Four hundred thousand people don’t want asset sales.

It’s many more than that. David Shearer has increased his claim to “over 80%” which is unsubstantiated exaggeration but we can safely assume a million or two have expressed (via polls) they prefer the asset part sales didn’t go ahead.

Irish is presumablyupping the 390,000 who signed the petition – this number will reduce when invalid signatures are counted, the petitioners have allowed for a 10% reduction.

In fact they don’t just not want asset sales they want every voter in New Zealand to have the chance to cast a vote for or against asset sales.

The petition simply asked that a referendum be held on asset sales. Claiming that all signatories share two specific intentions is highly presumptious.

And National wants to discredit them.In fact it’s vital that National discredits them because the referendum looms as a huge political threat to them.

National doesn’t need to discredit them. National have succeeding in an election, they have succeeded in getting their bill passed through parliament, and they have won two court cases. The share float process has begun. At least one SOE will have been up to 49% sold before the referendum takes place. The referendum is no threat.

How big a threat? Well think about it. The referendum process and the referendum itself will take weeks, perhaps even months and every time it comes up in a story voters will be reminded that the government is flogging their assets and that they are willing to ignore the wishes of the electorate to do so.

Ah, the referendum isn’t about stopping asset sales, even though it has been sold as that. So Labour and Greens have been gathering signatures on false pretences.

That’s the core of a narrative of a government that is out of touch. And that is one of the most damaging brands a government can have in a democracy.

Irish is trying to introduce a new line of attack. Well, it may be new to the public, but it is likley that this was always the opposition plan. To damage the National brand of Government. The asset sales are just a convenient way to dupe the public into supporting them.

There’s another narrative that Irish doesn’t mention. There have been a growing number of commentaries (from the left of the blogosphere) warning that Labour and Greens are the ones who are out of touch, they are over flogging a dead horse.

An out of touch self interested opposition is a damaging brand. Nearly as damaging as an out of touch leprechaun.

So how scared are they? Well National are throwing every narrative they can at it in a desperate attempt to get something to stick. They’ve tried “it’s a waste of time because we’re selling anyway”, but that didn’t work, in fact it just made them look (heh) out of touch, so they tried claiming the signatures were dodgy, but the problem with that is that the petition will be officially endorsed as reaching the limit so that just looks a bit disingenuous. Oh, and they tried claiming the election was a mandate because Labour made it such a big issue, but nobody’s buying that because everyone know labour didn’t lose because of assets they lost because their campaign sucked and they had Phil Goff as a leader.

How scared are Labour? They are throwing every narrative at National National in a desperate attempt to get something to stick. Even with their levels of political diarrhoea they are struggling to find enough shit to try and throw.

Which leaves them with nothing but the old national-party-research-unit-via-third-party smear campaign. “Look” they get their proxies to cry, “look at these leaked documents showing public money being spent on this referendum, oh and unions! boo!”.

Another “National using proxies” attack on Kiwiblog. Without evidence again. IrishBill is in tricky territory here,  proxy for a party or union shit could be as easily claimed (with the same lack of evidence).

Of course the problem with this is that the money spent by the Greens and Labour on this petition would have been spent by them on this kind of thing anyway.

Irish is ignoring the problem being highlighted – that Greens and Labour are abusing our democratic process by hijacking CIR (Citizens Initiated Referenda) for party political purposes.

In fact I’d suggest that spending dollars on helping get Kiwis a say on their assets is more acceptable to the electorate than a party spending that money on, say, regular polling by a guy who also runs a blog that (and now we’re full circle) roll out smear campaigns against democratic processes.

He excuses this abuse (because it’s for a cause he supports) and launches into a highly hypocritical smear alleging smear campaigns.

As an aside, I note David Farrar has described this as “The taxpayer purchased referendum”. The Greens have been very open about how they are spending parliamentary funds on this.

The Greens have not been “very open”. Their use of parliamentary funds was uncovered.
The Greens have not been “very open” about their intent with the petition/referendum.The Greens have not yet been “very open” about what they may or may not intend to do with the contact information harvested from the petition.

Perhaps David would like to follow their example of transparency and let us know how much parliamentary funding he has been paid over the years. (Perhaps he could title the post “The taxpayer purchased blogger).

David Farrar is one of the most open and transparent bloggers in New Zealand. Far more transparent, for example, than “IrishBill”.

Who is “IrsihBill”?
Who is IrishBill paid by?
Who does “IrishBill represent when he blogs?

And getting into transparency arguments and funding of bloggers is very risky for an author at The Standard.

But back to the document in question. I have no doubt that someone in Labour’s top team would be stupid enough to leak something like this for some cleverdick tactical reason (just wait for Trevor or Phil to start whispering that it’s Cunliffe – despite the fact this is a document that only the leadership team would have), but it looks like a work of fiction to me.

Having tried to discredit the Government and discredit the blogger Irish turns to trying to discredit the evidence – with a bit of internal Labour discrediting thrown in while he’s at it.

Or perhaps the work of a junior staffer playing out some masters of the universe fantasy. If only because no experienced Labour hack would have made such a ridiculous assertion about pressuring the unions. Simply because the unions would have told them to fuck off. And they know it.

A bit more discrediting, and interestingly a plug for those feisty unions.

But that’s all by the by because, unfortunately for National, everyone sees through this kind of behaviour to their motivation. 

Now speaking for “everyone”.

Perhaps some of “everyone” will see through IrishBill’s kind of behaviour here, and question his motivation. That would be an unfortunate backfire for the leprechaun.

And that motivation is their fear of democracy.

Why would National fear democracy? So far democracy is favoring them.

National  have been democratically elected as by far the biggest party in our Parliament.
National have democratically porgressed their MOM bill through our democratic Parliament.National have been supported by two court cases.

National are doing what they are democratically able to do. What whould they fear?

Labour, Greens and IrishBill have fought an election on asset sales.
Labour, Greens and IrishBill have campaigned against asset sales since then.
Labour, Greens and IrishBill promote a referendum that hijacks people’s democracy.

Perhaps Labour, Greens and IrishBill fear their campaign has failed – the Mighty River Power share float is under way, it looks to be unstoppable.

Perhaps Labour, Greens and IrishBill fear that all their efforts have failed.

They fear that they have fertilised a huge political lemon.

IrishBill sounds like he has tasted this lemon, he sounds very sour.

He does what some on the left do, he launches a sour attack. But the lemon on his face doesn’t disguise his fear that the Labour-Green tactical leprechaun may be lost in the garden on the left.