Your PM at work for you
Two news snippets yesterday seemed to me to capture the essence of John Key PM. First, his response to recommendations about super, and second his prognostications on the Christchurch insurance market.
Politics
politicans
Trotie – the dubstep remix
Goff dissects Key on RWC
A video clip from Parliament yesterday. Goff calmly and systematically rips Key and the government apart on Friday’s RWC fiasco. Armstrong calls it Goff’s “best speech in a long time”.
Garner rips useless Nats
Duncan Garner has demolished the government’s disgraceful excuse-making over its woeful lack of preparation for the World Cup. “I was there. It was scary. It was a disgrace. There were few police. There were no barriers. It was NOT family friendly. It was a tragedy waiting to happen.And that’s just Party Central. That’s the bit the Government was responsible for. Don’t forget that.”
Couldn’t organise a party at Party Central
Keen to shift the blame for the RWC opening fracas Murray McCully has used reserve powers under his very own CERA-like powers to seize control of the whole Auckland waterfront. John Key wants it run like Party Central, which he says “worked absolutely perfectly”. Yeah, tell that to the waka paddlers who were assaulted by a drunken mob there.
Resignation watch
Which minister(s) will John Key fire this week? Bill ‘Double Dipton’ English, is embroiled in yet another personal corruption scandal involving a job for his brother. Gerry ‘The VIIIth’ Brownlee’s Christchurch fiefdom is seeing a peasants’ revolt among redzoners. Murray ‘drowned rat’ McCully delivered Key a huge embarrassment on Friday at the RWC opening.
Nice Mr Key
The Stuff interview of John Key in the weekend was better than your average puff piece. Interesting that Key doesn’t even try to defend his record on its merits.
Caption contest
Nats clueless on privatisation consequences
If electricity assets were part privatised, future governments couldn’t make the kind of reforms that National made earlier this year because of the need to consider private investors’ rights. Pretty simple, eh? Tell that to Hekia Parata. Bill English has his head in the sand on the effect of falling markets and can’t guarantee Kiwi ownership.
Chose a brighter future?
Once again recent headlines prompt me to ask if in 2008 we really chose a brighter future after all.
The zen of Key
Listening to John Key explain the lack of women on his list is like entering a place where words are devoid of both meaning and melody, and eloquence is heresy. When Key concluded “of course we’d like to have more women in the top 10 and that involves us putting more women in the top 10 if we possibly can”, I heard the sound of one hand clapping.
Happy anniversary Christchurch
“Happy” anniversary Christchurch. And with it comes a broken promise, and an interesting legal decision.
1 in 5 Canty Uni jobs cut
The Tertiary Education Union has revealed that 350 jobs are for the chop at Canterbury University – 18% of the workforce. The Uni, hardly reassuringly, says its 100 to 500. The Nats blame the quake. That’s rubbish. These kind of cuts will permanently gut the Uni, leaving it in no position to be part of the recovery. National: the anti-education government.
Australia bound?
Some advice if you are planning on joining the many kiwi’s that have left the country to go to Australia since National made it their aspiration to do something about that migration trend. They certainly have massively increased the outflow – one of their few success stories. But where to go to in aussie?
Turning Green
Tracy Watkins admits today’s Fairfax poll is pretty out of whack but there’s no denying the trend has turned against Labour in the past few months. People back the policy. That’s not the problem. Labour will still be hoping to close up 5% or so in the campaign. On the positive side: what a result for the Greens!
Human face of public service cuts
Good human interest story in the DomPost today about the human costs of public service jobs cuts. A Wellington woman has written a […]
Jackel: NBR’s hack job on Hone lambasted
The establishment elite know Hone Harawira is their greatest foe. That’s why they try to besmirch him again and again, including by claiming he called Osama Bin Laden a freedom fighter and mourned his death? Now, the Press Council has ruled that the NBR’s Bin Laden article purposely misrepresented and maligned Hone.
We are all socialists now
According to John Key all New Zealanders have a socialist streak. But wait, there’s more…
Cuts and consequences
The government reckons it can cut the number of public sector workers without cutting services. That wasn’t the experience of the 80s and […]
Democracy at its finest
Seems like Key isn’t interested in listening to Christchurch quake victims.
