Polity: News from National Comms!

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 40 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity on what has landed in his mail box paid for by your GST and also close to the wrong side the permissible limits of Parliamentary Services funds. Or perhaps this is something for “NZ Taxpayers Union” to moan about wasting taxpayers money with. They won’t of course because they seem to be good little front organisation for Act and Jordan Williams appears to have about as much independence as their beloved slaves. But if you received one, then a complaint seems in order.

TPP – the expensive vanity project of NZ diplomacy

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 51 comments

Wayne Mapp is worried about the possibility of Labour backing away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). If National and MFAT would like support from the free-trade advocates inside Labour, then I’d suggest that they get off their padded arses and provide some solid information not only to us, but also to the public. But all I have heard so far is some psuedo-religious Randian rants about free-trade that are about as convincing to business people as statements about the imminent arrival of the Rapture.

CTU: Why is the Reserve Bank happy with low wage growth?

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 124 comments

There seems little prospect for better wage growth if the Reserve Bank is to be believed. There is a high risk that growth peaks this year without most people seeing any sign of it in their pay packets. People are being forced into the job market because stagnant wages mean more people have to work for the needs of their households. At the same time harsher rules on social welfare benefits and the low level of those benefits force people into a job market where as the bank says, there is ‘elevated unemployment’.

Imperator Fish: ACT’s new employment relations policy

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 20 comments

The ACT Party today released its employment relations policy, which focuses on providing both employees and employers with flexibility in how they arrange their workplaces. “People may think they know how slavery works, but do they really? It’s an idea that has had some bad publicity over the years, but only because the right model hasn’t been tried. We believe we have developed the right model. A model that gives employees genuine choice about whether or not to become slaves.”

National’s mouthpiece on manufacturing doesn’t like details

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 116 comments

David Farrar in his usual burst of hypocrisy and curious selectiveness about detailed numbers is proclaiming a headline rise in manufacturing. As is usual he is only interested in the top level numbers and doesn’t provide a link to even the summary data. I guess that is because they are rather depressing for his 9th floor of the Beehive view of employment and wage packets, which is what most voters expect from growth. There has been a slight decline in manufacturing jobs while we have a 11% growth in “manufacturing”.

Polity: Even non-coattail electorate deals can create unfair advantage

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 21 comments

What of the deals with true minnow parties, like United Future or ACT? If a party is only polling enough to get one seat anyway, does it matter to Parliament overall whether the small party wins an electorate or its client big party wins it instead? The answer is “possibly, yes,” because we can never be sure which party ultimately loses a seat to accommodate the new minnow party in a 120 seat parliament. Say a Epsom deal as a test case

NRT: Climate change: A carbon tax in action

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 5 comments

The Greens promised to scrap the gutted and ineffective ETS and replace it with a carbon tax. National immediately claimed that the sky would fall if we stopped subsidising polluters and allowing them to rort us. But where it is used it has done exactly what it was designed to do: reduce emissions while lowering taxes on ordinary people. National just likes polluters?

Murders out west

Written By: mickysavage
Date published: - 204 comments

Four alleged murders out west in the past month have caused a great deal of soul searching.  What is going wrong?  What can we do to prevent any further tragic loss of life?

No Right Turn: Electoral donations, corruption, and transparency

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 37 comments

Writing in the Herald, Fran O’Sullivan tells us what we all knew: that political donors have expectations, and want favours in exchange for their cash. She’s too polite (and Establishment) to call it corruption, but that’s what it is. Its time we forced parties to do so as well. Transparent public funding if required. If the choice is spending public money or permitting corruption, the choice is pretty clear.

Local Bodies: Teaching Profession Rejects Parata’s Plans

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 78 comments

Classroom teachers, the New Zealand Educational Institute, the New Zealand Principal’s Federation and education academics have all strongly rejected the Government’s proposed $359 million Investment into Education Success (IES). All believe that this substantial amount of money will not produce the results that the Education Minister claims and would be better spent elsewhere.

Paula Bennett now believes in education for solo parents

Written By: mickysavage
Date published: - 70 comments

Five years after making cuts to the training incentive allowance for solo parents wanting to educate themselves National is moving to provide some support and now realises that it makes long term sense to invest in education for solo parents. Could it be there is an election around the corner and National realises that it is vulnerable on issues relating to poverty and inequality?

