Author Archive
Electoral donations reported
Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, May 1st, 2008 - 52 comments
The Electoral Commission has published the parties’ donation returns for 2007. It is worth noting from the outset that under the electoral law then in force only donations over $10,000 had to be declared and anonymous donations, including the use of anonymising trusts, were legal. Labour has the largest return, at $1,030,446.39. But $700,000 was […]
Know your Nat: Judith Collins
Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, April 30th, 2008 - 45 comments
If National were the Government, Judith Collins would be Social Services Minister. That should be enough to send shudders down the spine of anyone who is worried about ensuring there is a safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society. Collins is rabidly anti the welfare state and a nasty piece of work. […]
The Golfball and Sickle
Written By: - Date published: 12:38 pm, April 30th, 2008 - 56 comments
Personally, I think it’s hilarious. A brilliant piece of activism that got the public’s attention and raised the issue of why we have American spy equipment on our soil. All without any real harm done and no violence. The wannabe semiotician in me loves that you’ve got a rag-tag bunch of ordinary people attacking a huge, […]
Right answer, wrong question
Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, April 30th, 2008 - 3 comments
It’s not often National gets something right but their latest flip-flop, on bio-fuels, is a good policy (well, partially and for the wrong reasons). National has announced they will no longer be supporting the bio-fuel requirement in petrol because it may put up the price of petrol a few cents. The bio-fuel requirement was always […]
Child beating petition falls short
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, April 29th, 2008 - 95 comments
Family First’s petition for a referendum on reversing the amendment to s59 of the Crimes Act that removed the defence of reasonable force for assault on a child (try saying that three times fast) has failed to get enough signatures. It needed 280,275 signatures and seemed to have enough but the Office of the Clerk […]
Put it on the kids’ tab
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, April 29th, 2008 - 6 comments
Some may have noted an odd series of questions in Parliament and press releases from Bill English around government borrowing over the last month. The questions purposely conflated the idea of maintaining current debt levels with increasing debt. We noted this at the time and Tane correctly picked the strategy: First, sow confusion about debt […]
On child poverty
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, April 29th, 2008 - 26 comments
The Child Poverty Action Group has released a report [PDF, 400k] showing there were 185,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand in 2004. That’s a big number but it is out of date and already well down from the dark days of the 1990s. It is estimated that higher employment, higher wages, paid paternal […]
Repeating the mistakes of others
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, April 29th, 2008 - 13 comments
Remember National’s policy of charging a $50 levy on everyone convicted of or, maybe, charged with (Key keeps on mixing up the terms) an offence? Remember all the obvious problems with it enforcement, administration cost, natural justice issues, the pitiful size of the sum that would be collected? Well, it turns out we missed one. […]
Pepsi vs Coke
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, April 28th, 2008 - 79 comments
Last week, Campbell Live ran an article about the framing of Key as slippery. It could have been an excellent piece on the merits of such attacks, the wisdom of them, and their effectiveness. In parts it was, but then Campbell did this: The shallow premise that politics is only identical brands competing for popularity, […]
Right question, wrong answer
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, April 28th, 2008 - 15 comments
Interesting to see people gradually waking up to what Fidel Castro, last year, called “The sinister idea of converting food into combustibles”. Even crazy ol’ Mike Moore writes about it today, although he is dead wrong when he calls biofuels “a populist Green response to global warming”. Environmentalists were always suspicious of biofuels, seeing them […]
Rodney Hide answers your questions
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, April 28th, 2008 - 27 comments
We’re very pleased to have ACT leader Rodney Hide respond to your questions as part of our Interview the Leaders series. Question to all leaders: Of which of your achievements in politics are you most proud? Making the IRD legally and culturally more accountable and responsive and getting my Regulatory Responsibility Bill to the Commerce Committee and, I […]
Mistakes, I’ve made a few
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, April 26th, 2008 - 91 comments
David Farrar’s three more prominent weaknesses came together in a speculator PR disaster yesterday. The weaknesses are his ego, his trick of using pictures of naked women to boost hits on his site, and his reverse midas touch, whereby every he touches turns to, well, it doesn’t turn out well. See, Farrar led the campaign […]
If I were National’s campaign strategist
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, April 24th, 2008 - 61 comments
National will not win by running on its rightwing principles and policy. For 20 years, New Zealanders have consistently said they do not want to sell public assets, they do not want weaker employment law, they do not want tax cuts at the cost of public service cuts, and they like government assistance like Kiwisaver […]
Bad Comics
Written By: - Date published: 7:33 pm, April 23rd, 2008 - 12 comments
So, one internet comic writer challenged another internet comic writer to draw 200 bad comics and this was the result. Awesome on so many levels. I especially like number 10. I wonder if that will be New Zealand come November.
Clark’s answers delayed
Written By: - Date published: 4:33 pm, April 23rd, 2008 - 25 comments
We had hoped to have the answers for our ‘interview the leaders‘ series from Helen Clark today. I talked with the PM’s office and they explained the questions are with Clark, she’s been busy travelling, and we’ll have them as soon as they come back. So, they’ve asked for an extension and I said ‘fair […]
Flat-Earthers heart climate change deniers
Written By: - Date published: 3:19 pm, April 23rd, 2008 - 4 comments
The Climate Science Coalition is the last of a dying breed; a rabid, climate change denying lobby group. Of late, they have been performing a desperate, last-ditch attempt to slow the introduction of a carbon trading scheme. And, now, it looks like they’ve received some heavy-weight support in the form of the venerable Flat Earth Society:
The cart before the horse
Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, April 23rd, 2008 - 28 comments
The internet is awesome; you can use email, learn heaps, and read sites like The Standard. Faster internet is awesomer; you can watch the Porirua market video without having to wait for it to buffer. Personally, I can’t wait until I’m getting the internet through a chip in my skull. Why, then, is National’s $1.5 […]
I’ve got a solution, what’s the problem?
