Shearer Says

Written By: - Date published: 3:37 pm, February 1st, 2013 - 57 comments
Categories: david shearer, labour - Tags:

Greetings and Happy New Year.

We have a big year ahead of us. We will be holding the Government to account and standing up for the hard working Kiwis that this Government has forgotten. But we also need to show New Zealanders there is a better way. There is a Labour way.

That’s why we’ll be concentrating our efforts on creating jobs, building affordable housing, standing up for children in hardship, ensuring New Zealand’s education is the world’s best, diversifying our economy and rebuilding Christchurch. These are the areas that will make a difference.

One thing is for sure, the global economic landscape has changed as a result of the financial crisis. It’s not just a blip.

The world has changed, but National hasn’t. We need fresh thinking and new ideas.

That was what I talked about in my opening speech at Parliament yesterday.

We need a hands-on active Government that is ready to get stuck in and make a real difference to people’s lives.

In my first speech of the year at the Wainuiomata Rugby Club on Sunday I set out how we can make that happen.

But I can’t do it alone. I need your help to get there. I want to hear your hopes for this country and your ideas on how we can get there. Because ultimately, this is about how we – together – can build a country we all have a stake in.

I’m looking forward to getting out across the country this year and will see you for a chat soon.

Thanks,
David Shearer
Leader of the Labour Party

57 comments on “Shearer Says ”

  1. Naki nark 1

    Mr Shearer this is February not Happy New Year. [This was sent out on 30 Jan, I missed it until now – r0b]

    You have said nothing AGAIN! Nothing that Donkey would not say.

    Please put Labour instead of your ego first.

    • McFlock 1.1

      or you could read/watch either of the speeches he linked to rather than Mrs Meecham’s guide to when it is appropriate etiquette to stop wishing people a happy new year.

  2. AmaKiwi 2

    “I want to hear your hopes for this country and your ideas on how we can get there.”

    My hope is for an open leadership contest because it will:

    1. Let the market place of public opinion decide who is the best candidate to beat National;

    2. Generate invaluable media coverage for Labour;

    3. Attract new members as the road show debate goes around the country;

    4. Show the caucus’s confidence in the members to make decisions;

    5. Heal the chasm between the caucus and many of the members;

    6. (I pray) convince the caucus we care about winning the election, not about caucus factionalism.

    7. If the winner of the contest has any political sense, he or she will make the runner-up their deputy, thereby further unifying the party.

    A year of primary contests between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton did all this for the Democrats and won them the White House.

  3. DJ 3

    I call bullshit on this cliche’d speech.

    “We will be holding the Government to account and standing up for the hard working Kiwis that this Government has forgotten.”

    How? What do you call hard working?

  4. Rhinocrates 4

    Oh fuck, not this again.

    “Holding the government to account” even appears in the first line past the fake greeting.

    Oh, and the “working Kiwis”, dog-whistling “not those beneficiary scum” AGAIN.

    We need fresh thinking and new ideas.

    That was what I talked about in my opening speech at Parliament yesterday.

    Yes, you talked about it fuckwit. I notice that you do that a lot.

    I want to hear your hopes for this country

    You’ve been hearing about them for a long, long time now, but you’re still not listening. Perhaps it would get through to you if I used Morse Code and my size 10 Blundstones?

    hands-on active

    Groan…

    Jesus, this wouldn’t pass the Turing Test.

    and will see you for a chat soon.

    Indeed, Vicar, and don’t mind the bitter almonds flavour in your tea.

  5. fatty 5

    I’m looking forward to getting out across the country this year and will see you for a chat soon.

    Nice one bro. I’m in the east of Chch…you know, that area that you don’t appear to give a shit about.
    I look forward to this chat, but I have to warn you, if you use the word rebuild in front of me I will probably stick a screwdriver through my left eye. Also, bring your guitar so we can have a singalong about you like putting your hands on stuff.

    • Rhinocrates 5.1

      probably stick a screwdriver through my left eye.

      While I fully understand the “make it stop” impulse, I do suggest that you’ve chosen the wrong eye and even the wrong head.

