Archive for July, 2014

NRT: The police are still ignoring electoral crime

Written By: - Date published: 3:05 pm, July 3rd, 2014 - 17 comments

The Electoral Commission is saying nothing about apparent police inaction on breaches of the electoral law. Information provided by the Commission reveals that since the beginning of 2011 there have been 113 breaches of the Electoral Act that it’s referred to police for investigation. Not one has resulted in a prosecution. In November, then the prosecution time-limit will kick in, and people will escape justice.

McCully is in trouble

Written By: - Date published: 7:56 am, July 3rd, 2014 - 151 comments

Murray McCully’s Ministerial career must be close to being finished.  The ineptitude required to allow a diplomat to use diplomatic immunity when clearly Malaysia was completely indifferent to this happening is considerable.  And McCully, who is known as a control freak, claims to have no idea what was happening within his Ministry.

Open mike 03/07/2014

Written By: - Date published: 6:33 am, July 3rd, 2014 - 248 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step up to the mike …

“Why did you not ask?” – Apologies & culture

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, July 2nd, 2014 - 56 comments

In its handling of the case of the Malaysian diplomat accused of attempted rape in NZ, the government has marginalised the concerns and sensitivities of the victim.  Their own arse covering was given a higher priority.  Jan Logie argued for the victim in the House today – government MP’s attacked her for it. [Update#2: the survivor of the attempted rape, spoke to Jan Logie]

Phil Goff: Contemporary China Research Centre

Written By: - Date published: 6:25 pm, July 2nd, 2014 - 9 comments

It isn’t that often that we put up speeches by politicians. They’re usually aimed at the general public and don’t really get into the guts of the issues in the way that our activist commenters like to argue at – they tend to be political and in this site preaching to the converted.  However this speech by Phil Goff is exceptional. It was made at a centre looking at China, and looks at the benefits and risks of our current and future relationships with that country. Worth reading

NRT: Dysfunctional

Written By: - Date published: 5:48 pm, July 2nd, 2014 - 6 comments

In short, a report on our intelligence services says that they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know why they’re doing it, and they’re not doing it well. NZSIS can’t do its core job – security vetting – in a timely fashion, GCSB can’t even count, and they hate each other. Plus they’ve got poor financial management practices and no idea of how much stuff they own to boot. And then they wonder at the level of public hostility?

Labour will end the farce of “voluntary” school donations

Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, July 2nd, 2014 - 188 comments

Labour’s latest education policy announcement is fair, practical, and an answer to my (childhood) prayers.

Polity: Who do the “missing million” like?

Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, July 2nd, 2014 - 17 comments

National appear to have been indulging in wishful thinking for some time based on dubious analysis of voter turnout.  Their latest round of silliness comes from kiwiblog. Sure there were some National supporters who chose not to vote in 2011 out of complacency. But it is probably a minority, and that most of the new non-voters (who voted up to and including 2008, and then stopped) are lefties. The survey evidence points that way, and so does the E9 evidence when looked at properly.

Polity: Today’s Herald editorial

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, July 2nd, 2014 - 33 comments

The NZ Herald has been particularly stupid recently, especially in its editorials. Now some of the anonymous editorial writers appear to have descended to not even reading their own paper. Today whoever wrote the editorial are suggesting that Labour release a particular policy, one that their political gallery writers wrote about on Wednesday. I guess that ‘anonymous’ couldn’t stand to read their own paper when it refers to Labour? Now that is really being biased.

NRT: Overstretched

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, July 2nd, 2014 - 9 comments

The Office of the Ombudsman has budgeted to deal with 800 Official Information Act (OIA) complaints. Last year it got 1913. Other areas of its operations are also underfunded.  The Ombudsman is our watchdog against the government. If we want it to do that job effectively, it needs to be funded properly. Watching government departments drag out OIA requests may be fun for ministers, but it doesn’t help the transparency that our democracy needs.

Dairy prices keep dropping

Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, July 2nd, 2014 - 90 comments

Dairy prices have resumed their slide, falling 4.9 per cent at the latest GlobalDairyTrade auction overnight. The drop was the ninth fall out of the last 10 auctions. It looks to me like the boom is over. Looking at the rise in production for whole milk powder in China, and increased exports from other countries, I think that it will continue to decline. In the meantime National have been allowing our other export industries to stagnate.

Open mike 02/07/2014

Written By: - Date published: 6:52 am, July 2nd, 2014 - 185 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step up to the mike …

Was John Key telling the truth about the Malaysian Diplomat?

Written By: - Date published: 5:34 pm, July 1st, 2014 - 209 comments

John Key has claimed that New Zealand asked Malaysia to waive diplomatic immunity for the Diplomat charged with breaking and entering and assault with intent to rape.  But news is breaking that Malaysia was willing to waive diplomatic immunity but decided to take up New Zealand’s offer to invoke diplomatic immunity.  So who is right?  And if the offer was made why did John Key say otherwise?

Update: From a McCully email it appears Malaysia thought that refusing to waive immunity would be acceptable to New Zealand.  Details of the “informal communications” need to be released so that we can judge for ourselves what was actually discussed and agreed to.

Rachel who?

Written By: - Date published: 4:30 pm, July 1st, 2014 - 69 comments

A guest post from Rachel Jones, who is number 25 of Labour’s list as well as the Labour candidate for the Tauranga seat.

Mallard’s moa idea is not going to fly

Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, July 1st, 2014 - 97 comments

Trevor Mallard’s comments today about Moas is obviously tongue in cheek but have succeeded in engaging social median in a way that the designers of #TeamKey can only dream of.

Polity: Brownlee burns $100,000 or $5 million, take your pick

Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, July 1st, 2014 - 27 comments

The Government has almost finished a $100,000 project to strengthen a bridge it will now tear down and replace as part of its new roading package. The $3m to $5m cost to replace the bridge, with construction due to start next year, was a “massive investment while there’s other more pressing priorities in the region”. Who would have thought that pork-barrel road projects had such poor cost/benefit reasoning behind them. Heckuva job, Gerry. OIA time

Open mike 01/07/2014

Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, July 1st, 2014 - 142 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step up to the mike …