Dirty politics and the world wide web

ROCHELLE REES threw some cyber-mud at John Key on the internet "as a joke". The Auckland computer programmer was astounded at the fuss she caused. Her "harmless little prank" got a lot of publicity and raised hard questions. Was this a case of dirty tricks in cyber-space? After all, wasn't Rees a former Labour Party activist? Rees, 22, laughs.

What she did was plant a "Google-bomb" under the National leader, a prank familiar to geeks but new to most other people. A Google-bomb - an easy thing to devise, according to techies - manipulates the search engine to make someone look silly. In this case, Rees' bomb meant that if you typed "clueless" into Google New Zealand, the first website you would find was John Key's.

"It was just a tiny little thing I did for fun," she told the Sunday Star-Times. She had heard about a couple of overseas Google bombs. In one, "liar" led to Tony Blair, and "failure" and some much juicier phrases led to George Bush's biographical website. "I thought those were cool and humorous," she says. Nor did she make any secret of her prank. She sent an email about it to many people, including some journalists. The trouble started when, she says, a newspaper journalist misquoted her as saying she had no party affiliations.

Actually, she had been on the executive of Young Labour for some months last year. "One simple Google search would be enough to bring up my party affiliations. It would be ridiculous to claim otherwise. I'm just not that dumb," she says.

She can't remember exactly when she quit her post on the executive, and says it's possible she still held the post when she planted the bomb (now disabled). But she says it was all her idea and not Labour's.

"The thing I don't understand is why, if I do something, it's the Labour Party doing it. Even if I was involved in the Labour Party, I've never taken orders from higher up. Everything I've ever done has been for my purposes, lobbying on issues I care about." Rees has been active in the animal rights' movement - she was part of a noisy anti-fur protest in 2004 outside an Auckland fashion shop - and in green issues. Last election she voted Green. "I'm not sure who I'm going to vote for this time" - but it won't be John Key.

So is this a dirty trick, as some claim? And if it isn't, what does count as a dirty trick? Rees's trick was just a prank, says right-wing blogger Cameron Slater. "I think that a dirty trick should be somewhat hidden, and malicious in the way that you're doing it." Google-bombing was "a puerile trick and it's something I do, and I would accuse myself of being puerile." It would be malicious if the entry was "rapist" instead of "clueless".

Wanganui mayor and former National MP Michael Laws says jokes and wounding witticisms are not dirty tricks, even though they can be devastating to their victims.

A dirty trick is a covert act "that you would be embarrassed about if you were exposed". When he was a National candidate, he was the target of malicious faxes sent anonymously to newspapers. And when he worked for the National Party research unit, he was involved in gathering dirt on Labour MPs. This was part of a system of deterrence and mutually assured destruction practised by both main parties, he says.

Dirty tricks - the spreading of false rumours, the destruction of rivals' hoardings - will certainly be part of this election campaign. What is newer, however, is the use of cyberspace - and it is here that allegations of dirty tricks are freely aired.

Both left and right-wing bloggers accuse one another of hiding their real affiliations, and of malice. Slater's Whaleoil blog specialises in attack videos against Labour and Helen Clark, with images of her manipulated to look ridiculous and with wounding soundtracks added, often with accusations of lying.

"I don't think my videos are malicious," he told the Sunday Star-Times. "For a start, I put my name to it, so everyone knows who I am, and I'm not lying about my affiliations... Yes, you could say they're malicious in that I don't pull any punches. I call them liars, but that's my persona online, it's in-your-face. I don't see that as being malicious. If I catch out anybody as being a liar, they're going to cop it."

He has had several cracks at John Key, he says, but not as often as he has attacked Labour. Key, he explains, is only leader of the opposition and has little power. If Key became prime minister, Slater said, Whaleoil would be much harder on him.

Slater, 40, says he has been a member of the National Party for a long time, although he has never held office. His father John Slater was once president of the party until ousted by Michelle Boag, but "if anything that shuts more doors than it opens, and dad's not the president any more".

"Everybody on the right hand side of the blogosphere is either self-employed or running their blogs out of their own pocket. There is no money or information flowing from the National Party to any of us, that's for bloody sure. I get nothing from the National Party. Everything I get and post is coming from my own sources. I've been accused by The Standard [a left-wing blog] of having the [National] research unit funnel information to me - I wish they would!"

