Archive for June, 2009

Pork Board desperation and farm tour success

Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, June 5th, 2009 - 15 comments

Animal Liberation Aotearoa (ALA) have for the past year or so been running a series of farm tours, taking members of the public onto factory farms to see for themselves how they work. They do these openly and in broad daylight, accepting the possible risk of minor criminal charges that may result (though thus far none have).

Time for a change

Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, June 5th, 2009 - 112 comments

Sorry for the long post. This is my transcript of John Key’s interview with Mary Wilson on Checkpoint last night. It’s just incredible. Key obviously shielded Worth with a *nudge* *wink* ‘investigation’ into the sexual harassment complaint and his now trying to cover his own arse. I’ve added my own comments in italics and taken […]

Housie

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 9 comments

I was listening to Parliament on the wireless this afternoon. First. Question Time. Bennett was asked how many jobs the Jobs Summit has saved. Proudly, she announced ‘223’. But wait! A few minutes later she corrected that to, wait for it, 303! After all that 223 303 jobs saved. A $65,000 talkfest of our mortal gods, the leaders […]

Slippery

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 15 comments

Mary Wilson interviews John Key on Checkpoint. Brilliant. Sean Plunket interviews Richard Prebble and Richard Griffin on Morning Report. Grubby old men. Time for a change. UPDATE [a_y_b]: That first one’s unbelievable. Here’s the embed.

Quandary

Written By: - Date published: 8:06 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 59 comments

This evening, Labour tabled in the House, with her permission, a statement from the woman that Richard Worth harrassed with his corrupt ‘jobs for favours’ proposals. Journalists got copies and have quoted from it but not shown it. Except, the Herald briefly posted an image of it. Here’s why we’re in a quandary. We’ve been […]

Get a shave mate, you’re the PM

Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 47 comments

If you saw last night’s One News piece on the Worth fiasco, you might have noticed Key looking particularly haggard. This photo doesn’t really do justice to how crap he actually looked – grey, sallow, a lot of wrinkles and bags under the eyes, and a serious five o’clock shadow. Johno, if you can’t control your […]

Rhetoric & Reality 2: Jobs

Written By: - Date published: 1:29 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 7 comments

Before the election National’s “Employment & Workplace Relations” policy set out the principle of “building opportunity for all”, and the need to “Expand job opportunities for those having difficulty getting work -like young, inexperienced people or new immigrants.” The Job Summit talk-fest paid plenty of lip service to the importance of jobs: Key: [Jobs] count […]

Breakfast covers the Worth investigation

Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, June 4th, 2009 - 18 comments

First it was Paul Henry and Guyon Espiner. Both agree Key needs to “come clean with the country and give us more detail than he has”. Next up was Goff. Fair analysis. Didn’t gloat. One of his best appearances so far.

General Election in 2010?

Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, June 4th, 2009 - 11 comments

National promised to do a lot of things in their first term such as: Not selling state assets. Keeping WFF and other entitlements as they were. Keeping superannuation ticking along nicely Giving everyone “north of $50 a week” They have broken two of their promises. No State Asset Sales will turn into a “For Sale” […]

Worse and worse

Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, June 4th, 2009 - 77 comments

This just gets worse for Key. It has emerged that Worth was offering ‘jobs for favours’ for a young woman. Goff passed her allegations on to Key. According to the Dom (physical version, online is different) Key said “I investigated them and there didn’t appear any truth to them and I accepted Dr Worth’s version […]

Question time

Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, June 4th, 2009 - 44 comments

John Key’s making a real hash of this latest Worth scandal. There was the secretive way he went about things yesterday, which is just not acceptable from a Prime Minister in New Zealand. He wasted several opportunities to correct his mistake and give full details during the day. Yet the story is still coming out. […]

Iz satisfard

Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, June 4th, 2009 - 2 comments

hattip: Maia, Anthony Karinski

Happy Birthday lprent!

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 am, June 4th, 2009 - 20 comments

Happy 50th lprent! Now here’s someone Russel Norman could legitimately call grey 😉 But seriously, Lynn is a baby-boomer, one of those generation born with a golden spoon who enjoyed a free education while lumbering my generation with debt. A generation who are now further stealing from mine by refusing to pay for their own […]

I wish to complain…

Written By: - Date published: 10:42 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 31 comments

It turns out that Phil Goff was aware of an allegation about Richard Worth weeks ago that may relate to the current investigation. Labour leader Phil Goff took an allegation of Richard Worth’s inappropriate behaviour towards a woman to Prime Minister John Key about a month ago, it emerged tonight. This was apparently not the […]

Barrel scraped

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 41 comments

A dude told me a good political rule of thumb the other day. ‘If Farrar won’t go near something, it’s pure political poison. Farrar can be low but he’s got good instincts for saving his brand. Look at the way he dropped Lee and his Mt Albert blogmobile’. So I had to laugh when I […]

Update on Worth

Written By: - Date published: 4:40 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 41 comments

