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Steven Joyce is a pillock
If you need proof watch this morning’s TV3 debate with Grant Robertson.
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NRT: The last day
Today is the last day of Parliament for the term. After spending the morning on non-controversial legislation, the House will have its last Question Time and then an adjournment debate. And then they’ll be off to campaign for the election. The big triumph here? No last-minute urgency. No “wash-up”. Hopefully it’ll be a permanent change.
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Focusing on the issues that matter?
Everyone’s favourite National Party blogger Cam Slater has posted a sneaky candid shot of Metiria Turei in which he mocks her for *gasp* wearing a hat.
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ImperatorFish: I did not order this – again
Scott reposts this Nick Smith classic.
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Polity: Bye bye, Colin
National has all-but confirmed today that there no deal for Colin Craig in East Coast Bays, or for any other Conservative. This was the right thing for them to do, for one simple reason. This decision came down to simple maths. If Key thought the Conservatives could muster double the votes that a decision to back the Conservatives would cost National in the centre-ground, then he should do the deal. If not, he should not. All the stuff about Winston running was a bit of a late sideshow, as the decision had likely already been made.
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Mum and Dad Investor?
The SST this morning have broken a story about how an American couple were able to purchase $1.6 million worth of shares in Genesis while “mum and dad kiwi investors” had their share allocation limited to $5,000.
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Implausible denials
From the Herald today: What Jonathan Coleman said on Monday: “Ministers had absolutely no knowledge of any pending FBI-NZ Police investigation.” What Immigration NZ said on Wednesday: “The general information about the FBI was passed to Mr Bickle who then passed it to the Minister.” Grant Robertson is absolutely right: Former Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman must come clean about when he was told the FBI was investigating Kim Dotcom.
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Thriving children, liveable communities & sustainable resources
capitalism, climate change, election 2014, equality, greens, Metiria Turei, poverty, russel norman, sustainabilityThe Green Party’s election focus is on reducing poverty & inequalities (highlighting its impact on children), and developing sustainable communities. 2 recently announced policies are under-pinned by 2 crises: poverty/inequality; and the destruction of our environment (climate change, resource depletion).
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Key denigrates All Black jersey
John Key is now pretending to be an All Black as part of his campaign for re-election.
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NRT: A circus of self-mutilation
No Right Turn gets rightfully acerbic about the witless fool “senior” MP in Labour who was trying to sabotage Labour in the Sunday Star Times this weekend, and about the general self-mutilation of Labour by its caucus at present.
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NRT: Docs or its bullshit
Over the weekend we learned that police had been juking the stats, recoding burglaries as “incidents” to make themselves and their Minister look good. But its all fine now, supposedly – the police claim they’ve instituted a series of spot audits to ensure it can never happen again. Except when they’re asked for information about these supposed safeguards and whether they’ve uncovered any problems, they suddenly can’t find anything… Sounds like bullshit and spin.
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Imperator Fish: Read the law
Imperator Fish discovers that the official legal website for law in NZ has been hacked. The law that the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) used to look at complaints about the interception of communications for Kim DotCom, political parties, and anyone that the police deem as being suspicious was obviously incomplete. So the IPCA used some invisible law in their ruling. Who cares what the real law is anyway?
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I protest against Gaza offensive
This is just too awful to let go without saying something. Update: Protest tomorrow (Sat 19 July) Aotea Square, Auckland, 2pm.
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What’s so important about 15 September?
I’m intrigued by Kim Dotcom’s announcement of earth-shattering revelations to be made on 15 September – just 5 days out from the last voting day of this general election.
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Polity: Minimum wage rises do not cause unemployment
In the cartoon world of Economics 101, there is perfect supply, perfect competition, perfect demand, perfect information and prices for labour (and everything else) are set at their true market values. The real world is somewhat different.
