In his Herald column today, John Armstrong attacks the government for its smear campaign against John Key, and says "stop playing the man and start playing the ball" (to which the obvious response is "what ball?" - a question Armstrong has asked himself in the past) But buried in there is this spectacular piece of blindness:
Neither did it help Clark that Key had not been involved in the 1993 sale. Yet, even if he had been, what would that have proved?Simple: it would have shown that Key was irredeemably morally tainted, an active participant in events that many New Zealanders to this day regard as corrupt and criminal. Don Brash was widely loathed because of his actions as Reserve Bank Governor during that time, but at least he had the "excuse" that he was faithfully enacting government policy. The people who profited from it have no such excuse. They are simply thieves.
As it turns out, the allegation wasn't true. Key may have crashed the New Zealand currency for fun and profit in 1985, but he didn't help Fay and Richwhite loot the state in the 90's. But I'd expect one of New Zealand's leading political journalists to be aware of the political consequences of the latter.
