Unemployment is up, wages are down. But the Nats want to put the boot into workers to keep costs down for their rich mates. They’re trying to take away workers’ rights, remove protections, cut pay, reduce holidays and diminish access to sick leave. Tomorrow is the national day of action when we fight back.
The government is refusing to step up to save IHC providers that are insolvent due to a recent court case that resulted in IHC carers being awarded hundreds of millions in back wages. The government is washing its hands, even though it is the primary funder of the services. Will the Nats let IHC collapse or will they use this to bring in their corporate mates?
When you boil it down, John Key’s much-vaunted political nous is about keeping his personal brand clean. He farms out anything controversial to ministers and leaving them to it. The problem with that approach is muppets are left to run things with no oversight resulting in political cock-ups. Case in point: the Supercity.
20 years too late, Spud has announced that the neoliberal privatisation agenda has been a failure. He says we sold the wrong things, sold them the wrong way, got too little money, and created private monopolies. Of course, what we should have done is hold on to our assets, rather than turning them into cash cows for foreign owners.
If you resign from your job today will your boss give you half a year’s pay as a parting gift? No? Funny because that, apparently, is standard practice for high-paid stars. It is being reported Paul Henry received up to $150,000 from TVNZ when he resigned due to the storm over his racist remarks. And that was regarded as a good deal for TVNZ!
Chris Carter faces a disciplinary hearing at labour HQ this evening. Already evicted from caucus, this meeting could result in sanctions from the Party including revoking his membership. But I don’t think it will come to that, and I don’t think it should for both principled and political reasons.
Despite a slew of scandals, Key has not enforced any ethical or professional standards on his ministers (apart from Worth, for whatever he did). Ministers know that Key will keep his personal brand clean but won’t do anything to pull them into line. This has created a culture of impunity in the government, which has started to spread wider.
Labour candidate for the Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board Daljit Singh has been named as one of two people charged over false voter registrations. This seems a pretty crude attempt at perverting an election and a stupid one that no sophisticated political player would ever think they could get away with.
Aaron Gilmore became an MP in 2008 by a hair’s breadth. Something like 40 more votes to Labour and his list seat would have gone to them. His Parliamentary career has been as undistinguished as the manner in which he got in. Now, it appears his CV isn’t as impressive as he would like us to believe either.
The capitalist elite is anti-democratic to its core. The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act (CERRA) is being held up as business’s ideal form of government. Ex-National staffer Richard Long says that Gerry Brownlee should use his CERRA powers to ‘sort out’ a slew of other ‘problems’. We should never have trusted them with this power.
John Key really does say some extraordinary things when he’s trying to placate the media, and often it works because journos are bamboozled into accepting what he says as fact. Yesterday, he defended the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act saying the Governor-General tests the appropriateness of each CERRA law. Dead wrong.
Everyone had pretty much assumed that Kerry Prendergast was a sure thing to win another term as Wellington’s mayor. But a Dompost poll shows Celia Wade-Brown is in the hunt. With a small gap and low turn-out every vote matters – so cast yours for Wade-Brown today.
The Dompost has joined the chorus of outrage over CERRA (The Gerry Brownlee Enabling Act). Parliament got it badly, badly wrong in signing away its powers but it’s not too late to make things right. The Greens are calling for a review. Labour should join them.
OK, so it’s quite up with the best campaign ad ever, but Yani Johanson and James Dann’s anti-Bob Parker rap brought a smile to my face. Yani is running for councillor in the Hagley-Ferrymead ward and James is going for the Hagley-Ferrymead Community Board, both on the People’s Choice ticket.
Peter Jackson’s in the paper today whining about being denied entry to a union meeting.
There’s a really simple reason for that – union meetings are for union members, not for employers.
The Herald’s editorial today is a strong rebuke of National’s anti-democratic power grabs. Close on the heels of CERRA is the World Cup Empowering Act, giving unfettered powers to ministers that they don’t need. The Herald’s opposition shows, again, how badly wrong Labour and the Greens got it when they voted for CERRA.
I thought Peter Jackson was an ordinary guy made good who hadn’t let success make him an elitist prick. I was wrong. New Zealand taxpayers contributed hundreds of millions to his <em>Lord of the Rings</em> trilogy and what thanks do we get? Threats of capital flight, which will probably soon be followed by demands for taxpayer subsidies.
