Posts on government and governence at national and local level, political parties,politicians, and political participation
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, May 26th, 2012 - 65 comments
Taunting the young people who are getting the shitty end of the economic stick – does it get any more arrogant than that?
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, May 26th, 2012 - 47 comments
National don’t have faith in Kiwis, or our skills and education, our Kiwi ingenuity. Nope, they think the only way to wealth is farming – which can’t be expanded, tourism – which provides low value jobs, and resource exploitation – of oil, gas and minerals unfound. They’re banking on us hitting the jackpot, because they can’t think of any real way of providing a future for our country.
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 35 comments
This afternoon a couple of ‘hidden treasures’ have come out of the budget. In changes not announced, but discovered 1122 teachers could be losing their jobs and changes are being made to the assets old people are allowed to keep once in residential care. Sneaky, Bill, sneaky…
Written By: - Date published: 2:31 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 5 comments
Budget is a sluggish student who shows no enthusiasm or energy, and must be coaxed into making even the tiniest effort. His attitude is all wrong. He is something of a braggart, repeatedly telling all of his peers how fast he is, even though when challenged to a race he always finds an excuse to back out.
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 16 comments
The Government have been pushing a line that Christchurch is holding us back as an economy. The poor people of Christchurch are to blame for all our woes apparently, with their earthquake. We shouldn’t blame National, just Cantabrians.
But it’s not true.
Written By: - Date published: 1:58 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 4 comments
The 3 most expensive items in the Budget: 1. $10.24 billion: Superannuation, 2. $3.69 billion: Debt Servicing, 3. $3.32 billion: National Land Transport Agency (Roads of National Signficance etc) – up $334 million. National are prepared to sack teachers, raise prescription costs and pick paperboy’s pockets to defend their roads that make no economic sense.
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, May 25th, 2012 - 20 comments
Getting back to surplus is not the first step to growing the economy. It’s the other way round.
Written By: - Date published: 6:46 am, May 25th, 2012 - 169 comments
In his Budget speech, David Shearer labelled John Key ‘Mr Australia’. Because that’s where he’s pushing us. The zero hope budget offers a thousand and one nasty little cuts for students, for kids, for low-income workers, for schools, for community groups, for your public services. All to barely – if rosy growth forecasts come true – achieve a micro-surplus in 2014/15 for purely political reasons.
Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, May 24th, 2012 - 106 comments
Budget reaction here. Seems the Nats’ preferred budget tag line is ‘Investing in the future’. Should have called it ‘Waiting for Godot’. Here’s a quick summary: Zero = Fail.
Update: Nats planning to tax kids’ after school jobs. No, not joking.
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 24th, 2012 - 65 comments
David Shearer, with Shane Jones’ support, has stood Jones down and asked the Auditor-General to investigate his handling of Bill Yan’s citizenship affair. It sets a new, high standard. Whether Jones was right or wrong, he at least has a coherent story and there’s no suggestion of a crime. Compare that John Key allowing John Banks to stay on as a minister while under criminal investigation and having repeatedly lied as he tries to get out of it. Update: The court has found Yong Ming Yan not guilty of all five immigration fraud charges.
Written By: - Date published: 7:09 am, May 24th, 2012 - 3 comments
An excellent column from Bryan Gould, and a picture of working families in financial distress. Something to ponder, as we await the zero budget.
Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, May 24th, 2012 - 18 comments
Poor political choices, lazy spin management, a succession of statistics highlighting National’s poor management of the economy, a much more active Opposition, and, let’s not forget, a much less friendly media ever since the teapot tapes have combined to make this the first budget that has hurt National, rather than bolstered it.
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 pm, May 23rd, 2012 - 32 comments
So Key is ‘surprised’ that David Shearer, the local member for Eden Park, accepted tickets to a local game, and doesn’t feel beholden to corporate interests? He can accept hospitality and still criticise a company is somehow shocking? I think this tells us more about John, than it surprises the rest of us about David…
Written By: - Date published: 5:56 pm, May 23rd, 2012 - 16 comments
Exercise for the reader – post links to occasions of Key and the Nats ignoring official advice.
Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, May 23rd, 2012 - 8 comments
Bill English has introduced a number of stealth taxes over his time in office, to partly balance the loss his tax cuts for the rich has generated. The latest in this budget will be prescription costs and raising the price of Early Childhood Education (again). We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if …
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 227 comments
The media (and the braying right-wing blogs of course) have been bleeding plenty of ink over Shane Jones’ actions in the citizenship case. Jones hasn’t really put his side of the story – until last night.
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 22 comments
It’s great that foreign fishing vessels in New Zealand waters will now be required to be flagged here and, in theory, will be subject to New Zealand law. But I reckon that abuses of those crews is only half the problem. The other problem is that we have Kiwi quota owners, in particular iwi, employing foreign fishers while quarter of a million of our people are jobless.
Written By: - Date published: 7:11 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 15 comments
National has undershot every one of its growth promises. I bet that doesn’t stop them promising big tomorrow.
Written By: - Date published: 5:05 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 30 comments
Don’t blame Greece: if you change nothing, nothing changes. National’s problems are their own to solve, but they don’t have the guts to look at the big problems in New Zealand’s economy. 0.6% growth in total over the last 3 years – less than population. But National only tinkers and distracts, as our brightest and best head to Aussie.
Written By: - Date published: 2:57 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 22 comments
Labour has published its budget website and a video ripping John Key’s record of broken promises. It’s pretty damning. Yet Key and English want to claim that there’s nothing wrong and growth has been in line with projections. It’s like they’re operating in a parallel universe.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 12 comments
It’s an interesting fact that the one area in which National is going against its traditional approach and moving towards what the experts advocate is prisons. And I think I know why. In education, health, welfare etc National’s ideological positions correspond with cutting spending. But ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ costs. When Bill English called prisons a “moral and fiscal failure” his emphasis was on “fiscal”.
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 11 comments
Matt McCarten’s latest column is a must read. There is something nasty going on…
Written By: - Date published: 6:45 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 12 comments
National have become a very adept PR machine. While not adept at running the country, they’ve become great at running statistics. John Key was pushing things a little too far with his lines that unemployment rising to 6.7% showed an improved economy and that Europe electing anti-austerity leaders showed their austerity policies were right, but …
Written By: - Date published: 6:07 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 1 comment
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here.
A guest post from the Finance Minister.
Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 68 comments
The Greens launched their Budget alternative this morning. Titled “Smart Green Economics” it lived up to the billing. Extra heft was provided by BERL economist Dr Ganesh Nana paper arguing that the Government’s asset sales programme leaves the government accounts permanently worse off. It was also good to hear about opportunities and their alternatives. We’ve had enough of TINA.
Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, May 21st, 2012 - 19 comments
National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.
Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, May 21st, 2012 - 14 comments
Last Budget, National promised 36,000 jobs in the year to March 2012. We got 20,000. They promised 1.8% growth. We got 1.1%. They promised a $9.8 billion deficit. Now, it’s heading for over $12 billion. Ready for a repeat on Thursday?. English will say last year’s failures were all someone else’s fault. Key will grin and make some weak jokes, the beakbenches will hoot and holler. But will anyone outside National be smiling this time round?
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, May 21st, 2012 - 56 comments
Remember ‘ambitious for New Zealand’? Remember ‘brighter future’? National used to at least say they wanted to do something significant. At what point did all that get replaced with ‘surplus by 2014/15′? Key and National have $70 billion a year to play with to better this country, and the best thing they can come up with is making sure government operating revenue exceeds operating spending by about half a percent in three years time.
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, May 20th, 2012 - 26 comments
Like a polluter making money while passing on the costs of pollution to the rest of us, a media organisation can make money out of hatred while passing on the costs to society. Case in point – Paul Henry, who didn’t take long to revert to type in Australia.
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, May 20th, 2012 - 37 comments
Not content with selling your assets off, National has put aside $120,000,000 of your money to tell you that you should like it.
And, just to add more salt to the wound, Bill English has described the cost as “low by market standards”.
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