Is Steven Joyce corrupt?

Your $43m lifeline to TV3 owner
The Government has thrown a lifeline to ailing private media company MediaWorks, which owns TV3, Four, and about half New Zealand's commercial radio stations.

MediaWorks' latest accounts show it has essentially received a $43.3 million loan from the Crown to enable it to renew its radio broadcasting licences for the next 20 years.

According to the accounts, which MediaWorks is obliged to file with the Companies Office because it is overseas-owned, the private company is paying 11.2 per cent interest on the money, which has been granted for just over four years.

The Government appears to have agreed to the deal despite MediaWorks taking the Inland Revenue Department to court over a disputed tax bill. The IRD alleges the company owes $24.5 million in tax, interest and penalty payments from 2002 to 2004.

Telecommunications Minister Steven Joyce yesterday said the money was not a loan, but a deferred payment system to help the radio industry during tough times in 2009. Earlier reports said MediaWorks had been due to pay the Government the $43m in October last year to renew its radio licences for the 2011-2031 period.

I've never trusted Steven Joyce when he was so deeply involved with the machinations around the Exclusive Brethren in 2005, something the mainstream media NEVER point out, but I have several times...

In the week of the 16-20 May 2005, Steven Joyce had a formal meeting with the exclusive brethren who were organizing their despicable advertising campaign and Joyce met quietly with other pro-National lobby organizations telling them the two crucial messages were “change”. Change was the main theme the Exclusive Brethren ended up using, remember National weren’t officially having these meetings with the Brethren and Joyce was the hollow brain behind this.

Joyce also saw the draft pamphlets and advertisements from the Exclusive Brethren before they went out, remember National initially pretended they knew nothing about the Exclusive Brethren.

When confronted with allegations that this was a stitch up job, Joyce’s ‘response’ was that Stephen Win (the contact person on the EB pamphlets and advertising) wasn’t a National Party guy and it certainly wasn’t a National-funded campaign – that of course is a twisting of the facts after meeting with the EB and providing input and viewing all material about to be released by the EB, we can see how hollow Joyce’s response really was.

In 2005 Joyce wrote to electoral campaign committees saying that “in this election National is planning to go close to its legal limit for Party Vote campaign expenditure (meaning $2,240,000), That has not happened previously”. Interestingly when the donation declarations were delivered to the Electoral Commission not one name from National’s largest financial backers were declared after their donations had been washed through the National Party launderette, the ‘Waitemata Trust’ so that their political influence through financial donations remained invisible. Interesting side note isn’t it, Winston was crucified in the media for something the Electoral Commission, the Serious Fraud Office and the Police cleared him on, has National’s funding ever been given that level of scrutiny?

Steven Joyce was credited in the last election by National Svengali Peter Keenan for keeping on Crosby/Texter, the Australian spin Doctors who were so good this election at spinning the ‘change’ and ‘moderation’ con job.

The Hollow Brain went to Australia to meet with Crosby/Texter and on October 19th 2004 prepared the con job they would use to try and spin the election on, it is incredible how much of that con job was so similar to the con job the Hollow Brain used to win this election, let’s go through them…

1: Stop us going down the path to rampant political correctness.
2: Put an end to the grievance industry.
3: Make our community safer by locking away violent criminals.
4: Ensure your hard-earned tax dollars are spent on Education and Health and not wasted on Labour’s pet projects and bureaucracy.
5: Put in place economic policies that will lift all our incomes closer to those of Australians.
6: Tighten up Welfare and ensure that everyone that can work does work.

Note, none of this is policy, just focus meeting tested bigotry.

Interesting to note that when Joyce was challenged on whether or not Crosby/Texter was giving National advice in 2005, Joyce said there was ‘some’ advice but National had no plans of bringing them to NZ, which was a clear twisting of the truth because Joyce had been to see them in 2004, when challenged again Joyce fudged the issue and pretended to not know the depth of any Crosby/Texter relationship and advised Don Brash to claim he only met them in passing.

...so I've never trusted Joyce and now we have this situation where Joyce as Telecommunications Minister has greenlighted Mediaworks, a foreign owned media company, a $43 million lifeline because if the Government didn't do that, Mediaworks would have to hand back the frequencies to the Government.

Does that mean if the Rock was handed back to the Government that would be the end of sex tourism and exploitation competitions?

GREAT!

So while this Government butcher public broadcasting, the Telecommunications Minister is giving a foriegn owned media outlet a $43 million extension because of poor revenue? That's just not true, radio advertising is the most lucrative part of the Mediaworks revenue empire, it's the TV that is dragging them down, this money isn't going to prop up radio, its being used to prop up the highly leveraged Ironbridge idiocy that bought Mediaworks from Canwest.

And what was Mediaworks before Canwest bought it? Why it was a company called RadioWorks and who owned RadioWorks - wait for it because it'll have you crying into your keyboard - why current Telecommunications Minister Steven Joyce, he owned RadioWorks.

So the question has to be put, why on earth is Telecommunications Minister Steven Joyce cutting juicy deals for a company, part of which he used to own while Public Broadcasting is flushed down the toilet and why aren't more NZers furious about this deal?