Labour’s Kieran McAnulty has come out swinging at National’s Judith Collins this morning, calling her recent social media activity towards a KiwiBuild couple "cyber-bullying" and "utterly disgraceful".
McAnulty told TVNZ1’s Breakfast this morning Collins needs to own up to the incident.
"They’ve had to close their social media accounts. It’s utterly disgraceful. The vast majority of politicians wouldn’t dream of doing that. I think Judith Collins needs to apologise frankly. "
Collins retweeted a picture of the couple which was captioned, "204 countries + seven seas and I had the privilege of meeting you" and added her own spin, saying "204 countries – maybe doesn’t need taxpayer support".
Collins' response led some of her followers to believe that the couple, who are a graduate doctor and marketer, had travelled to 204 countries but the phrase from the original post is actually part of a longer romantic quote.
Regardless, followers scrolled through the pair’s social media histories to discover they’d travelled to the US and UK previously and criticised them for it, leading to the couple taking down their accounts.
Collins denied accusations of cyberbullying yesterday afternoon, saying she was criticising KiwiBuild’s eligibility criteria, not the couple.
But McAnulty said that’s poor cover.
"When we’ve got senior politicians in this country taking screenshots from personal social media accounts and then criticising them, there’s only one resolve and that’s further people going and criticising them on social media.
"Don’t go and post a picture of two people that she’s never met on to social media criticising their suitability for the scheme – not based on their income but based on whether or not they’ve been overseas – and then try to get out of it now after doing the fact. "
National MP Chris Bishop told Breakfast National’s stance is unchanged.
"The real issue is people thought this was going to be a scheme to help low income people get into home ownership which is a goal we all share.
"But the first KiwiBuild house, a four-bedroom home, went to a young couple who is a graduate doctor who earns a very high income.
"No one’s blaming them. They put their names in the ballot, they got pulled out, they’ve been lucky enough to get a taxpayer-subsidised home so no one’s blaming them.
"But I think questions and eyebrows have been raised about whether or not it’s really fair that a very generous KiwiBuild home goes to a couple like them.
"It’s really the equity and the fairness of the scheme."
Minister of Housing and Urban Development Phil Twyford said yesterday the scheme was never aimed at low-income families but if National wanted to challenge that, there’s different ways of going about it.
"This young couple have done nothing wrong. They have bought their first home. Judith Collins thinks it's appropriate to bully and encourage victimisation on social media, it's absolutely appalling…. She's encouraging victimisation and bullying on the internet because she disagrees with KiwiBuild.
"I'm more than happy to have that debate about policy," Twyford said. "But it doesn't justify victimisation of people on the internet."
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