  6. just saying 6

    Dear Mr Shearer,

    I hope that the Labour leadership will stop trying to appeal to basest tendencies of the electorate by dog-whistling hatred towards adults who are not in paid employment. I note you have you have again chosen to do this in your newsletter. It is nasty, it is dangerous, and it contravenes the stated principles of the party.

    I hope that Labour will formulate policies that benefit the working poor to attract their votes instead.

    yours sincerely,
    just saying.

  7. Mr Shearer there are 170.000 + non hard working kiwi’s,thrown out of jobs,why not
    have a heart for them,why only focus on the section of the community that you find
    acceptable, there are also those who cannot work for health reasons,why not try and
    make their lives brighter and tilt your hat towards them.
    Mr Shearer your caucus has proved over and over that you have not held the Nact’s
    to account at all,there are many,many failings by the nacts and yet Labour are still
    31.5%, the housing kiwibuild policy only helps those who are already cash rich,there
    is no mention at all how labour will help those on low incomes or low benefits.
    There is also the concern by myself and others that our democratic rights have been
    stripped away in regard to allowing a vote on the leadership issue, to demand your
    mp’s vote for you in a ‘secret’ ballot and to demand they tell you they would support you,
    is not in the spirit of democracy,neither is denying members and affiliates a vote on the
    leadership issue,which is one of the reasons Labour is failing to get any bounce in the polls.
    ‘Think of not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’.
    ps: Can’t remember what American used that phrase, but apt here.

    • Rhinocrates 7.1

      Think of not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country

      JFK

      You make a very good point – Kennedy addressed it to common American citizens, but it should be thrown back at leaders (and “ashpirashnul” leaders) too.

      • Thanks for that Rhinocrates, yes, JFK one of america’s great politicians.

      • xtasy 7.1.2

        AND as I commented only a couple of days ago: Only ONE in Labour is able to hold charismatic speeches of the kind that JFK was in his day and age known for. His name is DAVID (NOT Shearer – but) CUNLIFFE!

      • CV - Real Labour 7.1.3

        Mr Shearer your caucus has proved over and over that you have not held the Nact’s to account at all,there are many,many failings by the nacts and yet Labour are still 31.5%

        Relax everyone. Although I didn’t realise it at first, I’ve been advised by many people on the other thread that 31.5% is actually a good, respectable, solid number. As such we can be confident that everything is on the right track.

        Just thought that I would share that bit of info with all you guys so you can all have a good weekend without worry 🙂

        • fenderviper 7.1.3.1

          Thanks to my son and his fondness for Harry Potter movies:

          Hermione Granger: “Just relax, it’s Devels Snare, if you don’t relax it will just kill you faster!”

          Ron Weasley: “Oh great now I can relax”

  8. One Tāne Huna 8

    Dear Mr. Shearer,

    I think it’s lovely that your brains trust has finally recognised that you need our help. Now get the fuck out of the way and let us clean up your mess.

    Thirty one percent is a fail; resign, move on.

    Yours sincerely,

    OAB.

    • David H 8.1

      He can do what the fuck he likes. (Resigning would be preferable) I WON’T vote for him.

  9. xtasy 9

    “But I can’t do it alone. I need your help to get there. I want to hear your hopes for this country and your ideas on how we can get there.”

    Hey, poke a pin in my arm, please. Step on my toe please. This is not real, is it???

    This must be some kind of bad dream again.

    Anybody in the Labour leadership, who wants to hear what the people out here think, would just need to spend a bit of time every day to read the various stories and comments on this website and forum.

    There is a major disconnect!!! I hear, read and see nothing but DISCONNECTION.

    Step down Shearer, you have until Monday to save a sinking ship. I hope you learned paddling a little life raft while you were up north last holidays. Or you may sink with the whole ship soon.

