Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, March 9th, 2010 - 40 comments
Michael is dead right. The most important thing about the Hollow Men is not how Nicky Hager got the information but what the information is. It reveals National’s modern politics in all its unprincipled ugliness. Nonetheless, which Nats gave Hager the information is a subject of legitimate interest. I have some theories.
Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, March 9th, 2010 - 12 comments
John Key doesn’t need evidence. He just knows stuff. John Key just knows that Don Brash’s emails were stolen by a mysterious hacker, despite having no evidence at all. The same “reasoning” underpins most of National’s flagship policies. Key just knows they’ll work, even when the evidence says otherwise…
Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, March 9th, 2010 - 19 comments
In NZ, the average FTE wage rose 2.86% after inflation – $891 to $934 – over the past year. In Aussie, it was 3.6% above inflation – $1159 to $1226. When will John Key admit that he sold us a lie? When will the media call on him to resign if no progress is made on the one substantial promise of a ‘brighter future’ at he made?
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, March 6th, 2010 - 25 comments
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”.
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, March 3rd, 2010 - 24 comments
If you agree that money is power, and that power corrupts, then it follows having a lot of money may be a corrupting influence. So imagine the compounding effects of having a lot of money and being like, a Bishop, or a PM. Self-proclaimed Bishop Brian Tamaki is having a few problems at the moment […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, March 3rd, 2010 - 27 comments
Comparing the post-leadership careers of Clark and Brash is quite a study in contrasts. Clark’s has been stellar, Brash’s an embarrassment. But the world of difference between these two leaders is much clearer with the perfect hindsight of 2010 than it was when they were locked in a tight electoral battle in 2005.
How will history look back at the leadership of John Key?
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, March 1st, 2010 - 33 comments
John Key has promised to make tax changes that are revenue neutral, give huge payouts to the wealthy elite, and somehow mean the “vast bulk of taxpayers will be substantially better off”. But it’s a money-go-round. How you can make everyone better off with the same amount of money you’ve taken off them?
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, February 28th, 2010 - 51 comments
You have to double-check every ‘fact’ the Nats tell you. Bill English, for example, has been caught out lying on Labour’s growth record.
For the last couple of weeks, John Key has been claiming that when Labour increased GST from 10% to 12.5% in 1989 there was no compensation for taxpayers. That too is a lie.
Written By: - Date published: 6:54 pm, February 27th, 2010 - 13 comments
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 money by using their ministerial credit cards for prohibited purchases, Jones has recounted an incident from his time as a minister. When Jones was Building Minister in 2008 he hosted a dinner […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, February 24th, 2010 - 27 comments
Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.
Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, February 23rd, 2010 - 17 comments
This morning the DomPost ran an article by Tracy Watkins about several ministers misusing their ministerial credit cards for personal entertainment. They obtained the information by doing OIAs (Official Information Act requests). Now I’ve come to expect that NACT ministers will do (in John Keys words) “stupid” things in office. But what I found significant was that John Key appears to have discovered the use of a new word “disappointment”. This is a major advance for the NACT political vocabulary.
Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, February 23rd, 2010 - 13 comments
Duncan Garner: “Key must get the compensation [for GST] right or there will be a backlash from voters” Problem is, you can’t get everyone to put some money in a bucket, give a large chunk of it to the rich and then compensate everyone else for what they put in with what is left. It can’t add up.
Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, February 23rd, 2010 - 29 comments
BLiP puts his distinctive view on why the police have been losing “the respect of the community” with one of his locally famous lists. He attributes it to ‘Crusher’ Collins and wonders why John Key is cluessly fronting PR wanting stronger sentences for disrespecting police.
Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, February 21st, 2010 - 28 comments
Prime Minister John Key is the worst enemy New Zealand’s conservation estate has had in decades. Not content with the destruction caused by mining our most precious conservation areas, Key is pushing to sell off access to the conservation estate to the highest bidders.
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, February 20th, 2010 - 42 comments
So Key’s “party central” plan for Queen’s Wharf seems to be dead in the water, after Auckland Mayors labeled it a “monstrosity” and refused to fund it.
