Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, July 22nd, 2012 - 124 comments
An all-time record 53,900 people left New Zealand for Australia last year. Remember when John Key was going to stop the exodus by closing the wage gap? Yeah, that was a pretty funny joke. Now, here’s the punchline: Bill English now says that it’s a great thing that everyone is leaving for Australia. And the kicker, he wants to attract talent by driving down wages.
Written By: - Date published: 6:11 pm, July 19th, 2012 - 49 comments
Key is already qualifying a promise he’s made on Maori water rights. Does the promise mean anything at all?
Written By: - Date published: 12:12 pm, July 19th, 2012 - 7 comments
I/S at No Right Turn on yet another example of misleading Parliament – but it doesn’t matter because “the current Speaker has ruled that a Member can only mislead the House in ‘a statement of some formality'”.
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, July 19th, 2012 - 41 comments
The meeting between Key and the Maori Party leaders last night reached it’s predictable conclusion. From his point of view Key has played this brilliantly.
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, July 18th, 2012 - 47 comments
I don’t know which is stranger, a currency-trading capitalist denigrating people for maximising their economic opportunities, or claims dating back to The Treaty being passed off as somehow superficial.
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, July 12th, 2012 - 33 comments
Today’s DomPost says David Parker’s recent speech “criticised National for failing to boost imports and control housing prices.” That didn’t sound like David Parker. Sure enough he had put his finger on the real problem, the government’s failure to boost exports. Key’s reported “putdown” was Labour is “a joke.” One thing is certain, New Zealand’s ever-receding “brighter future” is no joke. I’d like to see the DomPost put it right. Tell us all what Parker actually said, then let us decide which party is the joke.
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, July 8th, 2012 - 29 comments
With news that there are now more Kiwis living in Australia than either Christchurch or Wellington, here’s “John Key’s” latest press release on the topic.
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, July 7th, 2012 - 39 comments
Gerry Brownlee is in court as some property owners challenge his decision to open up some blocks of land for new sections post-earthquake and not others. One of those property owners is Independent Seafoods. They would also have been one of a hundred to have benefited from a 2009 private members’ bill by Clayton Cosgrove. One of Cosgrove’s donors was IS. Brownlee’s shopped a smear based on that, and The Nation ran it.
Written By: - Date published: 2:29 pm, July 5th, 2012 - 11 comments
What do our leaders in parliament have to say about the latest developments at the Large Hadron Collider?
Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, July 5th, 2012 - 16 comments
There’s a new member in the ‘sphere, a cheeky little blog called Twisted Hive that appears to be a member of what you might call the Labour Ulterior, that great mass of Labour people who are unhappy with and feel excluded by the way things have been managed lately. This post, though, is about Steven Joyce’s white whale.
Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, July 5th, 2012 - 197 comments
The Nats are going to terminate the benefits of those who fail or refuse drug tests. I have a question…
Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, July 3rd, 2012 - 59 comments
As many of us expected, National has no intention of ever enforcing the ETS in the area where it makes the most difference to NZ emissions – agriculture.
Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, July 2nd, 2012 - 71 comments
So – what kind of person does well out of asset sales?…
Written By: - Date published: 7:48 am, July 2nd, 2012 - 57 comments
We know that the Police overstepped their authority following their Hollywood wannabe raid on Dotcom’s home. They used invalid warrants to take property of Dotcom’s that they weren’t entitled to, and gave that data to the FBI. Now, we learn that Key’s office was involved in advising the Department of Labour on shutting down a leaked email.
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, June 29th, 2012 - 40 comments
We’re getting used to the Nats running bash the beneficiary /poor /Maori /unemployed /criminal /etc distractions but it’s getting pretty bad when Bill English gets in on the act. Weirdly his idea of drug-testing beneficiaries seems to have been picked up from a Daily Show piece on how it failed in Florida – costing money, not saving it, and proving beneficiaries use drugs less than the rest of the population.
Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, June 25th, 2012 - 85 comments
National are so scared of the “Nanny state” hysteria that they drummed up from opposition that they’re now ignoring official advice and killing off law changes that would save lives.
Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, June 21st, 2012 - 34 comments
So the first car has been crushed. While ministerial grandstanding abounds, a criminologist describes it as “vindictive, malicious, petty and an undignified way of dealing with the problem”.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, June 20th, 2012 - 87 comments
Bill English has attacked the MED numbers showing that private electricity companies are 12% more expensive than public ones saying that argument assumes “that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are systematically paying more for electricity than they could?”. Um… Has English heard of Powerswitch? That multi-million dollar government campaign is based on exactly that premise.
Written By: - Date published: 5:34 pm, June 19th, 2012 - 4 comments
The right may talk up the virtues of self-responsibility, but when it comes to the failure of the Key government to achieve even modest targets, there’s always someone else to blame. It’s all Labour’s fault, or it’s all because of the earthquakes, or it’s all because of Europe.
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, June 19th, 2012 - 26 comments
John Key wants to debate school league tables. Presumably he thinks that this will do the double whammy of getting middle class parents back on his side in the education debate, and distract from asset sales. But he’s not checked with his Minister, or the Ministry of Education, or presumably read any of the official advice about how damaging league tables would be.
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, June 19th, 2012 - 8 comments
Key’s ditched the surplus target that was so important a month ago – yet another casualty on the way to the brighter future. The Queen may have asked him why he didn’t see European contagion coming. Shearer is right – Europe is an excuse for a government that has run out of ideas. Labour does have a fresh approach – we need to hear more.
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, June 17th, 2012 - 52 comments
John Key started preparing the ground to work with NZF, looking to forge a “Save Super” platform for 2014. But Winston Peters smacked him down hard.
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, June 16th, 2012 - 93 comments
Well, the same old lines just aren’t working now. Maybe its a factor of having 3 journos interviewing him, but they are just rejecting Key’s spin outright – they know that the lines are fundamentally misleading, so they just brush them off and ask tougher questions. He’s getting his arse kicked on everything from schools to the economy. I predict this’ll be one of Key’s last long-format interviews.
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, June 16th, 2012 - 56 comments
Austerity has failed in both the UK and NZ. But at least Cameron’s Conservatives have the wit to realise it, and the courage to act.
Written By: - Date published: 5:04 pm, June 14th, 2012 - 33 comments
National rushed its Asset Sales Bill back into the House today. Stephen Joyce argued that it was to reduce debt, deepen capital markets, and invest in schools etc. One-off asset sales asset increase debt and if schools depend on flogging off more assets, we won’t get many more before the assets run out. The real reason for the sale is the middle one. Asset sales produce huge windfall capital gains for the buyers. They should be taxed.
Update: Bill went through 61-59 – 2 opposed from Maori Party. Cushion?
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, June 14th, 2012 - 34 comments
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, June 14th, 2012 - 58 comments
John Key’s days are numbered. His personal popularity is falling. His brand is tied to unpopular asset sales and a pokies for convention centre deal that is now subject to an Auditor-General investigation. He’s not winning the next election. So a change of leader is coming: pre-election or post. But who can succeed him? Parata? Collins? Joyce? They’re all shot.
Written By: - Date published: 1:56 pm, June 13th, 2012 - 13 comments
The Auditor-General has announced an enquiry into John Key’s SkyCity deal. The deal should now be put on hold while the enquiry goes ahead.
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