Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, August 1st, 2014 - 86 comments
Updated John Banks has been sentenced to 100 hours community work and community detention for electoral fraud.
Updated links to reactions.
Written By: - Date published: 12:36 pm, July 17th, 2014 - 6 comments
The IPCA has upheld the Police decision not to prosecute members of the GCSB for illegally spying on Kim Dotcom.
Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, July 13th, 2014 - 45 comments
The Herald on Sunday is reporting that South Auckland police have doctored crime statistics for the area by reclassifying burglary offences as less serious offences.
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, June 29th, 2014 - 11 comments
How to make your very own New Zealand Prime Minister. Even better looking than this vessel.
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, June 24th, 2014 - 45 comments
When I first heard of this appointment, I commented that if McCully had offered Jones a briefcase full of cash rather than a specially-created high-paying job to resign, we’d call it what it is: Corruption and bribery of member of Parliament. From what I’ve seen in this release, I stand by that.
Updated: It looks like this appointment either violated the Cabinet Manual or is in violation of the State Sector Act. Whatever way you look at this, the appointment appears to broken some laws. Perhaps some journos would like to look up from bullshit from National’s dirty tricks blogger and care to investigate a real story?
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, June 21st, 2014 - 110 comments
Written By: - Date published: 4:14 pm, June 20th, 2014 - 39 comments
So it turns out that Immigration released letters from David Cunliffe and Chris Carter in support of Donghua Liu. However, the Department of Internal Affairs refused to release the letters sent by Mr Williamson and Mr Banks under the privacy and commercial provisions in the Official Information Act. This looks like a blatantly political release decision to advance the interests of the government of the day. Transparency of official information applies to everyone, not just the government’s enemies.
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, June 20th, 2014 - 25 comments
We all know from reading Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men (or watching the documentary) that the National Party actually advocates for a small section of society. Their policies rarely support most New Zealanders and after each period of a National led Government we have costly messes like leaky buildings and dead miners as the aftermath. This isn’t to say that Labour shouldn’t take responsibility for not repealing dodgy legislation, but National has always stood for less regulation, fewer protections for workers and the environment and an upward flow of money to the already rich.
Written By: - Date published: 7:41 am, June 15th, 2014 - 253 comments
Al Jazeera outlines the dubious ethics of Goldman Sachs and the oligarchy it supports. They don’t give a shit about the lives they damage, or the resulting increases in inequality. The Nation interviews call for increasing public pressure on politicians to tackle NZ’s appalling child poverty.
Written By: - Date published: 4:11 pm, June 11th, 2014 - 37 comments
Writing in the Herald, Fran O’Sullivan tells us what we all knew: that political donors have expectations, and want favours in exchange for their cash. She’s too polite (and Establishment) to call it corruption, but that’s what it is. Its time we forced parties to do so as well. Transparent public funding if required. If the choice is spending public money or permitting corruption, the choice is pretty clear.
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 am, May 11th, 2014 - 92 comments
The Herald, normally a bastion of support for National, has this weekend printed a number of stories openly critical of the National Government. As John Armstrong asks, have the wheels fallen off the Government’s reelection campaign?
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, May 9th, 2014 - 225 comments
Whether it’s Judith Collins, Michael Woodhouse or the Cabinet Club/s, National Party fundraisers, target the wealthy base they represent. In the process, boundaries are blurred between mainstream politics, exclusive private spaces & personal relationships.
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, May 9th, 2014 - 30 comments
New Zealand isn’t the only place currently seeing a cash-for-access scandal. In Australia, the federal Treasurer has a similar arrangement to the National Party, selling access to a donors by membership of a “club”. And in the UK, the co-treasurer of the Conservative Party has said publicly that £250,000 gets you a private dinner with the Prime Minister.
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 pm, May 6th, 2014 - 223 comments
It’s called “Cabinet Club” but National claims Ministers aren’t actually acting as Ministers when they use it to raise money.
Which is why they called it “Cabinet Club” and not something with Ministerial connotations like… um… “Cabinet Club”
Written By: - Date published: 6:52 pm, May 5th, 2014 - 69 comments
Looks like an interesting week of drawn out misery for someone. Rob Salmond at Polity again: “I do not want to talk about Judith Collins’ “private” dinner. There are plenty of people making astute points about her impropriety there already. Instead, I want to draw attention to another damning part of last week’s Friday afternoon OIA-dump.”
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, May 2nd, 2014 - 10 comments
Imperator Fish nails the essential relationship of a National/Act caucus with donations. “Why should a good hard-working minister have to resign over such a minor thing? All he did was put a little pressure on the police. Where’s the harm in that? Isn’t that what we pay our MPs for? To look after our interests and help us when we get into bother?” “Mr Liu invested a lot of money with the National Party. Isn’t he entitled to see a return on his investment?”
Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, May 1st, 2014 - 20 comments
When the Prime Minister found out that Maurice Williamson had contacted police over their investigation of a National Party donor on domestic violence charges, Williamson “assured [him] that he did not in any way intend to influence the Police investigation”. That is bullshit. But it gets worse. The police gave the Minister exactly what he asked for.
Williamson’s head isn’t the only one that should be on a spike.
