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The Electoral Finance Bill is back from Select Committee and can be downloaded here [PDF, 500k]. It's huge and will take a bit of time to digest, but it doesn't look like there are any major surprises. The overly broad definition of election advertising has…
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It's interesting to see National is attacking Peter Davis, the PM's husband, over a letter he wrote to the NZ Herald about the Electoral Finance Bill. Apparently Peter Davis - a respected university professor - is not entitled to views of his own and is…
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Granny's campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill started with a bang and ended with a whimper. On Monday there was a banner headline "Democracy under attack", complete with a front page editorial, a fuzzy picture of a masked woman, and a serpent cartoon. By Friday…
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The Dom Post reports that: National's support slid from 50 to 45 per cent in a Fairfax Media-Nielsen poll released today. Labour jumped four to 40 per cent from Fairfax's September poll, close to the 41 per cent it scored in the 2005 election. There…
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If we needed any more reason not to let National take us back to the 90s, I think this might be it. Via nznationalparty on flickr.
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Spotted yesterday in the Westin Hotel in Auckland's Viaduct Basin by our orbiting surveillance satellite & Don Brash in a job interview line. Could it be he's going for the now vacant National Party general manager's job? Steven Joyce and Jo de Joux, also of…
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Dodgy online polls seem to be becoming a staple of political reporting here in New Zealand. The story earlier this week on poll "hacking" sent me in search of an insightful opinion I'd heard previously. So today, we have a guest author on The Standard…
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In perhaps his strongest signal yet to potential coalition partners, John Key has set his Facebook 'Looking for' status to "Whatever I can get". Puzzled by the phrase "Whatver I can get" I looked it up in the urban dictionary: "A phrase popularly used on…
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Esteemed Tory Brit-econ-pop-enviro-guru Nigel Lawson, Lord of Blaby, dad of Nigella, is not bonkers. Lord Blaby (Ed: shurely not? Wot? It is true?), who is visiting New Zealand, allegedly to attend a Business Roundtable party, told TVNZ's Breakfast that the world could adjust to global…
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How's this for small-minded prejudice from National Party backbencher Kate Wilkinson in a press release today complaining about the $84,000 dollars for a Labour Dept to help provide health and safety training for Chinese coal miners: Ms Wilkinson says Kiwi taxpayers will clearly be surprised…
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Paris Hilton doesn't help drunk elephants I haven't read the article yet, and I don't think I will. With a headline like that who needs to?
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Granny Herald wants to run a campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill when it doesn't understand the Electoral Act. Worse, because it doesn't understand the Act it makes assertions that are neither true to the law or in line with the facts. So it keeps…
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The Business Roundtable has invited Nigel Lawson, British Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher, to speak to them on climate change. Inevitably, Lawson is a climate change denier. His message is that climate change is a replacement for communism and mainstream religion. He says people…
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Today the New Zealand Herald's waning tantrum over the Electoral Finance Bill has been relegated to Page 5. Perhaps Granny has paused, had a cuppa, and is coming to her senses. The Herald reports today, a tad ingenuously, that the government might be about to…
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The Roy Morgan poll results have been included in the latest rolling poll from Molesworth and Featherston and shows that National - despite John Key's confident prediction of a landslide victory (The Press, 9 Jun 2007) - is going to have to lift its game…
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Make your National MP's holiday season with one of these fantastic towels. Currently out of stock but don't doubt for a minute that it'll be back.
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Google's launched some great new online tools for the Australian election. Check out: www.google.com.au/election2007 where you'll find Google maps called maplets, with electorate boundaries, seats held and margins as well as electorate profiles and member information. Links are also provided to videos and associated electorate…
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Granny Herald tries to defend itself against National Party bias by saying it ran a headline "I am not a liar" over Brash after he admitted on bFM knowing that the Brethren were going to issue pamphlets attacking labour, three days after saying he knew…
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Tony Milne's got a good piece on the Electoral Finance Bill over at his blog I See Red - electoral finance reform is a way to safeguard democracy: "New Zealand history tells an interesting story about the battle for democracy. Whenever progressive forces have mobilised…
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Interesting to see Onslow College is giving its students a say over the hiring of their teachers. Recognising students as stakeholders in their schools is a fundamentally progressive and democratic move, and it'd be good to see it happening in other schools too. From this…
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Interesting to see National Party blogger David Farrar is inciting his readers to start a political party to bypass/oppose the Electoral Finance Bill. Even more interesting is the fact that his rabid hoard are already calling for him to be its leader. Here at The…
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Bob Clarkson's never been one of the sharper tacks on the National party backbench, his only contributions to the debate being his infamous 'left testicle' remark and his call for Muslims who wear the burqa to 'go back to Islam'. According to Frogblog he's now…
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The other day we published an extract from Evan Thornley's speech to the Labour Party conference. We've finally managed to get hold of a digital copy, so here it is in full. It's quite long, but well worth a read: LABOUR IS THE PARTY OF…
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Nigel Richards, formerly of Christchurch, has become our first world Scrabble champion. Richards apparently led from the start, needing just three of the five available games to clinch victory. Stuff reports that "In the final game, Richards got four bonus scores for getting all seven…
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From the BBC: "The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing nearly double the amount previously thought, according to a report set to be released by Congress". The Washington post has the full story: The economic costs to the United States of the wars…
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The BBC has a good roundup of the top 10 climate change denier arguments with rebuttals from scientists who agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: that it's happening, it's due to us, and the potential damage is serious. Worthwhile reading for those who…
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Thanks to the reader who sent us the latest edition of Cosmopolitican, a nifty little publication that did the rounds just before the last election. This month's edition has John Key as its coverboy, which sure makes a change from 2005 when old man Brash…
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So the Herald links to us from the front page of their website this afternoon, and the resulting traffic knocks out our server. Bugger. We're back online now, but I guess the moral of the story is we're going to have to start paying for…
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Matt Robson's newsletter has a real scoop on the Herald's next propaganda campaign: NZ Herald investigation into large, secret party funding I have it from good sources that any day now the NZ Herald is going to launch a full, in-depth investigative report into the…
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During the debate over the Electoral Finance Bill John Key's made a lot of noise about National's willingness to clamp down on anonymous donations and the need to regulate third party expenditure. This makes a lot of sense from his perspective - inoculate the real…