Who is Katherine Rich? | The Jackal

3 Sept 2014

Who is Katherine Rich?

Today, Whaledump released yet more communications that prove there's a right wing conspiracy to undermine our democracy. This latest release of messages between Cameron Slater and Carrick Graham showing that they were likely working with Nestle and Fonterra also mention somebody called Katherine Rich.

Here's the Whaledump tweet that should end Katherine Rich's career in New Zealand:


Who is Katherine Rich you might ask?  Well, Katherine Rich is a former National party MP and now turned chief executive of the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council, an industry lobby group that promotes unhealthy products that have been shown to cause widespread ill-health effects in the general population.

Strangely enough, Katherine Rich also published an article today:

For any type of business negotiation to be successful there has to be a degree of trust and respect – trust that the person on other side of the table is playing with a straight bat, and respect for the position they represent.

That's a bit rich coming from somebody like her. She also blathers on about how negotiations should be fair, courteous and respectful. Talk about a complete hypocrite!

What entirely contradicts her bullshit claims in her article today is that she was and most likely still is using Cameron Slater and Carrick Graham to secretly attack people who don't share there misguided belief in the free market, a belief that has caused this great country vast amounts of economic and social damage.

Here's one such discussion between Katherine Rich, Slater and Graham showing them conspiring to undermine Generation Zero, which is a group determined to cut New Zealand's carbon pollution through smarter transport, liveable cities and independence from fossil fuels:


Slater and Graham often talk about their smear campaigns as if they were some sort of mafia hit men. In fact it's too disgusting to repeat what Cameron Slater wrote to describe Labour MP Damien O'Connor after it was initially reported that there was E coli in Fonterra's dairy products.

I believe what Slater's overreaction shows is that Fonterra, like Nestle, were employing the attack bloggers to run smear campaigns against anybody who might help their clients to dodge any investigations into their questionable business practices. They were clearly campaigning for less regulation and being paid handsomely for their services.

Here's how Wikipedia sums up Katherine Rich's involvement:

Emails leaked to political writer Nicky Hager indicate that Rich, in her role as Chief Executive of the Food & Grocery Council, has while on the board of the Health Promotion Agency (a Crown entity) fed prominent blogger, Cameron Slater, with posts that denigrate individuals in academia and the media who report on news or support health initiatives inimical to the interests of the food, alcohol, tobacco and soft drink industries. The posts have been published as if by Slater himself on his blog Whale Oil Beef Hooked as recently as February 2014.

I would suggest that an in-depth inquiry needs to look at exactly who was writing the numerous attack posts on Whale Oil Beef Hooked, who was paying for such defamatory material to be published under Cameron Slaters' name and who else was conspiring to undermine our democracy. Because without that, we should be be banning these companies outright.