Written By: - Date published: 1:29 pm, May 1st, 2014 - 70 comments
Maurice Williamson was sacked within the space of 2 hours this morning after the Herald revealed he had attempted to interfere in a police investigation on behalf of a party donor. Its exactly what should happen when a Minister behaves corruptly and pisses on our constitutional norms like this. At the same time, it raises an obvious question: why hasn’t Judith Collins suffered the same fate? Or is corrupt behaviour only punished when it involves older Ministers the PM would like to dispose of?
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, May 1st, 2014 - 199 comments
It never seems to end does it? A National Party Minister contacted a top ranking police officer after a wealthy businessman with close ties to him was arrested on domestic violence charges. The Prime Minister’s office is understood to be considering Maurice Williamson’s future as a Minister, following Herald inquiries into the phone call that he made and over his involvement with Donghua Liu’s criminal case.
Bunji: And he’s gone – resigned as a Minister
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, April 3rd, 2014 - 3 comments
Last month, we learned that Judith Collins had taken time off a taxpayer-funded trip to China to endorse her husband’s company – a company which had also donated significant sums of money to the National Party. The endorsement appeared to violate the Cabinet Manual, but John Key stepped up and claimed that the Cabinet Office said it was all OK. Then, just a few days later, he admitted that he’d lied about that. In the process, he implicitly raised serious questions about the quality of the Cabinet Office’s advice.
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, March 25th, 2014 - 48 comments
There has been a long struggle by the Problem Gambling Foundation & others against SkyCity & the powerful and secretive Pokie Trusts. The government has tended to support the trusts, while maintaining their distance from them. The defunding of the PGF is the latest chapter in the struggle.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 pm, March 12th, 2014 - 142 comments
So the latest from National is Judith Collins ‘promoting’ her husbands’ company and Amy Adams promoting the interests of river-polluting Canterbury dairy farms when she herself owns Canterbury dairy farms.
Naturally, neither minister can see any problem with this.
Update: And now Nathan Guy – National’s immigration minister…
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, March 12th, 2014 - 46 comments
Last week No Right Turn argued strongly that we needed full transparency over Cabinet Office advice on ministers’ conflicts of interest, because we couldn’t trust the Prime Minister to represent that advice accurately, and we couldn’t trust secret advice to be accurate. And John Key has just proven his point: “Prime Minister John Key has admitted he misled reporters over Cabinet Office advice…”
Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, March 5th, 2014 - 38 comments
John Key claims Judith Collins was not guilty of conflict of interest re-her visit to Oravida in China. Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins, in the General Debate today claimed that Peter Goodfellow met with an Oravida sponsored group of businessmen to discuss “bi-lateral collaboration.” They claim Key also played golf with an Oravida bigwig.
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, December 5th, 2013 - 46 comments
I don’t support knighthoods. I especially don’t support knighthoods being handed out to people who have just done their jobs at the end of their careers. You know, the gongs for ministers and CEOs. But if you are going to have honours, they should go to ordinary people who have truly gone above and beyond and acted where others failed. Arise, Sir Graham McCready.
Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, October 15th, 2013 - 27 comments
The District Court is hearing evidence today as to whether John Banks should stand trial for signing a donations return that he knew to be false. Kim Dotcom has given evidence – the Herald reports that when he agreed to give Banks a donation of $50,000, Banks asked for it to be split and to be made anonymous., so that if Banks helped DotCom in the future it would not be known that he had donated to him.
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, August 14th, 2013 - 5 comments
The SkyCity deal still needs some urgent attention from members of the public interested in getting a submission to the select committee. They close on Thursday 22 August next week. The politically corrupting influence of the gaming industry means that members of the public will have to push the politicians to stop them giving SkyCity these extraordinarily lucrative and destructive concessions for a economic pittance.
Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, August 7th, 2013 - 25 comments
The government selling off prime real estate to the governing party. It sounds like something out of a banana republic. But it’s here. The National Party (via several fronts) has bought the former Prime Ministerial/ministerial residence at 41 Pipitea St from the Crown. Peters says there should have been an auction. Not far enough. National should never have put up itself on both sides of a property deal. It’s dodgy as hell.
Written By: - Date published: 6:06 am, August 1st, 2013 - 83 comments
It has been obvious that some people live in a different world than the rest of us. One where Chicago school economics, work! One where you save the village by blowing it up! One where global warming can be stopped, Canute like, by legislation. One where dropping wages and giving everything to bloated financiers, makes […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, July 18th, 2013 - 58 comments
Yesterday, National released hundreds of pages of documents on the SkyCity deal. They paint the picture of a government that locked itself politically into getting a deal and locked in SkyCity as the only option then was surprised when SkyCIty screwed them for everything it could get. Even the far from bleeding hearts at Treasury said it wasn’t worth the cost.
Written By: - Date published: 7:34 am, July 17th, 2013 - 44 comments
So, Tariana Turia is finally dropping the pretense that Whanau Ora is anything but a scheme to privatise social assistance and put it in the hands of unaccountable private groups. Not content with funding family reunions and other bollocks, Turia is now handing the funding decisions to three private groups. Oh, and she doesn’t want them to be covered by the OIA.
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