Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, June 7th, 2009 - 104 comments
On Q+A this morning, Phil Goff was asked by Paul Holmes for more detail on why John Key wasn’t surprised when he took the sexual harassment complaint against Richard Worth to him. According to Goff, Key said that he had been aware of rumours of similar activity by Worth and that was one reason why […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 6th, 2009 - 50 comments
There’s still a lot of confusion on the Right, in particular, about the sequence of events in the Worth saga, so I’ve tried to reconstruct it below (btw, thanks to John Armstrong for using his time machine and advising us “The [Dover] Samuels case had negligible impact on the new [Labour-led] government’s subsequent fortunes. The same […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 pm, June 5th, 2009 - 31 comments
Will be fun to read the Armstrongs, Rolstons, Laws, Holmes, Hooton and the other assorted rightwingers that besmirch our weekend papers. See them desperately to turn Key’s handling of Worth’s philandering into an attack on Goff. There will be claims that Goff made the harassment issue public. When it was Key on Wednesday afternoon. They […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, June 5th, 2009 - 27 comments
Key is describing himself as ‘piggy in the middle’ in the Worth sexual harassment affair. Says he had two conflicting stories and couldn’t choose between them. What rubbish. Key accepted Worth’s version of events. He let the matter drop. No punishment for Worth. If he had been in a dilemma on who to believe he […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, June 5th, 2009 - 112 comments
Sorry for the long post. This is my transcript of John Key’s interview with Mary Wilson on Checkpoint last night. It’s just incredible. Key obviously shielded Worth with a *nudge* *wink* ‘investigation’ into the sexual harassment complaint and his now trying to cover his own arse. I’ve added my own comments in italics and taken […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 15 comments
Mary Wilson interviews John Key on Checkpoint. Brilliant. Sean Plunket interviews Richard Prebble and Richard Griffin on Morning Report. Grubby old men. Time for a change. UPDATE [a_y_b]: That first one’s unbelievable. Here’s the embed.
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 47 comments
If you saw last night’s One News piece on the Worth fiasco, you might have noticed Key looking particularly haggard. This photo doesn’t really do justice to how crap he actually looked – grey, sallow, a lot of wrinkles and bags under the eyes, and a serious five o’clock shadow. Johno, if you can’t control your […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:29 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 7 comments
Before the election National’s “Employment & Workplace Relations” policy set out the principle of “building opportunity for all”, and the need to “Expand job opportunities for those having difficulty getting work -like young, inexperienced people or new immigrants.” The Job Summit talk-fest paid plenty of lip service to the importance of jobs: Key: [Jobs] count […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 18 comments
First it was Paul Henry and Guyon Espiner. Both agree Key needs to “come clean with the country and give us more detail than he has”. Next up was Goff. Fair analysis. Didn’t gloat. One of his best appearances so far.
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, June 4th, 2009 - 77 comments
This just gets worse for Key. It has emerged that Worth was offering ‘jobs for favours’ for a young woman. Goff passed her allegations on to Key. According to the Dom (physical version, online is different) Key said “I investigated them and there didn’t appear any truth to them and I accepted Dr Worth’s version […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, June 4th, 2009 - 44 comments
John Key’s making a real hash of this latest Worth scandal. There was the secretive way he went about things yesterday, which is just not acceptable from a Prime Minister in New Zealand. He wasted several opportunities to correct his mistake and give full details during the day. Yet the story is still coming out. […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, June 4th, 2009 - 2 comments
hattip: Maia, Anthony Karinski
Written By: - Date published: 4:40 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 41 comments
From the fuzz: Police confirm that a complaint was made in Auckland two weeks ago and related to a recent alleged incident. Preliminary inquiries were made and the complaint transferred to Wellington Police for further investigation. Meanwhile, Key has revealed that he lost confidence in Worth last Tuesday but let him keep his job until […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments
Quite rightly, Michael Cullen has avoided getting involved in the debate over National’s starvation diet for the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, known as the Cullen Fund. As chairman of an SOE, he should keep out of partisan politics. Still, he couldn’t resist sending a subtle message. In today’s Dom there is a letter to the […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 10 comments
David Farrar has a post on Kiwiblog listing the fastest risers to become Prime Minister. They are: John Key – 6 years David Lange – 7 years Jenny Shipley – 10 years Geoffrey Palmer – 10 years Bill Rowling – 12 years Mike Moore – 12 years Richard Seddon – 14 years So it might […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 97 comments
How titillating. Worth has resigned and he won’t say why. ‘Personal reasons’ eh? Heard that one before. Key’s not talking either. He describes it as a ‘private reason’. Got to wonder what’s in the Tories’ heads on this one. Don’t keep a secret unless you really need to. Bad look. The public has a right […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 36 comments
Just out from the police: An allegation has been made against a sitting member of Parliament. Wellington police are conducting a preliminary investigation into this matter. UPDATE: Key has just confirmed at his press conference that Worth has quit because of a “criminal matter”.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments
Six months in and John Key has broken three of his eleven “personal guarantees”. Impressive. Click on the image for full size.
