Posts on government and governence at national and local level, political parties,politicians, and political participation
The Government has received advice from the Ministry of Justice on its ‘three strikes’ legislation. It reveals such a horrendous risk of passing the law that any government should have abandoned it immediately. Instead, Simon Power was shuffled out of the way, Justice was muzzled, & the advice was suppressed. Until now.
Pete Bethune is one of New Zealand’s heroes. He’s been a successful entrepreneur and gone on to use his wealth to fight the […]
Vernon Small calculates that if the Cullen Fund had continued getting its monthly contributions, rather than just the one-off $250 million the government gave in July, we would be $30 million better off by now. Predictably, the financially illiterate Key apologists are having a cry about being shown to have stuffed this one up so badly.
From time to time you hear mention of John Key’s personal fortune of $50M. If you say fiftymilliondollars quickly enough it doesn’t sound […]
Voters of the Auckland region should be very concerned with the news that the Auckland City CBD-based Citrat political party looks set to run a single whipped slate of candidates at this year’s supercity election. The fear is that the C&R CBD old boys are gonna do in Waitakere, Manukau, Franklin, Rodney and the North Shore what they did in Otahuhu. Talk about crushing local voice.
Last year, Telecom screws over its engineers. Decides to make them dependent contractors. EPMU wins real jobs for most of them. Better contract conditions for others. But a sh*tload of experienced engineers say screw Telecom and leave the industry. Then the faults start. XT becomes a laughingstock. Customers leave in droves. Next, profit warning.
Kelvin Davis: It goes to show how high the aspirations of some of our Maori leaders are. We now aspire to bung the bros in the hinaki and watch the dollars roll in. The longer and more often we can put them away, the sooner we will be able to afford to expand the prison and lock even more away. With the soaring crime rate and high Maori unemployment everything is coming together nicely.
It’s time for the Nats to reverse what Vernon Small (with 20/20 hindsight) has labeled the “dumb, short-sighted decision” to can contributions to the Cullen Fund. We’ve already lost $25 million and Treasury says we’ll lose billions more. If we don’t make this investment now, superannuation will become unsustainable sometime after 2030. Perhaps that’s the Nats’ aim.
Phil Goff is being attacked by John Key’s apologists because he won’t pledge to reverse National’s GST hike given he can’t yet know the state of the government’s books when he becomes PM. How ironic to see the Right, who supposedly want accountable government, pillory a politician for being straight up with the public, rather than telling them what they want to hear.
This is a government that has failed to do anything apart from favours for its rich mates. But it’s still startling to see it all laid out. In his speech to the Grey Power AGM, Goff went through the failures of Key and co after less than a year and a half – an amazingly long list for such a short time. Goff is on the money when he points to the cause: National governs for the few, not the many.
National’s apologists say we should let private corporations run our prisons because it will save money. But do Public Private Partnerships (privatisation in drag) really save money? The experience here and abroad says no. To put it bluntly, when you rely on someone else to deliver something you need they’ve got you by the balls and the profit motive gives them plenty of incentive to squeeze.
National has announced the location for its first private prison on the same day we find out that they want their working group to look at privatising welfare. Private prisons were signaled by National. Privatising welfare was not. In both cases the victims will be a segment of society that this government and its supporters have actively vilified and the ones with the most to gain will be overseas corporations.
The Federated Mountain Clubs of NZ, Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, Coromandel Watchdog, and the Environment and Conservation Organisations of Aotearoa New Zealand have come together to organise the ‘Don’t Undermine New Zealand’ march on May 1st in Auckland. It should be a great event. Get out there and tell this government that some parts of our country are too precious to mine.
Following this masterpiece from Rabid Fire on Key’s F#ck Everybody policy, here’s a lovely summary of Mr Key’s exciting Washington adventure.
… the PM soon brightened, opening the Prime Ministerial lunchbox to show the press gallery his special lunch. “Look! Look! Bronagh’s made me special aeroplane shaped sandwiches for when I go on the aeroplane!”
Well, I’m pleasantly surprised. For once, Paula Bennett has played it straight on the benefit numbers. She hasn’t slapped herself on the back, even though last month’s benefit numbers are the best we’ve seen on her watch (in line with normal seasonal variation). If only Bill English could follow suit, rather than claiming credit for illusionary movements in the government’s books.
Who suggested that the mining industry in New Zealand needed to be reinvigorated and should put more emphasis on marketing its fundamentally strong geological resource, telling the NZ Herald that gold mining prospects in New Zealand were at least as good as anywhere in the world, a fact that needed to be exploited?
