Open mike 26/08/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Some good reasons for New Zealand to stay in Afghanistan
The recent death in Afghanistan of Lieutenant Timothy O’Donnell was a tragedy for his family and a blow to his army colleagues. It […]
Sacked 90 day worker wins justice
Heather Smith, the pharmacy worker who was sacked unfairly under the 90 day fire at will law and featured in a recent advert for the campaign has won a CTU-backed case against her employer in the Employment Court.
Ready for more of English’s dodgy numbers?
Bill English is going to play more number games today to claim wages are rising. Actually they’re falling, they’re going to keep falling, and there are 100,000 extra jobless. We deserve a Finance Minister who does his job, not one occupying himself with statistical chicanery.
Income splitting – all bad?
Can income splitting be made to work? Funding people to stay at home with children isn’t such a bad idea…
Faafoi to challenge Mana selection
I see Kris Faafoi’s been given the nod from the Goffice to have a crack at Mana. He’s always struck me as a decent and hardworking bloke, so I wouldn’t want anyone to take this as an attack on him personally, but isn’t it a little worrying how many of Labour’s new recruits are being parachuted in from the leader’s office?
Pretty fly for a white guy
This morning we’ve been treated to the sight of the media celebrating one rich white guy (double murderer John Barlow) getting out of jail and another rich white guy (former National Minister Roger McClay) escape a prison sentence for stealing tens of thousands of dollars. You’ve got to love it.
Key govt halves price of bananas
Prime Minister John Key has credited his government’s economic policies for the price of fruit and vegetables falling by 6.5%. It’s clearly because of all those fruit and vegetable price reduction policies the government has introduced. In fact, the fruit price index is really only down 3.9% since November 2008 and vegetables are actually up 14.4%. But who are you going to believe?
Treasury papers reveal SOE sale list
In the Treasury asset sale papers we released earlier this week, a key word is blanked out again and again. It is the name given for a group of SOEs in a series of slides on reforming the SOE sector. One can only presume that this list is the group of SOEs that the Government will be seeking to sell, if it can find a way to dupe the public first.
Open mike 25/08/2010
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Roy enounters changeable Mr Hyde
Is Heather Roy to depart the ACT caucus? According to TVNZ, Act Party leader Rodney Hide is signalling his dumped deputy Heather Roy will find it extremely difficult to stay on as an MP, despite saying last week that she would be welcomed back into the caucus.
Job queues longer
Contrary to the sunny prognostications of Nice Mr Key, job queues are getting longer. How much more great economic management from John and Bill can the country stand?
Failure by the numbers
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months before Paula Bennett came to office – 22600
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months since Paula Bennett came to office – 52200
Fiscal cost of extra people on the dole (welfare payments and lost tax) – approximately $1 billion
Money in this year’s budget for jobs initiatives – $31 million
Govt opts for show over substance on alcohol
The government’s alcohol reforms are so typical of this government: criminalise someone to be seen to be doing something, while ignoring the root causes of the problem. This is a government that would rather make a criminal of a good parent who lets their son’s mate have a beer at a BBQ than make it harder for booze barons to hook kids into drinking.
Got your doctor’s note?
It was only at the protest on the weekend that I learned about the Nats’ plan to make us get sick notes if we take a day off work for ourselves or to look after a sick family member. This would be an insult to workers and a huge waste of medical resources from a government that has no understanding of efficient use of scarce resources and thinks that workers are all scumbags who need a good kicking.
McCully does have vision..
There have been a lot of complaints that Murray McCully is useless as our offshore representative and shows a complete lack of vision. Stop complaining.
John Black shows you what the alternatives could be…
SOE bonds: raiding the piggybank to pay for tax cuts for the rich
John Key and Bill English said they have neither requested nor seen official advice on privatisation. That is a lie. Even just the papers we’ve seen, let alone the eight Treasury says are still under consideration, show that privatisation is very much on the government’s agenda. They’re just trying to work out how to sneak it past us without a public backlash.
Open mike 24/08/2010
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Principals’ principled stand for quality education
National Standards have been slated by all of the education and assessment experts in New Zealand as being fundamentally flawed. Anne Tolley’s recent admission that she has failed to find a way to ensure that League Tables (the most educationally damaging aspect of the National Standards policy) will be avoided is the final straw for principals around the country.
Crime and punishment
White collar crime is on the increase in NZ. The government talks tough and postures about crime in its other forms, how will it respond to white collar crime?
Work on privatisation under way
For the last few months, the Standard has been politely asking Treasury for their papers on the sale of Crown assets. To say they weren’t keen to share would be an understatement. We’ve managed to get a few papers of the papers, more are being withheld. These papers show what we’ve long suspected: the Government plans to force SOEs to issue bonds as a method of privatisation by stealth.
Open mike 23/08/2010
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When the science doesn’t suit, Right tries to shout it down
The other day, National Party pollster David Farrar had a rant against alcohol experts that boiled down to ‘who cares what the science says! We’re in charge now and booze barons are on our side. Go back to your books, dorks!’.
Big Dog responds:
The secret of my success….
John Black cartoons John Keys success from childhood to Prime Minister. It has been good for him. It is not so good for anyone else.
An interesting result
Australia is about to enter a new era in politics. They appear to have a hung parliament this morning according to the Sydney Morning Herald. There are a number of marginal seats in the balance. The single Green MP in the lower house and a number of independents will determine which major party forms a government.
Open mike 22/08/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Thousands protest Nats’ attack on our work rights
Thousands of Kiwis turned out to protest National’s new labour legislation, a unjustified, spiteful attack on our work rights, which is simply designed to lower labour costs. The CTU has announced a campaign leading to national day of action on Oct 20th. Kiwi workers won’t take this lying down. We are fighting back.
Australian election
Our cousins on the West Island are winding up their election day soon, culminating a dramatic couple of months for Australian politics. It may be that Kevin Rudd gets the last laugh…
Pressured plonkers pull the plug on PEDA pingers
Quite suddenly, the government has pulled the plug on the contraversial $4.8 million in uncontested funding it awarded to the previously unknown Pacific Economic Development Agency in this year’s Budget.
It all stinks to high heaven.
Quick bites
There are a bunch of interesting little stories floating around this week that we didn’t get round to writing full posts on or that we wrote drafts for but never finished. So here’s a new, possibly weekly feature – Quick Bites:
NZ Institute: ‘Nats have no plan’
Suicide funding cut
Nats’ interesting donors
Workers’ rights under attack
One foot out of Iraq
Vultures
Party on Garth
Open mike 21/08/2010
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Fairness at Work rallies 21 & 22 August
Workers are getting together to oppose the government’s changes to employment law with rallies in the four main centres this weekend. Join your rally.
The Saturday rallies against National’s anti-work rights bill assemble at:
Auckland, QE2 Square, bottom of Queen St – 1pm
Wellington, Civic Square – 1pm
Christchurch, Catherdal Square – 1pm
and on Sunday:
Dunedin, Dental School, Great King St – 11am
Can we trust MPs while they have secret trusts?
Registrar of Pecuniary Interests Margaret Bazley, the country’s busiest pensioner, has presented recommendations for improving the transparency of MPs’ financial interests. It seems like good stuff, but it ignores the elephant in the room – the ability of MPs to use trusts to hide their shareholdings, and their conflicts of interest, from the public.