Play Punch Journalism: NZ media cover-up & the law’s rescue of screwed-up ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ St Martin’s Day ritual

Decoding NZ PM John Key’s dirty political tea leaf ritual on 11.11.11;  former Police Minister Bro. John Banks cast as naked beggar in ‘political winter’ before pre-Dotcom B-Grade Hollywood summer psy-op raid

In the three-part series  – Psy-warfare from Zaoui to Iti to Dotcom – I showed how and why Algerian asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui became the New Zealand Crown’s poster-boy for Global War on Terror multi-season psy-op news special and how and why Tūhoe sovereignty activist Tame Iti became the next poster boy and then how and why internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom was framed as the national security state’s new cause celeb.

In this investigation — “Play Punch Journalism: NZ media cover-up & the law’s rescue of screwed-up ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ St Martin’s Day ritual” — Steve Snoopman shows how the Herald on Sunday, the New Zealand Herald and 3News together wittingly participated in the Teapot Tape cover-up prior to the 2011 election. The Herald on Sunday omitted the tape’s damning part, where John Key claimed to Act Party candidate, John Banks, that he didn’t run nasty political campaigns, and instead promoted the party’s policies to the electorate. However, Nicky Hager’s 2014 book, Dirty Politics, revealed Key was overseeing a two-track machine that outsourced attacks, while he acted as ‘Mr Nice Guy’. In short, Key lied.

This investigation also shows how New Zealand’s ‘Deep State Easter Bunnies’ foreshadowed their next post-9/11 ‘poster boy’ to replace Tame Iti with a St Martin’s Day encoded casting of Kim Dotcom as the fattened Martinaas Beef Bull, after many covert ‘steak-outs’ in Coatesville. In this codified cuppa tea meet-up event between then-Prime Minister John Key and then-ACT party political candidate John Banks, Key was cast as  ‘St John, the Bishop of Tours’ as a riff off St Martin the Bishop of Tours, whose feast day was 11 November 2011. In the legend of St Martin, the 4th century ‘Saint’ cuts his cloak in half, when he was a soldier posted in Gaul, now France, and gave one half to a beggar in the freezing winter.

Here, Snoopman explores this deeply codified event wherein ‘St John, the Bishop of Tours’ – John Key – essentially offers one half of his cloak to John Banks in the midst of a political winter for the ACT party. When this straight-forward symbolic political event goes awry, because a recording surfaces of some of their conversation that contains the Prime Minister’s lies about himself being above dirty political strategies — which the news media are aware of — Key & Associates panic and call in the ‘Second Estate’ Crown Police and Judiciary to protect them from certain election campaign to doom. Furthermore, a top layer is codified into the English Breakfast cup of tea meet-up, signified by the building name of the global engineering firm, Aurecon, that involved itself in the rescue, recovery and rebuild of Christchurch following the 22 February 2011 earthquake.

Meanwhile, 3News political editor Duncan Garner drops the number 13 in his first news story about the cuppa tea meet-up, before he realizes what’s gone wrong, thereby rendering his savvy old boys’ network ‘Easter Egg signal’ as a rabbit dropping. A Deep State-scripted event is detected. I contend it came packaged with Easter Bunnies, planted ‘Easter Eggs’, and a shiny, brightly-coloured tin-foil conspiracy wrapping that became more crinkled as the facts and evidence were scrutinized. These packaged elements were embedded into the event and when it unravelled, Key’s Deep State actors posted themselves as hostages to signal they were stabilizing the advancing game together — in accordance with game theory.

When Garner is required to save his favorite political party and its — the Prime Minister — from political death, he practices Play Punch Journalism and subsequently collects the Best News Reporter at the 2012 TV Awards with his protégé, Patrick Gower, for covering-up the Teapot Tape scandal. The pair could have whipped up into a stonking scoop, but instead the scandal’s cream was left to go off at room temperature and new audiences were, in essence, served hollow ice-cream cones.

Key Finding: The Herald on Sunday, the New Zealand Herald and 3News together wittingly participated in the Teapot Tape cover-up to save John Key’s political career during the 2011 election campaign. As a consequence of this rescue, the National Party were returned to power. Without this rescue, the raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion would likely not have happened, because a fresh Labour-led Government would likely have balked at inheriting a raid in Key’s electorate of Helenville. After all, the month following the scheduled Megaupload Raids, the trial of Tame Iti was due to commence. Helen Clark’s Labour Government was bruised over the Operation Eight Raids of October 15 2007. Moreover, if Key lost power, the Christchurch Construction Cartel would have also been placed in jeopardy.

By Steve Snoopman, 24 October 2018

Screwing up an election campaign photo-op

A pre-election ‘cup of tea’ meet-up that took place on 11 November 2011 between then-New Zealand Prime Minister John Key with then-ACT Party Epsom candidate and Christian Freemason Bro. John Banks is fascinating for the layers of symbolism hidden within it.

Firstly, the location is fascinating because the ‘cuppa’ meet-up took place at Urban Café in the Aurecon building.

Fascinatingly, because global engineering firm, Aurecon, which had 13 of its staff on the Christchurch City Council’s post-earthquake Mayoral Flood Taskforce, holds the buildings’ naming rights at 139 Carlton Gore Road where its Auckland office is located. Applying numerology to 139 Carlton Gore Road Newmarket, 1+3+9 adds up to 13. As I have shown in my article In a Land of Shock Therapies: Part 3 – A Secret Brotherhood in GodZone 13 — a secret Brotherhood codified their cartel behaviours as they advanced the Christchurch rebuild boom game by embedding the number 13 and its multiples in the data to signal unity and fraternal love among the ‘old boys’ network’.

Even more intriguing, in the 3News report of this “Teapot tape event” — as it quickly became known – political editor Duncan Garner made a point of saying that it lasted for exactly 13 minutes.[1] Moreover, Garner enthused that the prime minister’s ‘sound-bite’ answer to 3News was precisely 13 seconds long. This was a curious observation that went unexplained.

To the secret New Zealand fraternity, dominated by men, whom are aligned with their international counterparts, the recurrence of the number 13, and its multiples, works as a way for members of this hidden network to find, communicate and work with each other — as conspiracy theory as its sounds.

As we shall see, the event signaled Key & Associates’ appreciation for occult symbolism.

At its top layer, this deep political event — in part — extended to a play on Banks’ Christian beliefs. In this meeting of the ‘two Johns’, Key was satirically endorsing Banks with the awareness he is a Brethren of Freemasonry, a once-Secret Order whose roots extend beyond the cathedral and castle builders of Europe, back to the stonemason temple builders of antiquity. After all, Christchurch was in serious need of architects, engineers and tradesman skilled in their respective crafts — like the stonemason orders of antiquity. What better way to signal that need than through a beatific political meeting with Key cast as ‘St Martin, the Bishop of Tours’ who was lured to minister a political candidate of a sick political party in need of being nursed back to health?

Indeed, this cup of ‘English Breakfast’ tea event was an exquisite allegorical rework of the St Martin’s story as signaled by the curious date of the cuppa meet-up — 11 November 2011, or 11-11-11. This date is the feast day of St Martin, a Roman soldier who served in the Calvary in Gaul, and according to legend cut his cloak in two to give one-half to a rag-clad beggar in the depths of chilly winter, and later became known as the ‘Bishop of Tours’. The Calvary Soldier’s reputation was doubtless enhanced when a flattering story spread about him dreaming that very night that none other than Jesus Christ himself was clad in the cloak-half he gave away. Evidently, Christ spoke a banal line like a pageboy to his fan-club of angels:

“Martin, who is still but a catechumen [an apprentice in Christian mythological metaphors], clothed me with this robe.”

– Alleged remarks of Jesus Christ hovering above Gaul (France).

Before you roll your eyes in disbelief, thinking with prejudice that I’m ‘drawing a long-bow’, consider that Key & Associates’ were riffing off occult or hidden symbolism as expressions of their control over events, to accumulate political power, and — in effect — creating copies of reality. Consider then, that the very day after the 2011 Election Day was Sunday November 27, which marked the first Advent Sunday or the commencement of four week Christmas season, and therefore commemorated the alleged First Coming of the Christ and the naïvely anticipated Second Coming. In the Christian Liturgical Calendar, this first Advent Sunday marks the beginning of ‘extraordinary time’, which finishes with Easter Sunday or the Resurrection of the Christian Messiah figure.[2]

By encoding this event with multiple layers of symbolism, Key’s political strategists such as Crosby|Textor were communicating that Key had a divine machine supporting him – to those who were attuned to ‘reading the tea-leaves’, or tasseomancy – the divination of ones’ fortunes through the meaningful coincidences of ‘synchronicity’. Indeed, as the biography Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography –published about the famous Swiss psychiatrist by St Martin’s Press in 1998 – explains that Jung theorized the phenomenon of synchronicity as acausal parallelism to describe an event that does not cause another event to occur, but appears to be linked through meaning. In others words, Key & Associates were contriving events with constructed synchronistic meaning to communicate to the Ruling Class that they could control the ritualized symbolic meanings of events, including the recurring overt and covert deployment of the recidivist number thirteen — even in a crisis.

By meeting with the ACT Party’s Epsom candidate on St Martin’s Feast Day, Key & Associates were also signifying through John Banks that his Christian worldview was the eventual result of the Roman Empire officially recognizing Christianity as a religion in 313 A.D. It is instructive to note the Empire eventually merged itself with a metaphor-laden religion in a gambit to unite its far-flung territories under one Church, because the deeper meanings of the TeaPot event were signalling the ‘Bishop of Tours’ was the premiere big business alliance broker for Christchurch’s rebuild projects. This was the top-floor layer to this four-storied deep political event, as signified by naming rights on the Aurecon building.

It would appear, then, that Garner was letting on he could see the number 13 had some kind of occult significance for the ‘Old Boys’ Network’.

Garner — whose cronyism with National’s political elite, including Key and Nationl’s political pollster David Farrar, was well known to the news media — described the Johns’ tea event as “a government bailout” for the poorly polling ACT Party. Where Garner appeared to comprehend the embedded symbolism more than most, the usually ever-sharp Toby Manhire noted in his piece, “Friday 11 November: the blue and yellow scone” rather wittily and — prematurely — “that’s enough tea puns, tea gags and tea stunts for the next 10 years or so”.

By lunchtime Sunday 13 November 2011, Manhire used his “Noted” column to communicate to the news media to go nuclear over a ‘Tea Tape’ recording of the two Johns’ meet-up, following the Herald on Sunday’s censored exclusive. But, Manhire still did not realize the ironic symbolism embedded in the event — given his own last name — because he failed to check the Christian liturgical calendars!

The symbolism of Key meeting with Banks at Urban Café was embedded in the four-storeyed building as a four-storied deep politics event, packed with super-sensitive layered parallel narratives that required state and media suppression.

On the ground-floor surface, where savvy, fishy journalists like 3News’s un-dynamic duo Duncan Garner and former New Zealand Herald reporter, Patrick Gower, fed Key was signalling to National Party voters in the Epsom electorate to give their political candidate vote to Banks, thereby boosting support for the ACT Party, whose party would not otherwise get enough party votes to reach the 5% threshold.

Three levels up, the hidden symbolism embedded in meeting at Urban Café in the 4-storeyed Aurecon building was that Aurecon was involved in the search, rescue, and recovery and was ‘in the camp’ for rebuild projects of Christchurch City following the 22 February 2011 earthquake.

Indeed, John Key was photographed with Aurecon staff during the recovery phase during the Christchurch after-shocks. The top level in this multi-storied narrative, communicated that the two politicians embodied the ‘labour hiring fair’ element for the New Zealand Tax Farm, which was at the time critical for the intended Christchurch City rebuild, amid earthquake shakes.

Thus, when Key stated to the news media that the country would get a “stable government”, he was mockingly signaling that it was only through his government and the Christian Freemason ACT Party MP for Epsom, that a corporate alliance could exploit the rebuild bonanza in a shaken city with a very Christian name. Therefore, this fourth level narrative cast John Key as the ‘Bishop of Tours’ for the Christchurch rebuild and other construction projects, as the event’s location at the Aurecon engineering and construction firm’s HQ symbolized.

Given that Aurecon was involved in the search, rescue, recovery and rebuild projects of Christchurch City following the 22 February 2011 earthquake, Duncan Garner’s prime number dropping of Thirteen in his 3News report of 11.11.11, becomes even more fascinating when it is learned that in the Tarot Universe, the ‘Thirteen’ card — which features the legendary democidal, mass murdering, serial Death killer character riding a horse — actually symbolizes destruction and rebuild, death and rebirth and denotes phenomena beyond the realm of the ordinary. It would seem, then, that in reporting that Key and Banks sat down for exactly 13 minutes and that the prime minister’s ‘sound-bite’ answer to 3News was precisely 13 seconds long, that this was Duncan Garner’s ‘dropping my bag of illuminati’ moment.