  10. bad12 10

    Dear Dave, it’s a month into the New Year and the Christmas overspend has seen me really short, you know how it is kids looking at you expectantly and all that,

    I am outta Mango-skins big time and if there’s any old bread lying round after that Christmas barbecue you fella’s had do you think you could maybe give a couple of slices a squirt of sauce and send them my way,

    Yours (up),

    A Sickness Bene…

  11. xtasy 11

    Dear David “hollow” Words Shearer —

    Where do you stand on these topics and issues?

    http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/2013/01/11/new-zealand-british-style-work-tests-concern-tests-were-developed-by-disability-expert-prof-sir-mansel-aylward/

    http://www.politicus.org.uk/news/new-zealand-%E2%80%98britishstyle-work-tests-concern%E2%80%99-tests-were-developed-by-disability-%E2%80%98expert%E2%80%99-prof-sir-mansel-aylward_1833

    And the author of these “presentations”, comparing benefit dependence to drug dependence, was put into his job as Principal Health Advisor for MSD and WiNZ by the last Labour government in 2007:

    http://www.politicus.org.uk/news/new-zealand-%E2%80%98britishstyle-work-tests-concern%E2%80%99-tests-were-developed-by-disability-%E2%80%98expert%E2%80%99-prof-sir-mansel-aylward_1833

    http://www.gpcme.co.nz/pdf/2012/Fri_DaVinci_1400_Bratt_Medical%20Certificates%20are%20Clinical%20Instruments%20too%20-%20June%202012.pdf

    (see pages 3, 16 and 33 of the latter “presentation” for that “advisor’s” likening of beneficiaries to drug addicts!)

    Your comments and ideas on all this would be most welcome, dear David. We have been waiting for a year now!

  12. Jackal 12

    On another thread, CV UnReal Labour asks:

    Whose [being] despondent?

    I reference nearly every comment above, and would be hard pressed to find any other thread on The Standard that’s so negative and full of people who are obviously despondent.

    Shearer offers a happy New Year in his first newsletter for 2013, and is spat on.

    Shearer says Labour will be holding the NactUF to account, and this is met with howls that Labour hasn’t held Act to account at all. Anybody who bothers to watch Parliament TV or receives Labours press releases knows that to be untrue.

    Shearer says Labour will be standing up for the hard working Kiwis that this Government has forgotten, and this is met with more accusations that Shearer is a beneficiary basher.

    Shearer says he wants to hear people’s hopes for this country, and this is met with cries for him to resign. Nobody bothers to spell out what their hopes for New Zealand are… Have your despondencies extinguished all your hopes or something?

    Shearer says he’s looking forward to getting out across the country this year to meet and talk with people, and receives threats of a screwdriver in the eye and poisoned tea.

    The illegality of such comments aside, they’re entirely uncalled for and you guys have obviously completely lost it.

    However despite your negative bullshit, here goes…

    One of my hopes for New Zealand is that there’s an early election… With the left now having the numbers to form a centre-left government, and Labour, NZ First, the Greens and Mana already showing they can work together, I’m hopeful that a progressive and constructive coalition government will be formed to undo some of the damage the neoliberal agenda has caused.

    I’m also hopeful that the Greens and Labours complementary housing policies are fully implemented, there’s a huge shift towards a clean and green economy, and that the living standards of those living in poverty are improved through better welfare systems and more employment. Higher wages and better conditions wouldn’t go amiss either.

    Perhaps I’m being too optimistic, but I also hope that the left wing can learn to work more constructively together to ensure the best results are attained. In fact I also hope that the right wing start to realize what’s best for New Zealand as well, and put their personal investments and self interests aside to start doing the right thing for the entire country.

    So basically I’m hoping for more enlightenment and co-operation… But considering the previous ignorant comments on this thread, maybe I’m hoping for too much?

    • rosy 12.1

      I’m also hopeful that the Greens and Labours complementary housing policies are fully implemented, there’s a huge shift towards a clean and green economy, and that the living standards of those living in poverty are improved through better welfare systems and more employment. Higher wages and better conditions wouldn’t go amiss either.

      This is not going to happen under a Labour government that is pandering to the middle class. Either it’s going to be elected and turn it’s back on everything Shearer has said, or it’s going to continue the middle road, safe (politically) course.

      If it’s the first you’ll get your hopes fulfilled, but where’s the honour, trust and truth in that – or the 2 term endorsement from people who have been lied to? If it’s the 2nd we carry on in the same direction, but not quite as quickly. I’m sure, as a doubter, I’d feel much better if I knew what David Shearer actually believed in.