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The FBI also wanted DotCom to stay in New Zealand
The FBI had been working with the New Zealand authorities for a year before he was arrested. They wanted to arrest him on his birthday “because it would be a big party and all the assets would be there.”A Department of Justice official revealed this to ex-Senator Dodd, chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America. The FBI is a Justice Department agency. The “party assets” were why he had to be kept here.
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Polity: Judith Collins on crime
Last week, new information became public about potential stat-juking by our Police. The practice of reclassifying crimes as “incidents” has the effect of artificially reducing the apparent crime rate. This practice occurred mainly in the Counties-Manukau police district, which operates in the electorate of then-Police Minister Judith Collins. That is, of course, troubling on a number of levels.
Updated.
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Green Party election priorities launch
election 2014, Environment, equality, greens, internet mana party, labour, Mining, sustainability, waterToday the Green Party launched the first of it’s election priorities in Hamilton at 11. 00 am. The focus is on building a cleaner, fairer, smarter New Zealand. The Internet Party is onboard with a new environment policy. There are differences between these 2 parties and Labour on oil and gas exploration. Equality continues to be a key priority for the Green Party. [Updated]
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Clear choices in Labour’s mini-Manifesto
Kiwi voters are going to be offered clear election choices across a wide range of policies that matter. This is clear from Labour’s mini-Manifesto, released at the weekend Congress. As promised Labour’s offerings are positive and forward-looking. Besides education, there are policies on work, economy, schools, children, jobs, homes, environment, democracy, health, living costs and budget – put the commitments together and it’s a recipe for positive change.
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NRT: So much for the surplus
As was generally expected by anyone who’d been watching the actual economy rather than just the dairy exports, business profits are lower than expected. And there aren’t the jobs and pay increases in our “rockstar” economy. So consumer spending measured by GST is low as well. Meanwhile the price inflation keeps increasing government costs. So we are already on track for a large deficit next year rather than the government’s much-touted imaginary surplus. You have to ask why we deserve a government that appears to live more in a universe of wishful thinking than reality.
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Polity: National dropped 6% in 2008, 2011 campaigns
election 2008, election 2011, election 2014, greens, labour, national, nz first, Politics, polls, uncategorizedAt Rob Salmond’s briefing to Labour’s Congress over the weekend, he made a point about National’s performance in recent campaigns, which was later picked up in David Cunliffe’s speech.
National has dropped six percent each time. For those interested, here is the data that sits beneath this claim.
It is no wonder that John Key is worried when 3 months out from an election they are sitting on less than 50%, with dead and dying coalition partners.
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Imperator Fish: In the Beehive today
This post was put up at Imperator Fish on Sunday evening. It looks like Hekia Parata was following Scott’s script today. 🙂
Sure we need a better class of wingnut commenter, as is frequently suggested here. However surely it is more important that we get a better quality of government minister than ones who think that evidence based policies means only the evidence about how well their party is doing in the polls?
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Blame the Officials
accountability, conservative party, International, national, Parliament, Politics, public services, same old nationalMurray McCully doesn’t accept his responsibilities. He appears to see no need to do more than to blame his officials. Yet his job, under our system of parliamentary government, is to be accountable to parliament for the performance – and failures – of his department. The McCully doctrine appears to be to suppress public discussion on difficult issues and to limit any adverse fallout for their party. Public officials are convenient sacrificial lambs if things go wrong. This is a bad idea.
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NRT: John Key pisses on public service independence
One of the core principles of our public service is that Ministers have no role in staffing decisions. This is not the era of Seddon, where a Minister could stack “their” department with cronies and time-servers. For over a century, public sector heads have been statutorily independent in such matters. John Key appears to not understand that independence or just likes stupidly shooting from the hip. In the process he is opening taxpayers up to paying for his mistakes.
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Labour Policy release – Eliminating violence against Women and Children
Labour has today announced its policy on eliminating violence against women and children.
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Let’s play blame the public servant
John Key has announced an inquiry into how the ambiguity in New Zealand’s position relating to the Malaysian diplomat was created. And he has already blamed the Public Servant involved while refusing to criticise Murray McCully. Clearly we now have a situation where instead of there being Ministerial Responsibility for the performance of their Department the Government is now entitled to attack a public servant in an attempt to divert political blame.
