Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 5:22 pm, March 5th, 2018 - 76 comments

Categories: Media, national, same old national, Steven Joyce, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags: matthew hooton

There have been some interesting developments at the NBR over the past few days. First Matthew Hooton posted last Friday a very critical piece on Steven Joyce. The post is subject to copyright but the essential claim by Hooton is that Steven Joyce only received four votes in National’s recent leadership campaign. Hooton also suggested Joyce’s time was up and he should be sacked.

Matthew Hooton’s NBR column this week is surely his most aggressive & demolishing one yet of Steven Joyce. He challenges Bridges to show Joyce the door, & suggests the Party board should also be resigning over the debacle that they have left the party in: https://t.co/KHwxlzeEeX pic.twitter.com/lH30shD2bU — Bryce Edwards (@bryce_edwards) March 1, 2018

Then suddenly Hooton’s continuing association with NBR was terminated.

Matthew Hooton has been axed by NBR, apparently because he's a lobbyist. Despite him being the most transparent (and valuable) among such pundits, hopefully, this kickstarts a debate. Here's my latest contribution on this (written prior to Hooton's axing): https://t.co/Magqi2QYlx — Bryce Edwards (@bryce_edwards) March 4, 2018

And in the past few hours the reason has been disclosed. From Newshub:

National’s finance spokesperson Steven Joyce is threatening the National Business Review (NBR) and Matthew Hooton with legal action, Newshub understands. On Friday, NBR published a column in which Mr Hooton was highly critical of Mr Joyce. A source told Newshub that NBR received an “aggressive” letter about the column, which said it has until 5pm on Monday to retract or apologise. The NBR’s publisher Todd Scott says Mr Joyce won’t be getting either a retraction or an apology. He told Newshub if Mr Joyce is successful in launching legal action, NBR will subpoena a number of senior National MPs including Simon Bridges and Amy Adams. Mr Hooton did not have comment on Monday morning, and Mr Joyce did not respond before deadline.

I support Hooton in this. MPs have to be thick skinned and realise that they will be subject to comment and scrutiny. And I have no sympathy for Joyce nor for his ability to count. His misrepresentation of Labour’s figures during the last election campaign mean that the most intense scrutiny of his claim is appropriate.

Interesting times …

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