Colin Craig may be more familiar with the High Court of Auckland than his home. Photo / Michael Craig
Colin Craig may be more familiar with the High Court of Auckland than his home. Photo / Michael Craig
Steve Braunias reports from yet another Colin Craig libel trial.
Colin Craig, always Colin Craig, as much a fixture of the High Court of Auckland as the downstairs cells, the payphone in an alcove, the magnolia tree in the courtyard. The former leader of the Conservative Party – this mannearly made it to parliament! - has returned to the courts yet again in the litigation without end. He must know the place better than his house. He should bring pyjamas, a kettle, a dog.
His opposing foe in courtroom eight brought a dog: John Stringer, a former board member of the Conservative Party, is possessed by an antic spirit, and his legal folders in courtroom eight were decorated with photographs of British bulldogs wearing powdered wigs. He owns two of these beasts. "They're stubborn," he said, as we waited for proceedings to begin. "Resilient."
I said, "Are they stupid?"
He claimed they weren't. Stringer is suing Craig for libel. "It sits within a battery of more than a dozen parallel proceedings linked to Mr Craig, mainly in defamation," he told the court. More than a dozen! It feels closer to more than a thousand.
The case is set down for three weeks. It's presided over by Judge Matthew Palmer, son of former deputy prime minister Geoffrey Palmer – same oval-shaped face, like as rugby ball with ears.
The libel action concerns events from a distant age, an era few cosmologists can accurately measure: 2014 and 2015, when dinosaurs roamed free, and shook the ground with their great big feet. I am of course referring to Whaleoil.
Alas, poor, ruined Whale. From the pages of Moby-Dick, the greatest whale tale of all: "Kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal." Cameron Slater, the author and publisher of the Whaleoil blog, shivers and moves through all of Craig's many and assorted libel actions. His name was bandied about willy-nilly on Monday and Tuesday as Stringer and Craig talked obsessively of the fortunes and misfortunes of the Conservative Party in 2014-15, precisely the time when Whaleoil was running amok in New Zealand politics.
John Stringer is suing Colin Craig for libel. Photo / Doug Sherring
Stringer alleges that Craig wrote and published a booklet which contained 84 disparaging or defamatory remarks. He says it killed off his chances as a Christchurch City councillor, and also killed off his chances as a New Zealand First candidate. But at least it's inspired one of the quirkiest opening statements ever presented at the High Court. Stringer likened the case to the historic Oscar Wilde trial of 1895. There were so many parallels. Such as? "Wilde, famously, wrote poems. Mr Craig and I do too, but rather less famously."
Craig began his cross-examination of Stringer on Tuesday. Much of it centred the events of June 19, 2015, when Craig announced he was stepping down as party leader, and Stringer responded by racing off to give an interview on the subject.
Craig: "Do you agree you breached confidentiality by speaking without approval?"
Stringer: "No. The party had melted down by then."
"Do you accept you weren't a designated spokesman for the party?
"We didn't have any, because you didn't allow them."
Political losers, squabbling in a court. Who cares? Old campaigns. Old blogs. Old, ruined Whale. Ghosts and shadows, tumbleweeds and yesterday's news. Litigation and re-litigation...."In this world," Herman Melville wrote in Moby-Dick, "it is not so easy to settle these plain things.
