The other day, I wrote a piece on Poto Williams’ selection to be Labour’s candidate in the Christchurch East by-election. I promptly had to ban a commenter who assumed her selection was due to a quota – ie. a woman Cook Islander can’t possibly win on her own merit. Unfortunately, it seems The Standard sets higher, um, standards than The Herald, which published a similar argument by Damien Rogers today.
Imagine that your job was to clean 130 toilets every day. Imagine the grinding unpleasantness of it. Imagine the horrors some disgusting person would regularly leave for you to deal with. Imagine you do that for just above the minimum wage, barely enough to support your family, far from enough to live a real life. And imagine seeing one of the people whose shit you clean sneer at you.
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The right must be very afraid of David Cunliffe. Because they are coming up with the most extraordinarily crazy conspiracy theories to try and discredit him.
Radio New Zealand has issued an apology to David Cunliffe following Matthew Hooton’s recent smearing of him. If only Cameron Slater would do the same because he is starting to get pretty obsessional about Cunliffe. This may not be a bad thing as he is rapidly turning the Collins faction of the National Party into New Zealand’s equivalent of the Tea Party
With Cunliffe’s Labour in the ascendance, NAct and/supporters pull out their bag of dirty and deceptively manipulative, Hollow Men, tricks. Adviser to John Key & Boris Johnson, Mark Textor, will most likely be used again: ruthless attack politics, playing on fears & prejudices.
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Two very good speeches in the General Debate in the House from opposition leaders. They highlight Nick Smith’s dodgy record, & why he should be stood down as a Minister in Key’s “Dark, dirty & heartless” government. [Update: Key – on (dis)honesty]
As Irish predicted, the Nats continued their desperate smear campaign today with the revelation that David Cunliffe doesn’t actually have a qualification he never actually claimed to have. Honestly, you couldn’t make this shit up.
Cunliffe’s moderate, centre left Labour is on the rise; MSM-supported, NAct smears & negative spin is in over-drive. John Key and the NZ Herald editorial spin from the radical “neoliberal” right. Slippery Nick Smith, a NAct weak point, is under concerted pressure. [Updated]
Just to be clear: Nick Smith did not order the Big Brunch Fry-up, no matter what he might have said.
David Cunliffe’s reign as leader of the Labour Party has started with a great deal of promise and this morning’s Herald Digipoll is encouraging. Labour is finally looking united and policy statements are sharp and effective. But we may be no more than 400 days to the next election. And unless we want the instability of a Labour Green NZ First Coalition then support for the left and work by its activists will need to be increased dramatically.
Sure it’s just one poll but that’s nearly seven percent. And it’s (nearly) all come off National. This goes quite some way to […]
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It’s not been surprising to see National’s dirty tricks machine groan back to life over the last week to attack Cunliffe.
And you’ll not be surprised to know more is due over the next few days.
What is surprising is just how hamfistedly they’re doing it.
Just for the record, if you or any other idiot accuse me of homophobia, genocide, necrophilia, child kidnapping or just not being nice […]
John Key: “I don’t think New Zealand should rush to become a republic. It may happen one day, but I can’t for the life of me see the benefits of it other than you get to spend a lot of money electing heads of state as opposed to the government appointing one.”
National is a very traditional party. They think that NZ is good at clearing land and raising animals, with a bit of mining on the side. The population is there to service farmers and miners on low wages. That may have been the case in the 1950’s. But as usual they’re hopelessly dated. Sometimes in recent years it has appeared to me that Labour thinks that way as well. But it looks like David Cunliffe is intent on refocusing us back on the burgeoning hi-wage and hi-growth hi-tech sector.
The cleverness of David Cunliffe’s reshuffle extends beyond how he has united Labour by keeping worthy MPs who opposed him in senior positions while demoting no-hopers like Curran. He’s also left space for the Greens to move into both in opposition and in government. That acknowledges the reality that Labour and the Greens need each other.
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Details of the Labour Caucus changes are now appearing in the media. The update is Parker, Robertson and Jones will be the core of the economic team, King retains Health, Shearer gains Foreign Affairs and Cosgrove and Hipkins retain their current responsibilities. Mahuta and Moroney are elevated to the front bench and this will help gender balance.
Updated with full list.
Matthew Hooton accused David Cunliffe of lying about his involvement with the Boston Management Group when it was providing advice that led to the development of Fonterra. A little research supports Cunliffe’s claims and not Hooton’s.
Ed Miliband got the idea of pre-distribution from Jacob Hacker. Cunliffe has followed. Can “pre-distribution” underpin a new direction for the left in NZ: one relevant to the challenges of the 21st century, especially in countering the too wide inequality gap & re-instating social democracy?
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Selling Mighty River shares was bad enough: $66m taxpayer dollars spent on selling shares with a dividend yield of 6% (the total shareholder return for the Crown last year was 11%) to avoid borrowing at 4% . That’s spending money to lose money. Not crazy enough, apparently. For the Meridian sale, they’ve doubled down. The cost will be $100m and they’ll be selling shares with a dividend yield of 8%.
In a previous post at The Standard I did a wee bit of math and came to the conclusion that National has already […]
My semi-regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the last fortnight. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere. This week: happiness, income, Germany (election today!), and the US security services. Not to mention why time-travellers can’t kill Hitler. (Bonus extra-large edition with more videos and pictures!)
Unions Auckland has released a how to vote card based on candidates who will support a living wage, no privatisation of Council assets and sorting out a fair deal for the POAL workers.
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Labour has selected Poto Williams to be its candidate for Christchurch East. I hadn’t heard of her before but a few phone calls has convinced me she’ll be a great candidate and a great MP. It’s fantastic to see a Maori woman being selected for a general roll seat in a open competition with people from a variety of backgrounds. That shows it’s a meritocratic system.
Matthew Hooton has raised the spectre of Judith Tizard working out of David Cunliffe’s office as if it was a bad thing. But this has made me reflect that Judith’s treatment by the right was not fair, and we should not tolerate these sorts of attacks on our own.
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Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
The spinners in parliament and government are rather predictable. They dump their embarrassments late on a friday, preferably on a long holiday weekend or with a sporting event. I’m picking that today we will see some material dropping off the rear of DOC related to what Nick Smith saw and can no longer remember….
Yesterday in Question Time Nick Smith continued to pretend that he had not forced DoC to shitcan its submission on the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme. He even went so far as to claim that he had no idea that the submission even existed until this week. But it was just more lies
Can Wellington outdo Auckland for the revival of town hall meetings? Come to an urgent Stop the TICS Bill meeting on Monday 23 September, 7pm at Old St Paul’s, Mulgrave St.
