smear
• she reveals herself to be anti business
• she reveals herself to be against people carrying on successful private enterprises
• she is the one seeking to campaign in the gutter
• she reveals that she and her colleagues are doing precisely what they accuse National and Crosby Textor of doing, manufacturing ‘facts’
• yet again she exemplifies Cullen’s remark that this campaign is about retaining power

Adam would like to think that the electorate will see through the vituperative venom which this woman shrieks across the House day after day.

It is good to see that at least one member of the MSM is not slavishly following the Clark line.