Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, July 26th, 2012 - 44 comments
Police were unable to establish that Mr Banks had the necessary knowledge that the donation had been recorded as anonymous in the return before he signed and submitted it. As No Right Turn puts it: “So basically they’re letting him off because he didn’t read the thing he signed and was legally responsible for. Its one law for finance company directors, and another for corrupt politicians.”
Written By: - Date published: 6:57 am, July 26th, 2012 - 26 comments
John Key’s grasp of his own asset sales policy is being revealed to be shakier by the day. He doesn’t know how it would hurt the government books. He flips his position on water rights each day. He doesn’t know how much a looters’ bonus of free shares would cost. And, yesterday, he didn’t even realise that $56m is budgeted to cover sharebrokers’ fees for the looters.
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 pm, July 21st, 2012 - 51 comments
Today’s big announcement from Paula Bennett at the National Party Conference was that those on the run from police will have their benefits stopped. But the question needs to be asked: how many people on the run are collecting the benefit?
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 21st, 2012 - 96 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, July 20th, 2012 - 75 comments
Here’s a guest post from an Auckland Labour Party member with a different take on the constitutional changes. It’s interesting and challenging. Good food for thought. – Let us consider Labour’s proposed constitutional reforms in its moment. New Zealand’s progressives continue to splinter, just as conservative variation contracts. As the progressives splinter, they are also […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, July 17th, 2012 - 42 comments
I’ve just got my summary report on Labour’s organisational review, emailed to me as a member from President Moira Coatsworth, with a link to the website – things have certainly got better since my day! On a quick first look, it seems to be a very good job, and a real contrast to National.
Written By: - Date published: 6:34 pm, July 8th, 2012 - 4 comments
Monday 9 July at 5:30pm in St John’s Church Hall, Wellington, Dr Geoff Bertram will discuss how corporatisation of the electricity SoEs has been bad for domestic consumers. Part-privatisation now may lock in prices that could never have been sustainable under proper regulation, and close off options to tackle energy poverty. Proper regulation may still be an answer.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 6th, 2012 - 24 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 10:07 pm, July 5th, 2012 - 36 comments
The Police have concluded their investigation into John Banks’ donations to his 2010 mayoral campaign. The Police legal section will now decide whether or not to prosecute. There are two tests; the evidential test and the public interest test. There is no question that if the evidence is sufficient, prosecution is in the public interest. It comes down to credibility – best decided in court.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 1st, 2012 - 164 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, June 30th, 2012 - 8 comments
Just before the parliamentary recess National released its latest set of Laura Naude targets. They will join all the others – catching up with Australia, jobs from the cycleway, government surplus by 2014, yadda yadda yadda. I can’t think of a single target National has actually met. These targets aren’t real; they are just there to provide fodder for uncritical media.
Written By: - Date published: 4:31 pm, June 25th, 2012 - 20 comments
You’ll really want to know this – the queen has just updated the curtsy order. “Blood princesses” come first, so if William isn’t there Kate has to curtsy to Anne, Alexandra, and even Beatrice and Eugenie!!! Will be interesting to see how low Bronagh goes when Charles and Camilla come to spend our money later this year.
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, June 25th, 2012 - 3 comments
This free Fabian Society seminar is on tomorrow Tuesday in Wellington at Connolly Hall in Guilford Street, starting at 5:30pm All welcome; you can register here. Will be interesting.
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, June 25th, 2012 - 156 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, June 23rd, 2012 - 31 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, June 20th, 2012 - 60 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 20th, 2012 - 240 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, June 19th, 2012 - 8 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 pm, June 17th, 2012 - 92 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, June 17th, 2012 - 52 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 14th, 2012 - 79 comments
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.”
Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, June 11th, 2012 - 11 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 11th, 2012 - 152 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 6:28 am, June 8th, 2012 - 65 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 1:58 pm, June 7th, 2012 - 50 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, June 6th, 2012 - 12 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, June 5th, 2012 - 18 comments
Hey John – where’s our “Brighter Future”? Hey National voters – was this what you voted for?
Written By: - Date published: 7:48 pm, June 4th, 2012 - 18 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, June 4th, 2012 - 77 comments
We all know National is on a record borrowing binge. But when they say they need to slash education investment to balance the books, what dumb spending are they leaving untouched? Which leaves the obvious question: why were these Tory sacred cows protected while public education was cut?
Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, June 1st, 2012 - 17 comments
National has no choice but to call off the education cuts. The sooner they do it the sooner it will stop killing them in the court of public opinion.
Written By: - Date published: 12:11 am, June 1st, 2012 - 69 comments
Hekia Parata is demonstrating how political lines endlessly repeated can go horribly wrong if you have nothing else to say. Her Polly Parrot repetitions are wrongly-based, and the longer she and Key go on about how fewer teachers and larger classes is going to improve the quality of teaching the worse its going to get for National. The hubristic Parata has galvanised and united the education sector and more backdowns are likely, both in policy and politics.
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