There was intense competition this week. Paula Bennett with her attack on Jacinda’s Spotify playlist almost won but Northcote candidate Dan Bidois succeeded for managing to talk out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and only confusing his tongue.
Labour and National have both selected their candidates for the Northcote by election. Labour’s candidate is Shanan Halbert who cut significantly into Jonathan Coleman’s majority at the last election.
Steven Joyce’s $11.7 billion fiscal hole is becoming more and more of a reality although it is in hidden infrastructure costs that National had suppressed in search of the elusive surplus.
This week the award goes to a Fairfax reporter for writing as fawning a review of a political career as you can imagine.
Jonathan Coleman has announced his resignation from Parliament.
National is united. There are no murmurings about leadership and Bill English’s and Paula Bennett’s positions are secure.
The Herald has equated Jacinda Ardern’s desire to temper the worst excesses of capitalism with the full embrace of marxist communism.
In the spirit of bi partisanship the Standard wishes to offer the candidates for leadership of the National caucus guest post slots and the ability to answer readers’ questions.
According to Health Minister Jonathan Coleman he is right, everyone else is wrong and there is no elective surgery hidden list in New Zealand.
One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not quite the same.
Can you guess which one is not like the other, can you tell me before I finish the game?
The Health Ministry committed to spending $18m that they didn’t have on upgrading their own offices, and tried to claw the money back from the underfunded DHBs trying to deliver health care to NZ. And that seems to be just fine with Minister Coleman.
In a shock horror expose Andrew Little has been exposed as having had dinner with people who work for drug companies. Clearly according to some it is better for him to never meet these people. Or to stop having dinners.
John Key and Jonathan Coleman are attending the World Cup on the taxpayer’s tab.
It appears that the Government has a radical proposal to undermine democratic participation in our Health Boards. Although the Minister claims not to know about it.
Young Labour has proposed that there is public funding for hormone replacement therapy and gender reassignment. Jonathan Coleman described the proposal as “absolutely nuts” but it then emerged that there is already some public funding for this treatment. And the media tried to suggest that some off the cuff comments by Labour MPs is evidence of division.
David Cunliffe is now being criticised for having a short holiday with his family. It is strange that it should be thought of as a bad thing for the leader of the party interested in improving ordinary people’s quality of life to try and get some work life balance.
National is claiming that Immigration NZ’s decision to allow Kim Dotcom to stay was made without any political pressure being applied. But it was the decision of the SIS to remove its block on Dotcom’s application that let the approval be granted. Why did the SIS remove its block and who applied the political pressure?
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.
The Herald is reporting that direct political pressure was applied on Immigration NZ to grant Kim Dotcom and his family residence in New Zealand. And the SIS tried to block the application but dropped their objection after being told there was “political pressure”.
Updated with more links
National’s, weird, favourite line at the moment is to say ‘we’re going to ignore the asset sales referendum and the opposition are hypocrites because they ignored the smacking referendum’. Russel Norman finally had had enough yesterday, and asked Jonathan Coleman just who had been PM when the referendum happened. Coleman’s answer was textbook cowardliness.
The SMH reports: a New Zealand government minister “was yelling out, ‘f—ing cheats’ and other offensive remarks” at the Wallabies during the Australia v Italy game. Hmm. The game was at North Harbour. Who is a local MP, a minister, and has a record of bad behaviour in corporate boxes?
Yesterday, Jonathan Coleman was handed the job of doing the introductory speech on the Taxation (International Investment and Remedial Matters) Bill 2010. Coleman was reading from a prepared speech that someone had handed him, and it was the wrong speech for the wrong Bill. Coleman, without seeming to realise anything was amiss, proceeded to repeat verbatim a speech Peter Dunne gave a year ago for the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill.
If you resign from your job today will your boss give you half a year’s pay as a parting gift? No? Funny because that, apparently, is standard practice for high-paid stars. It is being reported Paul Henry received up to $150,000 from TVNZ when he resigned due to the storm over his racist remarks. And that was regarded as a good deal for TVNZ!
One of the best pieces I’ve seen about the idiotic minister of broadcasting Jonathon Coleman wanting to starve or bend National Radio into the level of stupidity that the NACT’s prefer. Rosemary McLeod writing “Quality radio easy target for the barbarians” in the Sunday Star Times this morning.
The backlash to National’s attack on Radio NZ is beginning, and it looks like Jonathan Coleman may have bitten off more than he can chew.
Take the Save Radio New Zealand group on Facebook. In less than 24 hours it has 1700 2800 3500 supporters, with 10 more joining every minute.
Jonathan Coleman has described public broadcasting as being like North Korean propaganda. Turns out the wee fella isn’t afraid to force operational changes on our most independent broadcaster and threaten to sack the board if he doesn’t get his way.
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