This ‘coincidence’ of 11 November 2011 being St Martin’s Feast day is also fascinating when it is recalled that both Johns have made much of their upbringing in poverty. It would appear that the Christian Freemason Bro. John Banks — who in 1998 unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute Te Papa Museum for exhibiting an artwork featuring a statuette of the Virgin Mary in a condom — was unaware of the darkly satirical elements encoded in the cup of tea event.

At second narrative level to the narrative Key & Associates were posting themselves as hostages to advance their dirty political game. The game was so ‘next level’ it would fly over heads of the Bro. John Banks — and even Kim Dotcom — who would eventually see he had been gamed, but even then fail to realize how deeply, darkly and dastardly satirical New Zealand’s Deep State Bunnies’ script was.

Traditionally, St Martin’s Feast Day, which is celebrated throughout Europe, was a time for completing wheat-seeding in the autumnal Northern hemisphere, the slaughter of fattened cattle which produced Martinaas Beef, and for farm labour ‘hiring fairs’. The three elements of this tradition were embedded into the two Johns’ event as ‘Easter Eggs’. In other words, Team Key was signaling in the ground level symbolism they had not only sorted the ‘wheat from the chaff’, a prerequisite step before seed sowing.

Key & Associates were also communicating that they knew about former Police Minister John Banks’ proximity to tech-magnate Rich-Lister Kim Dotcom, a German-born Finnish national who it turned out had made secret donations for Banks’ 2010 Auckland Mayoralty re-election bid. More visibly, former Police Minister John Banks’ proximity to Dotcom was known to the Key Administration’s Immigration officials and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), because then-Auckland Mayor Banks had asked to help him throw a $600,000 fireworks display for 2011 New Years Eve over the Waitemata Harbour.

Moreover, Key’s meeting with the former Police Minister symbolically signaled the Deep State Easter Bunnies had their ducks lined up. Back when Banks was Police Minister, the Air Force claimed they had no available aircraft to fly him, the Police commissioner and the anti-terrorist squad the night of 13 November 1990 as the Aramoana Massacre was still unfolding, in which Gray killed 13 including Armed Offenders Squad Sgt Stewart Guthrie. Banks — along with machine-gun totting police — had to get a commercial flight the next morning where they joined the 13 member anti-terrorist squad, which was subsequently named the Special Tactics Group.

Therefore, through this St Martin’s Feast Day deep state-sponsored event, New Zealand’s Deep State rabbits were signaling that they were lining up the fattened Martinaas Beef bull — Kim Dotcom — since a five-member task force for the Organised and Financial Crime Agency (OFCANZ) began planning the Operation Debut raid on Dotcom’s Coatesville Mansion back in September 2011. The third level was the encoded Dotcom Easter Egg.

But – this St Martin’s Feast Day deep state script did not go according to plan.

Freelance photographer Bradley Ambrose inadvertently recorded the ritualized ‘private conversation’ after Key’s Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson called for the media to clear the café. This mingling period among the Fourth Estate news media, in essence, riffed off the story of St Martin, who hid among geese in a barn because he realized the trick played to get him to minister a sacrament over a sick man, and he did not want to play Bishop. But, the geese being geese cackled, giving away his location. Amidst the commotion following Eagleson calling time, Ambrose evidently forgot to retrieve his remote-controlled microphone. To those in the news media who knew about Prime Minister John Key’s links to political strategists Crosby-Textor, National Party’ top opinion poll surveyor David Farrah and attack dog blogger Cameron Slater,  the conversation recorded by Ambrose showed up Key’s hypocrisy because he was telling John Banks he was above dirty political attack politics.

To resolve the ensuing conflict, which resulted in Ambrose seeking reputation damages of $1.25 million, Key & Associates settled out of court a little over four years later. The Ambrose-Key Settlement was, in effect, a darkly satirical script that riffed off Christian mythological elements and metaphors to construct an ‘Ambrosian Rite’ religious climax –– on the symbolically significant day of Palm Sunday, March 20^th 2016. In that settlement, Ambrose was cast as a four year-old colt donkey in a rework of the Biblical story such that ‘John-the-Messiah’ bossed his disciples to fetch for ‘the ass’ to ride into ‘Jerusalem’.

Thus, what unfolded after Garner’s ‘13News’ report of 11 November 2011 is gob-smacking intriguing, weird and creepy — even for this Deep State rabbit hole-venturing travel writer!

News Output Restrictions: Media missionaries hide dirty ties

John Key’s ritual conversation over a ‘cup of tea’ with John Banks quickly blew into a faux media storm. The intended savvy political strategy un-ravelled and should have been explosive two weeks out from polling day. Instead, news audiences were treated to the equivalent of domestic grade fireworks at a public fireworks show, instead of industry grade pyrotechnic fireworks. Worse, this wet-fizzer episode in political reporting had far-reaching consequences not simply in terms of the news media’s complicity in a dirty political attack praxis that worsened as the Key Ministry accumulated more power. The media’s cover-up to save Key & Associates’ ‘political asses’ also saved multiple actors in the Police-Intelligence-Surveillance-Security state from prosecution for multiple parallel conspiracies. Those black operations included depriving Tūhoe the return of their ancestral customary lands — unencumbered by a sly title derived from the Crown. Lest, its sole sovereign status suffered a catastrophic collapse in the event that other iwi and hapū also saw that their long-latent aspirations for sovereignty were now possible and check-mated the Key Ministry.[3]

It is precisely because of this news media complicity that explains the hidden ‘how’ and ‘why’ about the ‘Teapot Tapes scandal’ and its cover-up through the construction of a ‘copy of reality’.

Some Establishment Media Missionaries protected the then-Prime Minister by not exposing the most sensitive elements of the symbolically ritualized ‘private conversation’, because of their own complicity in this Dirty Politics praxis that was subsequently exposed by independent journalist Nicky Hager with the publication of his 2014 book, Dirty Politics: How Attack Politics is Poisoning New Zealand’s Political Environment.[4] The news media’s connivance leads down a rabbit warren into New Zealand’s Deep State during the rise, cruise and fall of John Key when his Dirty Politics praxis flourished.

To locate the ‘Teapot Tape scandal’ in its un-sanitized context, this Dirty Politics praxis delivered Key three fraudulent election wins, because Key led a political conspiracy that involved the use of a fraudulent two-track exclusionary blackballing stratagem.[5] The first track involved exploiting John Key’s charisma for charm offensives. Political strategists Crosby|Textor cast Key as ‘Mr Nice Guy’, a re-work of the archetypal Trickster character, when Key signed them on in late 2006 upon taking over the National Party leadership from Don Brash.[6] The ruse was that New Zealanders would not think for a moment that the minor scandals, embarrassing smears, and gaffs – that were blown out of proportion by a compliant propagandist news media system — had anything to do with Brand Key.[7] Meanwhile, the second communication track involved Key’s top PR-man and senior advisor, Jason Ede outsourcing dirty political attacks to right-wing blog-sites, such as Cameron Slater’s Whale Oil and David Farrar’s more cleanly-pitched, Kiwiblog. The key finding of Hager’s book was that the purpose of constructing a dirty political environment was to turn off young people and left-wing citizens from voting first, knowing from overseas experience that conservatives and far-right wing people would still turn out on polling day. Therefore, to save his own political skin, Key brazenly exerted official state censorship over an accidental recording of the ritual ‘cup of tea’ conversation with John Banks, because its contents had everything to with Key’s fake Mr Nice Guy persona.

Freelance photographer Bradley Ambrose had inadvertently recorded the conversation when Key’s top minder, Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson, called time on the media to clear the café, and the Diplomatic Protection Squad Police obliged. Ambrose worked freelance with the Herald on Sunday and had been at the media-political circus with Herald on Sunday deputy editor Jonathan Milne. According to then-Herald on Sunday senior reporter David Fisher, Ambrose reluctantly gave the recording to the newspaper. Justice Winkelmann stated Ambrose gave the recording to the Herald on Sunday and also to TVWorks, by which she meant MediaWorks, owner of TV3, thereby betraying her dangerous disregard of not only for the full factual background, and the vexatious blackballing stratagem escalated by Brand Key, and the NZ Police’s bad faith and improper motive — as I shall show.

But, also Winkelmann’s tardiness in incorrectly naming a party to the matter on her judgment — which carried no Crown crest — belied her own bad faith and improper motive in the case at hand, because of her involvement in helping the Crown keep those arrested in the Operation Eight Raids October in jail without bail for a month upon their arrest. In other words, Winkelmann well understood the propaganda value of turning a public interest issue on its head, by assisting Team Key’s re-framing of the matter as a law and order issue. Winkelmann had been a party to ensuring the ‘optics’ looked bad for those maliciously framed for planning terrorism in mid-October 2007 — as I showed in Weaving Quilts: How & why Tame Iti’s ‘Uprising’ Fantasy fed the NZ Deep State’s B-Grade Five Season Terror Plot Frame-up Job. As such, her claim that she could not decide on whether or not the recording had captured a ‘private conversation’ — as Key asserted — was contrived theatre to mirror the copy of reality that Team Key were attempting to construct for Brand Key at Urban Café two weeks out from the election.

Because New Zealand’s top lawmaker had screwed up what should have been an easy semantic construction of a symbolically ritualized ‘private conversation’ intended to sucker naïve swing-able voters into believing their brain-washing activities, Key & Associates was forced to embroil not only Crown Law officers, the Courts and Judiciary, the Ministry of Police to mop up. Key & Associates also needed the news media’s help cover-up what was Dirty Politics praxis. It is, in part, because of the size and ownership concentration, corporate advertising profit autism, close proximity to official sources and crony Neo-Colonial ideological biases of the five major media cartels that key-supporting actors played their role. I say in part, because there is an amplified news-filtering element of collusion for economic gain occurring within the major newsrooms that unhealthily coincides with the political players’ need to cover-up their conspiracy to accumulate power through a deceptive dirty politics praxis! Since a scandal during an election attracts more ‘audience’ because the Tax Herds’ appetite for political mayhem helpings is large, such spectacles offer easy pickings to scoop up media awards and help-out political players that key newsmen and newswomen know should really go directly to jail.

To this complicit end, the Herald on Sunday published a story and an op-ed piece about the recording, but did not disclose the specific content. Consequently, Prime Minister John Key provided an un-sworn statement that was used to construct a complaint to the Police organized by the Key’s Chief of Staff, Wayne Eagleson. The Police swiftly sent out a press release to all news outlets alerting them to the Prime Minister’s complaint against Ambrose, warning that it would be a breach of section 216(b) of the Crimes Act to publish illegally intercepted communications. At this point, Ambrose appears to have lost his whistle-blowing nerve and moved to seek a court judgment declaring he had copyright rights over the recorded material. All news outlets complied with the Police warning throughout the election campaign and to this day — even through the subsequent Dirty Politics scandal of 2014 — have suppressed the most damning content of the ‘Teapot Tape’. Ironically, it means that the news media had consciously participated in protecting the outrageous lawbreaking of the nation’s top lawmaker and his criminal associates, because they gave into feckless fear when they are supposed to call out the wrong-doing of those who abuse power!

Here’s the how and why.

Fisher cleaned up the sound using a programme called ‘Audacity’ to create a transcript. Then-Herald on Sunday deputy editor Bryce Johns sought legal advice that said it was legal to publish and then sought editorial advice up the chain and evidently considered the ethical issues.[8] Without saying anything about the trio’s strategizing, Fisher quotes Johns who evidently dictated or typed, “Neither politician knew they were being recorded and they want to keep that chat private” — as a way to justify the newsroom’s self-censorship. In his retelling of the episode in May 2016 in an article headlined, “Teapot tape – the real story of 11-11-11”, Fisher claimed he “lobbied” to seek permission from Banks and Key and it was in that direction that the newspaper headed. Neither politician would consent to publication of the recording, or its transcript — naturally.

