Whale Oil has a post up relating how a reader of the ACT MP Heather Roy’s blog noticed that every time a comment was placed on the site, it also displayed the IP address of the commenter. Many of the comments seem to originate from two IP addresses. According to Whale, one is Roy’s home IP address and the other is her office IP address.
There is no firm and irrefutable evidence that these comments were all posted by Heather Roy pretending to be someone else. However the IP addresses were scrubbed pretty quickly once Whale highlighted the issue.
So far there has been no explanation from Roy as to why so many comments on her blog were posted from her own IP addresses.
Whale has approached the matter pretty dispassionately. For myself, I have somewhat stronger feelings on the issue. Suppose Roy did post the comments. What does that say about her personal integrity? I feel that anyone committing such a breach of basic trust and morality has no damn business representing other NZers in parliament. Unless Roy can come up with a good explanation for this event, then she should resign. She’s already busily helped ACT commit electoral euthanasia. If she is guilty of the cheap and petty dishonesty that the IP addresses appear to indicate, this should be the last straw and she should go. Right now.
She must be as thick as two short planks anyway not to understand the significance of the IP addresses. I’m so sick of all of these dopes and con artists in parliament. A copy of one of the comment threads in question is over the fold.
Submitted by Jim (not verified) on Fri, 04/03/2011 – 7:27pm. (IP Address : 122.59.253.125)
Nice to see commentary on the future Heather and thanks for the link to the very good article on ruined city reconstruction. The media’s fascination with the dead and their recovery is not helpful. Yes, it is a dreadful waste of life, but what about the living who are struggling? Key too should have taken the lead earlier on places like the Eastern suburbs. After all, the media will go where he goes. It’s called leadership and I’m afraid he’s beginning to enjoy his own press.
Well done for going to Christchurch and doing your bit. I suspect you are one of the best informed MPs on what it is like for the ordinary Joe Christchurch as a result of your visit. That’s leadership too, well done.
Submitted by Gadfly on Fri, 04/03/2011 – 7:30pm. (IP Address : 122.59.253.125)
Your Lest We Forget segment this week is very good. I read an article in the newspaper earlier in the week. Frank Buckles led an interesting life and his single-minded attempt to enlist is quite inspirational, although I’d rather 16 year olds weren’t going off to war.
Submitted by Heather Roy on Fri, 04/03/2011 – 8:01pm. Submitted by Heather Roy on Fri, 04/03/2011 – 8:01pm. (IP Address : 122.59.253.125)
Thanks Gadfly. I wrote a longer piece on my ‘Royters’ blog on Frank Buckles earlier in the week – http://www.roy.org.nz/royters/the-last-his-kind-last-us-veteran-wwi-dies… There is a link in the blog post to the full NZ Herald article about him.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 04/03/2011 – 10:17pm. (IP Address : 122.59.253.125)
Have you seen this Kiwiblog piece on how (taxpayer) might pay for the rebuild of Christchurch. http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2011/03/hooton_on_paying_for_christchurch.html
TrueblueNZ 
19 responses to “ACT’s Roy- Yet Another Embarrassing Bungle”
R.I.P. ACT.
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Haha, what do we pay these louts again?
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I’m thinking she could have just been posting the texts from letters or emails she received and pretending they were blog comments. Then again, she could have made them up. No explanation so far.
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David Garrett, still a current act member even though he has bought the party into disrepute cracks a funny from his shed at the cemetery. I wonder who will be having the last laugh on election day David?
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It doesn’t matter much if they were actually letters or emails, she should in that case have said so, and shown her vaingloriousness in that way. Now it has deceit added in to it. All politicians no doubt suffer the traits she has, point is that they can’t be caught with it. She should go.
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That may well be the explanation (that she’s copied from emails). This is common practice on the NZCPR forums, but it’s painfully obvious this is the case.
Either way, I think Roy needs to clarify, and do so quickly. If the explanation is that she received emails or letters she copied to the forum, she will need to release them. If she has been creating these comments herself, it’s a further act of duplicity on her part and she should resign immediately.
