About that mandate
The Right would have us believe that the election was a referendum on asset sales and nothing else. Well, let’s take a closer look at the results of that ‘referendum’. Yeah, there’s no mandate there.
Social issues
Muddling through with “intelligent austerity”
It’s our official policy according to Treasury’s Chief Economist at a seminar yesterday. A questioner asked “What’s intelligent about it?”, citing anti-tradables bias and income inequality as examples. There is a more intelligent approach says Krugman citing IMF research. We could use it here.
Pike Road?
A strong safety warning today about sheeptruck disaster met Ministerial indifference from Associate Transport Minister Simon Bridges. He said Australian legislation to promote safety and fairness in the road transport industry was not needed here because “New Zealand already has a system of work time requirements to help manage the risk of fatigue”. More infamous last words from a National politician – but the police are really worried.
Trash talk
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”.
Police to march?
Who guards the guardians if the police march on Parliament?
The art of the possible
The Nats’ latest defence of asset sales is ‘if Labour doesn’t say they’ll buy them back,then they secretly agree with the sales’. Well, we would all like Labour to be able to make that commitment but, in the real world, that would be irresponsible . The incoming government is going to have to know how the bad a states the Nats leave the books in first.
Open mike 20/06/2012
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Policy on the hoof
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.
Know when to fold ’em
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.
ImperatorFish: Teacher Development and Smaller Class Sizes: We Can Have Both
Scott thoroughly fisks libertarian Damien Grant’s Herald on Sunday Column. And if teacher development is so important (as indeed it is) why have National cut it massively since they came to power, and are now dropping their budget plans to expand it. Money could be found from those tax cuts if they wanted…
Scraping cents, but costing us dollars
Another day another story of National scrimping short term savings that will cost us much more in the long run. This time, they’re scrapping free sex advice for teenagers. It’s almost like they want more youth on the DPB to give them a scapegoat to demonise…
Know when to walk away
Tony Ryall wanted to be very clear on Q+A today that asset sales were not necessarily a done deal. Could this be the first sign that Farrar’s polling is telling National, as it did with teacher numbers, that MOM is a turkey and if they go ahead National is toast?
Peters smacks down Key
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.
Cunliffe attacks Nats’ crony capitalism
David Cunliffe went to the lion’s den yesterday with a speech telling a meeting of Kensington Swan’s receivership and liquidation lawyers that there would be a lot less work for them under Labour but saying “the Labour Party is not your enemy. Your enemy is inefficiency, corruption, and the wastage of both public and private wealth. Your enemy is a cosy corruption that helps a few friends of the government get very rich at the expense of the community.”
Housing bubble round 2
Another housing bubble. Just what we need. House prices up 5.4% in a year, 7.8% in Auckland. Inflation is 1.6%. Billions are being funneled into housing by banks who can make a buck off importing cheap credit from offshore and lend it to homebuyers here. The government could act. But this is National, does anyone expect solutions from them anymore?
What price an apology?
Parents and teachers are calling for Key to apologise over the stress and anxiety that Key’s government has caused them over the last 2 weeks. Want to guess how Key handled it?
Unable to retire
Sharples and Turia remind me of an old couple running the family store with no kids to pass it on to. They want to retire. If they do, that’ll be curtains for everything they’ve built. Without them, the Maori Party goes to a deserving death. Plus Key will be pressuring them to stay. They’re his only ghost of a chance. How much longer can they keep going? They’ll be 72 and 70 in 2014.
Open mike 11/06/2012
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Nats try and fail to inoculate Key from Budget mess
The Prime Minister chairs Cabinet, which signs the Budget off policy by policy. A competent Prime Minister would be intimately familiar with the major policy changes. So, it was very interesting to see Audrey Young’s ‘insider’ piece on the education debacle yesterday. Chock full of tidbits supplied by Murray McCully. All the blame sleeted home to Bill English and Hekia Parata. Crucially, John Key barely mentioned.