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 1 comment
Strange isn’t it that Key can support transparency yesterday but not today. Political expediency at its worst.
Written By: - Date published: 4:23 pm, June 1st, 2009 - 67 comments
This part of Vernon Small’s article today deserves an extended quote: “The numbers are stark. If full payments resume in 2020, contributions will have to be more than $1b a year higher than if we continued as normal now. Even then, from 2020 till 2030 the fund will be $37b smaller than it would otherwise […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, June 1st, 2009 - 41 comments
A few weeks back, in the best traditions of tabloid TV, Q+A took time to mention Lockwood’s ride, the macho muscle car Ford Falcon Cobra – a car that screams red-blooded heterosexuality. It got me wondering. I heard Helen Clark used to drive a Mitsi when she was PM. Boring. But what sort of cars would […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:44 pm, May 31st, 2009 - 44 comments
On Q+A this morning Guyon Espiner interviewed Bill English. Guyon had received papers from a treasury official that apparently show the cost of cancelling the government’s contributions to the Cullen Fund for 10 years will be $8 billion over and above the cost of borrowing to fund the contributions. $3.5 billion from lower value of […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:04 pm, May 29th, 2009 - 28 comments
The Budget is already costing jobs. AirNZ has announced that it will be cutting flights. 80 jobs will go. The EPMU has said it will fight hard for the jobs. It’ll be tough to save them all. Why is AirNZ cutting the flights? Not enough passengers. AirNZ was hoping for something for tourism […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:03 pm, May 28th, 2009 - 20 comments
John Key famously said “we would love to see wages drop“. It sure didn’t take him long in government to see his ambition achieved. Here are the wage hourly wages rates, adjusted for inflation, over the last decade and Treasury’s projections from today’s budget. After peaking this year (wages lag unemployment), wages will drop then stall. […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 pm, May 27th, 2009 - 35 comments
If there was ever a phrase that this Government keeps reminding me of, it’s “couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery”. Today, on the eve of what will be a particularly important Budget for our country, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance aren’t entirely sure just what it is they’re trying to achieve. […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, May 26th, 2009 - 32 comments
Watch as the Tories try to distance Key from Lee. Remember that Lee was Key’s personal choice. Young, pretty, smiley, not too sharp on the detail – he must have seen a lot of himself in her. He believed that she would win on the back of his popularity. In Key’s mind this would be […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, May 25th, 2009 - 36 comments
Remember – March against National’s undemocratic supercity today 25th, noon, Queen St [More info] Thousands of protesters take to the streets of Auckland today to save local democracy. Key’s response: ‘let them eat oysters’ Nah, what he said was the hikoi is “unlikely to make a difference, is premature and the wrong forum to raise […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, May 24th, 2009 - 7 comments
Herald: Key negotiates talks in Hillary papers dispute Stuff: PM wants the facts on Veitch What’s next? Key joins hunt for couple who fled with $10 million? Key’s wasting his time getting involved in minor stories he saw in the news. Meanwhile, our country’s losing 2000 jobs a week. His government is doing nothing about […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:07 pm, May 19th, 2009 - 1 comment
When a Government are having to defend their actions they are not setting the agenda, Given it is a week before National’s first budget the ‘Rankin’ situation is not what they will be wanting. But as the previous Government illustrated, it’s not getting into a mess that matters – it’s how you get out: NZ Herald […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, May 18th, 2009 - 33 comments
John Key’s performance at this afternoon’s 4pm Press Conference was impressive. I’ve never heard so many, ‘don’t knows’, denials, ‘I can’t tell yous’, prevarications and equivocations in a press conference before. You wonder why he bothered to even turn up, he could’ve just sent along a billboard with ‘No Comment’ on it for all the […]
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