Cabinet ministers accused of freewheeling credit card use have become the target of online ridicule - but also the odd impassioned defence. And not a little humour.
“Internal affairs spent $50,000 auditing ministerial spending. It would have been c
Cabinet ministers accused of freewheeling credit card use have become the target of online ridicule - but also the odd impassioned defence. And not a little humour.
“Internal affairs spent $50,000 auditing ministerial spending. It would have been cheaper to say: cheers, whack away, the porn and booze is on us,” quipped comedian Raybon Kan on Twitter.
System administrator Simon Lyall weighed in with “The real scandal is that NZ hotel internet is so slow and expensive that our MPs are forced to pay for porn via hotel TV.”
It was a comment that segued well with Mr Kan’s earlier: “[This is why] taxes should be lower. Government wastes public funds! Dude, porn is FREE. Give me your credit card, I'll give you porn, and change”.
Many thought the media had gone into a feeding frenzy. “Fair call it was bad spending, but a witch hunt for watching a movie? Do we need MPs to itemise every single thing they pay for?,” tweeted Dagan McGregor.
@PublicAddress, moderated by Media7’s Russell Brown, complained “Of all the reporting that might be done on Tim Groser's travels, his minibar use is perhaps these least important, but the easiest to do.”
Fellow Public Addressor David Slack struck a similar theme, tweeting “Outrages still to come - 1964: Keith Holyoake buys copy of Best Bets on our coin. 1938: MJ Savage scores free tin of dripping.”
“Obviously tits and bums stories sell,” offered NZ Open Source Society President Donald Christie (perhaps momentarily forgetting that most media organisations suffer in the world of free content these days). “But this information is ultimately invaluable for a transparent democracy.”
We'd like to say Mr Christie's eloquent thesis brought the discourse to a close.
But we're talking about the internet, of course, so no such luck.
TV3's Ali Ikram was soon on a roll, tweeting and retweeting a series of titles for a proposed line of Shane Jones porn movies, including:
- Bugger the pollsters
- Perks
- Minister for Internal Affairs
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
- "The member will withdraw and apologise" and the immortal
- Yes, Yes, Yes Minister
Others on Twitter chipped in with Hung Parliament, Swing Vote, Bareback Bench, Shane Bones and The State of Head.
Many suggested that Mr Jones' comment he was expecting a "bollocking" from Labour leaders Phil Goff and Annette King was, under the circumstances, ill advised.
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