Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, November 10th, 2010 - 21 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 46 comments
National is finding new exploitative ways to try save their by-election campaign in Mana.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 10 comments
Last week Speaker Lockwood Smith rolled back transparency on MPs expenses, by making travel spending secret again. John Key came out “against” the move. Yesterday Labour and the Greens called his bluff by releasing their details. Over to you John, once again you’re too late to lead, but you can still follow…
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, October 30th, 2010 - 41 comments
Last year MPs’ spending was opened up to public scrutiny, and many hailed a “new era” of openness. Well it didn’t last long. Now MPs’ travel costs are to become secret again. We won’t get to know about cases like Rodney Hide and Chris Carter. This will prevent incidents like the Carter witch-hunt. But on balance I have to come down on the side of transparency. This move to start rolling it back is a mistake.
Written By: - Date published: 5:11 pm, October 29th, 2010 - 53 comments
The Hobbit Enabling Act is meant to do is say ‘you’re an employee if you are called an employee in your contract, if not, you’re a contractor’. But it doesn’t say that and it doesn’t override the Bryson case that caused the ‘uncertainty’ Warners supposedly feared. Now, nobody knows what the law actually is. Well-founded disagreements will mean court cases.
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, October 28th, 2010 - 7 comments
Select committees are very important. They take Bills after first reading, hear submissions, and recommend alterations. Ministers do not (usually) sit on them and they are not meant to be mere rubber stamps for the government. But Harawira’s removal from the foreshore committee shows this government doesn’t care about good lawmaking.
Written By: - Date published: 8:16 am, October 6th, 2010 - 9 comments
Ministerial staffers who have worked under the National and Labour governments of recent years have begun commenting on some of the differences between each.
Apparently, one key difference has been that National ministers refuse to hire staff from other ministerial offices to avoid being labelled by their ministerial colleagues as staff-poachers.
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, October 1st, 2010 - 19 comments
Rodney Hide has taken a complaint to Parliamentary Services over Phil Twyford EA sending a message from his work email calling on people to vote for Len Brown. Wow, free emails. What a huge abuse of taxpayer cash. Not exactly on the scale of a trip to Disneyland. You’ve got to love Hide’s total lack of self-awareness.
Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, September 28th, 2010 - 22 comments
A group of 27 legal scholars from New Zealand and overseas has written an open letter outlining their deep concerns over the constitutional implications of the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act 2010.
Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, September 26th, 2010 - 19 comments
In the aftermath of the twin towers, the dust that accompanied their collapse gave rise to a health crisis in the medium/long term that continues to play out to this day. And given the prevalence of asbestos in Christchurch buildings, it just might be that the earthquake will result in a number of preventable deaths after all…
Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, September 24th, 2010 - 17 comments
A few days ago Charles Chauvel wrote a piece on Red Alert on why Labour voted for CERRA. I have two big problems with it. 1) Labour may have won concessions that improved CERRA but they didn’t get the key one. 2) There’s a dangerous mindset in the position that Labour had to vote for dictatorship or get pilloried in the media and lose votes.
Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, September 24th, 2010 - 9 comments
Lockwood and Nick did good work yesterday. So praise where praise is due: Keep it up boys.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 23rd, 2010 - 9 comments
Great video of Clayton Cosgrove getting right stuck into the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s Garth McVicar over his hypocrisy on David Garrett. Cosgrove’s certainly no bleeding heart liberal so I’d say McVicar’s credibility on law in order is now pretty much shot.
Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, September 20th, 2010 - 10 comments
Andrew Geddis (Associate Professor of Law at Otago and writer at Pundit) is an expert on democratic theory. He has become required reading for politics junkies. His latest piece — a brutally honest analysis of the recent work of the Law and Order select committee — should be required reading for everybody.
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, September 19th, 2010 - 21 comments
The ‘shock doctrine’ is how (capitalist) elites use moments of crisis to make power grabs while the normal checks are offline and/or the political opposition and media are swept up in a ‘unity’ mantra that prevents them acting to protect democracy. Last week, National used it to make us a dictatorship.
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 pm, September 17th, 2010 - 17 comments
It’s been a very big week this week, so I thought I’d do a round-up, just so we don’t forget some of the ‘lesser’ lights that may have been big news had we not had so much to go on…
Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, September 17th, 2010 - 78 comments
David Garrett has resigned from ACT and has indicated he will almost certainly resign from Parliament. Good, He is a scumbag, a liar, and a hypocrite. He is only resigning because he was caught. Now attention must turn to Rodney Hide. He can’t now pretend to be administering justice when he harbored Garrett and kept …
Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, September 16th, 2010 - 30 comments
The Gerry Brownlee Enabling Act is a Dictator’s Charter, and all we can do is hope Brownlee doesn’t abuse it. Even the Herald is against the unwarranted and excessive powers that have been conferred on one man with no meaningful checks or balances. This isn’t about Left or Right but too many on the Right seem happy with unfettered State power.
