Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 13th, 2011 - 18 comments
So you support Maori being paid less than Pakeha for the same work? What about men being paid less than women? No, that would be discrimination, eh? Same work, same pay. So, what about paying a 17 year old less than a 18 year old for the same work? That’s what National is planning if we are stupid enough to give them a second term.
Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, June 12th, 2011 - 15 comments
Amongst the many vacuous claims made in relation to the last budget, the claim that cuts to KiwiSaver would encourage savings always struck me as the dumbest. Now the facts are in, and guess what…
Written By: - Date published: 10:34 am, June 10th, 2011 - 80 comments
The Budget is unravelling at a startling rate of knots. Bill English is floundering to explain his dodgy asset sales numbers that count the benefits but not the costs. Now, a senior minister has admitted that John Key’s claim that “there are 170,000 new jobs being created as a result of this Budget” is a lie. We actually really do deserve better than this.
Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, June 10th, 2011 - 27 comments
The Nats haven’t got a clue how to run a successful country, and most of the things they do try just make matters worse. We’re drifting…
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 pm, June 9th, 2011 - 93 comments
The latest Roy Morgan is the first poll taken after the Budget has had time to sink in. Nat+ACT+UF fell from 55.5% to 51% while Lab+Green went from 38% to 42.5%. Labour rose a massive 8%. New Zealanders do not want asset sales, fewer work rights, and National’s nasty agenda and are realising they have to vote against that ‘Nice Man Mr Key’.
Written By: - Date published: 4:19 pm, June 9th, 2011 - 15 comments
Question Time: David Cunliffe wipes the floor with Bill English in the House today, as he shows up his missing costs of asset sales.
Written By: - Date published: 6:37 am, June 9th, 2011 - 54 comments
So, that’s National’s great big plan: get rid of our electricity assets and use the cash to build more prisons. Not much of a brighter future there. National still hasn’t come up with a convincing reason why we would sell highly profitable monopolistic companies. Instead, we’ve seen a series of weak excuses. Now, English has revealed the truth.
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, June 8th, 2011 - 29 comments
Do you remember back in the day when Bill English didn’t want to put any money into the Cullen Fund? Remember how we were smugly told that borrowing to save was foolish? Well, since then the Cullen Fund has made a fortune and, we know learn, the government has been borrowing to build up savings for the Christchurch rebuild.
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, June 8th, 2011 - 39 comments
I don’t have a problem with MPs going to a Destiny Church conference to chase some votes. Attending a group’s function isn’t an endorsement of its views, although there’s obviously a line (eg. neo-Nazi groups). John Key, however, is endorsing of Destiny’s politics saying: “National’s policies align much more closely with their beliefs than Labour.”
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, June 7th, 2011 - 14 comments
Don Brash has attacked Bill English’s budget which he says fails to lay out a plan for New Zealand. The reality, I think, is that both have plan however there is little or no future in either plan. Neither Brash nor English have laid out a plan which deals with the present and quite near problems we will face.
Written By: - Date published: 6:21 am, June 7th, 2011 - 48 comments
I’ve been thinking about the budget. Its economic vacuousness: borrowing and crossing fingers for strong growth, while keeping tax cuts for the rich. The bare-faced cheek of counting the asset sales in its projections and passing Kiwisaver cuts without getting a mandate. But also, the cuts to vital public services without a more imaginative and sensible solution: drug reform.
Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, June 3rd, 2011 - 11 comments
TEU President Sandra Grey writes: When all the unders and overs are calculated, the maths for tertiary education is a lot simpler than all the commentary from the government would have us believe. For the next four years, the minister, Steven Joyce, will be putting less money into tertiary education. That is a political choice.
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, June 3rd, 2011 - 29 comments
Oh dear. Only two weeks after its Budget 2011 economic forecasts were released, Treasury is already warning they are too optimistic. In their defence, they say the forecasts were settled in April and growth prospects have got worse since then. Well, you’re not much of a forecaster if you can’t see that happening in the middle of an oil shock.
Written By: - Date published: 7:58 pm, June 1st, 2011 - 18 comments
Hide is trying to distance himself from his negligent costing of the Auckland merger, and the consequent $450 million blowout on IT systems alone. Aucklanders won’t have the satisfaction of kicking him out at the election. But they can still kick out the arrogant government that steamrollered all over the city, with no regard for good process or public opinion.
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, June 1st, 2011 - 21 comments
No Right Turn asks an interesting set of questions about the state allocation of broadcast media time.