Police Liaison = Police Trap
Last week I wrote about how the mass arrest of protesters last week was planned by police from the beginning. A couple of days later I was told that 10 minutes before the march a Police Liaison Officer spoke to protest organisers and stated that police were only there to facilitate the march. I have now managed to track down the video of this conversation.
While I have your attention class…
While the public’s attention is focused on educational issues, use the platform to press for change on the Nats other damaging educational initiatives, national standards and charter schools.
Schadenfreude
The hysterical right are pretty pissed that the Nats have backed down on class sizes. Let them rant all they like – the Nats can’t afford to listen.
Flip-flop still leaves hole in education budget
With its polling slip-sliding away, National had no choice but to dump its ideological class size increases. But why did they dump the spending on teacher quality too? If that was such a priority that it justified sacking 1,000 teachers, couldn’t something else be cut? And what other education spending will now be cut to fill National’s budget hole?
Parata to the Headmaster’s office?
Nanaia Mahuta has a wicked sense of humour, as well as being a very smart politician. Her report card on National’s performance on education gives Parata an F for failing to do homework. Parata may also risk expulsion., judging by John Key’s comments from London that she should talk to the unions. Looks like a call to the headmaster’s office coming up.
Update: Sure enough the Nats have backed down completely from upping class sizes.
Class sizes vox pop
Public opinion is massively opposed to cutting teachers. When 50,000 people marched down Queen St the Nats dropped plans to mine conservation land. Time for another show of people power.
Don’t feed the troll
Bennett is running misdirection for the Parata. Not letting bad parents have more kids is nothing new. It’s just the existing powers courts have to order CYFS to take newborns into custody and to ban people from contact with kids. With the meaningless addition of making these orders before a woman is pregnant. Good talkback bait though. Bennett’s just trolling again. Which is all she seems good for.
Serco incompetence should put a halt to Wiri
A year in to its 10-year, $300 million contract, and Serco is making a real hash of running Mt Eden Prison. A second escape this week, along with two late releases, failure to meet drug testing targets and failure to report as agreed. And this is dealing with mostly only remand prisoners. Why are we spending $900m on an unneeded prison at Wiri for these clowns to run?
Lifestyle “choices”
Last year John Key said that the poor and those on benefits had made lifestyle choices. If they budgeted properly, they’d be fine. Things aren’t fine, and they’re getting worse, which is why a 40-yr-old DPB Mum in Christchurch – facing an $80/week rent increase, because Key hasn’t done anything about Christchurch’s housing shortage – has had to resort to the lifestyle “choice” of prostitution.
Basher Bennett rides to Hekia’s rescue
Same old National – when they’re in trouble, out comes the club for a distracting headline. Hekia Parata’s under fire and digging herself into a very deep hole, so Paula Bennett rides to the rescue with the “news” that Cabinet is discussing allowing judges to direct miscreant parents not to have children. Who knows what the judges think about this hospital pass – let’s hope the media sees it for what it is.
Coward
Hekia Parata has refused to front up to education groups against her bigger class sizes.
Only money matters
How did National get it so wrong on the cuts that would costs too many schools far too many teachers? Did the Nats do any consultation at all?
Class sizes: show National you care
Here’s a petition against Hekia Parata’s class size increases. Show the government what a big mistake they’ve made. If Federated Farmers can spread it, so can you…
Postcards from the “brighter” future
Hey John – where’s our “Brighter Future”? Hey National voters – was this what you voted for?
CGT Now!
The “tradeable” sector is still shrinking. The property market is heating up again. We need a capital gains tax now.
One law for some
Financially troubled private school Wanganui Collegiate received a $3million grant in Budget 2012, 3 times the annual operating grant of the larger Wanganui City College. Since then it has been advertising its low class sizes and ability to reduce fees significantly. Private schools will no doubt be using the current outrage over increased class sizes for recruiting purposes, but they should not be doing it with taxpayers’ money.
Out of order
I’m not a big fan of the whole honours system, with or without knighthoods. But if you’re going to have it, make it […]