Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, August 21st, 2011 - 31 comments
About now or very shortly, Trevor Mallard and Cameron Slater should be dismounting from the cycling race that has obsessively awaited by the right on the blogosphere. I’ve been aware of that this ‘political’ event was going to happen because of the frequent waffling that shows up on posts from the right. But it was nice day – I went along to exercise the car and to see the start.
Update: Trevor won..
Written By: - Date published: 9:40 pm, August 8th, 2011 - 107 comments
It’s bad to have a senior frontbencher attack the media.
It’s really really bad when that frontbencher is in charge of your election campaign.
Written By: - Date published: 8:42 am, May 7th, 2011 - 33 comments
The semi-hysterical responses of some of the unreconstructed left and pseudo-left about some at the Standard supporting Hone Harawira and the Mana Party has really been quite revealing. They seem to think, with a clarity of logic Garth George would surely envy, that refusal to endorse a public burning of Harawira constitutes some kind of crazily misplaced …
Written By: - Date published: 8:51 pm, May 5th, 2011 - 158 comments
Hone Harawira left himself open to attack with his comments on Te Karere.
But that doesn’t excuse the disgraceful beat-up executed so well by the right’s smear machine.
If this is how the election is gonna play out it’ll be no good for anyone.
Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, March 21st, 2011 - 28 comments
As you know, Trevor Mallard is a keen cyclist. He touched wheels with another competitor in the R&R sports tour on Saturday. 3 cyclists went down at 40km/hr. Trev broke his femur and shoulder blade. It looks like he’s dealing with it OK. Maybe he should stick to leisurely rides on the John Key Memorial Cycleway in future.
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, January 20th, 2011 - 14 comments
Mallard has laid a Privileges complaint over Brownlee’s Hobbit lies. Good. Brownlee and Key deserved to be hammered for their part in the Warners/Jackson shake-down that cost just $34m and work rights. Lockwood won’t uphold the complaint though. He hates Brownlee. Not enough to severely embarrass his party in election year though.
Written By: - Date published: 12:33 pm, November 17th, 2010 - 23 comments
With Pansy Wong in hiding on John Key’s orders, rort-buster Pete Hodgson laid the blame her corruption and all the other rorts squarely on Key yesterday. In question after question, Key couldn’t make a serious defence of his record. Then, he made an extraordinary admission: his ministers will keep on rorting – it’s up to Labour to catch them.
Written By: - Date published: 12:28 am, June 24th, 2010 - 27 comments
Asked if a win against Paraguay should warrant a public holiday, John Key replied “Damn fine idea. I want the country to enjoy this. They’ll be dancing all over the place”. Trevor Mallard has taken up the cause and will ask Parliament’s permission for it to debate a Bill that will create a one-off public holiday on Friday if the All Whites win. There’s strong public support.
Written By: - Date published: 6:32 pm, June 22nd, 2010 - 4 comments
Good to see that the Greens presented to Parliament today a 37,000 signature petition expressing concern about the Government’s National Standards policy…
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, March 18th, 2010 - 27 comments
Which minister will be next to go? Rodney Hide or Anne Tolley? If competence was a condition of keeping their job, both would be long gone. But doing a good minister has never been a job requirement in John Key’s government. It comes down to which of them makes a spectacular mistake so serious that …
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, February 24th, 2010 - 26 comments
Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, February 22nd, 2010 - 61 comments
Labour is a pretty risk-adverse organisation. Making those two unorthodox attacks on those two ministers, and pulling it off both times, shows that Labour has got the measure of Key’s drop-kick ministers and is feeling more confident in itself.
Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, February 19th, 2010 - 11 comments
When you’ve got a Finance Minister who can’t get stats right, a Social Welfare Minister who can’t define her flagship policy, and an Education Minister who can’t explain her flagship policy, it’s easy for an incompetent Women’s Affairs Minister to slip through.
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 9 comments
It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, January 29th, 2010 - 62 comments
Check out this exchange between Trevor Mallard and Metiria Turei on his Facebook page (great how the new media allows these spur of the moment debates): Trevor Mallard: 25c/hour. $10 week for 40 hours then minus tax, extra acc, ets charges. Not fair John Key. It should be $15 Metiria Turei: Trevor, with genuine respect, …
Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, September 27th, 2009 - 19 comments
Trev on the money laundering bill. Has a go at a certain Bill who has been laundering a lot of our money. Very good:
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: 12:48 pm, July 3rd, 2009 - 36 comments
I reckon Red Alert, the Labour MPs’ blog, has been a huge success. It’s great to see MPs unscripted and it’s good for them to get the instant public reaction in the comments. It’s also a bit of a political risk. When you’re allowing instant, uncensored public reaction you can’t hide from criticism and you …
Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, June 21st, 2009 - 17 comments
Commenting on Key’s policy to force the Guardians of the Super Fund to invest 40% of funds in New Zealand, ACT’s Roger Douglas notices a pattern we’ve posted on here at The Standard before: “This only enforces the emerging trend we have seen between Mr Key and Mr English. Mr Key announces a stupid idea …
Written By: - Date published: 5:11 pm, May 16th, 2009 - 39 comments
The ongoing filibuster is highlighting the intransigent nature of the NACT government. NACT ministers are getting annoyed by having to remain at the house to push through their legislation. However there is a perfectly reasonable offer on the table – but they’d prefer to have the filibuster maintained rather than get the holes fixed in …
Written By: - Date published: 1:25 pm, March 13th, 2009 - 31 comments
The Dominion Post has this column on Fridays called the Diary [offline*]. It’s written by some anonymous staffer and is supposed to be a witty and irreverent take on minor happenings over the last week. We’re clearly getting under someone’s skin there, because this week they’ve taken a potshot at us over Trevor Mallard commenting …
Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, September 9th, 2008 - 58 comments
God, another leak from National, this time their research, science and technology policy. From Mallard’s press release: “Mr Key should not only be embarrassed, he should be very worried about the shambolic show he is running. Contrary to his desperate claims last week, I did not find any of these policies in any café. Or …
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, September 5th, 2008 - 29 comments
The leaks from within the National camp just keep on coming. Last night Trevor Mallard had the privilege of releasing National’s environment policy on 3 News thanks to a leak from the inside, destroying National’s planned policy launch on Saturday and exposing serious divisions within the party. From this leak we can tell there’s either …
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