“..if we think TV and radio broadcasting is so influential that it must be restricted to produce a level playing field between parties – which I agree with – why do we allocate it so it produces the opposite?”
Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, May 31st, 2011 - 55 comments
This government’s got a real talent for manufacturing crisis to suit them. The debt disaster is a classic – in order to get out of debt we have to cut public spending to the tune of almost $1billion and sell assets.
Written By: - Date published: 4:02 pm, May 30th, 2011 - 18 comments
So it appears that John Banks will get to face his mayoral campaign manager, Aaron Bhatnagar, as National candidate for Epsom. National will continue to ensure Act’s survival, as latest polls keep Act at about 2%.
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, May 30th, 2011 - 87 comments
Plenty of polls lately. Do we really need so many? Two released yesterday show some closing of the gap between National and Labour – but not nearly enough yet…
Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, May 29th, 2011 - 66 comments
Seen the coverage of Goff’s visit to McGehan Close? So negative. Portrays it as cynical politics. Yet when Key visited in 2008, the coverage was fawning over the ‘kompassionate konservative’. What’s wrong with Goff going along to the place, it’s in his own electorate, and showing Key’s broken his promises? Nothing. Governments should be held to account.
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, May 28th, 2011 - 73 comments
Auckland ratepayers are going to be stuck with a huge bill for the Nats’ failure to properly cost the merging of the old Councils’ IT systems. As Russell Brown puts it – “Someone has to be accountable for this”…
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, May 27th, 2011 - Comments Off on Locally Left: Budget Special
Night of politics at the pub on May 31 7pm-9pm at the Wine Cellar, St Kevin’s Arcade, K Rd, with panel: Jesse Mulligan (Comedian and commentator at-large), Rhema Vaithianathan (Economist) and Jacinda Ardern (MP).
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, May 27th, 2011 - 5 comments
PEDA last year. Parents Inc this year. Ministers giving backhanders to their mates is a growing trend. $1.5m is being cut from the Community Organisation Grants Scheme that funds things like Rape Crisis. Instead of this democratic, accountable process, the money will go to four groups hand-picked by Turia. Dodgy as hell.
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, May 27th, 2011 - 66 comments
A new organisation, the Coalition for Social Justice, is calling for a march in Auckland tomorrow.
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, May 27th, 2011 - 58 comments
Based on the Herald’s latest poll, that is a message the Left will be well advised to push hard. The poll shows 62% opposition vs 29% support for asset sales, while NACT polls at 56%. So, at least 18% are prospective NACT voters AND oppose Key’s main policy. The Left can win over many of these people on this vital issue.
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 27th, 2011 - 81 comments
The Greens and environmentalists have been talking about peak oil forever. Now, the IEA and IMF have joined them in warning that governments need to act immediately. Labour has pledged to cancel one of National’s white elephant motorways but that must only be the beginning. Meanwhile, the Nats are planning more ‘Roads of National Significance’.
Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, May 26th, 2011 - 15 comments
Remember when John Key was promising that he would seek a mandate from the people at the election before starting to sell public assets and cutting Kiwisaver. It was only a week ago. And he’s breaking his promises already: the Kiwisaver cuts actually kick in on July 1, and the privatisation process is underway.
Written By: - Date published: 9:41 am, May 26th, 2011 - 85 comments
In last year’s budget, the Nats awarded a $4.8m contract to an unknown organisation called PEDA without tender and against official advice. The people behind PEDA were apparently tied to Bill English via his wife. The full truth still hasn’t come out. Now, the Nats are up to the same trick with Parents Inc.
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, May 26th, 2011 - 62 comments
Last week we had National’s budget and Labour’s conference. A chance for both parties to set out their ideas for the future. National’s do-nothing budget went down like a lead balloon, while Labour started setting out promising new policy. Looks like the 2011 election campaign will be a contest between ideas and schoolboy mockery.
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, May 24th, 2011 - 55 comments
“The worst display from a Prime Minister since the schnapps election” – that’s what a journo said about Key the other day. No, it wasn’t about him being a multi-millionaire who gave himself tens of thousands of tax cuts opposing a fair wage increase for the lowest paid workers. It was this disgraceful behaviour on Budget Day. Watch.
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 pm, May 23rd, 2011 - 29 comments
The latest Roy Morgan poll is not good reading for the political left. But it’s not quite time to despair yet!
Written By: - Date published: 2:32 pm, May 23rd, 2011 - 10 comments
Cartoonist Guy Body in The Herald, with one of those pictures that is worth a thousand words…
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