Through their framing, story construction and narrative for the 13 November 2014 edition, the Herald on Sunday trio of deputy editor Bryce Johns, political reporter Jonathan Milne and senior reporter David Fisher headline’s, constructed an “exclusive” that was in reality a pathetic, deceptive cover-up. Milne claimed the conversation was “breathtaking” and that “potential disclosure of the contents of that conversation … could throw a rocket in this election campaign. It’s a game changer.” I’ve emphasized Milne’s use of the adjective “potential” because the Herald on Sunday was performing a Hostage Posting Ritual that signaled the self-censorship they were practicing could only work so long. This move required the Prime Minister to make his refusal of permission more formal — by way of a Police complaint.[9]

In his sanitized Herald on Sunday piece that carried the headlined, “PM blocks tape chat” of 13 November 2011, Fisher wrote, “the pair discuss Act’s future and its leadership, New Zealand First’s electoral chances and the percentage of the vote the National Party would secure.” The most damning part of the ‘cup of tea’ conversation was not about the way they spoke about a need for a post-election restructure of the ACT Party involving the toppling leader Don Brash, as Duncan Garner’s grilling of John Key, John Banks and Don Brash on Monday November 14 inferred.[10] Nor was it “the pair’s assessment of the prospects of National, Act and NZ First”. Rather, it what was captured by the “breathtaking range of comments” — as Milne pointedly described in his opinion piece, “Chat over cuppa more than it seemed.” The most sensitive part was where Key and Banks talk about how election campaigns can be dirty, and because The Herald on Sunday knew about the Key Ministry’s dirty political attack dog habitat, their newsroom’s self-censorship saved ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ from getting a conviction record for breaches of section 240 of the Crimes Act for crimes of deceit!  Here, Key said:

“I don’t think that’s a strategy that works very well. I think its better to get out there and promote what you’re doing, promote your policies …  I can’t be bothered with it and I’m not going to do it … I’m actually proud of the record we’ve got.”

– NZ Prime Minster John Key [Teapot Tape Recording, 11 November 2011]

Banks replied, “Someone told me you’re working with—uh”. Here, Key steers Banks away from specifics, revealing their awareness they were in a café touching upon a sensitive area.

It’s not surprising, then, that Fisher had a vested interest in not revealing the full transcript he had made. When it is recalled that Hager’s 2014 Dirty Politics book exposed — among other things — David Fisher’s unseemly close ties to one of John Key’s political attack bloggers, Cameron Slater. In his mea cuppa piece, “My history with Cameron Slater” — published amid the Dirty Politics scandal that exploded during the 2014 election campaign — Fisher states he spoke with Slater regularly between “2010 and early to mid-2012,” using Slater as a source and contact. I shall show Fisher’s Apology Ritual was subterfuge because in saying he began to wonder — at the beginning of 2012 — who exactly was manipulating Slater, and in turn manipulating him, his posture worked as a transmission mechanism to stabilize the scandal before it snowballed into a fall blown crisis. By the end of this case study, it will become clear that Fisher — along with the Herald on Sunday newsroom — understood the political anatomy of the Dirty Politics praxis run by Key & Associates.

Fisher’s bland story “PM blocks tape chat” was framed as a media ethical issue to justify the Herald on Sunday’s capitulation to the Prime Minister, and therefore, to coerce New Zealand’s top lawmaker to make a complaint to the Constabulary — which he did by lunchtime the next day. In effect, the Herald on Sunday trio practiced self-censorship as a containment strategy to buy the Prime Minister time to make a counter-move and thereby suppress the material with an official state censorship mechanism. (Key’s National Government brought in this section216b of the Crimes Act to protect themselves from such disclosure).[11] To help construct this game threat move, Fisher recruited a number of public figures for quotes to support his fake ethical news framing. Therefore, it is very telling that Fisher finishes his piece with a quote from right-wing blogger, David Farrar, whom Fisher said supported exposing the recording’s content if it revealed hypocrisy. Fisher quoted Farrar:

“If there is something which is contradicted by what they say publicly, it makes the public interest argument.”

At this time, the public did not know that Fisher was in the Whaleoil blogger’s “tent”. By his own admission, Slater’s ‘tent’ meant he had access to easy tips for dirt to hurt National’s political opponents. Because Fisher, like so many reporters, political editors and news producers failed to provide contextual connections, readers did not get the significance of what Slater’s tent really meant. Back in 1998, when Cameron Slater’s father John Slater was National Party President, John Key was invited to New Year soirée at John Slater’s Pauanui beach house in order to recruit the banker into politics — as Bevan Rapson’s 2005 report Golden Boy in Metro disclosed.[12] By letting David Farrar have the last word, the inference then was that Fisher was communicating to the National Party leadership that the Herald on Sunday trio understood a good deal about the dirty political praxis that Team Key was running. Especially in light of Key’s ‘break-taking’ posture to Banks that he was above dirty attack politics. Fisher accidentally forgot to mention that Cameron Slater is the son of former National Party President John Slater in his Teapot Tape ‘censored exclusive’ and in his Apology Ritual amid the Dirty Politics scandal. Indeed, then-Auckland Mayor John Banks described Cameron Slater’s pedigree as an “impeccable centre-right political background,” in a Sunday Star-Times story headlined “Internet Warrior” from 12 July 2009 after the Manukau City-based blogger had appeared on TVNZ’s Close-up.

Moreover, Fisher forgot to mention that Farrar was a vital political asset. Farrar had been a member of National’s Research Unit since the mid-1990s. His Wellington-based company, Curia Market Research, has conducted political polling for National since 2004, placing him in a pivotal position to write blogs to attack National’s opponents with a sophisticated understanding of New Zealander’s across all demographics, and thereby assist in constructing deceptive political communications. By gifting the last word to the country’s top political polling analyst, the Herald on Sunday’s encoded message, in effect, signaled to the media ‘do not investigate too hard otherwise Key’s popularity will plummet and National Party will be finished for years’.

This is what Jonathan Milne meant when he claimed the tea-cup ‘chat’ was “breathtaking” and that:

“potential disclosure of the contents of that conversation … could throw a rocket in this election campaign. It’s a game changer.”

In other words, Farrar’s last word was shrewdly saying most New Zealanders do not yet know that behind Key’s ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ image is a milieu of attack wolves with sophisticated political machinery at their finger-tips — such as himself. Farrar knew that Fisher, Milnes and Johns knew it and that he would soon be reading their encoded threat — bidding for a counter-threat.

The Herald on Sunday was, therefore, showing it too could construct sophisticated political communications – and in their capitulation to pressure – their exposé was ultimately deceptive too. In his ‘opinion piece’ — “Chat over cuppa more than it seemed” — political reporter Jonathan Milne also constructed a narrative to transmit a threat to the National Party leadership. Milne’s piece communicated that the Herald on Sunday newsroom knew about Key’s close ties to dirty attack wolves such as Cameron Slater and David Farrar and their transnational counterparts, Crosby|Textor, who cast themselves as political strategists, by what he wrote to work in tandem with Fisher’s piece that together signaled their awareness. Key’s use of dirty attack politics goes back to a contract signing between professional political manipulators Crosby|Textor and John Key in late 2006. There in Canberra, Key signed on the same political strategists that his predecessor, Don Brash, used to scape-goat Māori, beneficiaries and immigrants as a devious means to improve National Party’s polling because the posturing did not explain re-set of New Zealand in 1984 and its trajectory since. Every Establishment Media newsroom knew Key & Associates dirty attack politics, not least because Nicky Hager had revealed these facts on January 31 2009, in a piece “Nat’s secret advisers accused of dirty tricks across Tasman” published in the Herald on Sunday’s rival newspaper, The Sunday Star-Times.[13] The only way the Establishment Media Missionaries — particularly the editors and the Parliamentary Press Gallery — could go on pretending they didn’t know about Key’s Dirty Politics praxis was by avoiding to follow up on Hager’s scoop, the way the public would expect editors and reporters to do!

Milne subtly communicated his ‘potential disclosure’ threat by weaving into his narrative that he had been at a country hall political debate in Kaukapakapa the day prior to Key’s cup of tea meet-up with Banks. The significance being that Kaukapakapa is in the Helensville electorate that Key colonized in his bid to depose Helen Clark as Prime Minister. Milne emphasized the seven other candidates “put themselves on the line” in a lively debate with the locals, and that in his election campaign reporting he had come to see that “most politicians are decent human beings.” Milne deployed a layered expression when wrote that he and the Herald on Sunday had been ‘breaking bread’ throughout the campaign with the politicians and their families. It’s plain meaning expressed a comfortable informal atmosphere, while its Biblical Jewish and Christian meaning denoted a ritual of thanksgiving in joint fellowship sharing the bounty and joy bestowed by the alleged Almighty God, and in remembrance of the legendary Christ figure, who calmly performed this ritual at the ‘Last Supper’ the night before his execution by crucifixion. Milne finished his piece saying it was a pity Key missed the Kaukapakapa debate because “he was too busy orchestrating his tactical cup of English Breakfast tea the next day.” Of course, Milne knew Key wasn’t tied up organizing his itinerary. Milne was sarcastically signaling that the Herald on Sunday newsroom knew Key’s posturing to Banks about being above dirty politics was untrue. Thus, Milne ended his piece by slyly signaling he neither regarded Key as a decent human being, or a politician with the guts to put himself on the line in his electorate — like he postured to Banks — and that he was threatening a “potential disclosure” like a conspiracy charge over the John the Bishop of Tours’ Political Ministry —punishable by electoral crucifixion.

Thus, Bryce Johns the deputy editor opted to become an ethicist, while reporters David Fisher a lobbyist and Jonathan Milne a satirist.

The combined construction of Fisher’s fake ethical lobbyist news frame, Milne’s sarcastic juxtaposition of Key and his Helensville electorate contenders, and Johns’ alleged dilemma to weigh up the “ethical factors” over going for the jugular — like a news room editor is supposed to – renders an exquisite example of cartel game theory and filter six of the Propaganda Model for conspiracy and collusion when applied to newsroom performance and behaviours. Instead of exposing the dirty and dark hypocrisy contained in the ‘chat’ — the Herald on Sunday even mocked their readers by inviting them to write a letter to the editor — in keeping with spin-cycle savvy journalism that leads news audiences down metaphor-laden garden paths to believe they are well-informed. The alleged weighing up of ethical factors by ‘deputy editor’, Bryce Johns, were fake Equivocation Rituals at best, to deflect from the fact that The Herald on Sunday did not want to damage the National Party too hard because of all the unspoken ‘editorial factors’. Those unspoken ‘editorial factors’ are captured by five news filters — as explained by Edward S. Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model — that theorizes the ‘necessity’ for a propagandist system of communication in societies with formal democracy, because the state cannot openly intimidate and suppress ‘free’ populations without losing the legitimacy to rule.[14].

However, since the Herald on Sunday trio clearly constructed their ‘exclusive recording exposé’ as a collusion measure to extract profits while restricting supply — as cartel game theory could predict – a sixth filter that models for collusion and conspiracy in newsrooms explains their enjoinable conduct.

The Propaganda Model

Filtering the News: The Propaganda Model describes how the news can be censored by unofficial means, as explored in 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine[15] and Manufacturing Consent.[16]

Fisher claimed in his pre-2014 election mea culpa piece published at 13 o’clock — during the Dirty Politics scandal — that he felt he was being gamed by Slater, that he severed relations with the blogger between early-to-mid 2012 and he lead readers to believe that from now on he would work hard for his readers. By interference, this meant The New Zealand Herald too, would work hard mitigate bias in the political news it produced. Recall that Fisher admitted he had relied on the Slater ‘tent’ to access the National’s Party political machine since 2010. However, in his mea cuppa piece, “My history with Cameron Slater” — Fisher didn’t mention to his readers David Farrar’s part of the dirty political attack milieu and that Fisher, Milne and Johns knew Farrar was a vital component in the National Party political machinery. And, therefore, Fisher neglected to inform his washed-up readers that he had played a part in the pre-2011 election Teapot Tape hostage posting rituals to limit the damage to Key, National & Associates.

In other words, Fisher and The New Zealand Herald were conning their stranded readers about the reporter’s obtuseness, in order to get them to empathize with him. In his meek Apology Ritual, Fisher alleged that he couldn’t see who all of Slater’s Associates were, and evidently started wondering who was manipulating Slater and, therefore, himself. This mea culpa news frame was a deflection from the central issue and it was strategically intended to activate a scape-goat mechanism, while using Fisher to re-hook The New Zealand Herald’s floundering readership. Fisher wasn’t pointing out this meant he had knowingly participated in helping Key, National and its political machinery associates win the 2011 election through strategic restriction of supply — and carried on for four-and-a-half years — ultimately under the ruse of a flimsy legal restriction! Therefore, Fisher’s Apology Ritual was subterfuge because it, in essence, subtly signaled – to those in the Establishment Media who could read the encoded message — to focus on:

scape-goating Whaleoil to resolve this scandal, lest it rapidly snowballs into a crisis for Key. By the act of re-casting Fisher — of Teapot Tapes censorship fame — in a new hostage posting ritual amid this Dirty Politics Scandal, the newspaper is heralding caution to those news-fisher-men attuned to symbolic communications, even as we re-hook our floundering news-catch.

