Fags bad, piss good
Here’s a great interview by RNZ’s Kathryn Ryan with Professor Doug Sellman, Director of the National Addiction Centre, on Government’s bizarre inconsistency in […]
Politics
national/act government
More Muldoonism
The government announced a package of measures for the aquaculture industry – including a power for Ministers “to amend regional coastal plans in exceptional circumstances where it is in significant regional or national interest”. The Minister can unilaterally decide what is in a region’s interests, irrespective of what the people of that region may say to the contrary.
This continues this authoritarian government’s assaults on voters ability to choose the own representation.
Whanau Ora minister, Foreshore sell-out
Maori activists who want a better deal on the foreshore and seabed can rest assured that the Maori Party is about to sell them out. Tariana Turia just got herself a shiny new portfolio as Minister for Whanau Ora, whatever it is. Do you really think she’s going to give up a control over a policy that National has agreed to just for her? Do you really think she’ll stand strong on her principles over the foreshore and seabed if it means losing the Crown limo?
A day of flip-flops
You can say this much for the Key Government – they’re idiots but half the time they’re also cowards. If an issue generates too much public disquiet they’ll flip-flop. It’s easy when they don’t have a real plan or real principles.
Laissez-faire or fairly lazy?
Fran O’Sullivan’s write: “Till now, Key has operated a rather laissez-faire approach to Cabinet management.” I think she meant “fairly lazy”. She points out that Gerry Brownlee and Paula Bennett have been allowed to go out and essentially lie to the public about their policies only to be embarrassingly exposed by an increasingly awake media (helped by the blogosphere) because Key isn’t paying attention.
John Key heckled in Levin
The smile is wearing off. John Key visited Levin today to open a new district court. The visit didn’t go to plan as he was heckled by 150 locals over health cuts – which will see the region lose 24 beds.
Wait till the mining issue heats up.
Nats’ wage drop plan progressing well
How’s that brighter future looking? A couple of years back, Steve wrote a piece on how National could reduce pay packs accordance with John Key’s statement that he “would love to see wages drop”. Now, wages are dropping thanks to a combination of government neglect on job creation and policies that are actively designed to suppress wage rises. Let’s see how the plan is playing out:
Hysteria in the government over mining
The Herald has a editorial lambasting John Key about claiming this week that they were ‘hysterical’ writing about the plans to mine the conservation lands, and that there were no such plans. Later in the week, the government launched a probe to find out who leaked cabinet documents about mining the conservation lands. The irony of the two actions appears to have escaped John Key who appears more clueless than ever.
Rumblings in Nats’ base
There’s a danger in being a government that does nothing except pay of its rich mates, and that’s losing faith with the conservative base. Garth George is the slightly mad, always irritable voice of this demographic, so it’s worth watching as his initial love for John Key wears off to be replaced by despair (and rising anger) at Key’s failure to deliver the brighter future he promised.
Minister flees from journos
We’re used to Key and his ministers hiding from their duties. Now one of them has taken it to a new level. Journos wanted to ask Pacific Affairs Minister Georgina Te Heuheu about the rumours her ministry is getting the chop. At the sight of them, Te Heuheu ran away. Fran Mold reportedly said she’d never seen anything like it.
Recentralisation? A whole lotta nothing
During the neoliberal revolution, the 4th Labour Government and the Nats decided to break up the big ministries into lots of little ministries […]
John Key lies about “surgical” mining
Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee is refusing to rule out landscape-scarring mining on our most precious conservation land. This makes a liar of John Key who promised the government was considering “surgical mining”.
High ministerial standards
No, it’s not one of the Nats or their hangers-on. It’s Shane Jones. Following revelations that National ministers have been essentially stealing taxpayer […]
Heatley’s redherring cover for Brownlee
Fran O’Sullivan agrees with my theory on the real reason for Phil Heatley’s resignation and the reason why an excuse was invented. The real reason was what amounts to Heatley’s theft of taxpayer money by using his ministerial credit card, and the receipt excuse was invented to protect Gerry Brownlee who had also misused his credit card
Heatley story full of holes
Ministers don’t resign for describing a trivial expense in a perfectly legitimate way. I’m thinking Phil Heatley really had a crisis of conscience over the credit card ‘misuse’ and wanted to resign but that would have put Gerry Brownlee in the gun too. So they invented the receipt excuse. What’s your theory?