Imperator Fish: Winning in 2014: a prescription for Labour

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 38 comments

Scott Yorke at Imperator Fish is well known for his inciteful insightful analysis of many issues. However he has really really outdone himself on this clarion call for rioting clarity. It will bring war unity to all parts of the political spectrum outside of Labour  advising them on their strategy. Who can wait to read the few lines of commentary by David Farrar giving the 9th floor position as he quotes this post. Indeed!

xkcd: 4.5 degrees

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 67 comments

Without prompt, aggressive limits on CO2 emissions, the Earth will likely warm by an average of 4-5°c by the century’s end.
How big a change is that?

Humourless Key pours scorn on Civilian

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 44 comments

John Key has been making a joke of the electoral system in recent days with his support of criminal MPs and his veiled attempts to foist the crazy Conservatives on various electorates. But he was quick to pour scorn on a very popular micro-party who were less likely to become a pliant tool of the National party. Clearly he hasn’t realised who the Civilians are satirising and why so many taxpayers support them. Updated with Occasionally erudite’s analysis.

Polity: A paucity of vision?

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 68 comments

Hey, we won’t get in the way of a good stoush on the net about Labour’s policies, in fact we will encourage it. Here is Rob Salmond’s response to Idiot Savant’s post at No Right Turn. We’d also suggest that people look at Mike Smith’s post from this morning and last night (that probably has the nuttier conspiracy theorists going by now) for a third point of view.

Comments please…

Paul Goldsmith and the bag of flour

Written By: mickysavage
Date published: - 34 comments

Yesterday TV3 on the Nation hosted a debate between the candidates for the Epsom seat. Unbelievably National’s Paul Goldsmith did not show up. Labour’s Michael Wood produced a bag of wholemeal flour and has promised to take this bag to every public event and to put it where Goldsmith should be every time he does not show up. I suspect we are going to see this particular bag of flour a lot …

NRT: Good riddance to John Banks

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 62 comments

The government has been stripped of its legislative majority and its policy programme, especially employment relations “reform”, is now in tatters. Now that Banks has going, we are seeing an extensive rewriting of history by the National government. Kind of pathetic really.

Farrar lies again

Written By: geoff
Date published: - 61 comments

For the second time in as many weeks, David Farrar has lied to his readers over at kiwiblog.

Communication upgrade needed

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 51 comments

David Cunliffe badly needs a new stump speech. On Thursday in Whanganui I heard him depress a large and sympathetic audience for ten minutes with tales of national woe, then promise a positive campaign but give no details. It is good to know that a positive campaign is proposed. Labour has promised an economic upgrade; it also needs a communications upgrade, and besides being positive it must be relevant. That could shift the polls.

Through the looking glass

Written By: karol
Date published: - 93 comments

Banks look very likely to be gone by Monday. But, some journalists are going to bat for John Banks, claiming he hasn’t really done anything wrong with respect to the verdict of guilty for filing a false election funding return.  They are ignoring the facts of the case, and trying to rewrite history. [Update: Banks to resign]

Imperator Fish: Move along please, sir

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 8 comments

As a senior member of the New Zealand Police, I would like to respond to allegations that the police were remiss in not prosecuting ACT Party MP the Hon John Banks. There is no police corruption here.  We may have been disgracefully, eye-wateringly incompetent, but we are not dirty. Now please move along, as we wish to put this entire incident behind us as quickly as we can, before too many questions are asked.

Too many hedgehogs

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 220 comments

Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise – the art and science of prediction) uses an old idea to distinguish pundits as hedgehogs or foxes. Originating with Archilochus  through Isaiah Berlin to it can be summed up as “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” The test for hedgehogs is “Do your predictions improve when you have more information?” Foxes do – hedgehogs’ don’t. The polls should be a wake-up call for Labour.

Polity: Morgan’s poll, and Morgan’s commentary

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 47 comments

Earlier this week the latest Roy Morgan poll came out. It was not good news for the left, with National up well over 50% and the Labour/Greens combination languishing below 40%. It is after the Budget and ended before the Banks stuff. Most is probably the post-budget spike. But the government parties are in a lot worse position than they were before the 2011 election.

Spy law changes & telcos exposé

Written By: karol
Date published: - 13 comments

Vodafone has made public the extent of the use of spying via their systems, done by state agencies in several countries including NZ.  NZ state agencies have revealed the amount of warrants issued prior to the passing of the GCSB and TICS laws late last year.

Why John Banks is now John Key’s biggest headache

Written By: mickysavage
Date published: - 104 comments

The John Banks scenario must have the Government scratching its head wondering what to do.  If he fails to be discharged without conviction a by election will need to be called and can only be avoided if Parliament is reconvened and  a 75% majority agrees that one not be called.  The imagery of this occurring is something I am sure National wants to avoid.