How dumb was John Carter to use his speech at the Grey Power National Conference to have a cry because Grey Power’s participating in an inquiry into aged care by Labour, the Greens, and the Progressives? You don’t try to bully Grey Power with its 100,000 members. The grey voters will be leaving National in droves.
Before the election National promised that they would “Ensure that institutions have greater autonomy”. What does greater autonomy look like, National style? It looks like yet another National attack on democratic governance.
National’s proposed reform of the foreshore and seabed legislation is no ‘elegant solution’. Instead, it is being criticised in the business press as an undemocratic favouring of Maori business interests over Pakeha ones, while iwi are saying that it doesn’t give them what they want.
A senior judge is under investigation for sitting on a case in which his business partner, whom he owed $240,000, was a lawyer. The investigation could result in a recommendation to the Attorney-General that the judge be sacked. But Attorney-General Chris Finlayson has trampled over the process and has said he will not act against Justice Wilson, who is a mate of his from their days at Bell Gully.
Smile and wave is easy enough in the first year, people are willing to give you a chance. But at some point, the public expects a government to get to work tackling the big problems. National displays no will or ability to do so. In just two months, 1 in 8 Kiwis has switched from thinking the country is heading in the right direction under Key to thinking things are getting worse.
The day after Zet’s post here on homophobic, imbalanced reporting by TV3’s Duncan Garner, Brian Edward’s wrote a scathing detailed deconstruction of Garner‘s […]
National is offering significant new concessions on the foreshore and seabed. It’s a whole new ball game. Coming on top of Whanau Ora its second big win in a row for the Maori Party. Is this it? Will there be an agreed solution? Can the country put this issue behind it?
In politics nothing lasts forever. That is it seems, except the Rt Hon Winston Peters. The latest Roy Morgan poll has NZ First at 3%, just below the 5% threshold (Nats 49%, Lab 33%). With Peters once again creeping back into the media spotlight, you’ve got to wonder: Will Rodney Hide’s nightmare come true with the return of Winston Peters to Parliament in 2011?
Even Guyon Espiner is concerned about the lack of quality analysis and policy design. If the government were serious about helping families in need it’s priority would be getting people back into work and better pay and conditions for low income workers. The fact that is has gone with this Whanau Ora nonsense shows it has no real intention of tackling the causes of this country’s social ills.
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?
So the govt wants to sue the Waihopai 3 for $1.1 mil. No pesky jury this time. The dudes only have a grand between them. Spending a couple of hundred thousand on lawyers’ fees to bankrupt some hippies. Doesn’t seem like the best use of taxpayer cash. Tell you what. If the govt really wants its $1.1 million they can take it out of our tax ‘cuts’. 25 cents each. That’ll be my tax cut pretty much gone.
The Waihopai spy base is very much in the news. Last month the Waihopai Three were acquitted of charges, provoking a storm of controversy (and congratulations). Yesterday came the news that the Government is considering further action against the three. There was also a “very unusual” statement about the role of Waihopai from the GCSB. Who to believe?
The Whanau Ora Taskforce report is out and it fails to even attempt to answer simple questions like ‘why is Whanau Ora the best way to help families’. It provides no evidence it will work. Check out the graphic to the right – what does it even mean? All we do know is Whanau Ora will put public money in unaccountable private hands and be privatisation by stealth.
A while ago at a barbeque a couple of friends were discussing the “Seven Good Pairs of Hands Theory”, namely, that a good […]
It’s the lies that get you. That’s what Agriculture Minister David Carter and John Key are learning as more details of Carter’s conflict of interest over the legislation that removed the Environment Canterbury councilare emerging. Carter and Key now have to explain why they have lied and misled, which will be tricky to explain if they continue to insist there’s no ministerial misbehaviour to cover up.
Whanau Ora is, apparently, about giving a big pile of money to private groups under so-called ‘high trust’ contracts and expecting them to get on and deliver a whole range of public services that have previously been the responsibility of accountable government departments. What could go wrong? Quite a bit suggests this story
I don’t have a problem with MPs being able to get public funding for court cases arising from their professional activities. You wouldn’t expect private sector employees who are taken to court over their actions in their job to be forced to pay their own way. But what a sense of entitlement Gerry Brownlee has.
Remember “the underclass”? They were briefly fashionable in National circles in 2007. Now that they are the government National’s policies for the underclass seem to involve a good deal of beneficiary bashing. Invalids are being thrown off their benefit before the new legislation is even in effect. Election promises are being broken to remove the carrot and wield the stick. How will this help the underclass?
John Key’s National government has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to subsume Archives New Zealand and the National Library within the Department of […]