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, April 23rd, 2008 - 38 comments
The junior doctors’ strike is a difficult issue. On the one hand, these are highly valuable workers whom we can’t afford to lose overseas and they do work long hours in difficult conditions. On the other hand, the pay rise they want would cost $50 million and is well above what other medical professionals have […]
Twin peaks
Written By: - Date published: 3:31 pm, April 22nd, 2008 - 50 comments
We have all heard of the peak oil crisis that is already manifesting itself in fuel prices. Now, consider peak food, the point where our ability to produce food peaks even as demand grows. Wheat was the first plant to be domesticated, around 10,000 years ago. Our civilisations are built on the excess calories available […]
What would National do?: Emigration
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, April 22nd, 2008 - 18 comments
Simon Power has hit on the fact that Stats New Zealand produces migration figures every month, and that means every month he gets to report the number of New Zealanders heading for Australia as if a) the number is unprecedented, which it is not b) it’s all the Government’s fault, which it’s not. Not that […]
Emigration in perspective
Written By: - Date published: 4:35 pm, April 21st, 2008 - 28 comments
Last year, 99.33% of New Zealand citizens liked their country so much they stayed. Some left for short periods, and some left forever but they were more than replaced by new New Zealanders who also think this is a great place to live. There really is nothing extraordinary in the new emigration figures. The numbers ebb and […]
Interview the leaders V: Maori Party
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, April 21st, 2008 - 41 comments
Even amateur, part-time bloggers sometimes make mistakes, and last week we didn’t send Clark her questions until Wednesday, rather than Monday, due to a miscommunication between ourselves. So, we extended her deadline to this Wednesday. We’ll post her replies when we get them. In the meantime, here are the questions to ACT’s Rodney Hide that […]
National makes work rights the defining issue
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, April 21st, 2008 - 32 comments
National’s strategy, the strategy of a weak party, is to present a ‘small target’ by promising to change virtually nothing if they were in government. Problem is, their small target has a great big bull’s-eye on it called work rights. With flip-flops on health, education, welfare, annual leave, parental leave, assets, Working for Families, Kiwisaver, […]
Ralston sez: leave poor Johnny alone
Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, April 20th, 2008 - 61 comments
In the Herald today, Bill Ralston sticks up for poor John Key who has been the subject of personal political attacks recently. Like Key, Ralston wonders what is “the cost of the Government using countless bureaucrats to endlessly scour records in an attempt to discover inconsistencies in any utterance [Key has] made”. Ralston needs to […]
Hutchison chases the Green Fairy
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, April 18th, 2008 - 18 comments
Earlier this week, John Key had a whinge about ‘personal’ political attacks on him. Particularly, he thought it was a waste of taxpayers’ money that some Labour MPs wrote and performed a version of The Gambler mocking him. The song was written in a pub on a Saturday night (Key thinks they should been reading […]
Business to Key: ‘You’re ruining everything’
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, April 18th, 2008 - 54 comments
Business is starting to get worried. This was meant to, finally, be the year that they got the Left out of government and started making New Zealand work for the business elite again. But there’s a problem: the man they chose for the job. Sure, Key’s got a cheeky grin but on real ‘prime minister […]
Last chance to grill Rodney
Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, April 18th, 2008 - Comments Off on Last chance to grill Rodney
Remember, our party leader in the ‘interview the leaders’ series this week is ACT’s Rodney Hide. Questions are picked on Sunday, so take the opportunity while you can. Ask them here. Helen Clark’s respones are due to be posted on Monday.
Flip-flopping at warp speed
Written By: - Date published: 3:13 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 31 comments
On Monday, I wrote ‘Stay tuned for National’s next assets policy, due out sometime next week.’ It seems I miscalculated. Here’s what Key had to say on asset sales today on newstalkzb: ‘I’m going to go into an election with a group of policies and those policies we will implement or not implement as the […]
Cost of benefit system plummeting
Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 26 comments
Continuing our benefits theme, here’s a look at how much the benefit system costs you. The figures are the combined expenditure by the Government on the Unemployment, Sickness, Invalids’, and Domestic Purposes benefits per day per working age New Zealander, in 2007 dollars. Sources: MSD (1,2,3), StatsNZ (4,5) The portion of the working age population […]
If I were the Maori Party’s campaign strategist
Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 27 comments
The Maori Party is in an enviable position going into this year’s election. It is likely Kingmaker, and the more seats it gets the more likely it will occupy that ground. Polls project the Maori Party to possibly win all seven Maori roll seats while obtaining around 2% of the party vote. That will create […]
Running scared
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, April 16th, 2008 - 32 comments
Why did National block Parliament from debating the Auckland Airport sale? Only last Friday, Key was ‘fuming‘ over the Government’s decision to prevent the sale, claiming it would be the end of foreign investment in New Zealand and cause a plague of boils to descend on our land. Yesterday, when New Zealand First offered them a […]
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