Steve Braunias: Secret Diary of the Labour Party

New Zealand Herald columnist Steve Braunias. 26 November 2014 New Zealand Herald Photograph By Chris Gorman NZH 25Jul15 - NZH 25Jul15 -

SUE MORONEY
"How one loves Easter! It's so good to be away from one's $150,000-a-year job doing whatever one does as a list MP who has been defeated in the past 27 elections by increasing landslides. One packs up the Jag, and one flees to one's holiday home in the Coromandel. It's the Kiwi way.

I was sitting back enjoying a nice glass from a rare $999 magnum (1500mls) of Destiny Bay 2010 Magna Praemia and nibbling on Cloudy Bay clams with jamon, chilli and parsley sauce which we had flown in from Auckland restaurant The Grill when I saw the most ludicrous sight.

It was a flash holiday house flying the Lockwood flag.

How priceless! Didn't they know it lost at the referendum? Didn't they know that New Zealanders voted against it with all their might? Didn't they understand how foolish and out of touch with reality it made them look?

It needed recording, and sharing with as many people as possible. I savoured the response my 2653 Twitter followers would have when I put up a photograph!

I started taking photographs from the lounge window with my $1238 Nikon 1V3 compact system camera with a Nikon CX CMOS sensor and touch screen, but felt that I had to get a little closer.

I dressed in an adorable cotton khaki ensemble made by Trelise Cooper with sunglasses by Karen Walker and scarf by Juliette Hogan, and covered my face with mud from the garden. Then I crawled into some bushes on their front property, and started filming.

I nearly gave myself away to the owners, though, because I got the giggles. I thought to myself, "Gosh, Sue, here you are on all fours on the ground - you're a kind of Easter bunny!"

ANDREW LITTLE
"God almighty. What's her name Moroney puts up a photo of someone's private house on Twitter and mocks it for flying the Lockwood flag. What a bunny.

It's the last thing the party needs. We should have got some traction on the referendum. For a change, we were actually on the winning side.

We stood with ordinary New Zealanders. We were with the majority. We reflected what the public wanted.

It was a novel and kind of giddy experience and I guess it made people like Sue lose their bearings.

I told her off to a standstill. I told her it was important for Labour not to seen as negative, or carping, or petty.

We have to be seen as the party of ideas - hence our Future of Work initiative- but it's equally if not more important that the public trust us as the party who stand for common sense.

But certainly I see no problem in making my views known that well-paid PR operatives are part of a vicious online commentary which somehow or other I think are linked to the death threats made against Paula Bennett.

QED, really.

I said to the press, "If you combine a sense that people are feeling that life is tougher, along with this change in the tone of a lot of communications, then it's not surprising that there are some people who are going to read completely the wrong signal and think that it's OK to make completely unacceptable comments."

I mean it's just logic.

Furthermore, I'm not going to single out right-wing lobbyist Matthew Hooton as the person who is manifestly and obviously responsible for this change in the tone of communications, but he has a particularly vicious tongue and is very scornful and hurtful and mean, and I don't think it's going too far to say that he should be locked up for a very, very long time.

It's just common sense.

In conclusion, I want to make it perfectly clear that Labour are the last party who would read the wrong signal and think that it's OK to make completely unacceptable comments."