Written By: - Date published: 7:51 am, September 16th, 2010 - 150 comments
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, September 15th, 2010 - 142 comments
The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act gives the Government the power to pass Orders in Council overriding nearly every law. That makes ministers, not Parliament, the sovereign power in this country. Scary stuff, which I haven’t seen justified by the facts of the quake recovery.
Written By: - Date published: 7:58 am, August 7th, 2010 - 40 comments
Herald political editor John Armstrong has slammed National’s “arrogant” behaviour in Parliament saying it verges on “being a disgrace to itself and the institution”. This is incredibly strong language from a senior journalist. It is the result of a government which is undermining democratic accountability in Parliament by lying and obfuscating in answer to opposition questions.
Written By: - Date published: 7:14 am, July 13th, 2010 - 10 comments
Who’d be an MP? In many ways it’s a dog of a job, and the prospect of really “making a difference” seems remote. Politics seems to bring out the worst in people, and too many politicians have earned the low esteem in which they are held by the public. But despite all this, some people are drawn to politics for all the right reasons. Good on you all. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Written By: - Date published: 9:47 pm, July 5th, 2010 - 155 comments
Been a bit disappointed that there hasn’t been a post up here yet on the news out on Saturday that Steve Chadwick is seeking support for a Member’s Bill to make abortion truly on demand in NZ, to 24 weeks. Then I remembered that I still have posting rights from doing the 2008 General Election …
Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, July 4th, 2010 - 7 comments
David Farrar leapt to a “they did it too” defence of the taxpayer-funded ‘survey’ that National MPs are sending to selected voters around the country. I reckon he wrote the questions. It was Farrar’s dodgy polling that convinced National to run Melissa Lee as the candidate in Mt Albert. I guess Lee getting caught out with a dodgy ‘survey’ is just Farrar’s reverse midas touch striking again.
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, July 2nd, 2010 - 17 comments
Tolley’s snookered herself. Either: Parliamentary Library republishes the paper with the few phrases that annoy her gone = Looks like Library has caved to her attacks. Tolley’s a bully. Has attacked the Library’s neutrality. Or they decide the phrases are substantively OK. Republish = Tolley looks like an idiot. Her National Standards further undermined.
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 am, July 1st, 2010 - 58 comments
A reader sent us these images of an addressed ‘survey’ he received in the mail from Melissa Lee. It makes interesting reading because it’s not actually an attempt to gather our opinions to inform National’s policies. It’s a cynical attempt to influence our views while pretending to care what we think. And the Nats are using our money to fund it.
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, June 26th, 2010 - 20 comments
This week, the Government slammed through the Policing (Involvement in Local Authority Elections) Amendment Bill. It lets Police stand for local elections under the same rules as other public servants. It’s an issue that deserves to be debated. Instead, it was rushed through by this government in yet another shameful act of disregard for transparent government and active democracy.
Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, June 24th, 2010 - 36 comments
Well, this is pretty embarrassing for the Attorney-General Chris Finlayson. He’s the (big g) Government’s top lawyer, and he’s just been taken to school by one of those former teachers in Labour’s ranks that National is always mocking. It’s a little bit hard to be confident in the guy’s ability to be Attorney-General when he can’t understand a simple rule and signs false documents.
Written By: - Date published: 12:41 pm, June 23rd, 2010 - 40 comments
The most disturbing aspect of the handling of the Chinese security guard’s assault on Russel Norman is the way that the Nats are going to use it as an excuse to further restrict free speech. Don’t let them set us on the path to America’s notorious “free speech zones”.
Written By: - Date published: 11:02 am, June 23rd, 2010 - 90 comments
It is good to cast light on ministers putting personal spending on the taxpayer but the media is attacking legitimate spending too. As a result, MPs are being prevented from doing their jobs properly for fear of appearing profligate. Is this the desired effect of the chill wind blowing from the media on our representatives’ expenses, that even John Key warned about?
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 am, June 21st, 2010 - 15 comments
Georgina Te Heuheu and Bill English have been saying the money allocated in the Budget to PEDA might go to some other organisation. That would be a huge abuse of the Budget process, whereby the Government asks Parliament for permission to spend money on specific activities. Of course, really the Nats are just trying to muddy the water as questions on PEDA continue.
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