What to do if you’re a government with an ideological fixation on selling assets, which is hugely unpopular? The public will catch on if you put SOEs as full entities up for auction. So, you don’t sell off the companies. Instead, you sell off the things they own or, through bond issues, their profit streams. We’ve been warning this would happen. Now, it is.
Odd timing as everyone powers down for Christmas, but The Herald has published the NZ Wikileaks cables. A rather far fetched attack on Clark (covered by Eddie yesterday), the Nats breaking promises and misleading Parliament. But if that’s the worst in the cables then I’m guessing that politicians on both sides, past and present, will be vastly relieved.
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It must be coming up to election year, because whenever I load Granny Herald there’s some ludicrous attack on Labour or love-piece on Key. The Herald on Sunday has some Wikileaks cables and the ones they’ve chosen to pre-release supposedly shows Labour was willing to give up the anti-nuke law but didn’t to win votes. They show no such thing. [Updated]
Phil Twyford is selected as the new Labour candidate for Te Atatu from a strong field.
Phil Twyford is a formidable campaigner, as I know from past experience. I almost pity whatever sacrificial lamb that National put up in that electorate.
Perhaps, like me, you have left your Christmas shopping to the last minute. Fear not – help is at hand! Here’s a roundup of some real gifts that you might give this Christmas.
Over at No Right Turn, I/S has picked up on some Aussie research that shows Free Trade Agreements aren’t the huge money spinners they’re sold as. Because FTAs create different rules for different trading partners, exporters have to meet complicated ‘rules of origin’ to prove they quality for the lower tariffs. The cost can eat up the supposed benefits.
Ok this is seriously weird, too cool, and as bad as the elevator music is. But at least it is not John Key mangling songs with syncophantic radio announcers declaring it to be music.
The band running on iPad’s and iPhone – North Point’s iBand
Armstrong makes a powerful attack on the media’s “increasing appetite for personality-based politics at the expense of more serious discussion about policy”. If only Armstrong were one of half a dozen political editors who shape the media discourse. To be fair, Armstrong hardly writes about soap opera stuff. Some of his junior colleagues should follow suit.
Brownlee ignored warnings that his reforms would increase power prices, not lower them as intended. Wholesale power prices have spiked from $50 to $300 per MWH. Exporters have cut production. Residential users are next. With power up and petrol breaking $2 a litre, energy is a handbrake on this supposed economic recovery.
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Several studies have now shown that those who watch Fox News are significantly more misinformed than those who don’t. Well there’s a surprise! Not. Serious question though, can we have both a free media and a requirement for minimum levels of accuracy and balance, or are those options mutually exclusive?
We don’t have to care so much about beneficiaries any more. Or those single parents. Or the trials and tribulations of anyone else at all really. We have to be grown up. And we are more mean and lean than we used to be. Hell, even those pesky parliamentary lefties have abandoned the beneficiaries and the single parents. Yup. Nothing to see there. Life is good. We’re getting ahead. And we sure know what’s what. Don’t we?
Three government investment decisions in the last couple of weeks have shown the deficiencies in the neoliberal way of doing things. SOE Solid Energy’s lignite-to-liquids obsession, Kiwirail buying trains in China rather than making them itself and Steven Joyce decision to re-create Telecom’s monopoly by giving it 70-84% of the broadband contracts.
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It’s a tough Christmas for far too many Kiwis. Poverty is up, wages are down. 350,000 Kiwis are jobless or underemployed. The job losses are still coming. The rich got tax cuts, 70% got nothing. Drought is spreading. Thousands of Cantabrians face an uncertain future. Meanwhile, the Nats cynically exploit disaster to advance their agenda.
Jason Ede, Whaleoil’s main source for smut in the National Research Unit, has done a clever little play on Phil Goff. Like 40-odd other MPs, Goff owns an investment property. That it’s in Wellington doesn’t matter. This isn’t a Double Dipton rort. But Goff pledged to sell it and he hasn’t. No rort but sloppy. A fair cop.
Isn’t it great we’ve got that nice man John Key running the country?
He can’t sing, but he does entertain his fans so. Last year he sang Snoopy’s Christmas for his fans, this year Santa Claus is Coming to Town. He sure does know what it takes to be popular. And he always does his best.
You are invited to complete the New Zealand Political Blog Readers’ Survey for 2010. This survey is a follow up to the 2008 survey, which provided an amazing amount of data about who reads New Zealand political blogs and their thoughts on the medium and its potential. This survey will gain further insights into New Zealand political blogging.
The Right often espouses the mantra of “choice”. How we do better if we leave things up to the private sector, so we can all get what we want, instead of forcing us into the same solution.
Choice is great for ice-cream, but I don’t think it’s great for government services.
A very good close of year speech from Phil Goff in the House yesterday. I think this is the kind of thing we want to see more of next year. Phil’s job is to crystalise the vague sense of dissatisfaction that most people feel with the Key Government with himself as the spokesperson for those Key has betrayed and let down.
Pansy Wong’s resignation in disgrace makes four ministers and three MPs lost by John Key’s government in two years (and more who have escaped scot-free). Now, we face another by-election – on March 5th, Botany will choose Wong’s successor. Here’s my take on the probable candidates and the party positioning.
The Right always advocates for less government spending as a percentage of GDP. Those with ideological blinkers cannot see the high correlation between being a free and stable country and paying for it. The most successful nations are willing to invest in quality public services. Government spending is low in poor, unequal, and unstable countries.
Tax cuts don’t cause growth, and even some of the right wing commentators are starting to admit it. The Nats’ tax cuts aren’t “broadly neutral” either, and that is why the deficit is blowing out. National’s one and only economic policy is busted. Now what?
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Wayne Mapp to retire “for personal and family reasons” at the 2011 election. Who’s going to be flown in to replace him?
How does large hunks of most of our coastal cities and thousands of acres of farmland being swallowed the sea sound? This neat graphic shows effects of sea level rises from climate change: 1m – roughly in line with official predictions; through 6m – collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; to 14m – doomsday scenario. Even a small rise is catastrophic.
Annette Sykes recently delivered the annual Bruce Jesson Lecture concerning ‘The Politics of the Brown Table’. Much of her address is a harsh critique of the so called ‘iwi elite’ and their neo liberal agenda. In my opinion her assessments are true and justified. Without doubt neo liberalism undermines Maori efforts for self determination
Rortbuster Pete Hodgson unveiled yet more information about Pansy and Sammy Wong’s business activities in China on the taxpayer dime in Parliament yesterday. It’s damning material. The Auditor-General had decided not to investigate but there’s every chance she will now or that the Police will.
3 under the radar stories yesterday. All linked by ideology. Kiwirail to buy 300 wagons from China because its cheaper than building them here. Not allowed to consider wider economic gains. Collins outsources her new prison to a multi-national with a history of prisoner abuse. English wants more ‘value’ from public assets. Value for whom? The likes of Serco?
As a government and as a country we honoured the Pike River dead, as was right and proper. But now the hard part starts. What are we going to do for the Pike River survivors? The families who lost loved ones. The fellow workers who have now lost their livelihood.
Child poverty is on the rise again. My question to the National government is simple. What are you going to do to reverse this trend and lift children out of poverty? It’s your watch. What are you going to do?
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Let’s face it. A government doesn’t accidentally spend $15 billion more than its revenue while cutting billions in taxes. The unsustainably high deficit is intentional policy, not happenstance. In good times and bad, National’s answer is always to cut taxes. The objective is to make huge deficits that then need to be ‘fixed’ with spending cuts.
