Consistency - Whale Oil style

The right wing blogger Whale Oil has been throwing that H word around a lot today, accusing all in sundry of 'utter hypocrisy' for saying one thing now and another thing at another time.

Yet only last week Whale Oil celebrated the resignation of Porirua City Councillor Hemi Matenga as 'One less Labour Trougher'. "Bring shame and humiliation down upon their heads until they resign". "Good riddance, now pursue him for his salary for non-performance"

Matenga missed four consecutive council meetings, and subsequently resigned from the council.

But what did Whale Oil say only a few months back, when Eden-Albert Community Board member Ryan Hicks missed four meetings and had to be sacked from the Board?

"The left are want to bang on about equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and trans­parency in democ­racy but when it comes to feather-bedding for their own they are a lit­tle more quiet about all that. Rocky from the Stan­dard aka Rochelle Rees has just been appointed by the City-Vision major­ity on the Eden-Albert Com­mu­nity Board to replace an elected C&R rep­re­sen­ta­tive (Ryan Hicks) who failed to turn up for 4 con­sec­u­tive meet­ings. Whilst on the sur­face this looks like a mat­ter of replac­ing an AWOL rep­re­sen­ta­tive, in fact Ryan Hicks appears to have been hounded from the role by the nasty spite­ful City Vision mem­bers on the Com­mu­nity Board, mak­ing life unbear­able for Mr Hicks at meet­ings, so much so that he no longer came to the meetings."

The board member in question happened to be from the right wing Citizens and Ratepayers ticket, the National party in local drag.

At the time Citizens and Ratepayers HQ bought out the smears in an attempt to deflect from the fact they selected a representative who was simply not doing his job. CityRat boss John Slater (and Dad of a Whale) told the central leader "City Vision has treated him quite shabbily. He has been poorly treated and it's simply disgraceful"*. Somehow I suspect the Slaters believe this sort of compassion for missing meetings should only apply to the blue team, as there is a big difference between this and calling for 'shame and humiliation'.

In constructing his little conspiracy theory, Whale Oil also neglected to mention Rees was the next highest polling candidate in Eden Albert- making her the logical replacement in a situation where a by-election was not going to be held. A much clearer example of a gerrymander was in Maungakiekie. Following his election as local MP, CityRat Pesta Sam Lotu-liga opted to stay on the City Council, double dipping in other words, just long enough to avoid a by-election in the council seat. He then got his mates to vote that the seat stayed vacant (the next highest polling candidate was Labour's Rosie Brown). Essentially Lotu-liga cheated his constituents from being fully represented at council for the sake of the political convenience of the CityRats. While trying to juggle both jobs, Lotu-liga missed Council meetings too.

Whale Oil accusing anyone of being a hypocrite or a party hack are claims as hollow as an echo chamber.

* Central Leader (4/11/09), "Member of board sacked"

PS: I have thrown out a few old newspapers tonight - this shows it always pays to read them again!