      Power just for the sake of it is not worth the effort in my book. Power for genuine belief in a fair and just society is. I realise it doesn’t bother you too much as a Green supporter – you’re after a place in government on the back of safe Labour and you’re not keen on Labour heading back to similar political space that Labour needs to occupy to be true to the principles it supposedly espouses.

      But it does bother me. I’m a Labour supporter, not a Greens supporter. I could head toward the Greens, but the attitude of winning power by denying principles that you’re comfortable with Labour doing could lead to a National/Green coalition (depending on which leader prevails) and it leaves me cold. The trouble is that leaves me with a Labour party promising to be National-Lite.

    • @ Jackal, there are none so blind as those who cannot see.

      • wobble 12.2.1

        Good call VV.

        Jackal – I find it sad that you attack commentators here for their clearly held belief in the failure of Shearer’s leadership. Yet you dogmatically defend everything Shearer does.

        And if 31% isn’t rational scientific evidence of failure, then what do you define failure as?

        • Colonial Viper 12.2.1.1

          Well, it’s actually 31.5%. Please note, that last 0.5% is important in situations like this, please do not omit it, every decimal place counts at the moment.

          • Anne 12.2.1.1.1

            Rumour has it that it was actually 31.7%, but they rounded it off to 31.5. I reckon Jackal should email Morgan with a complaint.

    • fatty 12.3

      Shearer says he’s looking forward to getting out across the country this year to meet and talk with people, and receives threats of a screwdriver in the eye and poisoned tea.

      Was that me? I made it clear I was planning to put a screwdriver through my own eye, not Shearer’s eye, and only if he used the word rebuild.
      Get down off your high donkey Jackal, you can’t read from up there

      • fenderviper 12.3.1

        +1

        Read it again Jackal, it clearly says a skyscraper full of flies.

        As for the poisoned tea, I thought Rhinocrates was meaning it was made with some dodgy cream of the body temperature variety.

    • AmaKiwi 12.4

      @ Jackal. I don’t see my comment (2 above) as negative.

      I am convinced an open leadership contest to which the press and public are invited would do wonders for the Labour Party. It will be a huge news event and keep the media spotlight on Labour for a month or more. It’s publicity we couldn’t buy for a million backs.

    • Jenny 12.5

      This truly is good news. And thanks to Jackal for bring it up.

      NZ First, the Greens and Mana already showing they can work together

      Jackal

      I presume Jackal is referring to the work all three parties have have contributed towards the parliamentary crisis in manufacturing.

      Great work by all three parties. working together, they have achieved more than either of these parties on their own could have done in forcing this issue back into the public arena in the face of John Key’s vehement denial that there even is a crisis.

      Now if only all three parties could get together for a parliamentary enquiry into climate change.

      Because it is this sort of broad consensus that will be needed in this fight as well.

      • Jenny 12.5.1

        More good news.

        I have been talking to senior New Zealand First activists. They also are becoming personally convinced of the reality and dangers of climate change. This was from a previously held conservative opinion, that climate change was not an issue.

        However Now the bad news.

        David Shearer the leader of the biggest opposition party, and probable next Prime Minister is an open ignorer of climate change. Not mentioning it once in his listing of where Labour will be “concentrating our efforts“.

        …..we’ll be concentrating our efforts on creating jobs, building affordable housing, standing up for children in hardship, ensuring New Zealand’s education is the world’s best, diversifying our economy and rebuilding Christchurch. These are the areas that will make a difference.

        David Shearer

        I would like to tell David Shearer and all politicians that these areas you mentioned, will not make any difference, if you continue to ignore climate change.

        As Naomi Kleine says climate change has the power to undue all your past victories and current campaigns.

        • Jenny 12.5.1.1

          ….Climate change has the ability to undo your historic victories and crush your present struggles. So it’s time to come together, for real, and fight to preserve and extend what you care most about — which means engaging in the climate fight, really engaging, as if your life and your life’s work, even life itself, depended on it. Because they do.

