A George Monbiot article in the Guardian made me wonder what effect the Atlas Network is having on New Zealand politics through the Taxpayer’s Union. Publicly available information suggests considerable funding is being made available and that the current Government’s priorities are precisely those that the Atlas Network would approve of.
This is the only possible explanation. As well as celebrating all things car National has a pathological hatred of cycleways and walkways and public transport.
In one speech Shane Jones has talked about the “hysteria surrounding climate change”, promised to disregard targets agreed to under the Paris Agreement, ordered the halting of work at the Ministry for the Environment, promised the lifting the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration at pace, and said that Mining on Department of Conservation (DoC) and Stewardship land is also in the pipeline.
Recent claims by Nicola Willis that the Governments Finances are full of fiscal cliffs is evidence either that National will cynically make baseless claims to attack Labour or that Nicola Willis has no idea about what she is talking about and has not been doing her most basic job of reading and comprehending previous budget documents.
This morning on Q&A and despite being pulled up on it Chris Bishop repeated National’s claim that under the Smokefree reforms there would only be allowed one tobacco retail shop in Northland when there would actually be at least 34.
So the coalition negotiations are going as well as I thought they would.
It is very early days and already, in what appears to be a finely calibrated insult to make David Seymour appear weak, Winston Peters has responded to the first overture from the Act leader for talks by ignoring him.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary Winston Peters has accused Jacinda Ardern of hiding the fact that her office received the Christchurch Massacre shooter’s manifesto shortly before the massacre occurred.
National has suffered further damage to its credibility with its promise of a $250 tax cut per fortnight for an average family only being realised if that family spent at least $300 per week on childcare and was a two income family with each adult earning between $53,500 and $66,000.
In a week of weird events National’s decision not to debate Labour in the Press’s leader’s debate has been a massive own goal because the country will be able to see how toxic David Seymour’s and Winston Peters’ relationship is.
After Stats NZ shot down National’s claim that the country is in recession National pirouetted by claiming that New Zealand WILL be in recession in the near future and that the Reserve Bank has predicted this. But according to the Reserve Bank this may not be true …
Fact checking by TVNZ has determined that much of what Christopher Luxon said in the recent leader’s debate was not true.
National, which perfected the art of dirty politics, and which has spent the past couple of years being relentlessly negative and which has had its sock puppets attack individual Labour MPs mercilessly is deeply, deeply, deeply upset that the CTU has pointed out to the public what a Christopher Luxon led Government would actually mean.
David Seymour reached more absurd levels of idiocy this week with a suggestion that if he was alive Nelson Mandela would be an Act supporter.
David Seymour yesterday hit a new low in race baiting when he said that “in my fantasy we’d send a guy called Guy Fawkes in [to the ministry of Pacific Peoples] and it’d be all over”.
National has this propensity of announcing policies that scratch conservative itches, cost nothing and hog media attention. Yesterday we had a classic example of this as they announced that cell phones would be banned at schools.
Fresh from news that Christopher Luxon ordered a State supplied Tesla when his household already owns one comes news that the household Tesla was upgraded, and that the clean car discount was obtained.
A fine example of when a free speech advocate is spouting garbage that serves nothing and nobody well except his own biased views.
National has been caught out misrepresenting official data by claiming that 19,000 nurses had left public health when they knew that the figure includes transfers between health boards and the number of employed nurses actually increased by 4,108.
This week Chris Bishop announced National’s landlord policy and made the extraordinary claim that making evictions of tenants easier was a progressive pro tenant policy.
Is it just me or is Mike Hosking becoming more unbalanced? The recent misrepresentation of a speech from Deborah Russell would suggest that he is getting worse.
Rob Campbell is under some pressure from National and Act for calling out publicly the right’s dog whistle attacks on co governance. But so far self appointed protector of the right to freedom of speech, the Free Speech Union, has been very quiet. Why is this?
Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation as Scotland’s First Minister was something of a replay of Jacinda Ardern’s resignation. While subject to widespread abuse, both were reluctant to cite this as their main reason for quitting. But the abuse undoubtedly played a major role. But the misogynist trend is endemic and needs to be quelled.
Son of former National MP and former Political reporter and currently self branded travel reporter Brook Sabin has produced potentially the most ridiculous article of the year by blaming the Government for not sorting out Auckland Airport’s baggage handling problems. And we are only 10 days in.
Federated Farmers leader Andrew Hoggard thinks that climate change is probably happening but we will have to wait 50 to 100 years to see the effects.
Elon Musk and Wayne Brown both deliberately promote chaos.
US conservative figures are downplaying the right’s involvement in a hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband by spreading completely unfounded rumours. And in Aotearoa rumours continue to be spread about Jacinda Ardern’s pending resignation despite her repeatedly ruling this out. Clearly some see the use of rumours as a valid political weapon even if they are based on complete falsehoods.
Golriz Ghahraman wanted Parliament to condemn the Iranian Government’s oppression of women’s rights. David Seymour moved to block the motion because Golriz had raised points of order against him during a previous speech. Fancy putting your hurt feelings in front of making a statement of support and principle.
Yesterday on Radio New Zealand’s Political Commentator’s show Bridget Morten said that three waters is a toxic thing for the Government but then declared that her law firm represents a group currently taking the Government to Court over three waters. Should such clearly partisan views be given expression by RNZ?
Yesterday the Government announced a slate of new powers designed to address gang violence. Newshub chose that day to imply that Labour was soft on gangs because a gang member said on social media not to vote for National.
National’s attack on requiring banks to charge GST on the provision of Kiwisaver services the same as smaller services is deeply cynical when its attacks on Kiwisaver in the past are considered.
National’s media spin team is at it again claiming that removing interest rate deductibility for landlords is a “tenant tax” when it is neither a new tax nor for tenants.
The question of what has happened to Christopher Luxon was answered yesterday in a shambolic messy way that must have National operatives in despair.
Fresh from his attempt to alienate the female vote by being equivocal on if a National Government would move to restrict access to abortions yesterday Christopher Luxon compounded things by purporting to speak for all women.
BusinessNZ’s attempt to put New Zealand on the ILO naughty list because of fair pay agreements has failed.
Various media and the National Party are speculating that there may be an early election. What are the chances of one being called?