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NRT: National standards for pollution
Today the government announced the final version of its national standards for freshwater. They’re trying desperately to pretend that these will improve water quality, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is not a “balance” between the economy and the environment. It is destroying the environment for the profit of a few. And I’d like to see political parties making clear statements that these “bottom lines” will be improved, to outlaw pollution and make our rivers safe to swim in.
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NRT: The police are still ignoring electoral crime
The Electoral Commission is saying nothing about apparent police inaction on breaches of the electoral law. Information provided by the Commission reveals that since the beginning of 2011 there have been 113 breaches of the Electoral Act that it’s referred to police for investigation. Not one has resulted in a prosecution. In November, then the prosecution time-limit will kick in, and people will escape justice.
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Phil Goff: Contemporary China Research Centre
China, Economy, Environment, exports, farming, farming, food, International, labour, phil goff, Politics, tradeIt isn’t that often that we put up speeches by politicians. They’re usually aimed at the general public and don’t really get into the guts of the issues in the way that our activist commenters like to argue at – they tend to be political and in this site preaching to the converted. However this speech by Phil Goff is exceptional. It was made at a centre looking at China, and looks at the benefits and risks of our current and future relationships with that country. Worth reading
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NRT: Dysfunctional
In short, a report on our intelligence services says that they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know why they’re doing it, and they’re not doing it well. NZSIS can’t do its core job – security vetting – in a timely fashion, GCSB can’t even count, and they hate each other. Plus they’ve got poor financial management practices and no idea of how much stuff they own to boot. And then they wonder at the level of public hostility?
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Polity: Today’s Herald editorial
The NZ Herald has been particularly stupid recently, especially in its editorials. Now some of the anonymous editorial writers appear to have descended to not even reading their own paper. Today whoever wrote the editorial are suggesting that Labour release a particular policy, one that their political gallery writers wrote about on Wednesday. I guess that ‘anonymous’ couldn’t stand to read their own paper when it refers to Labour? Now that is really being biased.
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NRT: Overstretched
The Office of the Ombudsman has budgeted to deal with 800 Official Information Act (OIA) complaints. Last year it got 1913. Other areas of its operations are also underfunded. The Ombudsman is our watchdog against the government. If we want it to do that job effectively, it needs to be funded properly. Watching government departments drag out OIA requests may be fun for ministers, but it doesn’t help the transparency that our democracy needs.
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Dairy prices keep dropping
Dairy prices have resumed their slide, falling 4.9 per cent at the latest GlobalDairyTrade auction overnight. The drop was the ninth fall out of the last 10 auctions. It looks to me like the boom is over. Looking at the rise in production for whole milk powder in China, and increased exports from other countries, I think that it will continue to decline. In the meantime National have been allowing our other export industries to stagnate.
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Mallard’s moa idea is not going to fly
Trevor Mallard’s comments today about Moas is obviously tongue in cheek but have succeeded in engaging social median in a way that the designers of #TeamKey can only dream of.
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NRT: Fixing Christchurch
Labour has announced another part of its package to fix Christchurch: an immediate crash home-building plan. The market has failed, so the government has to step in. Its that simple. As for why the market has failed, there’s the ongoing insurance problems of course, but perhaps this also has something to do with it. Living costs in ChCh are exceeding wages and the construction industry is pocketing the difference. Labour is also changing the rules about exploiting overseas labour.
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NRT: Who’d have thunk it?
Capital gains tax is now accepted by a more people than who oppose it. But for a policy long considered a “third rail” of New Zealand politics, its a significant shift. It ought to put paid forever to the idea that parties must go with the flow of public opinion because they are unable to affect it. Weak parties are. But if Labour stops being scared of its own shadow and afraid of its left-wing heritage, it can actually change things, and build the majorities it needs to govern.