Therefore, Fisher’s Apology Ritual was subterfuge because his posture worked as a transmission mechanism to stabilize the Dirty Political scandal that could have easily left Attorney General Chris Finlayson with no choice but to call Key to account for his actions before a committee prior to the 2014 election! Had Finlayson been successfully cornered by any member of the Establishment Media to force Key to testify under oath about his two-track communications’ deceptive and dirty political strategy, the actions of his staff and National Party contractors working either in the Office of the Prime Minister, or at Curia Market Research and Crosby|Textor — Key would have been finished. Because the optics or the spectacle of a Prime Minister under scrutiny right before an election would have drawn more news audience to realize that purpose of a dirty political environment was to quite literally turn-off the potential voters for his political opponents. All it would have taken was one Establishment Media Missionary to defect from the game. By going for the jugular disclosure about the intent of the dirty political two-track communications stratagem, how it worked and graphically illustrate either in words, or a hand-drawn diagram, the full Monty anatomy of the Dirty Politics habitat for Mr ‘Nice Key’ to answer at presser — with every news outlets’ HD audio film tapes recording. This failure to defect provides an exemplar episode of all five media cartels staying the course — as game theory could predict.

Garner’s hounding of Key, Banks and Brash was more strategic hostage posting. Garner revealed 3News had obtained a copy of the recording at the top of his 6PM News story of Monday 14 November 2011. The 3News political editor focused on Key’s and Bank’s refusal to permit the release of the recording and its transcript, whether there might be a restructure of the ACT Party after the election, thereby inferring that the “fiasco” was merely about the high profile politicians saying politically embarrassing things about Brash’s usefulness as the ACT Party political leader. 3News mislead their news audience by letting them think that their newsroom’s hands were tied regarding broadcasting the recording or its transcript because neither, Key, or Banks would give permission. To support this deception, Garner said it was:

“against New Zealand law to play the tapes publicly, even when the two men are high profile politicians who invited the media to witness their meeting. One of them has to consent to let the public hear what they talked about.”

Garner added that the Police had received a compliant under 216B of the Crimes Act with a potential sentence of two years for breaching. Because 3News uses the same news model as pretty much every other newsroom in the world – which includes overly short news stories — 3News was, in effect, lying by omission.

Statute law is only one type of law. It is possible to challenge Crown prosecutors and Police, with case law, or common law. Lawyer Steven Price, in his piece Teapot pours out on the Media Law Journal blog pointed out at the time that Key’s position was ludicrous, since he could not reasonably expect the conversation was not being recorded, since he had been a party to inviting the news media! Therefore, the Police would not be able to prove this in court. Moreover, the significance of National’s Parliamentary Chief of Staff, Wayne Eagleson, calling time on the news media to leave the café — a signal with which the Diplomatic Protection Squad Police complied — would not have been lost on Garner, or many other seasoned political reporters, editors and producers.

After-all, Garner broke the story that became known as the Cocktail Party Secret Tapes in August 2008, recorded by Kees Keizer during the National Party’s conference, that revealed National MPs Bill English saying he would sell Kiwibank and Lockwood Smith saying the Party presented palatable policies to avoid scaring off voters. After the final release of several drip-fed recordings on November 5 2008, then-New Zealand Herald journalist Patrick Gower ‘scooped’ the story of who had infiltrated National’s cocktail party — the very next day! In his story — “Cocktail party spy who fooled National says it was easy” — Gower maintained the Media Missionaries’ code to only identify Farrar and Slater as bloggers when he reported how Keizer was identified, without explaining how Garner had received the ‘tapes’:

“after bloggers David Farrar (Kiwiblog) and Cameron Slater (Whaleoil) noticed he had taken a complaint about an Employers and Manufacturers Association anti-Trevor Mallard advertisement to the Electoral Commission”. — Patrick Gower — 6 November 2008

Evidently, Slater had, while working with National Party’s Research Unit to identify the spy, found photos of Keizer on a Young Labour Facebook page, and National MPs confirmed the match. (As we shall see, Duncan Garner’s knowledge of this research unit goes back to the mid-1990s, when he became friends with David Farrar).

During the 2008 election campaign, Key’s senior advisor and political attack coordinator, Jason Ede, conducted morning conference calls with Slater, Farrar and one or two other bloggers, as Nicky Hager reported in Dirty Politics. Ede, working out two doors down from the Office of the Prime Minister, was the link between Key’s Chief Press Secretary, Kevin Taylor, and the bloggers, and was known around parliament as the ‘black ops man’. Where Farrar’s Kiwiblog brand was framed as independent, providing rational political commentary (despite its poorly moderated comments), Slater’s Whaleoil was pure attack wolf politics. Both however, were complimentary attack blogs working to advance the National Party, while undermining its opponents.

This covert communications strategy was complimented by an exclusionary blackballing strategy engaged in by both Labour and National, who sought to control public perceptions about the relevance of the so-called minor parties. During the 2008 and 2011 election campaigns, both National and Labour refused to engage in televised leaders’ debates involving the ‘minor parties’ — on either of the two major broadcasters, TVNZ or TV3. Therefore, 3News executive producer Mark Jennings and political editor Duncan Garner were well aware that John Key had a track record of stymieing robust debate in an MMP political environment, because the newsmen knew about the two major parties conspiring to restrict supply of robust debate.

Furthermore, Jennings, and Garner will have read Jonathan Milne’s sarcastic piece pointing out Key’s avoidance to debate political issues in his own electorate the day before the ‘cuppa tea’ meet-up, listened to the Teapot Tape themselves and heard Key’s hypocritical posturing. Because Jennings and Garner between them all had more than enough experience about the nuances of news and current affairs scripting, including framing, it would not have been lost on them that the Herald on Sunday trio had capitulated and opted for the ethical news frame.

It will have also not have been lost on the 3News duo that David Fisher’s piece gave the last word to National’s political opinion pollster, David Farrar, with his quote saying that releasing the recording would be fair game for meeting the public interest threshold, if it proved to be hypo-critical. Therefore, it was the 3News duo’s strategic decision to withhold that proof of Key’s hypocrisy in projecting himself as a clean, proud politician who was all about getting out there openly promoting the party’s policies, and that he wouldn’t engage in dirty, nasty attacks. The 3News newsroom, therefore, opted not to play their Jugular Card.

Brand Key would have been sunk if just one major news outlet revealed the essential facts they all had about Key’s hidden dirty attack wolves, including Cameron Slater, political analyst David Farrar and political strategists, Crosby|Textor — with the new evidence on ‘tape’ that proved Key was a hypocrite!

To convey just how deeply hypocritical TV3’s newsroom — and in particular how Garner and Jennings were themselves behaving — its crucial to recall a prior episode of a ‘tape’ recording that hurt National’s credibility during the 2008 selection campaign. Because it was Garner who had broken the story of at the time of the Cocktail Party Secret Tapes scandal in 2008, and Jennings had been producer through it all, they were acutely aware of that they could sink National if they revealed Key’s use of the very same political strategists Crosby|Textor that his predecessor Don Brash used when he deployed Race Card politics to boost his popularity. For one thing, Nicky Hager had reported in article “Nat’s secret advisers accused of dirty tricks across” published in the Sunday Star-Times in early 2009, that Key had signed up Crosby|Textor as his political strategists.  Furthermore, Garner and 3News failed to disclose to viewers that Garner was an old friend of the owner of National Party’s polling company, David Farrar, the ‘blogger’ that David Fisher gave the last word to in his Herald on Sunday capitulation news piece, with its fake headline – “PM blocks release of chat tape”.

Indeed, after Duncan Garner and his deputy political reporter, Patrick, Gower shared the 2012 Television Awards for ‘Best  News Reporter’ coverage of the Teapot Tape scandal – David Farrar wrote fondly of his chum, Duncan Garner from early-to-mid-1990s. To get the extent of their chumminess, Farrar had rung Garner’s desk at One Network News to “hassle” him for giving a young woman carpet burns in a minister’s office during the Bolger Ministry one night after a ‘caucus event’ — code for a boozy night between National Party politicians, often accompanied by chummy reporters. Instead of getting Garner on the line, Farrar found himself being grilled by senior reporter Linda Clark — and caved into her determination. Evidently, the morning after the booze-up, the young woman, code-named ‘C’, turned up for work with the National Party’s Research Unit, showing everyone the carpet burns on her back and evidently said, “Look what Duncan did to me.”

In a word, Duncan Garner’s 3News lead Teapot Tape story was subterfuge.

This proximity between Garner, Farrar and Key and National party had everything to do with why 3News enjoined themselves with the Herald on Sunday in ‘Play Punch Journalism’. These newsrooms didn’t play their Jugular Cards partly because Garner’s chummy proximity to the National Party caucus, including Key, National’s polling company, Curia Market Research, and political pollster and Kiwiblogger David Farrar and 3News’ bias at that time to back Key meant they were practicing Play Punch journalism.

Especially because it revealed what politicians really thought, the recordings passed the public interest threshold.

In other words — during the 2011 election campaign — Eagleson, Key and the Diplomatic Protection Squad had colluded to exert dominance over the news media in retribution for the 2008 Cocktail Party Secret Tapes scandal that hurt National’s credibility during the 2008 election campaign.

And that dominance game went awry.

Moreover, in the months prior to the 2011 election campaign, Key’s Government railroaded through retrospective legislation that made the national security state’s previously illegal surveillance and recordings legal — as New Zealand Herald conservative liberal columnist Brian Rudman pointed out. Rudman, who earnestly recruited numerous law scholars and civil liberties advocates to support his opinion piece, “Key plays risky game over tapes”, explained the Police were bizarrely investigating a purely political game. At that time, the Police were moving to exercise search warrants on news media outlets over the Teapot Tape scandal, and saw that behind the Police’s motivation was an unhealthy mission creep among institutional players who had mutual vested interests.

Such mission creep is entirely predictable by scholarly conspiracy law theory, pertaining to political conspiracies and economic collusion. In his Yale Law Journal paper “Conspiracy Theory”, Neal Katyal argued that a “sunk cost trap” dynamic is created when people commit to a specific course of action that binds them and “escalates previous behaviour”.[17] Consequently, corrective action by colluding players to serve their secret goals, or “enjoinable conduct,” can be expected to surface in the news.[18] Enjoinable conduct can take the form of direct communications such as meetings and conference calls, systematized processes such as price lists (and their exchange) and contractual clauses that favour specific parties. Such hidden enjoinable conduct to undermine competitors may include confidentiality agreements between political parties, out-sourced political assets and encoded messaging to communicate threats and promises to stabilize a crisis. Indeed, in a 1993 Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management paper, crisis management expert Paul ’t Hart observed powerful groups use the media to relay information to “crisis stakeholders”. In his article entitled — “Symbols, rituals and power: The lost dimensions of crisis management” — ’t Hart explained that a ‘crisis’ “creates a self-binding dynamic,” since the act of characterization is rhetorical and lends itself to semantic descriptions.[19]

Therefore, Brand Key were brazenly constructing a copy of reality by semantically asserting that two high profile politicians speaking over a ritualized cuppa meet-up that they were having a private conversation — in spite of not only inviting the news media. But also, given that as two politicians who were symbolically signalling an alliance in a bid to regain power to be the country’s lawmakers, they were brazenly claiming that their conversation’s contents were not for the public record, only its metadata recording that they had one.

In this way, Brand Key’s layered messaging strategy had been to aggressively re-frame a national conversation as a private exchange, which was incredibly brazen given that Key was simultaneously the country’s top politician, top lawmaker and a strategically-placed Rich-Lister oligarch![20] When that layered messaging strategy — bundled as it was into a symbolic meet-up with the Act MP for Epsom, without the ACT Party leader — went awry, Team Key were compelled to move swiftly into damage control. Once the Key & Associates saw signs of the crisis stabilizing, by way of the news media committing to a collusion course of restricting supply, under the ruse of a legal threat, Key & Co could relax a little. Key, the Rich-Lister Oligarch could even be arrogant by the time he appeared for an interview with the earnest Rachel Smalley on Campbell Live and lured her into a semantic cul de sac with his fake private conversation ‘sweet-nothings’, despite her having heard the tape. The Establishment Media’s ruse — notwithstanding numerous journos who are easily conned or confused — should have been apparent to everyone since it was Ambrose who had been cast as ‘Culprit Number One’.

