Saturday, September 13, 2008

Honesty: Its such a lonely word

The 2008 Election on November 8 is to be fought on "honesty" and "trust" according to the official election day announcement made by the Prime Minister Helen Clark at 12.50 pm today.

Considering Ms Clark has had multiple issues with trust and honesty over her 9 year old governments tenure it seems to be a bizarre way for her to fight an election when she doesn't have a strong honesty platform from which to pitch her message to Kiwi voters.

Clark has lied over introducing new taxes, speeding in a ministerial car, signing a name to a painting she didn't paint, introducing an anti smacking bill, and a myriad of other promises made pre-elections such as "having an open and honest government", "closing the gaps" and returning New Zealand to the top half of the OECD.

Secret agendas also stretch the credibility slingshot to breaking point; removing the Privy Council, The Electoral Finance Act, increasing welfare to record levels via Working for Families, massive carbon taxes and a whole host of other policies not canvassed before elections, fully discussed before implementation and rushed through Parliament under urgency.

The biggest threat to Helen Clark's honesty and trust quotient though is her lie over what she knew, when she knew it, and what her involvement was in the Owen Glenn/Winston Peters donation scandal.

She withheld information about when she knew about the donation, then we found out she lied about that because she actually knew years earlier.

Truth and Helen Clark, like her husband, are strange bedfellows-to use truth and Helen Clark in the same sentence is the oxymoronic understatement of the year. 

New Zealand definitely needs a truthful Prime Minister but sadly Helen Clark is missing in Mt Albert somewhere when it comes to telling the truth.


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