Dirty tactics backfire on National | The Jackal

8 Jul 2020

Dirty tactics backfire on National

Michelle Boag - Former National Party President
When Todd Muller decided not to discipline Hamish Walker for his horribly racist press release last week, you had to wonder if his lack of proper leadership had something to do with a shared belief system? After all, the whiteness of the blue “team” isn’t exactly a secret.

But with Walker now being revealed as the leak of the COVID-19 patient data, perhaps Muller's inaction was because he's complicit in the privacy breach? The leak originated from Michelle Boag, who was instrumental in Muller attaining his leadership position, which certainly gives grounds for people to believe that Muller is implicated in National's latest smear campaign.

Muller clearly isn’t displaying much aptitude in his new role by labelling Walker's crimes as just a simple 'error of judgement' and stripping away his non-existent portfolios. I mean how pathetic! As well as removing Walker outright, Muller really needs to take some responsibility as leader during National's latest dirty politics debacle.

However, instead of acknowledging any fault from the party or their leader, National and their propagandists are now trying to make us believe that Muller commands such low levels of respect from within his caucus that they would leak career ending information to the media entirely behind his back.

This is a highly dangerous game to play, being that it’s much more likely that Muller was an integral part of the conspiracy to try and undermine the Government using what are clearly immoral and illegal methods.


Today, the NZ Herald reported:

Live: 'Others' fingerprints all over this': Police Minister on National MP Hamish Walker's Covid privacy breach 

Police Minister Stuart Nash believes an investigation will show other National Party MPs or members were also involved in a Covid patient data leak. 
Last night, MP Hamish Walker and former National Party president Michelle Boag confessed to being behind the massive privacy breach of Covid-19 patient information.

I’m not sure what’s worse; the National Party breaching COVID-19 patient's privacy for political gain or that Hamish Walker thought releasing people’s confidential information would somehow justify his blatant racism?

"I simply can't believe that this is just Michelle Boag and Hamish Walker. There'll be others' fingerprints all over this," Nash told Newstalk ZB this morning. 
… 
Muller told Newstalk ZB's Mike Yardley that he was informed Monday lunchtime that Walker was the leaker and after the inquiry was announced, made it clear Walker had to co-operate. 
He then sought legal advice and once receiving that, made it public.

You know who else apparently received legal advice, Hamish Walker. In his initial press release the idiot claims that no crime has been committed, clearly showing that he and his supposed legal advisor are ignorant of the law, which is no excuse.

Muller will of course hope that by quietly removing Walker, people will become disinterested in who else within the National Party was involved. However it’s pretty obvious that Walker and Boag didn’t come up with this plan all by themselves. In fact it has a distinct stench of Muller’s right hand man, Matthew Hooton, all about it.


The other problem for Muller and his hopes of one day becoming Prime Minister is that many of those COVID-19 patients who had their privacy breached would have been National Party supporters. Clearly the National Party’s dirty political tactics have gone down like a lead balloon on the left, but they won’t sit well with many on the right either.

Their distaste at private information being leaked for political gain will grow exponentially if it is revealed that Muller knew about and did nothing to stop the smear. Because if Muller knew and chose to allow a crime to be committed, he is also gone, just like the National Party’s hopes of winning the next election.