The Herald on Sunday’s newsroom, and their owner APN, were not backing a long-term contractor, whom — depending on who’s version you believe — had either been pressured to hand over the recording or gave it willingly and then got cold feet. APN media did not give Ambrose overt financial help and provision of a legal team. Neither the Sunday tabloid newspaper, nor any other news outlet that supposedly had an interest in fighting political muzzling of a story, were willing to actually fight Brand Key in a newsroom or a courtroom with their Jugular Cards splayed on the table. Every newsroom performed Abdication Rituals, knowing they had capitulated to the politically captured law enforcement, security state apparatus working for NZ’s Neo-Colonial Oligarchy.

This key finding is particularly enlightening when it is known that Key said to Banks the reason he hadn’t replied to any of Banks’ texts was so the Epsom candidate for ACT wouldn’t have to pretend he hadn’t heard from Key. It then becomes apparent Banks has two phone numbers for Key and Key confirms which one is the correct number. Therefore, Brand Key intending make a conscious strategic display over control of communications. This ‘chat’ over English Breakfast tea was a codified self-referential Deep State event designed to signal the that with ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ as the First Estate’s visionary role, he could simultaneously cloth a political beggar, Christ in the Realm of Heaven, bankroll the  Christchurch rebuild, and as the Clergy Minister of the SIS and GCSB, he could secretly sign-off on the New Zealand Deep State’s next international debut with a B-Grade Hollywood script: Operation Debut. In other words, Mr Nice Guy Key came packing an amendment to Crime law that made some of its illegal private surveillance legal and he was seeking to establish a precedent that he was the boss of politics, law, and police.

Key as ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ was also seeking to exert dominance over the media too by getting his chief party whip, Wayne Eagleson, to politely compel the expulsion of his Media Circus’ guests from the Urban café. And the Police were playing ball because the National Government had recently rail-roaded through the retrospective legislation to make their illegal surveillance and searches legal — as conservative liberal New Zealand Herald columnist Brian Rudman pointed out in his piece, “Key plays risky game over recording”.[21]

For its part, the Herald on Sunday understood Brand Key’s game was to present a squeaky clean image through grime-free plate glass windows. Political reporter Jonathan Milne was at Urban café that Friday of 11.11.11 and he clearly read the signals from Team Key, that if the newspaper had communicated, on November 13th of 2011 to their readers, the dirty political habitat of Key & Associates before they could muster the fake appearance of legal protection over recording private conversations, the National Party would have lost the 2011 election (and would have been sunk for years). By practicing feckless Play Punch Journalism, New Zealand’s Establishment Media allowed the Ministry of John the Bishop of Tours to demarcate this line in a very public way across the news media, so that every newsroom would notice the battleground had changed. But, this is only the surface reason why the constructed their exclusive scoop the way they did, to hide the reason they voluntarily censored it.

The real reason for this will become super-clear that it had little to do whether it was legal or lawful to publish or broadcast the contents – because even when the material surfaced on the Internet on January 26 2012, followed swiftly by the transcript, no major news outlets defected from the game to disclose excerpts of the recording or text. This restriction in supply — which is classic cartel game theory behaviour — had everything to do with the cozy proximity of the leading political editors, reporters and producers of the major news outlets to Brand Key since he had become prime minister. It also had everything to do with what every major newsroom knew about the anatomy of Brand Key’s dirty attack politics milieu and therefore the vulnerability to that brand if Key’s clean politician posture on the Teapot Tape were fully exposed in lead story news.

At the end of the constructed ‘private conversation, Key noticed the black microphone bag sitting on the table between them. Key asked the former Police Minister if it belongs to him, and clearly panicked later when the Herald on Sunday revealed it had a copy of the recording.

Key: Well, you learn everyday. So, you want to do the standup? Is that yours? Is that yours? Is that yours?

Banks: No.

Key: Hey, that’s a recording device![22]

When Team Key’s plan went awry to demarcate the new on-the-record/off-the-record boundaries before the news media, Key, Eagleton and – doubtless Farrar, CrosbyTextor, Steven Joyce and Key’s election campaign manger, Jo de Joix, went into damage control mode. Key accused the Herald on Sunday of ‘News of the World tactics’, which was a red herring logically fallacious argument to deflect attention from the central issue; Key’s dirty politics was central to re-winning power. Key and Eagleton resolved to make a complaint to the Police in an ultimately futile attempt to shut-down copies of the recording entering it into the ‘public domain’. And the news media fell in line like obedient Alsatian Police dogs that don’t bite their master.

By association with Garner, former New Zealand Herald political reporter Patrick Gower also behaved like an obedient Police Alsatian for failing to spell out to viewers on the 6 o’clock news the dirty attack political milieu of Cameron Slater, David Farrar and Jason Ede.

Gower focused on Winston Peters’ claims that Key was disparaging toward old people, whom comprised much of New Zealand First’s constituency. Gower, along with Garner failed to point out Key’s contrivance that the conversation was a ‘private’ one designed to create the appearance that Key was a cleanly competitive politician seeking another term as the country’s top lawmaker. The contrivance is belied on the ‘tape’ when Key says to Banks that the reason he did not reply to the ACT Party’s Epsom candidate’s texts was so that Banks would be able to honestly say he had not spoken to the Prime Minister if asked the media. At this point in the ‘private conversation’, Key confirms the ‘proper’ number for the two numbers that Banks has for Key on his mobile phone.

When the Tea Tapes were posted online on January 26 2012, Fairfax reporters Tracy Watkins and John Hartevelt continued to construct wriggle room doubt to get Fairfax off the hook to go for Key & Associates’ First Estate jugulars.[23] The Fairfax reporters stated the recording “appeared to confirm the authenticity” due to the Key informing Banks of his proper phone number. Curiously, some four years later when Key settled out of court with Ambrose, Watkins wrote:

“When the recording later emerged it seems that the simplest explanation was also the right one since there was nothing particularly inflammatory about the conversation.”[24]

In other words, Key was just “genuinely angry and affronted” and Fairfax’s readers were simply meant to think that Key simply did not like things going wrong. Wryly, Watkins noted the only other time, other than during the Teapot Tape scandal, that the Parliamentary Press Gallery reporters could recall Key seriously angry “was a whole election campaign later, the day after Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics landed.”

In other words, another scandal that the news media managed with strategically pulled punches so that the blows would not prove fatal. Watkins, like the rest of the news media, could only get away with such deceptive piffle because every newsroom gave into the feckless fear instead of directly challenging Key either in court — or by publishing and broadcasting the ‘Teapot Tapes’ contents years ago!

Ironically, when Key walked out of press conference at the time the Teapot Scandal broke, Tracy Watkins surmised this ‘walk-out’ was staged as a “calculated move to drive a wedge between the media and the public over the issue.”[25] The Fairfax political reporter reasoned the public must have found it distasteful the way the tape was recorded, because she assumed National must have polled sample groups. This mention of polling was a red herring logical fallacy, since it deflected attention from the fact that the Herald on Sunday had gifted Team Key a window of time to find a legal solution to block publication of the recording. After all, as a political reporter she well knew that Kiwiblogger David Farrar who was gifted the last word in David Fisher’s fizzer expose, was also the National party’s pollster, opinion polling guru.

Rather, Key was running away with the expectation that the police, the courts and news media would stabilize the situation, knowing the  feckless among the Fourth Estate had played along to construct the belief that their tongues and hands were tied with the threat of joining the prison muster if they revealed the Teapot Tape’s contents and more importantly supplied the missing context of the First Estate’s dirty politics milieu or setting.

It’s telling that in the hours after the Tea Tapes were posted exactly two months after Key won re-election, the snail Police announced they wanted to speak to six patrons present at the café the day of the Key-Banks Tea-Cup Show. This was six days after the Police led a trans-agency raid on Kim Dotcom’s Coatesville mansion on behalf of the U.S. FBI and U.S. Department of Justice and Hollywood’s big five media cartels. Key & Associates were signalling where the Deep State Easter Bunnies were going next. Meeting with the former Police Minister who had been refused an Air Force flight the night of 13 November 1990 as the Aramoana Massacre was still unfolding, signaled the Deep State Easter Bunnies were lining up their ducks.

Following the posting of the Tea Tapes online on January 25 2012, the N.Z. Police did not announce they had raided ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ Parnell mansion to get to the bottom of a political deception that breached section 240 of the Crimes Act — for crimes of deceit. Those deceptions became obvious on listening to the Teapot Tape, in conjunction with the public statements, symbolic communications and actions and avoidance of actions by Key & Associates — not only for the Dirty Politics stratagem. But also for the more obvious deceptions underpinning the conspiratorial actions of the Police, Judiciary and Crown Law office to frame the Urewera 18 and their replacement scapegoat, Kim Dotcom. [See section: From Zaoui to Iti to Dotcom]

For their part, Gower and Garner won ‘Best TV News Reporter’ for their fishy surface Play Punch Journalism coverage of the ‘Teapot Tapes’ scandal.[26]

Instead of going for Mr ‘Nice Guy’ Key’s jugular over his hypocritical stance about being an above-board, cleanly competitive politician, Garner and 3News deliberately posted themselves as hostages to signal to the rest of news media that the way to safely advance the game was to follow his lead story in how to tightly frame their news stories.

Team Key’s counter-move to target Ambrose — rather than the Herald on Sunday & APN and TV3 and MediaWorks — belied their acute comprehension that a ritualized battle was in play, rather than the full-scale game-changer it could have been. Likewise, Team Key’s avoidance to go after Herald on Sunday editor Bryce Johns and political reporters, Jonathan Milne and David Fisher, and their counterparts at TV3, executive producer Mark Jennings and political editor Duncan Garner and deputy political editor Patrick Gower confirmed that Key & Associates understood that a non-fatal cartelized media strategy game was in play.

In mid-November 2011, the Police were set to make demands on news outlets to gather evidence to support the Prime Minister’s shoddy position. But, then the Police delayed just long enough to await a High Court decision on whether or not the scape-goated Ambrose would be awarded a declaration that no malice was intended by his apparently accidental recording of the conversation — once the media were told to leave the café. In the hearing over the legality of the contested Teapot Tape recording between plaintiff Bradley Ambrose and Attorney-General Chris Finlayson, Justice Helen Winkelmann punted for political touch.[26]

Justice Winkelmann avoided making up her corrupt mind about whether it was a ‘private communication’ or not.[27] Winkelmann claimed the evidence presented was inadequate to decide on the legality of the recording, that it would prejudice a police investigation or trial, and the timing of the hearing exacerbated the risk that granting such a declaration would inhibit police and prosecutorial work. But Winkelmann performed a neat trick. Nowhere in her ‘judgment’ did she explicitly state she had listened to the recording, requested a copy to hear it herself or removed her ass from her Auckland High Court bench and moved it to either of the closely located media cartel H.Q.s, APN or the one wrongly named as ‘TVWorks’ to procure a copy. In doing so, she abdicated her role as a member of the judiciary to check abuses of the executive branch of government – because she avoided informing herself of the context.

This strategic failure to exercise ‘judicial fitness’ meant Winkelmann constructed a very learned looking judgment that considered the merits of various cases cited to justify or block the move to make a declaration that the communication in question was private or otherwise, and therefore whether or not the tape was a “criminal recording”. In her avoidance behaviours, Justice Winkelmann strategically failed to consider whether Key & Associates were breaching section 240 of the Crimes Act, which deals with deceptive stratagems, tricks or devices, by constructing a vexatious criminal proceeding to work as a scapegoat transmission mechanism. Had Justice Winkelmann entered the crucial evidence of the Teapot Tape in her High Court, Key & Associates’ deceptive two-track campaigning strategy would have been laid bare, because Key really did not want the voting public to hear what he said, despite his public comments that the tape contained nothing shameful.

