What the hell? This isn’t an election advertisement. This is someone expressing their views in music and video. This judgement by the Electoral Commission doesn’t appear to have any real basis behind it. Quite simply they are wrong.
Just over six weeks to go until the next election and we have our first major campaign issue. Not what some young people said about John Key but foreign ownership of our land.
A video setting out John Key’s various memory lapses.
There are sobering & harrowing stories coming out of AAAP’s Action Impact at Mangere this week. It exposes the vast inequalities & poverty existing in NZ. Vote to end this destruction of humanity & democracy! Vote for compassion, caring & sharing! VOTE LEFT!
John Key has agreed to attend one local meet the candidates meeting this year. The rules are however that there will be no debate, questions will be screened and candidates will only be able to refer to each other once. And silence will be demanded. What happened to the good old fashioned election political meeting?
The Conservative Party’s Christine Rankin has announced that she is standing for the Epsom seat. This will add an extra degree of chaos to what is already an interesting battle. But will she help the National candidate or the ACT candidate?
The Malaysian diplomat charged with serious offences has not returned to New Zealand. Despite previous assurances given by John Key it appears that his formal extradition will be required. And as further evidence of incompetence Murray McCully did not read the email advising him that Malaysia had invoked diplomatic immunity for weeks after it had been sent.
The list of National ministers with dodgy dealings is growing. But John seems desperate to keep them all. Higher standards are only something you talk about in opposition apparently. I guess when you have a list that’s brought in the likes of Aaron Gilmore and Claudette Hauiti there’s not much of a pool to be choosing new ministers from; but have National never heard of responsibility for one’s actions?
The National led Government are desperate to present the good news stories to promote the success of the past six years of their governance. They have increased the budget and the numbers of their spin doctors to ensure that it is mainly positive messages that make into the public domain. The Government cleverly manipulates data to hide the extent of poverty the degradation of the environment and the success of our economy. Of course most of us who live in the real world know that National’s reality is a falsely constructed one.
National has all-but confirmed today that there no deal for Colin Craig in East Coast Bays, or for any other Conservative. This was the right thing for them to do, for one simple reason. This decision came down to simple maths. If Key thought the Conservatives could muster double the votes that a decision to back the Conservatives would cost National in the centre-ground, then he should do the deal. If not, he should not. All the stuff about Winston running was a bit of a late sideshow, as the decision had likely already been made.
We are at a very sensitive stage of the election campaign. Labour’s decline in the polls has reversed, membership enthusiasm is high and National is being criticised for its male dominated list as well as facing the problem of its relationship with the Conservatives.
John Key is now pretending to be an All Black as part of his campaign for re-election.
John Key claims to not know how much money Claudette Hauiti has spent on her credit card and suggests that a list demotion has persuaded her to stand down. Surely he should ask. If he doesn’t then the media should ask why not. And was Hauiti persuaded or pushed into not standing again?
As a young MP in the British House of Commons in the late 1970s, I rapidly became aware that half the political stories […]
Despite previously promising to do so John Key is now refusing to apologise to Tania Billingsley for the complete shambles that National has made of the Malaysian Diplomat issue.
David Cunliffe is now being criticised for having a short holiday with his family. It is strange that it should be thought of as a bad thing for the leader of the party interested in improving ordinary people’s quality of life to try and get some work life balance.
If there is evidence that Key lied about when he first heard of Dotcom, then that strengthens Dotcom’s defence against extradition. He can then rightly say he has not had a fair go; that the parties trying to send him to the States to stand trial do not have clean hands. The potential personal gain for Kim Dotcom is obvious. The effect on the election may not be quite as positive.
National is claiming that Immigration NZ’s decision to allow Kim Dotcom to stay was made without any political pressure being applied. But it was the decision of the SIS to remove its block on Dotcom’s application that let the approval be granted. Why did the SIS remove its block and who applied the political pressure?
The FBI had been working with the New Zealand authorities for a year before he was arrested. They wanted to arrest him on his birthday “because it would be a big party and all the assets would be there.”A Department of Justice official revealed this to ex-Senator Dodd, chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America. The FBI is a Justice Department agency. The “party assets” were why he had to be kept here.
The Herald is reporting that direct political pressure was applied on Immigration NZ to grant Kim Dotcom and his family residence in New Zealand. And the SIS tried to block the application but dropped their objection after being told there was “political pressure”.