          Naomi Kleine “I’d Rather Fight Like Hell”

          To all the four opposition political parties; Labour, New Zealand First, Greens, Mana I would like to amplify Naomi Kleines call, that it’s time to come together, for real, and fight to preserve and extend what you care about most.

          This means engaging in the climate fight, really engaging as if your life and your all your life’s work depend on it.

          To this end, I think that the great work that these four parties have shown over the crisis in manufacturing, should not be a one off. But should be continued and extended. I would like to ask all four parties to consider holding another parliamentary enquiry some time in the coming two years, this time, into the crisis in the climate.

          Even more than the crisis in manufacturing which is being ignored by John Key and his government, the Key government is even weaker and more vulnerable in their record of complete lack of action and backtracking over the crisis in the climate.

          Just as they did for the ‘Parliamentary Inquiry into the Crisis in Manufacturing’, National will again refuse to attend. Which will further weaken and expose them in the eyes of the voting public. Such an enquiry as well as exposing this government’s lack of concern on the climate, would also be complementary to, and extend the work of, the current all party Parliamentary Enquiry into Manufacturing, by helping identify where many of the future jobs in manufacturing will come from in this, the 21st Century.

  13. Tiresias 13

    “One thing is for sure, the global economic landscape has changed as a result of the financial crisis. It’s not just a blip.” – David Shearer.

    Looks like the same old global economic landscape to me. Sure the US tax-payers have had to bail-out the Too-Big-To-Fail-However-Badly-They-Screw-Up-Banks but they’re still lending into the recovering property bubble rather than business and paying obscene bonuses to themseves, the Euro is still tottering as it has been for four years but the few Greeks, Spaniards and Italians still working are hanging on in there being screwed into the ground while pensions, welfare and public spending on schools and hospitals are being slashed to repay their Government’s debts to German Banks, the Chairman of now-publicly-owned Barclays in the UK is expecting a million pound bonus for papering over his bank’s screw ups while all the other major UK Banks are getting wet bus-ticket fines for screwing over their customers with unnecessary insurance, miss-sold credit-swaps and fiddling the LIBOR rate, and of course paying their directors and executives obscene bonuses for all the extra work involved in sweeping it under the carpet, but everything is well on track to smooth over this little blip which, let’s face it, only crashed a few tens of thousands of those irritatingly small businesses who used to compete with the big boys, and put a few million peasants out of work.

    Do I hear from you – or anywhere at the political level – any serious reconsideration of Modern Monetary Theory? Do you hear any politican questioning the wisdom of fractional reserve banking? Has anyone suggested we change the global economic landscape by asking why a Government with sovereign power to issue its own currency should have to go cap in hand to foreign banks and borrow money at whatever rate those banks decides reflects the ‘risk’? Do you really believe that anyone with more than three functioning brain cells believes that if you were to get access to the Treasury benches you would do anything more than tinker with a few insignificant architectural aspects of even New Zealand’s economic landscape with a few tweaks to the tax rates and few million dollars moved from porrk-barrel A to pork-barrel B. Do you think you could do anything more to the global economic landscape even if you wanted to?

  14. Rhinocrates 14

    The illegality of such comments

    Jekyll, you really, really do need to understand the definitions of words it seems. Otherwise you sauce micturation might be taken as a palindrome! For cytoplasm’s sake!

    Shearer says Labour will be holding the NactUF to account

    Sorry, but waving a stick around and declaring, “Behold, I have slain the dragon” does not mean that one has actually slain the dragon. The dragon has to be seen to be dead – it rather helps one’s credibility. If it is lying down, not breathing and there is a sword sticking out of it, blood is leaking all over the place, the princess is safe and so on, then that’s even better.

    “A hack in my department sent out a press release saying that the dragon is naughty” is not enough.

    One of my hopes

    I hope for bunnies and ice cream. So what?

    Aah-choo! Cough!

    • David H 14.1

      Yep could be down right embarrassing to find out you had only stunned, and mildly wounded, and pissed off said beast, as it wakes up, and fries your ass!