The ritualized nature the private conversation would have also been laid bare because the tape clearly reveals Key’s thinking was to construct the appearance of an earnest Prime Minister having a ‘private conversation’ with a potential coalition partner. This construction was designed to convey the deception that Key was an honest politician who could be trusted to make far-reaching decisions in the country’s interests. Given that Justice Winkelmann would have been well aware of the Key Government getting this specific amendment to the Crimes Act passed after the exposure of secret recordings exposed during the 2008 election campaign, the High Court judge’s indifference to the Teapot Tape’s actual contents screams of willful judicial ignorance. In her strategic avoidance to test whether Key & Associates’ were attempting to cover-up some embarrassing truths that would qualify as crimes of deceit, Winkelmann’s was acknowledging that there was a furtherance of conspiracy in play. She knew very well she could inflict a fatal decision to terminate the life of the patient, Prime Minister John Key, by ordering the Teapot Tape in question to be played in court. Justice Winkelmann knew the Solicitor General was consciously participating in the theatre to protect the Prime Minister in his most recent role as ‘Bishop of Tours’, since it had gone awry. Indeed, Key’s absence in the High Court signaled the total vulnerability of his position — a critical point ‘missed’ by every news outlet. Because, if Key really had nothing to hide and was the above board politician and scrupulous lawmaker that his constructed image projected, he could have appeared confident knowing he draw a gallery of the Fourth Estate’s geese. If Key was really the ‘Mr Nice Guy’ he attempted to project on St Martin’s Day — with the seasoned political actor John Banks as a bit part player — and had no hidden vexatious blackballing strategies in play, he could have said in the High Court:

“Play the tape loud, please. I’ve got nothing to hide. Last night, I dreamt John said, “There’s John, who is not a catechumen [an apprentice in Christian mythological metaphors], who tried to heal my sick party with his magnificence.” – Honest John Key

Justice Winkelmann’s avoidance to play Teapot Tape meant she, in essence, performed a Patriarchy Winking Ritual via her judgment, which carried no Crown Court insignia.

To this corrupt end, Winkelmann cited the Attorney General’s position that a civil declaration ought to be rarely granted because it can prejudice the criminal investigation and prosecutorial proceedings yet to come, which were inherently fact sensitive. In weighing up these jurisdictional considerations, Winkelmann also cited Judge J. Thomas who said that although the Court does have such jurisdiction, it needed to exercise its jurisdictional powers sparingly. Judge J Thomas cautioned that “the criminal process is being used vexatiously and the criminal proceeding amounts to an abuse of process”. Winkelman then claimed it was “unnecessary and undesirable to overlay the discretion with any particular form of words or test”. In other words, Winkelmann was avoiding putting to the test Key’s and Banks’ words that were on a tape she avoided listening to before she entered the court. High Court Justice Winkelmann therefore, failed to hold the Solicitor General and Attorney General to account for why they allowed vexatious criminal proceedings to be pursued!

Fascinatingly, to signal she was advancing the game of deception, she cited the New Zealand case of Auckland Area Health Board vs Attorney General that Judge J Thomas was presiding over. In that case, the doctors of the intensive care unit at Auckland Hospital were seeking a court declaration to clarify whether they would be guilty of culpable homicide if they removed the ventilator system that regulated the breathing and therefore assisted in supplying oxygen for the heart to continue beating. Justice Winkelmann pointed out in that case Judge J Thomas granted a doctor the courtesy of making a lengthy and detailed presentation of matters pertinent to being a granting a waiver of criminal culpability to show they absolutely needed such a legal assistance. This is a crucial point because you would have though Winkelmann would have elicited from the news media their views on the merits of releasing the tape. Given that both the newsrooms of the Herald on Sunday and 3News, who were present in the High Court and they knew between enough information about Key & Associates’ duplicitous two-track dirty politics stratagem while maintaining a ‘Mr Nice Guy’ subterfuge, Winkelmann’s avoidance in teasing out why the Prime Minister was so worried about the tape is very telling. Instead, Winkelmann cited this Auckland Area Health Board vs Attorney General case as a way to codify her communications to Wellington’s political elite. The High Court Justice was saying that though John ‘the Bishop of Tours’ Key had panicked, and required the help of the Second Estate, the Crown Judiciary and Police to rescue him,

Pertinently, the patient had an extreme case of Gullain-Barre syndrome, a condition that Winkelmann did not describe lest her encoded messaging become obvious. The National Institute of Neurological Orders and Stroke describe Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) as:

“a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of its peripheral nervous system—the network of nerves located outside of the brain and spinal cord. GBS can range from a very mild case with brief weakness to nearly devastating paralysis, leaving the person unable to breathe independently. Fortunately, most people eventually recover from even the most severe cases of GBS. After recovery, some people will continue to have some degree of weakness.”

Justice Winkelmann appeared to be slyly and wryly communicating that she comprehended the symbolism of the two Johns’ meeting on St Martin’s Day, complete with its encoded riffs off the Roman Calvary Soldier’s life based in Gaul — now France — whose good deed of giving half his cloak to a freezing beggar was endorsed by Christ in a dream, allegedly.

Crucially, in the French Ancien Régime —when Christendom was the ideological framework that dominated Europe — the estates of the realm were divided into three broad orders as systems of social control, until the Masonic Templar-driven French Revolution of 1789-1799 smashed the Monarchy, as Nicholas Hagger found in his epic study, The Secret History of the West.[28] The clergy comprised the First Estate, above which sat the Absolute Monarchy, while the nobility formed the Second Estate as a magisterial class ministering over royal justice and civil government, and the bourgeoisie and peasants comprised the Third Estate.

In some jurisdictions such as Russia, rural commoners were consigned to the Fourth Estate. In the Realm of New Zealand, the Four Estates refer to the legislature, administration, judiciary and the journalism. Therefore, the Auckland High Court judge could see ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ and his First Estate clergy entourage were panicked when metaphorically dialed the emergency number 111 for help, when their clever metaphor-laden event went wrong on 11.11.11.

In effect, the Guillain-Barré syndrome symbolized their panic, since they had obviously developed a rare neurological disorder that led them — as the bodies’ immune system — to attack their own body’s peripheral nervous system – the Fourth Estate, or the profession of journalism. This panic, however, was the first time Key & Associates had got a fright and moved to attack the news media’s capacity to exercise free speech rights.

Because the body’s peripheral nervous system is the network of nerves located outside of the brain and spinal chord, Winkelmann, in effect, was saying that due to Guillain-Barré syndrome retarding how the immune system of the ‘Bishop of Tours’ behaved and performed, it was attacking the healthy nerves of the Fourth Estate. Consequently, the spinal cord, comprising the institutions of the Second Estate, or the administration, which included the Crown Law Office, Diplomatic Protection Squad Police, and the Police in general — were stiffened. The Bishop of Tours and his entourage called in the Second Estate to contain the advancement of the Guillain-Barré syndrome, lest it spread to the First Estate legislature — the brain — causing it to resemble an over-steamed cabbage and the Crown, or the Neo-Colonial Oligarchy, upon which its sits — to suffer a terrible fall in mid-walk.

To assist in remedying ‘John the Bishop of Tours’ and his entourage for contracting Guillain-Barré syndrome, the Second Estate — the judiciary — was called in to ensure the symptoms did not proceed beyond a tingling of feet and hands, muscle weakness, vision impairment and difficulty in swallowing, chewing and speaking. Otherwise, the peasants would see Key’s ruse, and the entire Realm would become incapacitated and the judiciary would be required to make a declaration that the doctors at Auckland Hospital’s intensive care unit would not be found guilty of culpable homicide for turning off the breathing equipment.

In this encoded way, I think Justice Winkelmann signaled she understood that the judiciary — or the Third Estate was being drawn into the dirty quagmire to obscure the vexatious exploitation of criminal proceedings to cover-up the New Zealand Realm’s top lawmaker’s own deceptive mess. Winkelmann, therefore, well understood the value of preventing the Fourth Estate from being safe to report to the realm, or the body in this metaphor-laden judgment that John the Bishop of Tours was on life support and as the realm’s doctors they could report with guilt-free consciences on patient’s severe case of ‘Guillain-Barré syndrome’.

If Justice Winkelmann had done her job properly, with her judgment just four days out from polling day, in effect, saying the doctors would not be guilty of culpable homicide, the full exposure and context of the Key & Associates’ immune system developing severe Guillain-Barré syndrome, thereby attacking the healthy nerves of the Fourth Estate. But, Winkelmann did not do her job properly because to do so would have not only terminated the retarded immune system of John the Bishop of Tours and his entourage. A sound judgment would have also have rapidly led to the termination phase of the immune system’s host: the Neo-Colonial State.

Indeed, the fully Monty spectacle of a terminally-ill Neo-Colonial Crown patient with four days out from an election would have been transformational, because the captive Tax Herds cast as voters would have been compelled to distance themselves from the stalking character Death, looming large over the horizon to eclipsing the sun as it rose on election day. In that set of circumstances, the New Zealand’s Tax Herds would have exhibited rational behaviour and resolved to become free-radicals to bury the flesh of the Zombie.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KloJf11GvQg

Key’s political career would have been over in a heart-beat on Saturday night, 26 November 2011.

Alas, that happy event did not come to pass.

Instead, and because Justice Winkelmann had allowed her High Court room to be a theatre for the black operations of Key’s top advisor Jason Ede, his chief of staff Wayne Eagleson and his campaign strategists Crosby|Textor, the Crown’s character actors could perform to a damage control script.

The Police retrieved Teapot Tape recordings and associated documents from the Herald on Sunday, TVNZ, TV3, and Radio NZ shortly after Winkelmann’s judicial punt for touch.

Solicitor-General David Collins, QC unwisely waded in this mess metaphorically wearing only short cheap blue-banded gumboots. The Solicitor-General claimed the political combination of Key and Banks were entitled to have a ‘private conversation’, and that it was out of the bounds of the High Court to interfere in a police investigation that needed to go forward independently and objectively. Solicitor-General Collins, who along with his boss, Attorney General Chris Finlayson should have advised the Police that it was a purely political game being played and that since the Police unwisely stepped into the fray, it would need to conduct it fairly. To do so, the Police investigation would have needed to model for game theory, oligarchy theory and cartel collusion to capture the conspiracy phenomena occurring in the background.

A full exposure of the deceptions in play would have been catastrophic not only for the Key Government, but also for the enduring nebulous machine that goes by the title of the Crown. To be fair, a Police investigation — which did not conclude until 27 March 2012[29] — would also have sought search and seizure warrants on a number of political players and their offices.

Particularly, as the Police-led Dotcom Mansion Raid of January 20 2012 showed up the willingness of the national security state, the Crown Law Office and Key’s ministers to embroil themselves in another jurisdiction’s claims to copyright infringements that were ultimately dropped. Those copyright infringements were not covered by New Zealand’s extradition agreement with the United States!

Crucially, Annie Goldson’s 2017 documentary, Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web, shows the Crown Law Office met with representatives of the Police, OFCANZ, and the GCSB — the government organization – that Grant Wormald avoided naming on November 4 2011 — a full week prior to the Martin’s Day cup of tea meet-up. As Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web, shows, the Crown Law Office embroiled itself in vexatious criminal proceedings against Dotcom, his family, his business, employees, customers, clients and ultimately condoned a multi-season news special psy-op against New Zealanders.

In essence, Winkelmann’s ‘Patriarchy Winking Ritual’ performance communicated the judiciary were not be going to interfere in the obvious Crown political conspiracy and media cartel collusion game in play: “carry on the ritualized battle” lest you be found guilty of culpable homicide of the patient with severe Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Because Attorney General Finlayson was also a Cabinet Minister in the Key Ministry, and the controversy had erupted during an election campaign, and such hullabaloos have the predictable tendency to amplify vulnerabilities to politician’s perennial disability — popularity autism — Finlayson and Key had the same need. Both political players needed to downplay the Key Ministry clergy’s breaches to section 240 of the Crimes Act inherent to the deceptive two-track dirty political communications strategy the rest of the news media would realize was afoot. Both political players needed to cooperate in a deceptive move to deflect attention by continuing to seek to get re-elected rather than admit to the true enormity of the scandal.

After all, Prime Minister John Key was Attorney General Chris Finlayson’s boss, who in turn was Solicitor General David Collins’ boss.

Dénouement of the Teapot Tape Scandal

Ambrose — who must have been seething at the Herald on Sunday and 3News for jettisoning him to turbulent waters – eventually filed for his $1.25 million defamation case against John Key in December 2014. This case was set down for February 2016. Following a crowd-funding appeal for Ambrose in early March 2016, Key reached an out of court settlement with Ambrose on the highly symbolic Sunday of 20 March 2016. Because New Zealand’s Tax Herd’s are un-attuned to the Deep State Rabbits’ symbolic communications, and the darkly satirical humour they embed into events, most missed the significance that this Ambrose-Key Settlement was reached on ‘Palm Sunday’, the Sunday before Easter Bunny weekend. Because Easter doubles as the commemoration of the alleged crucifixion of the world’s most famous Messiah figure and his magical resurrection three days later, the timing of this settlement event nearly four-and-a-half years after it was triggered is revealing.

