Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, December 3rd, 2011 - 103 comments
Quite apart from the broken promise, isn’t it the job of a “Conservation” Minister to, you know, conserve? Instead of leading the mining charge?
Written By: - Date published: 5:02 pm, November 29th, 2011 - 68 comments
In what must be a record for broken promises, National have on Day 1 of government delivered a letter to Forest and Bird that they will renege on their promise of public consultation before allowing mining on public conservation land. Denniston will be mined, without the public having a say.
Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, August 12th, 2011 - 35 comments
An Auckland University study, “Not in our waters, surely?” was released last night. It details a gruesome list of human rights abuses, crimes, and breaches of labour law being carried out abroad the slave ships contracted by our quota-holders to harvest our fish. Now, the government is moving to deport the prime witnesses before they can testify.
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, June 25th, 2011 - 14 comments
The spotlight was on Christchurch last week, and will be on Te Tai Tokerau over the weekend. Lots of stories are slipping by under the radar. But here are a couple of pieces that deserve further comment.
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 pm, June 15th, 2011 - 8 comments
Fascinating programme on TVOne Sunday this week – see it here and here – contrasting the Australian approach to mining with the disaster at Pike River. The key difference was the existence of union safety check inspectors. Australia use them, we don’t.
Written By: - Date published: 6:18 am, March 9th, 2011 - 54 comments
I/S at No Right Turn has done more excellent work. He’s revealed the official advice Kate Wilkinson was given on the minimum wage. The advice says there is a trade-off between jobs and the minimum wage, but even a rise to $15 an hour would cause an increase wages for low-income earners well above the cost in jobs.
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, January 24th, 2011 - 27 comments
You’ll remember the disgraceful Schmuck scandal when Minister John Carter had clauses inserted into legislation specifically to legalise Doug Schmuck’s annexation of a public reserve. John Key took no action. Now, Kate Wilkinson and David Carter got in on the act – forcing DoC to sign over more public land for private use.
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, September 10th, 2010 - 10 comments
There seems to be confusing in National’s camp about further attacks on workers rights.
Unfortunately this tallies with rumours they’re planning big changes in a second term.
Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, August 27th, 2010 - 61 comments
According to OIA papers released to the NZ Herald, Key’s plan to extend the 90 day “fire at will” law to all businesses is an ACT party takeover of government policy.
Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson recommended against the extent of the plan. She was overruled by Cabinet in response to ACT threats. As Trevor Mallard said, if Key had any balls he would’ve stuck to his Minister’s advice.
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, August 6th, 2010 - 280 comments
When National rammed through the first version of the 90 day fire at will law it claimed the period would be a ‘choice’ negotiated fairly between employees and employers.
Now employers are advertising it as a precondition in job ads, with the Minister backing them all the way.
Written By: - Date published: 5:46 pm, July 30th, 2010 - 10 comments
While there are some ministers who are pretty scared of fronting up for their portfolios, Kate Wilkinson is one of the worst.
There is also this little gem about a Minister that is happy to be anywhere that Sean Plunket isn’t. I guess this image will get a lot of use. Anyone got a good caption?
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, March 28th, 2010 - 23 comments
According to a poll in the the Sunday Star Times, John Key’s mining plan has turned off one in six National voters. The government claims not to be worried by the negative public relation. John Key is starting to sound very out of touch on the mining issue, and that could be his biggest mistake yet.
