Written By: - Date published: 5:24 pm, July 29th, 2008 - 20 comments
Should Labour be worried about today’s poll in the Herald which contrary to other recent polls showed the gap between the parties rising? Colin Espiner doesn’t seem to think so, suggesting: I wouldn’t take much notice of the Herald DigiPoll. This one’s even worse than the last one. It was taken over THREE WEEKS and interviewed …
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, July 11th, 2008 - 21 comments
Another one-page excuse for a policy from National, this one on early childhood education. After vehemently opposing 20Free, National would now keep it but not because it wants to, only because ‘thousands of parents are now using 20 Hours and we do not want to cause them uncertainty’. Gee, thanks, National. The headline change is …
Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, May 19th, 2008 - 32 comments
Last year John Key announced National’s ‘Blue-Green’ Strategy. It contained the first shadow of acknowledgment from National that climate change is a serious issue: a target to reduce greenhouse gas emission to 50% of 1990 levels by 2050. Of course, setting a target for a time when most of your MPs will be dead is …
Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, May 15th, 2008 - 8 comments
Christchurch hosted a public meeting on crime within the city last week. But the thing that caught my eye, despite the very laudable aim, was how National MP, Nicky Wagner, managed to present two contrasting opinions on the state of crime in the Garden City, in close succession: I do think the statistics are sometimes …
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, April 21st, 2008 - 18 comments
John Key: ‘ my lawyer actually does those things clearly [he] had the wrong information.’ That’s how Slippery John explained why legal documents showed him living at different addresses at the same time. For election purposes he had claimed to be living at his $1.1 million home in Waimauku in his electorate, but on documents …
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 …
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, March 25th, 2008 - 9 comments
Regular readers will remember that one of John Key’s excuses for he ‘we would love to see wages drop‘ quote was that the reporter had misquoted him. Now, Key has once again shown a disturbing trait of attributing his own mistakes to others. When asked about the possibility of moving National’s tax cut programme forward …
Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, March 19th, 2008 - 17 comments
You do have to wonder sometimes what it takes to get a straight answer out of a National party MP. Having recently given Brian Connell a bollocking for being evasive on camera, Bill English has now pulled out a performance of his own. He was far more polite of course, and at no stage made …
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, March 6th, 2008 - 31 comments
Bill English must just be sitting there in his office cringing as he listens to interviews like these. Sean Plunket spoke to Slippery John this morning about his latest policy flip-flops. It was a trainwreck. Have a listen – the text below is just a short excerpt. powered by ODEO Presenter: Is your policy today …
Written By: - Date published: 4:57 pm, March 5th, 2008 - 25 comments
Further to Dancer’s post below, this morning on Breakfast John Key claimed that National never had a deadline for settling Treaty claims and instead only had a deadline for lodging them. This was possum-in-the-headlights stuff, continuing an extraordinary run of gaffes from slippery Mr Key. Politely put, Key’s done a total rewrite of history. The …
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, March 5th, 2008 - 2 comments
Mr Key announced new National policy this morning. After a morning TV interview National now have no date to settle historic Treaty Claims: Presenter: National used to have a date, didn’t they? John Key: No, what they said was they wanted the claims lodged, and they’d like to see them cleared up by a certain …
Written By: - Date published: 3:05 pm, March 5th, 2008 - 2 comments
From John Key’s State of the Nation speech in January: The Youth Court currently has the power to place young offenders in youth justice residential facilities for a period of up to three months. Many are released after just two. Last year, long-overdue legislation was tabled to allow these sentences to extend to six months. …
Written By: - Date published: 3:29 pm, February 26th, 2008 - 15 comments
You think they’d learn. Wikiscanner reports that someone in Parliament has been busy – busy expunging potentially embarassing facts about a variety of MPs. This one’s about Allan Peachey. You might remember Allan from such debacles as the Peachey/Rich bulk funding controversy and also the little number above that he’d evidently rather history forgot – …
Written By: - Date published: 4:56 pm, February 7th, 2008 - 25 comments
Kiwis are showing their canny side in the way we’ve been flocking to sign up to KiwiSaver – now over 400,000 strong and still growing. It’s another dead rat that John Key has swallowed to make National an electable brand but let’s not forget that in 1975 National abolished Labour’s universal superannuation scheme. Bryan Gaynor …
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, January 31st, 2008 - 78 comments
National have just backed down on their opposition to interest free student loans. Back in 2005 Key called this ‘a policy that tells young New Zealanders to go and borrow to the hilt What a cost to the country! What an unaffordable and irresponsible cost to the country! It is a sad day National members …
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, October 18th, 2007 - Comments Off
The entry reads: These won’t be comfortable to wear or even be long-lasting but they do come with an interesting provenance. They are size 8. It has been claimed they were recovered from a rubbish bag collected from Parliament Buildings. Inquiries indicated that a practical jokester on National’s front bench carefully constructed them as a …
Written By: - Date published: 4:31 pm, August 27th, 2007 - 1 comment
As the National Party concentrated on its own political health with yet another policy u-turn inoculation, this time on the need for an airforce combat wing, Health Minister Pete Hodgson had some good news for the health of under-sixes.
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 pm, August 22nd, 2007 - Comments Off
Seems John Key’s not the only politician who’s had his previous statements on Iraq come back to bite him recently. Here’s Dick Cheney in 1994 explaining why the invasion and occupation of Iraq would not be the smartest course of action and would quickly become, in his own words, “a quagmire”. Interestingly, even in 2000 …
Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, August 20th, 2007 - Comments Off
For those who asked for them here are the conflicting quotes from John on climate change. As Goff points out in the video below, Key’s now on record as flip-flopping on two of the biggest issues facing the world today: Iraq and climate change. Key proudly calls himself a “risk-taker”. It’s one thing to risk …
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