From the fuzz: Police confirm that a complaint was made in Auckland two weeks ago and related to a recent alleged incident. Preliminary inquiries were made and the complaint transferred to Wellington Police for further investigation. Meanwhile, Key has revealed that he lost confidence in Worth last Tuesday but let him keep his job until […]

Nat discovers the virtues of listening

Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 3 comments

Here’s an exert from Nick Smith’s speech to the 2009 New Zealand Planning Institute Conference: I acknowledge, that while the bulk of submissions have been supportive of the Bill, there is considerable debate over the provisions that remove the non-complying activity class, that restrict blanket urban tree protection, that limit plan appeal rights and which […]

Cullen’s two cents

Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments

Quite rightly, Michael Cullen has avoided getting involved in the debate over National’s starvation diet for the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, known as the Cullen Fund. As chairman of an SOE, he should keep out of partisan politics. Still, he couldn’t resist sending a subtle message. In today’s Dom there is a letter to the […]

Sprinters

Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 10 comments

David Farrar has a post on Kiwiblog listing the fastest risers to become Prime Minister. They are: John Key – 6 years David Lange – 7 years Jenny Shipley – 10 years Geoffrey Palmer – 10 years Bill Rowling – 12 years Mike Moore – 12 years Richard Seddon – 14 years So it might […]

If you’re gonna cut, make it clean

Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 97 comments

How titillating. Worth has resigned and he won’t say why. ‘Personal reasons’ eh? Heard that one before. Key’s not talking either. He describes it as a ‘private reason’. Got to wonder what’s in the Tories’ heads on this one. Don’t keep a secret unless you really need to. Bad look. The public has a right […]

More on Worth?

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 36 comments

Just out from the police: An allegation has been made against a sitting member of Parliament. Wellington police are conducting a preliminary investigation into this matter. UPDATE: Key has just confirmed at his press conference that Worth has quit because of a “criminal matter”.

Three down

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments

Six months in and John Key has broken three of his eleven “personal guarantees”. Impressive. Click on the image for full size.

Transparency

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 1 comment

Strange isn’t it that Key can support transparency yesterday but not today. Political expediency at its worst.

Worth stands down

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 11 comments

Richard Worth has stood down for “personal reasons”. Of course he will have been pushed. My guess is that the PM will say some nice things about him on the record while off the record Kevin Taylor will be making it very clear this is a decisive move from a strong Prime Minister who of […]

Worth’s gone

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 20 comments

Link on Stuff. UPDATE: The “personal reasons” we know about so far: He personally profited from his trip to India to discuss aviation training. He personally visited the victim of an attack involving the son of a mate of his. He’s been personally summonsed to give evidence in a defamation suit involving a gossip columnist.

Super projections

Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 19 comments

I’ve had a crack at working out how much we lose by cancelling the Cullen Fund contributions according to the Treasury’s figures in the Budget. I come out with a loss of $7.5 billion by 2023. That’s a little lower than the figures Guyon Espiner was leaked, which were presumably based on more detailed modelling. […]

Submit!

Written By: - Date published: 12:17 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 1 comment

Over at No Right Turn, Idiot/Savant writes:- The Auckland Governance Committee has called for submissions on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. Two copies, by Friday, 26 June 2009, to: Auckland Governance Committee Secretariat Parliament Buildings Wellington The bill contains the details of the government’s Auckland Supercity, including its plans for at-large election, no Maori […]

Step-dad state gets it right

Written By: - Date published: 10:55 pm, June 2nd, 2009 - 31 comments

The principle of liberalism is that there should be no restriction on the freedoms of the individual except to realise a greater benefit for others (and, sometimes, the individual themselves). Society (or its tool the State) should do no harm to individuals unless to create a net benefit for the members of society (it shouldn’t […]

DPF agrees, cancelling Cullen Fund rips off NZ

Written By: - Date published: 6:46 pm, June 2nd, 2009 - 39 comments

DPF writes on the cost of cancelling contributions to the Cullen Fund: First of all, it is true that under the 11 year contributions holiday, the Super Fund in 2030 will be worth only $81 billion instead of $118 billion – a $37 billion difference….Over the 11 years 2009 to 2020, there would be $19.5 […]

Tip of the spear

Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, June 2nd, 2009 - 16 comments

You’ve done your job as a spin doctor when journalists start repeating your spin sub-consciously. The credit downgrade ‘issue’ is a great example. There was never any threat of a downgrade, as long as the tax cuts were dropped. The journalists all acted like there was a huge threat. They parroted the government’s line that […]

Rhetoric and reality

Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, June 2nd, 2009 - 45 comments

Tax cuts are the right wing’s favourite answer to every question. Before the election, National were promising us that tax cuts were the key to economic growth: Key: “National will deliver an ongoing programme of personal tax cuts. Fundamentally, National believes in the growth-enhancing power of tax cuts. Labour does not.” English: “… all the […]