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 am, March 27th, 2010 - 15 comments
Beyond this opening gambit on mining, National clearly has a larger plan. It is going to back down over Great Barrier, whether or not that was never part of the plan all along. But it is lining up more areas for later on. Areas like Dun Mountain near Nelson. Supposedly there’s gold in that there hill. But it also happens to be the site of one section of the John Key Memorial Cycleway…
Written By: - Date published: 4:29 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 37 comments
Over the last month or so National’s pollster David Farrar has been running a series of posts desperately trying to pin the spike in youth unemployment under National to Labour’s decision to abolish youth rates. I’d been wondering why the obsession with youth rates until I saw this exchange between Roger Douglas and Kate Wilkinson …
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, September 8th, 2009 - 18 comments
By John Ryall, SFWU National Secretary While The Standard readers know that the air traffic controllers were the excuse that Kate Wilkinson used to signal a repeal of parts of the 2008 Employment Relations Act (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Act, they are probably not aware of who is really going to be affected by …
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 4th, 2009 - 6 comments
Yesterday, National’s Kate Wilkinson tried to use a dispute over how to apply the new rest breaks law for air traffic controllers as a pretext for taking away our right to rest and meal breaks. She tried to paint the dispute over breaks as being about union intransigence, with the “Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) unwilling …
Written By: - Date published: 9:47 pm, September 3rd, 2009 - 15 comments
In 1908, the miners at Blackball took a famous strike over the right to take rest breaks at work. For most of the rest of the century this was enshrined in law and in our culture as a basic right of all working New Zealanders. That is, of course, until the National Government of the …
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, August 28th, 2009 - 12 comments
“I’m not going to resign” – Kate Wilkinson It’s one of the truisms of politics that when you’re a minister and you say you’re not resigning, it’s only a matter of time until you are. Kate Wilkinson’s behaviour has been almost universally disgraceful- the Kiwisaver debacle, her vitriol during the Shawn Tan affair, refusing the let …
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, August 12th, 2009 - 22 comments
The Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, is holding a meeting today with 25 top CEOs on the number of New Zealanders who are killed every year at work. The fact it’s being billed as an example of ‘partnership’ shows a lot about this Government’s worldview, because she’s specifically excluded any representation from the workers who’re …
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, July 14th, 2009 - 6 comments
One of the most fundamental rights at work is the right to come home at the end of the day healthy and safe. Now that work right, like so many others, has come under attack from National. NOHSAC, the National Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee, was set up by Margaret Wilson in 2003 to …
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, July 12th, 2009 - 32 comments
What a horrifying sight today’s Q+A interview with Minister of Food Safety Kate Wilkinson made. It was a shameful performance from a media point of view, with Wilkinson looking ineffectual, implausible and well out of her depth. But from a political point of view it was gobsmacking. Wilkinson enthusiastically admitted that she didn’t agree with new …
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, April 1st, 2009 - 14 comments
No Right Turn exposes ineffectual government spin on the fire at will act. The select committee procedure would have improved the bill. Perhaps to the point that it at least lived up to the spin. Earlier in the month, Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson warned employers not to abuse their new 90-day fire at will …
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, February 9th, 2009 - 34 comments
There is a rumour in the Dom Post and the Herald that the minimum wage will be announced today and the Nats are going to increase it to either $12.50 or $12.40 depending on whether it’s Fairfax or APN you’re reading. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true as John Key knows full well …
Written By: - Date published: 8:46 pm, December 9th, 2008 - 22 comments
Kate Wikinson, John Key’s hapless Minister of Labour, has told NZPA the public shouldn’t get to have their say on the fire at will bill because, apparently, we already had our chance with Wayne Mapp’s private member’s bill back in 2006. This argument is complete bollocks, and she knows it. Perhaps that’s why she refused …
Written By: - Date published: 12:36 pm, December 4th, 2008 - 74 comments
The Herald continues its campaigning today with a puff piece about a poll that claims business wants National’s 90 day ‘fire at will‘ policy enacted as soon as possible. The policy would remove the right of any worker in a small business to appeal against unfair dismissal during their first 90 days in a new …
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 16th, 2008 - 17 comments
When the EPMU released its investigation notes on Shawn Tan it was obvious that some right-wing bloggers would seize on the fact that Tan had been employed on a probationary agreement and stupidly claim that, therefore, the union was hypocritical for opposing National’s fire at will policy (which creates a 90 day no-rights period for …
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, June 12th, 2008 - 22 comments
With tones of the Brethren debacle we’re getting conflicting reports from the National Party as to whether or not they have haven’t have met with the Real Estate Institute of NZ. Simon Power says unequivocally that National hasn’t met with REINZ since the Real Estate Agents Act Bill [cheers lemsip, typo] went for public submissions. Yet …
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: 7:02 pm, August 29th, 2007 - 3 comments
Yet another policy inoculation today from the Nats, this time on paid parental leave. Judith Collins is now “generally not against it” and in typically decisive fasion John Key “thinks” he’s for it. What’s really astounding about this u-turn is how many of their MPs are on record as having vehemently opposed it since day …
Comments