Updated with more links
National’s desire of increasing its support among Pasifika is understandable in an MMP world. But John Key’s and National’s selection of socially conservative candidates in South Auckland in an attempt to be attractive to some socially conservative voters is more than a little disingenuous.
Rob Salmond presents the David Farrar / Steven Joyce / John Key argument that 2011 non voters are a National-leaning bunch. Then he shows that a better look at their own data undermines their claim. This matters because it helps us understand which bloc has more to gain from voter mobilization efforts in 2014. This means the left has a lot more to gain than the right from mobilization in 2014.
Tania Billingsley’s public comments and her suggestion that Murray McCully should resign as Minister of Foreign Affairs are cogent and compelling. For his failure to look after New Zealand’s interests and for his inept handling of issues for Tania he should resign as Minister.
Education has become a major election issue. And after Labour’s announcements at this weekend’s congress there is a stark divide, between the enrichment of the few or the advancement of the many.
Remember when John Key explained why he sends his children to private schools….. and now the Nats and Parata are saying that such advantages don’t work for all Kiwis.
One of the core principles of our public service is that Ministers have no role in staffing decisions. This is not the era of Seddon, where a Minister could stack “their” department with cronies and time-servers. For over a century, public sector heads have been statutorily independent in such matters. John Key appears to not understand that independence or just likes stupidly shooting from the hip. In the process he is opening taxpayers up to paying for his mistakes.
John Key has announced an inquiry into how the ambiguity in New Zealand’s position relating to the Malaysian diplomat was created. And he has already blamed the Public Servant involved while refusing to criticise Murray McCully. Clearly we now have a situation where instead of there being Ministerial Responsibility for the performance of their Department the Government is now entitled to attack a public servant in an attempt to divert political blame.
In its handling of the case of the Malaysian diplomat accused of attempted rape in NZ, the government has marginalised the concerns and sensitivities of the victim. Their own arse covering was given a higher priority. Jan Logie argued for the victim in the House today – government MP’s attacked her for it. [Update#2: the survivor of the attempted rape, spoke to Jan Logie]
National appear to have been indulging in wishful thinking for some time based on dubious analysis of voter turnout. Their latest round of silliness comes from kiwiblog. Sure there were some National supporters who chose not to vote in 2011 out of complacency. But it is probably a minority, and that most of the new non-voters (who voted up to and including 2008, and then stopped) are lefties. The survey evidence points that way, and so does the E9 evidence when looked at properly.
John Key has claimed that New Zealand asked Malaysia to waive diplomatic immunity for the Diplomat charged with breaking and entering and assault with intent to rape. But news is breaking that Malaysia was willing to waive diplomatic immunity but decided to take up New Zealand’s offer to invoke diplomatic immunity. So who is right? And if the offer was made why did John Key say otherwise?
Update: From a McCully email it appears Malaysia thought that refusing to waive immunity would be acceptable to New Zealand. Details of the “informal communications” need to be released so that we can judge for ourselves what was actually discussed and agreed to.
Bill English has stated that a third term Key government would majorly reform the government’s budgeting & spending. It’s a major move towards privatisation of public services, & full spectrum digitally-enhanced monitoring of individuals’ lives: especially those of the already demonised and harassed single mothers on benefits.
National’s announcement yesterday of $212 million for 14 roading projects around regional New Zealand hits a lot of bad notes. I think it is a strategic mistake. New Zealanders are not used to pork-barreling as naked as this. All but two of the projects are in National-held areas, and those other two are on National’s target list in September. And some are complete clunkers. For instance Nick Smith rerouting SH6 from the rich houses on to the kids going to schools
National has unveiled aspects of its 2014 campaign with John Key being a cult like figure and a slogan that makes it sound like National cares for ordinary New Zealanders.
It seems to be the season of books and faux movie posters. Mary-Ellen O’Connor has published a Nats’ cook book. Proceeds of the sales will apparently be donated to the “centre left”.
On Trademe.
“As new, unwanted gift from a smartarse.
John Key Portrait of a Prime Minister by John Roughan.
Essentially a love letter.
Utter rubbish but may get you out of a jam if you run out of toilet paper.
Proceeds from sale go to fighting poverty.”
It looks like the powers that be on the Herald’s editorial board are starting to realise that being a paid shill for the Key owned National Party is not as wise a move as they thought. Particularly as the realisation that the allegations fed from John Key and those around Donghua Liu are proving to be a quicksand that is sucking the already doubtful credibility of the paper as a crusading, principled record of fact away from it.
