Owen Glenn: The Storm in a Teacup
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I think I may be totally missing something with this issue. The ever-echoing right-wing blogohemisphere hear a snippet of news regarding Owen Glenn, Mike Williams, Winston or Dail Jones and suddenly they’re the investigative journalists with their nose on a scent.
“An Outrage!” they cry.
“They need an on-record denial of this travesty!” sound the screams.
“It never happened” is the official reply…..
“Outrageous! Hypocrites!” it continues to echo, folding in and feeding on itself.
Everyone needs to stop and get a grip, Mainstream Media included. However, I feel that the RightHype ™ machine is peaking too early. The election is projected to be around November this year. Who will remember except the partisans currently milking this issue for all its worth? National know better than anyone that a quick ambush at the appropriate time is enough to ruin an election. Even then, after the hype calms down this storm in a teacup will pan out to be nothing.
Well, They’ve managed to bury the “We would like to see wages drop” comment just coming to light at least. Although that in itself shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone – at least they’ve expressed how they intend to keep their tax cuts non-inflationary.
Back to the issue; I hear a lot of people are saying that donating to a political party to be given honours is terrible political patronage and corrupt and I agree. Mostly. I believe this is a special case. The man donated a whopping $7.5 million dollars to the Auckland University School of Business, several orders of magnitude higher than what he is attributed to have given to the Labour Party. Also hundreds of thousands of dollars of other donations to worthy causes (In my opinion, Labour being the unworthiest). But he had also been “passed over” for an Officer of New Zealand title no less than 3 times previously. Perhaps he should wait and if his contributions are deemed to be worthy he will be recognised by a future government… when?
Meanwhile, there’s still no evidence of donations to New Zealand First, nobody wants the “honorary counsul” position in Monaco except for Glenn, he didn’t give any money to the Maori party either and the Whaleoils of this world continue to pronounce the death of the political left and grasp at straws.
Update: Lo and behold, a nice little piece by Peter Wilson this morning puts it better than I can!
2 Comments
rhys lewis
February 21st, 2008
at 4:25pm
I guess the issue is that the governement in question had spent the previous couple of months telling us all that political parties should not be beholden to a few wealthy donors, and that NZ shouldn’t be a country where rich people can buy influence.
Then as the new year ticked over it turned out that if you make enough large donations to places such as a university you can buy an honour, and the very party that was decrying large donations from rich people turned out to have received $500k towards their $2.5m election budget from one rich man.
I don’t doubt that Owen Glenn is a nice guy, but regardless of his links to the Labour party, he should not be awarded an honour simply for making a donation to a university.
Chris
February 21st, 2008
at 5:48pm
His donations were numerous and varied. As much as he gave to the Labour party, he donated the Leigh Marine Laboratory… with many more on the list.
That’s called philanthropy, putting the money you’ve earnt from the community back into the community. And if anything this SHOULD be rewarded and encouraged… The crown has given honours for much less…
Given, he’s dodged a shitload of a tax by hanging out in Monaco, but his $7.5 million donation to Auckland University is a record high in New Zealand and he should be recognised – as you say – regardless of his links to the Labour party.