Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, April 2nd, 2012 - 54 comments
John Key gave one of his least sure and most defensive interviews in five years on Q+A on the weekend. His goal was clearly to protect his personal brand and close the issue down. He failed. He failed because he refused to criticise Pullar and Boag, and refused to back Collins’ law suits. That puts him at odds with the Collins faction and onside with Boag’s.
Written By: - Date published: 4:03 pm, March 31st, 2012 - 77 comments
The ever-growing list of letters, emails, and leaks in the National Party Civil War, that started off as an apparently apolitical privacy breach by ACC, is getting hard to follow. Here’s a summary of the various documents and their ramifications – so far.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, June 27th, 2010 - 24 comments
An interesting parallel between Kevin Rudd and the Key government’s leadership style surfaced in our papers this weekend. On Saturday, Tracy Watkins had this to say in the DomPost: Dislike of the Australian leader seems to have reached legendary proportions in the three years since he won the election a dislike surpassed only by the …
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, July 23rd, 2008 - 28 comments
The ‘policies’ National is releasing are nothing more than bullet points but we know from a number of slips that these vague one-pagers only scrape the surface. When they’re talking to friendly audiences without the media around, National’s MPs tend to be more forthcoming and rightwing when discussing policy. Clues can also be found in …
Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, June 16th, 2008 - 41 comments
In most countries, accident insurance is big business. Insurers and lawyers make billions off premiums, claims, and court cases but many people don’t actually get any cover if they are injured. The Third Labour Government set up ACC to ensure everyone would have cover if they were injured. It also freed up the court system …
Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, May 30th, 2008 - 23 comments
Tracy Watkins reported yesterday that National’s weakening of the employer contribution to Kiwisaver may take a different path to the one we envisaged. Rather than limiting employer contributions to a lower level Watkins reports businesses want to be able to dock or cut wages to compensate for the Kiwisaver contributions they make. This is currently …
Written By: - Date published: 12:48 pm, May 29th, 2008 - 33 comments
The most surprising thing to come of the National’s Kiwisaver fiasco is not that they want to undermine the scheme and get employers out of paying their part (this is the party of big business, after all). No, the real shock is to learn that Kate Wilkinson, National’s Industrial Relations spokesperson, is not involved in …
Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, May 28th, 2008 - 15 comments
National’s refusal to say what it stands for is becoming so ridiculous we have resorted to the Cold War art of Kremlinology. Today, we look at Kiwisaver. National has had a tortured relationship with Kiwisaver. When it was first introduced in 2005 John Key described it as a “terribly designed system” and spent the next …
Written By: - Date published: 3:24 pm, May 26th, 2008 - 11 comments
National is still refusing to give us any detail on its tax cut plan, indicating it doesn’t have one. But let’s do a bit of Kremlinology to work out what we might expect from them when they eventually get their act together. The size of Labour’s tax cuts has spooked National. Key’s speech in reply …
Written By: - Date published: 2:41 pm, May 21st, 2008 - 9 comments
Seemingly content to coast along on the “time for a change” sentiment, the National Party are still refusing to offer any substantive details in major policy areas: government debt, work rights and retirement savings. English ended up sounding like a broken record on Agenda a few days back. His stock answer was ‘I can’t tell …
Written By: - Date published: 1:56 pm, May 20th, 2008 - 24 comments
National’s refusal to say what it stands for is becoming so ridiculous we have resorted to the Cold War art of Kremlinology. Today, we look at work rights. On Agenda, Bill English said he is concerned about new ‘entitlements’ for workers. ‘Entitlements’ is an anti-worker way of saying work rights – it implies that they …
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, May 19th, 2008 - 72 comments
Discovering National’s policy is a bit like the old art of Kremlinology, when Western intelligence agencies would attempt to discover the inner workings of Soviet politics by looking at who stood next to whom in pictures, and what hand politburo members carried their briefcases in. The latest subtle signs from National regarding its tax policy …
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