  15. Draco T Bastard 16

    That’s why we’ll be concentrating our efforts on creating jobs,

    When will these twerps wake up to the fact that it’s jobs that’s the problem but the misallocation caused by capitalism?

    • Draco T Bastard 16.1

      When will these twerps wake up to the fact that it’s not jobs that’s the problem but the misallocation caused by capitalism?

      Missed out a word.

      • blue leopard 16.1.1

        @ DT Bastard
        I didn’t even notice your missing word, yet got the sense right anyway(!) Are you meaning misallocation of capital?

        Answer: When the twerps that that are advising & lobbying them start to get real and engage with the rest of humanity and realise that their own self-interest really isn’t going to make the world go round in quite the way they were brain-washed to believe; that non of us live in a bubble, we all survive through co-operation and rampant individualism is the biggest farce ever sold to humans.

        **love the word twerps thanx, haven’t heard it for ages…very appropriate**

      • Rogue Trooper 16.1.2

        now that’s twinning if you check the times, i was still having a cuppa Looking Out My Back Door, do do do looking out my back door

  16. NoseViper (The Nose knows) 17

    Jackal at 12

    I’m also hopeful that the Greens and Labours complementary housing policies are fully implemented, there’s a huge shift towards a clean and green economy, and that the living standards of those living in poverty are improved through better welfare systems and more employment. Higher wages and better conditions wouldn’t go amiss either.

    Perhaps I’m being too optimistic

    Correct Jackal.

  17. Fortran 18

    Having considered opinion poll positions over the last 12 months it is apparent that the Greens are Winners.
    Am I unusual in that I, like most people, like to vote for Winners ?
    I am still hoping the Labour this year will come out as Winners, as the thought of the Greens coming out on top again this year causes me concern, as I do not believe that they can be trusted – all rhetoric with no substance – but currently winning the MSM over continuously.

  18. jim 19

    I remember Mike Moore when chancing his chances at the general election.His pleading and i mean pleading cry was “give us a go”like a man possessed to the point of mental breakdown.A sad sight.

    David Shearer is not quite to that point of desperation but not too far off.And that is also sad,not for the centrists of the Party,but for the left,who!s life long understanding, belief and steadfast support of Labour !s socialist caring founding was all about, to be sneered at by centrist usurpation.

  19. Ad 20

    His priorities are:

    – Jobs
    – Housing
    – Children
    – Education
    – Economy
    – Christchurch

    So far we have seen: – housing policy.
    National are well on the way to negating that, because of poor policy preparation from Labour that forgot to define its terms and set the discourse.

    I don’t mind if Jackal invokes us all to be more positive. Good on Jackal.

    If only Shearer could use the standard rhetorical ploy of calling for unity among the progressives.
    It’s actually not about Labour. It really is about New Zealand.

    But of those six areas, we have seen one launched. Boldly to start with but more querelously as the debate ranges, spreads and breaks up through lack of focus.

    Shearer has five policy launches to go this year, if he is to make a difference in the polls.
    But Jackal, I will be more positive with results. Policy launch one: functionally Zero result according to popular opinion.

    I am not waiting around like we all did for Goff.

    No more waiting for the Great Tiny Step Forward.

    I want leadership change to launch those next five policy areas without more stupid mistakes.

  20. Rogue Trooper 21

    JHCEEC JHCEEC So if you’re gonna take a message ‘cross the floor, Maybe put it down somewhere over the other side? I can’t take this tail, oh no more, yet I guarantee you that it aint your day, your day, it aint your day. (Big Leap of Faith said the Big Friendly Giant; and everything will be peachy)

    -James

  21. xtasy 22

    I am so desperately waiting for the eventual post headline: “Shearer once said”, or “Shearer used to say”. That is what I am waiting for, as this “says” business, while ignoring all comments, contributions, suggestions, ideas and all other kinds of posts, does not justify that idiot to even get quoted here.

    He asks for ideas, suggestions, contributions and support, and he ignores all that people here write and say.

    Is this for damned real?

    Help the man out of his misery, send him an email, resign David, you are a useless DICK!

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    20 hours ago
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    7 days ago
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    7 days ago
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