“Ministers realised they had a device through which they could reduce the surprises they suffered. And, as it went on, the surprises ministers no longer wanted to experience became greater in number and smaller in significance.Increasingly, it placed on the public service a political imperative which it had never had to shoulder. “
Shane Jones has muddied a perfectly good job creation policy by talking about work for the dole.
Donald Trump’s response to news of the arrest of Michael Flynn suggests that charges closer to the office of the President may be close.
The text of an important speech from Phil Twyford where he talks about the 6th Labour Government’s plans for housing.
“When bankers like Morgan Stanley say we’re a threat, they’re right.”
From tweeting fake anti muslim videos to supporting the Senate race of an alleged child molester who was banned from a mall because he was so creepy to acting to remove his Secretary of State for thinking that he is a moron to passing a bill that will help the rich and hurt the poor while denying this is the case the Donald Trump White House is a chaotic place.
Just over one month in the new Labour led Government and it is time to measure progress.
David Fisher has written an in-depth article for the Herald that suggests that John Key’s promise, three years ago, that the Government had cancelled the Speargun project which would have allowed for the mass surveillance of New Zealanders was not actually correct.
It appears that Steven Joyce was right about there being a multi billion dollar hole in the Government’s finances. But not in the way claimed.
Why National is currently winning the debate about tax and what Labour needs to do to change this.
Don Brash has emerged from his crypt once again to tackle the greatest problem facing New Zealand today (in his strange little world) […]
National has been clogging Parliament’s written question system by asking questions that even David Farrar thinks seem silly and are over the top.
A rebuttal of Nick Smith’s claim to have “won the 2017 election, but lost the coalition negotiations.”
The media have noticed that Bill English has recently been missing in action. And pretenders to his throne are starting to play up.
No competition in this one, Nick Smith for showing that despite the 27 long years he has spent in Parliament he still has no idea how our electoral system works and for claiming there is an electoral convention that simply does not exist.
Jacinda Ardern intends to reach out to National to try and furnish a bi partisan approach to dealing with child poverty. It is a good idea, but I don’t like her chances.
Frigate. Send one. Now.
Gerry Brownlee has surfaced on Radio New Zealand to criticise Labour’s handling of the Manus Island refugee issue. But he seems to have forgotten that the proposal offered by Labour is the proposal originally offered by National.
National is trying to spin that Labour has adopted its position on re-entry of the Pike River mine. But the Pike River families are having nothing of this.
Robert Peston in the Spectator has analysed the social media performance of the two big parties in the United Kingdom and has concluded that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour had a significant advantage over Theresa May’s conservatives.
The Australian Government has this week been attempting to undermine Jacinda Ardern’s humanitarian request that the refugees on Nauru Island should be treated humanely.
There are major similarities between Helen Clark’s decision to accept into New Zealand refugees from the Tampa boat and Jacinda Ardern’s pushing for New Zealand to accept refugees based on Manus Island.
United Future has announced that it will be wound up.
US democratic activists have conducted a number of reviews on what went wrong at the last election. The conclusions they have reached could helpfully inform New Zealand political activists on what to do in 2020.
Jacinda Ardern has publicly criticised Donald Trump for idiot treating and Malcolm Turnbull for unacceptable handling of the Manus crisis.
David Parker has confirmed that the TPP11 negotiations have resulted in a considerable minimising of the ISDS provisions. But will this be enough?
Herald lifestyle columnist has published two recent opinion pieces, the first wondering if Jacinda Ardern will be able to address the many and varied problems the country faces and the second suggesting that the Government is under the control of the extreme right. Can he please make up his mind.
Mesia reports suggest that a possible TPP11 agreement is close to being signed.
National is trying to spin that Labour refusing to continue with National’s flawed pay equity legislation shows a lack of commitment to pay equity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Some aspects of the TPP no-one’s mentioning.
When they said they wanted to eradicate poverty, I didn’t suspect they simply meant to expunge the word.
Andrew Little has announced that the Government will increase the payout to Teina Pora by adjusting for inflation and by paying costs on Pora’s successful judicial review of the previous Government’s decision.
Winston Peters has launched a legal fishing expedition to identify who exactly breached privacy on his superannuation over payments. A problem that he shares with about 50 thousand other pensioners. Unlike them, his problem wasn’t trying to find money to repay it. It was that the breach was deliberately timed to be a classic dirty politics ploy, almost certainly by National, in the leadup to the recent election. I wish him good fishing.
The spin that National are running is that they are unhappy with the move to reduce the MPs in select committees. That their dick size opposition party is the largest make me see teenage boys being idiots. Because there is no substantive difference to parliament from when this was recommended and now.
Australia has refused New Zealand’s very generous offer to take 150 Manus Island refugees.
In recent years Labour has allowed National to dominate rural politics. Maybe it is time for Labour to think about reaching out to rural voters and suggest to them that a progressive vote is in their interests.
