TPPA agreement reached
The TPPA has been agreed to. Dairy access improvement is minimal, there will be a cost hit on Pharmac and every industry but Tobacco will be able to access the investor state dispute resolution procedure.
national
same old national
Hekia has gone rogue
Hekia Parata has announced that student achievement and not need caused by poverty will be a central part of any future funding system.
TPPA deal close?
The TPPA is said to be close to being concluded with resistance to change in Pharmaceutical rules being provided by Australia, not New Zealand. And John Key says that the deal isn’t a very good deal for Dairy.
Where is Peseta Sam?
This week we have had the release of the Priestley Report into the escape of Phillip Smith which details a litany of problems within Corrections and overnight there have been reports of rape and assault on a person moved from segregation in Serco managed South Auckland Correctional Facility. But no sign of Corrections Minister Sam Lotu Iiga. Where is he?
English: it’s all the planners’ fault
A guest post from Ad analysing Bill English’s speech where he blames planners for Auckland’s housing woes.
Key pinches Labour’s Kermadec Sanctuary Policy
National’s announced intention to create a marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands looks remarkably like Labour’s policy from the last election. And why did John Key not tell his caucus beforehand?
Jarrod Gilbert on National’s Lies
There’s a hard-hitting piece in the Herald today – from Jarrod Gilbert on how National has lied to the country’s face and got […]
What other countries are doing about climate change
There is hope that the cumulative effect of all the international pledges for the Paris climate change conference may buy the world some time to prevent runaway global warming. Some countries are pledging to becoming carbon neutral. New Zealand’s pledge is pathetically weak in comparison.
The problem is child poverty not CYF
The Rebstock Panel inquiry could be read to confirm that Child Youth and Family is unable to perform its job properly because of it is not properly resourced to provide the job. But it is clear that National is loathe to provide it with any more resources. And the elephant in the room is that the Government fails to understand that escalating child poverty is the cause the crisis.
From out of the Shadows
Goff has attempted to throw a fire-cracker into the notion of the National Party leadership and caucus being one big happy family. Is this the Labour Party’s way of sowing seeds of discontent without tainting the image of their leader? It is NOT Dirty Politics by any normal understanding of that term as captured in the book of the same name. Is this Goff’s role now? To box from the shadows?
The political machinations of the flag debate
The Green’s agreement with National to allow for Red Peak to be a referendum candidate potentially helps John Key out of a major difficulty and raises issues about the state of the Labour-Green relationship.
Paula Bennett’s loopy rules do not actually exist
The Government has admitted that at least some of the loopy rules mentioned by Paula Bennett in support of the Loopy Rules review do not actually exist.
Increase productivity. Make builders subject to criminal charges.
Nick Smith is being his usual dickhead self again suggesting that self-certifying electricians, directly subject to criminal prosecution, are the same as self-certifying builders who do not. The Government’s rules reduction taskforce is repeating the same mantras from the 1990s that lead directly to the destruction of productivity by National’s policies to create leaky buildings.
Housing Corp’s privatisation by stealth
One News has discovered that over the past five years Housing Corporation has divested itself of 2,472 houses at the same time that the need for social housing has escalated.
Twelve long months
Twelve months on from the last election and that brighter future we were promised has not happened.
The strip mining of Housing Corp is accelerated
Not only is Housing Corp planning to pay a $118 million dividend to the Crown this year but hidden away in its accounts is the payment of a further capital contribution of $336 million. Talk about strip mining …
This Government’s priorities
In recent news it has been stated that the Government has let Serco off fines totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars while at the same time it is sneaking through retrospective changes to the law to deny thousands of beneficiaries money they are otherwise entitled to.
Warner Bros – corporate welfare beneficiary
Figures have been released showing that Warner Bros were paid NZ $191 million in tax rebates to create the Hobbit Trilogy. The films were very profitable. Why is corporate welfare for profitable activity tolerated?
The strip mining of Housing Corporation
At a time where the need for social housing has possibly never been greater the Housing Corporation is to pay the Government a dividend of $118 million, the third largest in the Corporation’s history.
National’s refugee backdown
In both England and New Zealand conservative Prime Ministers are looking to urgently backtrack from recent refusals to do anything further for refugees.
Is Syria the first failed state because of climate change?
A climate change induced drought from 2006 to 2009 appears to have sparked the instability that has caused the Syrian Civil war. The mass exodus of citizens that we are witnessing may be the first of many climate change induced events.
Imagine if National had not sold the shares in our companies 2015 version
The latest financial reports for the privatised companies suggests that the New Zealand Government has lost in the past twelve months $470 million in dividends it would have received had it held onto the shares.
Finlayson criticises Law Society but gets it wrong
Chris Finlayson has criticised the New Zealand Law Society for not being aware that a change to the Health and Safety Reform Bill affecting human rights introduced after submissions had been heard was itself being changed. But all this does is reinforce the Law Society’s criticisms that such provisions should have been part of the original bill.
Dita De Boni’s last column for the Herald?
Dita De Boni’s possibly last column for the Herald is a must read.
Forget worm farms the Health and Safety Reform Bill proposes secret trials
The Government has snuck into the Health and Safety Reform Bill a provision that allows for withholding from the parties to court proceedings of classified security information and for decisions affecting their rights to be made on the basis of information they have no access to. This was not in the original bill and you have to wonder why such a contentious provision has been introduced so late.
National Ltd™’s Shane Reti Caught Out In Another Lie
Shane Reti lied about the process of ratifying the TPP. In a Press Release to the Northern Advocate, Reti states “. . . the agreement comes before parliament and opposition parties and select committees for debate and modifications . . .”
Zero integrity on zero hours
If you thought the Nats promising to sort out zero hours contracts was too good to be true — you were right.
John Key’s brighter future is not for everyone
While beneficiary numbers decrease the incidence of beneficiaries being trespassed and the numbers of pregnant women living homeless is increasing. Are we really seeing things improve or are more and more people falling through the cracks?
Hosking, Henry and Media Bias
Yesterday a debate that has occurred on the Standard about how main stream media has a right wing bias became mainstream when Winston Peters accused Mike Hosking of being a National Party Stooge. An online poll provided overwhelming support for his statement. And recently Steven Joyce attacked Rod Oram because his analytical thoughtful analysis critical of the Government displayed evidence of left wing bias.
Who is to blame for Solid Energy’s failure
… and why is Solid Energy removing links to its Annual reports from its website?
Free beer for all
Diversion alert. The Government considers that urgency should be given to changing the law to allow more beer to be drunk when the All Blacks are playing during the Rugby World Cup.
#Sheepgate and the war of metaphor
The war of metaphor requires the continuous repetition of a simple statement in the hope it becomes the accepted truth. Most of the time it works. But with #sheepgate it is starting to unravel.
National’s terrible deal making
A brief analysis of a number of deals that National has negotiated suggests that its reputation as a supposedly tough dealmaker is misplaced.
#Sheepgate – Key’s cheerleaders are sent in
John Armstrong thinks that National has bested Labour over #sheepgate because Key keeps saying it is all Labour’s fault. And Hosking thinks the payment has a good business case despite the payment having not achieved the result that was being sought,
NRT: 43,000 unemployed under National
Unemployment has risen for two quarters in a row despite the optimistic Treasury forecasts.
The dump of the #sheepgate papers
The sheepgate papers have been dumped and despite John Key’s claims to the contrary the only evidence of a change in position on live sheep exports is that of the National Government, not the previous Labour Government.