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Could be a staffer, but that is a big if…
On the balance of probabilties it’s likely a shocker…
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122.59.253.125 is part of a standard Telecom IP Pool. It is dynamically allocated and is not bound to any particular customer.
What this means is that because a particular person had this ip address on a certain time doesn’t mean they have it any other time. Sure you can talk about the balance of probabilities with respect to it’s appearance on the site in question but the point is that this is not the hard evidence you would like to think it is.
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Then why delete all the evidence Shane? She’s a moron; a duplicitous, lying politician and should fuck off.
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Shane (Heather?) said
“122.59.253.125 is part of a standard Telecom IP Pool. It is dynamically allocated and is not bound to any particular customer.”
That just isn’t true. It’s an assigned static IP address (rather than dynamic).
http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/122.59.253.125
http://www.ipchecking.com/?ip=122.59.253.125&check=Lookup
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It has been suggested elsewhere that she has been reposting facebook comments , but I have to find a smoking gun yet. In any case, she or her staffers have pretty much been caught red-handed either completely fabricating support, or VERY selectively re-posting facebook comments. If you look at the comments most of them are not very supportive. And if she is re-posting them, has she asked for permission to do it – judging by those tacky psuedonyms, I think not.
Whatever the scenario, she needs to explain herself. She is doing herself no favors by keep her mouth shut, and is pretty much confirming her guilt in the absence of any alternative explanation.
The fact
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“she or her staffers have pretty much been caught red-handed”
She is an MP, she only has one staff member – an executive assistant. But more importantly, the IP address is a Telecom Xtra residential IP, not a Parliamentary one.
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“She is doing herself no favors by keep her mouth shut, and is pretty much confirming her guilt in the absence of any alternative explanation.”
Hard to get past this.
Roy has to resign.
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She should have been made to resign when she failed to topple Hide. Surely there’s only 1 rule for a coup: win? Win and you become Minister of Finance. Lose and you’re dead. Seems pretty simple to me. Anyone know how it’s possible she’s still there?
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Liberals- ACT is full of them.
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Indeed, a weak, troughing bunch of liberals in conservative drag. Thought I’d strategically vote last time around Nats for the local MP, ACT for the list. I can just about puke about that now. Next time round I’ll have to think hard whether to vote or just use the paper for some other purpose, although I assume there will be limits as to what may be attached before they count them.
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Actually three addresses have posts from multiple personas including HR, one being the residential IP already mentioned, and two other parliamentary IP’s, (202.22.18.245, 202.68.87.70). Below I have given examples of posts where HR has posted a comment alongside others from the same IP allocated to a computer in Parliament. It appears HR uses the 1st 202 address currently, the 2nd one is circa 2009-early 2010.
Examples:
No Silver Bullet (google cache) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qnpSI7S5y8cJ:roy.org.nz/diary/no-silver-bullet+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&source=encrypted.google.com
Here, Roy and two others comment from the same parliamentary IP (202.68.87.70), within the space of half an hour of each other. Hmmm….
2010 Royters “New Zealander of the Year” https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:D4qjWltTr-YJ:roy.org.nz/royters/2010-royters-new-zealander-the-year+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&source=encrypted.google.com
Here Roy and several others post from the same IP (202.22.18.245)
What Next for US/New Zealand Relations? (google cache) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:S9-fKi-2H1cJ:roy.org.nz/diary/what-next-usnew-zealand-relations+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&source=encrypted.google.com
Listener not listening – NZSL needed
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KBsNnM-ucXMJ:www.roy.org.nz/royters/listener-not-listening-nzsl-needed+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&source=encrypted.google.com
Here HR and one other post from the same IP (202.68.87.70), a day apart.
What’s in an “h”? https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MpEiWkZNLdIJ:www.roy.org.nz/royters/whats-in-h+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&source=encrypted.google.com
HR and two others respond within minutes of each other from the same IP (202.68.87.70)
All pretty damning, don’t you think?
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She should go, full stop.
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[…] Their brand is irretrievably damaged by the antics of Progressives like Heather Roy. If ACT was a real party, united in its political objectives, she would have been expelled long […]
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