Ever since Kris Fa’afoi put his name forward to be Labour’s candidate in the Mana by-election, the National smear machine attacked him on his Tokelaun heritage. First it was ‘oh, they’re only going to choose him because he has a brown face’. Now, apparently, the problem is that he isn’t Pasifika enough. In truth, it’s National with the problems.
Long serving Dunedin North MP Pete Hodgson is stepping down at the next election. The local Labour party today selected their next candidate, the Rev Dr David Clark.
Check out Hilary Calvert’s interview in the ODT. It’s, um, extraordinary and hilarious. Calvert can’t remember whether she was ever a member of a different political party, when she first stood for ACT, or whether she has any convictions.
More evidence of the depth of talent in ACT these days.
Rodney Hide and David Garrett would have us believe that Garrett’s downfall is about youthful indiscretions and skeletons in closets. Let’s nip this in the bud straight away. It wasn’t Garrett’s “foolish actions 26 years ago” that sealed his fate, it was the confirmation that even to this day he is still a liar, a criminal and the worst kind of hypocrite.
A few days ago Charles Chauvel wrote a piece on Red Alert on why Labour voted for CERRA. I have two big problems with it. 1) Labour may have won concessions that improved CERRA but they didn’t get the key one. 2) There’s a dangerous mindset in the position that Labour had to vote for dictatorship or get pilloried in the media and lose votes.
Great video of Clayton Cosgrove getting right stuck into the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s Garth McVicar over his hypocrisy on David Garrett. Cosgrove’s certainly no bleeding heart liberal so I’d say McVicar’s credibility on law in order is now pretty much shot.
Garth McVicar is head of ‘tough on crime’ lobby group the Sensible Sentencing Trust. David Garrett is a serial offender who now faces further criminal charges for perjury.
So naturally McVicar is backing Garrett to head up a new hard-line law and order party.
On Thursday, our new dictator Gerry Brownlee decreed by Order in Council that the following Acts of Parliament were amended: the Building Act, the Local Government Act, the Resource Management Act, various pieces of transport legislation, and the Civil Defence Act. Most of the changes deal with minutiae of government. Some are less innocuous.
David Garrett’s theft of a dead child’s identity is a revolting offence that violated our passport system and distressed the family. He lied to the Police when arrested and lied to the Court about having no prior convictions. Why did he escape conviction when others were being jailed for the same offence? Because he’s a lawyer. The elite looks after its own.
Dictatorships are good.
Or at least that’s what Farrar is saying now his team has one.
The state sector is in turmoil. Secondary teachers and medical technicians are striking for fair pay and against claw-backs in their work conditions. Junior doctors look set to join them. What’s the Nats’ reaction? They’ve appointed the Scottish ‘smiling assassin’, Dr Kevin Woods, who fired 1,500 nurses from the Scottish NHS and will apply the same formula here.
John Banks’ team really jumped the shark yesterday with their bizarre ‘poll tax’ attack on Len Brown. Banks claimed Brown was proposing a Thatcher-style poll tax to fund the Supercity instead of rates. Of course, Brown is proposing no such thing – he is saying we should look at replacing rates with income tax. Desperate, Banksie, desperate.
Jim Anderton’s mayoral campaign got a lot harder last week. He had been the favourite by a long, long way but Bob Parker has handled the disaster recovery well and he will win votes for that. But it doesn’t change why the people wanted shot of Parker and Anderton in his place. All’s not lost. Jim’s holding a community forum tonight in Woolston.
Bill English has ruled out an inquiry into the SCF affair. Think about that: the government is forced to spend the annual Police budget in a single morning and isn’t even interested in learning what could have been done better. The public service’s response, on the other hand, to the Christchurch earthquake will doubtlessly be subject to numerous inquires. It’s just good governance.
The Civil Defence Emergency Act gives the authorities some extraordinary powers and has seen a handful of people in Christchurch very rapidly tried and summarily convicted of some unusual offences. It reminds us that the State holds huge powers in reserve for times of crisis. It speaks to the strength of our institutions and the people who operate them that these powers aren’t abused.