According to the Biblical story of Palm Sunday, the legendary Christ character is en route to Jerusalem, when he pauses, weeping as he allegedly foresees the coming destruction of the Second Temple and his impending ‘Passion’ — his alleged crucifixion on Mount Calvary, or Golgotha. The Christ character evidently bossed around his disciples to go fetch a colt donkey in the village ahead that he knows has never been ridden before. As the alleged Jesus Christ figure triumphantly rides the colt donkey, his gathering fan-base spread cloaks before him and cut palm branches, in apparent adoration of the humility of such a noble-born spiritual master.

In this settlement with Ambrose, the Prime Minister’s Jewish heritage was drawn upon to cast John Key as the Prince of Peace, riding a colt donkey — Bradley Ambrose — as a sign of peace. Rather than, say, on one of the noble Establishment Media cartel’s war-horses like John Bryce or Mark Jennings — in a court battle complete with bad optics. By effectively casting Ambrose in the metaphor of a colt — which denotes a male horse, zebra, donkey, or mule (or ass) of four years old or younger belonging to the genus Equus — Key & Associates were slyly poking fun at his past, as well as the realm’s Tax Herds for not knowing much

.

By meeting with Ambrose on Palm Sunday, Key & Associates were riffing off the Ambrosian Rite, which is one of three surviving liturgical rites in Catholic Latin Church services. The Ambrosian Rite is the principal liturgical rite of the Archdiocese of Milan, as well as the other Italian dioceses such as Bergamo, Lodi and Novara, Monza, Treviglio, and Trezzo sull’Adda and is also practiced in fifty parishes in the Swiss Diocese of Lugano located in the Canton of Ticino. The Ambrosian Rite is named after the fourth century Bishop of Milan, St Ambrose (c.337-397) — who title is ‘Confessor and Doctor of the Church’ — innovated what was an ancient rite, by introducing antiphons or short chants, hymn singing and new arrangements to vigils. St. Ambrose’s short chants and hymn signing spread from Milan to other Catholic Churches and eventually grooved up the City of Rome. He also defended Milan’s special customs such as feet washing of the newly baptized, which is fascinating because in John 13 of the New Testament, the character Jesus allegedly instructed his fan club of Apostles to wash one another’s feet to signify humility and brotherhood, and he led by example.

This symbolically laden conciliation with Ambrose was orchestrated to stabilize the power structure since a defamation trial would have posed a high risk to the Key Ministry. In keeping with the strictures of deep state actors who use metaphors laden symbols to control the meanings of crisis rituals, it occurred in private, rather than say, in the parliament buildings as an official matter that would be ‘on the record’. It occurred with lawyers for both parties meeting on Palm Sunday March 20 2016 to thrash out the settlement, which included a cash payment from payment, but no apology from Key, despite Ambrose’s apology four years prior. Thus, Ambrose was simultaneously cast as the Confessor of the Church because he apologized for giving the recording to the news media, which is what the news gatherers are supposed to do. And, as Doctor of the Church because he had ministered a remedy, by capitulating to Key & Associates for failing to call a press conference, playing the tape aloud and directly challenge the news media to ‘upload’.

It is, therefore, fascinating to discover that in the Ambrosian tradition, the Saturday just prior to Palm Sunday marks the end of the long catechetical preparation, instruction of the catechumens, or the apprentices for the Mysteries of the Christian Faith. It also marks the beginning of the solemn commemoration of the last days of Our Lord on the earth before His salvific Death on the Cross. The Saturday on the eve of Palm Sunday is known as the Sabbatum in traditione Symboli, which denotes the handing over of the Symbolum or the Creed. This Creed — titled Symbolum Apostolicum (Symbol or Creed of the Apostles) — has a Trinitarian structure containing sections that affirm belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son and the Holy Spirit. Its first appearance is in a letter written attributed to Ambrose, from a Council in Milan to Pope Siricius in about AD 390. Therefore, the eve of Key settling with Ambrose represented the end of his long preparation as an apprentice in the occult communications of the Neo-Colonial Deep State. This apprentice preparation of a catechuman was embedded in the St Martin’s Day Tea Cup event, since St Martin as the Roman Calvary Soldier was said to have dreamt of Jesus wearing the other half of the cloak he allegedly gave to a freezing the beggar. In that alleged dream, Jesus blandly enthused that although Martin was but a catechuman, he gave the legendary Messiah figure his robe.

In a ‘previous life’, Bradley Ambrose was Brad White, the former cop who had worked in the Taranaki Police precinct, and came under investigation in 2000. Police found White knew Kelvyn Alp, whom police claimed had organized a militia called the New Zealand Armed Intervention Force (NZAIF), that were allegedly intent on armed assaults on the capital And recall that he reinvented himself as Bradley White, and became a photographer with Fairfax’s, Taranaki Daily News. Prior to the Teapot Tape episode, Bradley Ambrose chased tornadoes in the United States in 2011 and filmed the Marum Volcano eruption of 2010 in Vanuatu.

Why would a person’s apparent poor judgment from so far back have a bearing on how he is singled out for special treatment at the hands of Deep State’s Rabbits?

Because Ambrose failed to see what he said at the time of the Teapot Tape scandal would be taken as an indication that he could be easily played as a scapegoat. His naïve comprehension of the territory he had strayed into meant he could be teethered — if need be — for the time-period it takes to rear a colt! In a Fairfax story from 15 November 2011 the day after Key and Eagleson made the Police complaint, Ambrose said:

“Being in the middle of a cyclone is much more fun than having this kind of attention. It’s just a storm in a teacup, a minor oversight that I inadvertently left it there and it’s snowballed.”

Then when Ambrose gave in to feckless fear and made the strategic mistake composing a letter of apology, the Police noted his apology in consideration of their biased, poorly modeled, highly enclosed investigation, and gave Ambrose a warning. Key exploited the feckless fear that had gripped the news media and Ambrose through the transmission mechanism of the Crimes Act that in effect worked like non-lethal strangulation does the job for a wife-beater — maintain submission and access. The ‘Bishop of Tours’ brazenly said:

“I repeatedly said at the time that I was concentrated on the issues that matter to the New Zealand public, and that the secret recording wasn’t one of those issues. That remains the case.”

Recall that New Zealand Herald columnist Brian Rudman had pointed out that the Police had embroiled themselves in purely political propaganda to reframe a ‘cup of tea’ media event gone sour as a law and order issue? Rudman honed in on Key’s risky game, because he was, in effect, escalating prior conspiring behaviours since his Government had rushed through retrospective legislation to help the police, national security state and legal establishment with outstanding prosecutions — including the Urewera 18 case — otherwise they wouldn’t be able present illegally gathered evidence?

Recall the track record of Justice Helen Winkelmann prior to her judgment of 23 November 2011, in which she strategically failed to declare whether or not the conversation Ambrose had recorded was a “private conversation”?

In her 9 December 2010, Justice Winkelmann had denied the ‘Urewera 18’ defendants of the Operation Eight raids a trial by jury. The date set was for August 2011, but then was brought forward to May 2011 – so that it did not compete with the Rugby World Cup for attention — even though the accused had been arrested on October 15 2007!

When it is recalled that the Taranaki Police force’s beginnings were forged out of the Taranaki Militias that formed the Constabulary, the historical ironies reverberate with the Neo-Colonial Crown meeting the ghost of its Colonial forebear. Particularly since the Constabulary rode around on horseback like a mounted Calvary helping to enforce the ‘peace’ after they and the Imperial Navy, Army and Colonial Defence Forces beat Māori in a war of the settlers’ own making. Especially, since the Crown unleashed a scorched earth policy against the sovereign Tūhoe, using a Constabulary force drawn from across the North Island, to route-out the defiant Te Kooti and his men in the very wilderness that Tame Iti was said to be organizing a terrorist militia. It was so ironic that Bradley Ambrose as his former self, Brad White, the former Taranaki cop knew Kelvyn Alp, the would-be commandant of the New Zealand Armed Intervention Force (NZAIF), alleged to be planning armed assaults on the capital. And then as the reinvented Bradley Ambrose he became a tornado chaser in the United States in 2011, before accidentally recording a a contrived private conversation that could have blown the Prime Minister’s ‘Mr Nice Guy’ cover and — if the journalism, university and police academies had looked into the liturgical calendars the layered symbolism could have come to surface.

Because Ambrose had re-invented himself by becoming a photographer and cameraman who filmed volcanic eruptions and storms, Team Key were mocking Ambrose for his fecklessness because he couldn’t see the potentially ‘explosive eruption forest’ for the ‘storm in a teacup trees’. By his own apparent obtuseness, Ambrose had stated back in mid-November 2011, the matter was a “storm in a teacup”.

Evidently, in still pursuing his defamation case into 2016, he had failed to grasp that he had sat on his evidence of Key’s fake posturing about being a clean competitive politician – even as the Dirty Politics scandal erupted during the 2014 election campaign! Ambrose failed to grasp that reputation is simply what other people think of you. If it really bothered him, and it really affected his capacity to get work, then what he needed to do was grow political balls. Ambrose could have released the tape and transcript in a very public way by playing it amplified loud to the media prior to the 2014 election — during the Dirty Politics scandal – and point out how it reinforced Hager’s argument because Key had pretended to Banks that he was a clean competitive politician.

As film screenwriters say, ‘character is action’. Key kept performing because no media outlets played their Go for the Jugular Cards, such as by leading the news bulletins and front-pages with the key finding Hager’s book:

Dirty politics’ purpose to turn off young and left-wing people from voting – Hager says”.

Because the news media avoided spelling out to the Neo-Colonial New Zealand Crown’s captured Tax Herds this devious intent, John Key & Associates were left scot-free to go on performing.

And for his part David Farrar and Cameron Slater kept their Kiwiblog and Whaleoil audiences in the dark about the two-track communications strategy that cast John Key as Mr Nice Guy, while the attack politics was outsourced to David Farrar and Cameron Slater. Sanctimoniously, Farrar wrote about someone posting the recording on Youtube with the title “2Johns2Cups” in late January of 2012.

Farrar claimed the recording was “quite benign”.

It wouldn’t be until the publication of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics book, that New Zealanders would learn that Key’s public relations (aka propaganda) pointman, Jason Ede — who was located two doors down from the Prime Minister’s office in the Beehive — was disseminating the political attack information to the bloggers.

For instance, journalist Nicky Hager argued in chapter three of his 2014 book Dirty Politics that New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) got politically involved in discrediting opposition leader Phil Goff, by fast-tracking the release of a SIS-Goff briefing record to a right-wing blogger Cameron Slater.

Where the mainstream media were denied the document, Slater was able to feed the news media, via his Whale Oil blog, negative stories about Goff for 2-3 weeks in the lead-up to the 2011 election period. The negative media barrage made the opposition Labour Party leader look dishonest and ill-equipped to handle flak. One such document release happened in 72 hours by the hand of the SIS Chief, Warren Tucker, following an OIA request by Cameron Slater.

On August 22 2014, the NZ Herald ‘unearthed‘ a video that showed New Zealand Prime Minister John Key acknowledging to the news media in August 2011 that he was personally briefed by the head of the SIS, Warren Tucker, that the SIS chief was going to release the SIS-Goff document under an Official Information Act (OIA) request from Cameron Slater.

But, once that the Dirty Politics scandal has erupted, with just over four weeks to the 2014 election, the prime minister had changed his story to say that what he meant at the time in 2011 was that it was his office that was informed, not him specifically as I reported in “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire” (August 25 2014).

What the fast-tracked SIS leak did was deflect media attention from a gaff that John Key made while he was in the United States visiting Barack Obama. Key’s gaff was that he jumped to conclusions over a mass killing of Norwegian Labour Party members by a far-right racist at a summer camp outside Oslo.

At a press conference with Obama, Key used the tragedy as an occasion to justify New Zealand’s involvement in America’s War on Afghanistan.

The media reported Key’s gaff. Then key insiders from Key’s administration exploited an apparent mistake by Goff when he claimed he had not been briefed on an earlier security issue when he had. The occasion in question was when a group of Israeli backpackers, who were suspected of spying, hurriedly left New Zealand after one died in the Christchurch earthquake of February 2011.

Blogger Cameron Slater was given the SIS document regarding Goff’s security briefing on the Israeli backpackers’ matter three days after making his request, which is unheard of speed for Official Information Requests. (The news media usually do not get a response in the 20 business days required by law).

Ironically, Goff had got some of his own medicine. By Goff’s hand, he had created flak for Don Brash, back when the former Reserve Bank Governor headed the National Party.

The phrase ‘gone by lunchtime’ became a cultural meme in 2004, after Foreign Minister Phil Goff, of the Clark Labour-led Coalition Government released notes made by a Foreign Affairs ministry official, who recorded Dr Don Brash saying to two US politicians that the National Party would scrap the ban on nuclear-powered ships “by lunchtime” if elected to power.