He and the well-known right-wing blogger David Farrar accuse The Standard of having undeclared links with the prime minister's department, trade unions and Labour. They also attack a newish left-wing blog, No8Wire, on similar grounds. He and Farrar make no secret of their affiliations, he says. And when they and a third person set up the Free Speech Coalition website to oppose Labour's Electoral Finance Bill, they even listed everyone who had sent donations. The Libertarianz Party, for instance, "gave us their entire bank balance" ($5692.13). But most of those on the two left-wing blogs are anonymous, Slater says.

"They like to call other people to account, but they're sitting there hiding. What have they got to hide?" This was a clear case of dirty tricks, Slater said, because blogs accused Key of "eating babies" but did not divulge their own Labour affiliations.

No8Wire was set up this year by a former employee of the prime minister's department, Rob Salmond.

Salmond, who now teaches political science at the University of Michigan in the United States, said he made no secret of the fact. He announced the blog to the press when it was set up.

The blog took a middle ground in that he didn't advertise the fact that he ran it, but would tell anyone who wanted to know. "I don't want the blog to be about me. For me this is about the issues and the issues only."

He had a part-time job as a ministerial adviser in the PM's office for some months in 2007, involving government online communications and preparations for question time. He had discussed the blog with nobody in the PM's department and had received "no directions" from anybody about it.

He will not identify any of his fellows at the blog, and nor will he say whether anyone in the PM's department contributes to it. He won't confirm or deny "any name under the sun". "When I asked around some friends of mine whether they wanted to contribute to the site I said I would keep them anonymous and I don't have their permission to out them and I'm not going to."

The owner of The Standard website, Lynn Prentice, a Labour Party activist, computer programmer for a small Auckland company, and Rochelle Rees's uncle, says his name has always been on the blog. But other names were kept secret partly to protect them from personal attacks. These attacks - familiar to him from other blogs - became very personal and even involved attacks on the person's family.

The Standard was outraged in January this year when a photo of the house of John Minto - described on the site as a "socialist lickspittle" - was posted on Whaleoil. "Steady Eddy", who posted the photo, had been stalking Minto, The Standard said. "People often ask us at The Standard why we don't post under our real names. Tonight Whaleoil has provided a damn good answer to that question," the site said.

There were no formal links with Labour, nor was it a front organisation for Labour, Prentice said. "I would say over half the writers are more Green than Labour. There's a few that are obviously out of the unions. And I'm not really that interested in that. What we're interested in is going off and writing stuff from a left perspective."

It was possible some people in the Beehive sent material to the blog. Anyone with a public email address would find "people send you stuff if you can get it out". What mattered with a blog, he says, is not the name of those who ran it but the quality of the material.

Michael Laws says dirty tricks - false rumours, character assassination - have been common in New Zealand politics. "When I stood for National in 1990, anonymous faxes were sent to Hawke's Bay newspapers [saying] that I'd had affairs - an affair in particular with a journalist, had made her pregnant and then left her. These were sent from post office faxes and were absolutely aimed at white-anting my campaign."

When he worked as a researcher for National Party leader Jim Bolger he was sent to Wanganui to check out a rumour - spread by Labour as well as by disgruntled Nats - that the local National candidate, the late Cam Campion, was functionally illiterate. Both parties actively promoted rumours about the private lives of MPs on the other side. National had helped spread a rumour that Labour leader David Lange had had an affair with a woman television presenter. Labour had spread rumours about the sexual orientation of a senior National figure. "I was at a cocktail party where a Labour MP was promoting that rumour."

He was sent to interview a prostitute in Hawke's Bay who had allegedly claimed that three Labourites had used her services without paying. "She was lovely, actually - I wanted to shag her myself," Laws says. But she said there were actually two not three and that they had paid.

"So you were building stories, or verifiable stories on the private lives of candidates - both sides of the house did it - for subterranean use during an election campaign. You'd seed the rumour along, you'd tell the media, you'd say it's off the record." The collection of dirt on both sides served to deter the other. Neither dared make an allegation if they knew that counter-allegations would come winging straight back.

Truth newspaper asked him about the rumour he had fathered two children out of wedlock. "I said, yeah, so what? And at that point they lost interest." Since there was no issue of hypocrisy, there was no public interest in the story. Laws believes there is less interest in politicians' private lives nowadays because people don't care any more what they do: Anything goes.

One dirty trick will certainly recur this year - the defacing of rivals' hoardings. This is a genuine dirty trick, says Laws, and causes tens of thousands of dollars of damage. How does it happen? By winks and nudges. If a young person was to say he'd destroyed some signs, campaign people would say "with a big smile on their faces, `Oh, that's dreadful'." Look, says Laws, political campaigns "are war". And in wars, bad things happen.

- © Fairfax NZ News