McCully caught in mining conflict
The Government is driving ahead with its plans to open up our National Parks and other protected environments to mining. The Standard can now reveal that Murray McCully has shares in a company that stands to benefit directly from National’s mining policy.
10,000 stand against RNZ cuts
Over 2,000 people a day are joining the Facebook group to save Radio New Zealand from National’s cuts, which would turn it into another crap commercial outlet. There are a lot of outraged people who voted for a ‘brighter future’ among those 10,000. The backlash is growing.
Watkins: govt adrift, icebergs ahead
Tracey Watkins writes that National is pissing off important constituencies and Labour’s messages are resonating. Key promised the world to everyone, he has failed to do anything for anyone except the wealthy elite. And public opinion is turning.
No ideas? Bash some beneficiaries
John Key says sickness and invalid’s benefit numbers are increasing because “the previous government encouraged a move off the unemployment benefit into those categories, which aren’t work testedâ€. You’ve been caught out on this lie by The Standard authors before, John. Did you think it would slip by us now?
ACC demo today
There’s a demo at Parliament today to protest against the Government’s ACC bill, which raises levies, cuts Kiwis’ entitlements and paves the way for privatisation. If you’re in the CBD make sure you head down in your lunch break.
MARCH AND RALLY FOR ACC
TODAY 16TH February
12.30pm – Parliament
Love for Key dying in middle NZ
Matt McCarten asks “are we still in love?” with John Key after a year of do-nothing government and a promised ‘step change’ that is really just favours for National’s rich mates. If the views of people on McGehan Close, Key’s famous ‘underclass’ street are anything to go by, the answer is increasingly ‘no’.
The lie behind the Right’s attack on wages
Paying a person doing the same work as another person less money because of their sex or religion or ethnicity or any other grounds […]
Nats eyeing up youth minimum wage?
Over the last month or so National’s pollster David Farrar has been running a series of posts desperately trying to pin the spike […]
Maori Party/Nat breakup over GST?
Yesterday, Rahui Katene said the Maori Party could walk away from National if they didn’t adequately compensate low and middle income people for increasing […]
No plan to get Kiwis into work
Number of jobless Kiwis = 276,000 Number of jobs plans from Key Government = 0 Key can make all the vague references to […]
Destroying our heritage
John Key is hell bent on carving up our most pristine National Parks for mining. No matter what. The areas most at risk […]
How did Nats know parents’ addresses?
You’ll recall that last week National spent $200,000 of taxpayer dollars on a proganda drop defending its national standards. This was a targeted […]
Commentators damning of Key’s visionless speech
Bernard Hickey: He had a chance to follow up all the talk of real reform to create a ‘step change’. He had all […]
Key: we’re a less than half-decent govt
Good spotting by Jake Quinn: during the 2008 election, John Key ruled out raising GST, as the Herald reported back in October of […]
Key’s statement to Parliament
Very little specific so far. According to Stuff, National will increase GST to ‘up to’ 15% – which I take to mean 15%. […]
Great expectations
“This is his most important speech since he entered Parliament in 2002.” That’s Duncan Garner on Key’s speech today. Other political commentators have […]
The victims of Brand Key
Remember the struggling Auckland family that John Key used in 2007 to help build his brand? Well, according to the Herald: The mother […]
DPMC: The “Key” to increasing the PM’s power
Last October I posted on National’s plan to fold the State Services Commission into the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Yesterday, Labour’s […]
Year of the wolf?
I really thought the rumour that the minimum wage would only rise by 25c had been put out by the government to make […]
Key admits mistake: Tolley and Groser shuffled out
Today John Key admitted his mistake in two Ministerial portfolio appointments, as two long overdue changes were announced. 1) Chopper Tolley has rightfully […]
Campbell and Hooton on do nothing Key
I can’t work out how to embed audio alone, so here’s a YouTube of Andrew Campbell and Matthew Hooton on the Key Government. […]