The news media’s coverage of the Dirty Politics Scandal actually helped Key re-win the election because they did not go for the jugular to spell out to New Zealanders to purpose of a right wing-conservative party running dirty political attacks in the lead-up to the election. The intent behind the imported political stratagem was that dirty attack politics benefits right wing parties such as the National Party, while it hurts left-wing ones more, because it is known to turn off left-wing citizens and young people from voting. Key admitted these facts in a pre-recorded interview on Campbell Live two days after re-winning power on 22 September 2014, when John Campbell point them out.

Unfortunately, John Campbell failed to go for the jugular, and despite The Nation replaying this Campbell Live interview the following Saturday, the news media also failed to go fo the jugular.

It was as if New Zealand’s news reporters, editors and producers wore kitten-mittens instead of Muhammad Ali boxing gloves.

In reality, the Fourth Estate media acted in its role as the body’s peripheral nervous system to protect the political bodies’ immune system — First Estate legislature, or the brain — to save it from resembling an over-steamed cabbage.

To maintain the Key Brand, Key had to perform to script with a straight, respectful face when he met with Bradley Ambrose to settle out of court on Palm Sunday 2016. In this re-casting, John Key’s role-play of riding a colt donkey would act as the embodiment of the mythological element of the Saviour, triumphing over political death, a spiritual victory for the dark forces of New Zealand’s Deep State!

Indeed, layered into the script was a taunt directed not only at Ambrose for being a feckless gatherer of news. But, also, John Key’s Palm Sunday Peacemaking Ritual signaled to the Herald on Sunday, 3News and the rest of the Fourth Estate news media that their newsrooms lacked the political balls and ovaries to play their Jugular Cards too. And, therefore the Fourth Estate’s symbolic casting as a four-legged teenage pack-animal, Team Key were communicating that they remain rulers over the Rome’s Tax Herds in the far-flung Tax Farm of New Zealand because we, the Imperial Brain Trust, have turned the news media into meek conscientious objectors.

Because Key’s two-track communication stratagem was laid bare during the 2014 election campaign with the eruption of the Dirty Politics scandal, the casting of Key as the Prince of Peace had a layered symbolism. At the surface, it communicated a mortal who make mistakes, acknowledges them, and has made his peace.

Beneath the surface, it signals New Zealanders were re-duped into believing in Key’s messiah-like image. Encoded into the Key-Ambrose-Key Settlement is the mythological element of the Salvation, intended as a darkly wry joke.

The Salvation Doctrine claims all mortals are cleansed through the self-sacrifice of Messianic martyrdom. The Messiah story attributed to the alleged Christ figure existed well before zero B.C. and was plagiarized from prior polytheistic cults and re-packaged by Rome’s syndicated New Testament writers to construct a monotheistic state-sponsored religion to monopolize the business of getting to Paradise. To those in the media and political elite who could read the ‘tea leaves’, the alleged Christ figure had been cast in the role of a passive peacenik, willing to ‘turn the other cheek’ when face-slapped. Rome’s casting of the alleged Messiah figure as a passive non-violent resister worked as genius psy-op, or psychological operation, because it spread the propaganda that by joining the Empire’s state religion, sins would be cleansed. Sins were Rome’s Deep State code for submission, especially via the transmission mechanism for control: tributes to support the Tax Farmers sitting in the Rome’s new senate, Constantinople.

Thus, the Biblical metaphors woven into ‘burying of the hatchet’ ritual were self-referential to the Key Brand losing control of their layered symbolic cuppa meet-up four years prior.

This way, Key would have to go through a week of scrutiny in the news media, perhaps cheaply pay off some Judas media disciples, or PR consultants by shouting a Last Supper on Thursday, before getting crucified in a traffic jam on the way to his Omaha beach-house on Good Friday. And then ‘Hone Key the Messiah’ would rise from undead on Sunday as Mr Nice Guy Key ready for Easter Bunny ‘selfies’. While announcing this settlement on Monday March 21, Rich-Lister Key explained his settlement would either be paid by the socialist means of using the Parliamentary Leaders’ Budget, or that the National Party would, in effect, hold a telethon via ‘the news’ to fundraise.

Therefore, Key’s public announcement of a settlement — complete with his clipped, petulant answers, was a crisis ritual with dark, hidden metaphors that not only mocked Ambrose. By staging this settlement on Palm Sunday, the Deep State Easter Bunnies who wiggle Key’s strings were humiliating him among those Deep State peers’ privy to the symbolism. This humiliation was designed to discipline Key & Associates and others that comprise the Deep State network about the perils of screwing up what should have been an easy pre-election public appearance. The fact that the Tea Cup event had four narratives embedded within it signaled the backers of Key & Associates had much to lose if National had lost the 2011 election, because it would have likely exposed numerous Deep State projects in the pipeline.

In these ways, the truth was voluntarily suppressed through strategic censorship by the news media in the first instance to buy Key & Associates time to stabilize the situation because it would have rapidly became a full-scale crisis for Key & Associates. The conversation was political in the midst of an election campaign between two well-known politicians. It was not merely a ‘chat as the Herald on Sunday’s ‘exclusive’ headlines deceptively claimed. The Herald on Sunday, in effect, strategically re-engineered the bombshell they had in their hot little hands so that it would make a ‘copy of reality’ – by appearing to be a storm in a teacup to anyone outside Wellington and Auckland’s Political Elite and Media Establishment. Therefore, this so-called exclusive wasn’t a scoop. It was only a “sc—”.

Because the newspaper was taking the piss, it had no ‘oop’. Absent substance that could produce ‘soil’ from the news cycle, this fake news fraudulent exposé only yielded urine instead of poop.

In selling the Teapot Tape ‘chat’ story the Herald on Sunday was treating its customers like they were children expecting a triple scoop ice-cream with chocolate-chip coating and gumdrops inside.

But, all they got was the cone.

Teapot Tape Scandal References

[1] David Fisher says the sit-down part was an eight-minute and 26-second conversation. See: David Fisher (13 Nov 2011). PM blocks release of chat tape 13 Nov, 2011 PM blocks release of chat tape. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10765711; See also: Duncan Garner. (11 November 2011). TV3 News. 3 Flower St, Newton, Auckland New Zealand; Newshub Library: MediaWorks.

[2] Liturgical Calendar for 2011. http://www.lectionarypage.net/CalndrsIndexes/Calendar2011.html

[3] Steve ‘Snoopman’ Edwards. (October 17, 2017). Weaving Quilts: How and why Tame Iti’s ‘Uprising’ Fantasy fed the NZ Deep State’s B-Grade Five Season Terror Plot Frame-up Job. Retrieved from https://snoopman.net.nz/2017/10/17/weaving-quilts-or-why-tame-itis-uprising-fantasy-fed-the-states-b-grade-terror-plot-frame-up-job/

[4] John Key’s use of dirty attack politics goes back to a contract signing between professional political manipulators Crosby/Textor and John Key in late 2006. There in Canberra, Key signed on the same political strategists that his predecessor, Don Brash, used to scape-goat Māori, beneficiaries and immigrants as a devious means to improve National Party’s polling. See: Nicky Hager. (31 January 2009). Nat’s secret advisers accused of dirty tricks across. http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/feature-archive/510105/Nats-secret-advisers-accused-of-dirty-tricks-across-Tasman

See also: The National Memory Key-Hole: Retrieving Dirty Politics Laundry from the Media Spin Cycle. Retrieved from https://snoopman.net.nz/2017/03/20/the-national-memory-key-hole-retrieving-dirty-politics-laundry-from-the-media-spin-cycle/#_edn5

[5] Nicky Hager. (24 September 2014) New Zealand elections: dirty tricks helped John Key win another term https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/24/new-zealand-elections-dirty-tricks-helped-john-key-win-another-term

[6] Nicky Hager (2014). Dirty Politics: How Attack Politics is Poisoning New Zealand’s Political Environment, p. 11.

[7] Vijay Devadas and Brett Nicholls (2012). The Meaning of John Key New Zealand Journal of Media Studies, 13.2. Retrieved from: http://www.nzmediastudies.org.nz/; Graham Adams / 15 March, 2016 Is John Key the finest actor of his generation?http://www.noted.co.nz/currently/politics/opinion-is-john-key-the-finest-actor-of-his-generation/; Puddleglum (21 April 2014). ‘What they see is what they get’ http://www.thepoliticalscientist.org/what-they-see-is-what-they-get/; Snoopman (August 25, 2014). https://snoopman.net.nz/2014/08/25/liar-liar-pants-on-fire-or-how-nzs-pm-john-phillip-key-is-now-fucked/

[8] Lawyer Steven Price said it would be legal to publish. See link [XX

[9] By lunchtime Monday the next day, Key had posted himself as a hostage to stabilize the situation and the police warned the news media that any release of the recording’s contents would be a breach of the Crimes Act, section 216b dealing with the use of interception devices.

[10] ‘Teapot tapes’ raise questions | Newshub https://www.newshub.co.nz/general/teapot-tapes-raise-questions-2011111417

[11] Crimes Act 1961 No 43 (as at 28 September 2017), Public Act 216B Prohibition on use of interception devices – New Zealand Legislation. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/dlm329814.html

[12] Bevan Rapson. April 2005. Golden Boy. Metro Issue 286. https://www.webcitation.org/5VxD4yxyR

[13] Nicky Hager. (31 January 2009). Nat’s secret advisers accused of dirty tricks across. http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/feature-archive/510105/Nats-secret-advisers-accused-of-dirty-tricks-across-Tasman

[14] See also: Nick McFarlane (2013). Chapter 8: Filters. In: Spinfluence: The Hardcore Propaganda Manual.

[15] Andrew Butler. (Mar 6, 2017). Incredible Animation Summarises Noam Chomsky’s 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine. Retrieved from: http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/incredible-animation-summarises-noam-chomskys-5-filters-of-the-mass-media-machine/

[16] Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) Wintonick, P. (Director/Producer) & Achbar, M. (Director/Producer). (1992). Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. [Motion picture]. Canada: Necessary Illusions. Retrieved from http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/manufacturing-consent-noam-chomsky-and-the-media/

[17] Katyal, N. K. (2002). Conspiracy theory. The Yale Law Journal, 112, 1337. Retrieved from http://yalelawjournal.org/

[18] Marks, R. D. (1986). Can conspiracy theory solve the “oligopoly problem”? Maryland Law Review, 45, 396. Retrieved from http://www.law.umaryland.edu/academics/journals/mdlr/

[19] ’t Hart, P. (1993). Symbols, rituals and power: The lost dimensions of crisis management. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 1, p. 42-44. Retrieved from http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0966-0879

[20] Who is John Key? Special report on National leader John Key By GILLIAN TETT and RUTH LAUGESEN – Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 03 February 2008

[21] Brian Rudman: Key plays risky game over taping – NZ Herald https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10766254

[22] John Key Teapot tapes leaked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvEOh2KOTqg; Matt Taylor (January 26th, 2012). THAT’S A RECORDING DEVICE! http://www.matthewtaylor.co.nz/tag/2johns2cups/

[23] Tracy Watkins and John Hartevelt (Jan 26 2012). Alleged tea tape leaked online. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/6317780/Alleged-tea-tape-leaked-online

[24] TRACY WATKINS March 21 2016. Why John Key’s backdown on the teapot tapes is a bigger deal than you think. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/78114758/Why-John-Keys-backdown-on-the-teapot-tapes-is-a-bigger-deal-than-you-think

[25] Tracy Watkins. Nov 16 2011 Key ups the stakes over tea tape. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/5976894/Key-ups-the-stakes-over-tea-tape

[26] TV3 Dominates News and Current Affairs at NZ TV Awards Sunday, 4 November 2012, 9:23 am Press Release: Mediaworks. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1211/S00059/tv3-dominates-news-and-current-affairs-at-nz-tv-awards.htm

[27] Scoop News. (23 November 2011). Judge Declines To Make Privacy Call On Teapot Tapes | Scoop News. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1111/S00212/judge-declines-to-make-privacy-call-on-teapot-tapes.htm

[28] Justice Winkelmann. In the High Court of New Zealand, Auckland Registry. CIV-2011-404-7392. Bradley Ambrose V The Attorney-General. 22 November 2011.

[29] Nicholas Hagger. (2005). Chapter 5: The French Revolution In: The Secret History of the West, p.281-357. New York; USA: Winchester.

[30] (Mar 27 2012). ‘Teapot tape’ saga dropped. Fairfax Media http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/6635890/Teapot-tape-saga-dropped