Are these the prudent decisions of leaders who don’t want the city saddled with expensive white elephants, or the timid decisions of leaders who are without vision and averse to risk?
Written By: - Date published: 3:01 pm, February 19th, 2010 - 41 comments
The letter warning school boards not to speak out over national standards is an outrage, but John Key and his National Party have a long and dishonourable record of trying to shut down those who speak out to oppose them.
Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, February 19th, 2010 - 15 comments
John Key’s recent stint at the Big Gay Out wasn’t all target marketing and niche political branding. He also had a run in with living-wage campaigners who took him to task for his government’s poor response to minimum wage earners and asked if he could live on the minimum wage.
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, February 19th, 2010 - 8 comments
Click through to see Phil Goff take John Key down a peg. Sloppy home insulation. Sloppy, broken cycleway promises. Sloppy, unfilfulled Youth Guarantee. Sloppy & uncaring on unemployment. Sloppy abuse of the people of McGehan Close. A sloppy, do nothing PM.
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, February 17th, 2010 - 5 comments
Tongue in cheek, George notes: When asked in Parliament why he hadn’t paid closer attention to his share portfolio, Key replied: “small technical issue, I’ve been busy running the countryâ€. That statement must come close to misleading Parliament.
Written By: - Date published: 6:22 pm, February 16th, 2010 - 19 comments
John Key has tried to excuse himself from owning shares in a uranium company by saying he was “sloppy”. I’m afraid that’s not good enough for a Prime Minister worth millions, who likely pays top dollar for a lawyer to advise him on just these kind of problems.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, February 16th, 2010 - 53 comments
You know how the world has been through the worst financial crisis in decades? You know how countries like Ireland and Iceland who had made themselves into financial hubs via tax breaks for banks are now deep in the crap with burgeoning debt and unemployment? Why don’t we do what they did?
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, February 16th, 2010 - 57 comments
John Key says Jackson Mining was just a gold mining company when he bought them and that they didn’t get involved in uranium until later. In fact, Jackson mining was already involved in uranium when Key listed his interest in the company last year
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, February 15th, 2010 - 54 comments
Key has explicitly promised that no-one will be left worse off by these changes but he doesn’t have the money, can’t have to money, to do that if he persists in handing over buckets of money to the rich.
Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, February 14th, 2010 - 50 comments
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’.
Written By: - Date published: 4:14 pm, February 13th, 2010 - 110 comments
Tracy Watkins awards the first week of Parliamentary politics this year to Phil Goff, and points out that it’s as much due to his and Labour’s much improved performance as it is to Key and National’s shambolic, over-promise, under-deliver governance. (more…)
Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, February 12th, 2010 - 5 comments
This is pretty classic. Found it on one of The Standard’s old posts. I think we’ll be seeing a bit more of this image around.
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, February 12th, 2010 - 15 comments
The other day I wrote: I reckon we probably will see a passing reference to the ‘underclass’ for appearance’s sake [in John Key’s statement to Parliament] but I’m just as sure that his government will continue to fail the most vulnerable members of our society. Well whatdaya know? There it is: I have said it […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, February 12th, 2010 - 12 comments
In chronological order: John Key: “[I never promised I wouldn’t raise GST]. I said I would not raise GST to cover deficits, and we are not doing so.” Guyon Espiner: “he would have been better of just saying ‘look, times have changed and GST is now back on the agenda’” Duncan Garner: “The Prime Minister […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 60 comments
My my, things are turning quickly for John Key. We now have the first sighting of the red flag term “the beleaguered PM” in the mainstream media. Recall that in 2008 Key promised not to increase GST, and now he is proposing to do exactly that. 3 News (Duncan Garner) summed up: So Mr Key […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, February 11th, 2010 - 3 comments
“An unscientific poll yesterday of 846 readers asking whether they would be happy to pay more GST if it meant they paid less income tax found 46.9 per cent in favour, 43.9 per cent opposed and about 8 per cent undecided.” – Stuff “Unscientific poll” I take to mean one of their online polls, and […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:09 pm, February 10th, 2010 - 75 comments
Apparently promises made before the election don’t count. GST was different then anyway.
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