Cunliffe kicks arse on asset sales
At the start of the year, John Key said that he wanted to have a mature debate on asset sales. Now, his Finance Minister and SOE Minister are refusing to front up to debate David Cunliffe on the issue. Instead, that was left to old man Brash on Q+A yesterday. Cunliffe made mincemeat of him. The Right still has no justification for flogging off profitable assets.
Getting to know Goff 2
Today Part 2 of The Herald’s profile of Phil Goff is out, and once again it’s a very interesting read. It debunks some of the spin surrounding Goff’s ideology and the Lange / Douglas government.
Bennett and Key at odds?
Bennett and Key are divided in their opinions and their stats, but at least they’re united in their state of denial.
Boscawen’s brilliant own goal
John Boscawen thought he was on to a winner yesterday. In an unprecedented move, he asked Parliament’s permission to ask a question of Phil Goff on the youth minimum wage. He got it, and the result was Goff at his very finest. He looked and sounded like a Prime Minister – like a real one, that is, not like Key. Let’s have more questions, Boscawen!
Nats refuse to face their record on youth
Having decided to beat up on a few thousand of the most hard done by young people in the country, National is now refusing to acknowledge the problem of disconnected youth that has ballooned under their watch. There are enough young people who aren’t in education, training, or work to fill Eden Park, and Key is literally running from the issue.
Daddy State vs Youth
National aim to score political points by attacking a small number of 16 and 17 year-olds, and taking away their autonomy. But they’re missing the real-world point – of the tens of thousands of young unemployed who need the jobs that National aren’t providing. That’s the real crisis.
Q+A interview – Key still lying
A better than usual interview of John Key by Guyon Espiner on Sundays Q+A. On the plus side Espiner was raising some serious issues. On the minus he let Key get away with his usual lies and evasions.
Nats rebel on privatisation
English is under attack at the Nat conference over asset sales. The neolibs vultures treat the state as a carcass to pick clean. But old school conservatives believe in investing the nation. And business types know you don’t get rich by selling profitable assets. English has no good excuses. All he can offer is expensive measures that make selling even more unprofitable.
Getting to know Goff
A few weeks back, I wrote that Labour’s policies are popular but it hasn’t secured the trust it needs to sway swing voters, partly people don’t feel they really know Phil Goff. Today’s Herald piece, reminiscent of one on Key in 2008 (except we get a lot more of the substance of Goff, not just carefully targeted anecdotes), should go a long way to fixing that.
Don’t penny pinch on Chch rebuild
Anyone else feel their heart freeze a little more when Brownlee labeled Christchurch’s rebuild plan “a pretty big wish list”? Here’s a once in generations chance to rebuild a city from the ground up. Going to cost tens of billions anyway. Why cheapskate by a few hundred million? Better to build a truly world-leading city designed for the future.
English’s record under fire
Stuart Nash put Bill English’s feet to the fire yesterday on his economic record. English has been claiming that the economy is in better shape to withstand another economic crisis than it was in 2008. Does anyone seriously believe that? We’re poorer, we’re more indebted, we’re less employed, and costs are higher.
NRT: Brownlee’s excuse
I/S at NoRightTurn has John Key and Gerry Brownlee floundering to explain why Brownlee hired National Party crony Jenny Shipley and other members of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Review Panel at double the normal rate. Brownlee’s excuses are weak and nonsensical. It’s not good enough.
Talk is cheap
Grieving families of Christchurch earthquake victims say that John Key has broken his promise to them. Key is refusing to even comment on the nature of the meeting. This must all sound very familiar to the families of the Pike River miners.
NRT on Brownlee’s lies and cronyism
Remember the fuss when Brownlee appointed Jenny Shipley and other cronies to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Review Panel at triple the normal rate? Brownlee tried to cover it up with a lie. I/S at No Right Turn has the scoop – go read it there.
It’s who you know
Who cares whether or not the SIS briefed Phil Goff over whether or not some Israelis were Mossad? What does interest me it this: Secretive SIS denied Fairfax a copy of the briefing paper on the non-agents. Days later it magics up a copy of this classified paper for Nat muckraker Cameron Slater. Who’s the SIS’s minister again? Oh yeah, John Key. Updated
Clusterf*ck in Epsom
It looks like the race for Epsom is about to get a whole lot more exciting. Former ACT funder Colin Craig seems set to throw his hat into the ring against ACT’s John Banks, National’s Paul Goldsmith, and Labour’s David Parker. It only needs Winnie to join in to make a real party of it. Can Parker slip through the middle and win?