Author Archive

Back to basics

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:07 pm, June 11th, 2009 - 50 comments

Radio NZ is playing John Key saying that, following the letter from the woman in the sexual harassment saga, he has “washed his hands” of Richard Worth. It seems likely he will move to have Worth expelled from caucus. Good to see he chose a sensible path rather than the ‘attack the woman’ strategy the […]

John’s recession-buster: a party, in 2 years

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:18 pm, June 11th, 2009 - 29 comments

On Monday, John Key promised he would make a ‘major tourism announcement’ today. Apparently, we’ve just had it. In a speech today, Key announced that during the Rugby World Cup in 2011, Queens Wharf in Auckland will be a temporary ‘live site’ (whatever that means) where there will be an opening ceremony. Apparently, it will […]

Marxism, whoo!

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:03 pm, June 11th, 2009 - 11 comments

All going according to plan, I’ll be there. Hungover in the back row.

The plot thickens?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:28 am, June 9th, 2009 - 35 comments

At his post-cabinet press conference, John Key continued to determinedly fly in a death spiral over the Worth affair. The journalists asked some probing questions on the sexual offending allegations and while Key still refuses to give us the full story, more details are emerging: Key has now confirmed that he did fire Worth, it […]

Old news

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:04 am, June 9th, 2009 - 2 comments

Saw this strange article from NZPA last night. National may be behind in the polls for the upcoming Mt Albert by-election, but nationwide it still maintaining high levels of popularity. The latest nationwide Roy Morgan poll recorded unchanged support for National with 52 per cent and Labour down half a percentage point to 31 per […]

Joke candidate cracks a funny

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:50 am, June 9th, 2009 - 19 comments

From Lee’s presser yesterday: “I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can vote for that will be inside John Key’s Government.’ Melissa, you’re not a minister. Only ministers are members of government.

Brains Trust

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:07 am, June 8th, 2009 - 36 comments

Whaleoil, John Key, and Melissa Lee. National’s policy wonks discuss transport modalities in an oil- and carbon-constrained future.

Should Key have appointed Worth at all?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:55 am, June 7th, 2009 - 104 comments

On Q+A this morning, Phil Goff was asked by Paul Holmes for more detail on why John Key wasn’t surprised when he took the sexual harassment complaint against Richard Worth to him. According to Goff, Key said that he had been aware of rumours of similar activity by Worth and that was one reason why […]

Wait, didn’t he say ‘women’?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:51 am, June 6th, 2009 - 50 comments

There’s still a lot of confusion on the Right, in particular, about the sequence of events in the Worth saga, so I’ve tried to reconstruct it below (btw, thanks to John Armstrong for using his time machine and advising us “The [Dover] Samuels case had negligible impact on the new [Labour-led] government’s subsequent fortunes. The same […]

Time for a change

Written By: Eddie - 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 […]

Quandary

Written By: Eddie - 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 […]

Worse and worse

Written By: Eddie - 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: Eddie - 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. […]

Update on Worth

Written By: Eddie - 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 […]

Cullen’s two cents

Written By: Eddie - 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 […]

Journalists not falling for Nats’ $8 billion con-job

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:23 pm, June 1st, 2009 - 67 comments

This part of Vernon Small’s article today deserves an extended quote: “The numbers are stark. If full payments resume in 2020, contributions will have to be more than $1b a year higher than if we continued as normal now. Even then, from 2020 till 2030 the fund will be $37b smaller than it would otherwise […]

The $8 billion robbery

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:44 pm, May 31st, 2009 - 44 comments

On Q+A this morning Guyon Espiner interviewed Bill English. Guyon had received papers from a treasury official that apparently show the cost of cancelling the government’s contributions to the Cullen Fund for 10 years will be $8 billion over and above the cost of borrowing to fund the contributions. $3.5 billion from lower value of […]

Turei new greens leader

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:15 pm, May 30th, 2009 - 40 comments

Metiria Turei has been elected at the Green Party National conference to replace Jeanette Fitzsimons are female co-leader. Her election is no real surprise. Turei brings youth and a lack of baggage. Youth is important for a party whose MPs’ average age is 55, apparently the oldest average (apart from Jim Anderton). Sue Bradford, who […]

Time for a change

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:33 pm, May 30th, 2009 - 3 comments

Remember that month when John Armstrong was away when up and comers like Patrick Gower and Eloise Gibson were getting to write pieces on the big issues instead? Oh how I miss those golden days. Now Armstrong is back with his brand of relentless sophistric sycophancy and complete focus on the politically expedient over effective policy. If […]

Government waste

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:11 pm, May 29th, 2009 - 16 comments

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the right when Labour and the Greens filibustered the other week to draw the public’s attention to the supercity bill being rammed through Parliament. ‘Think of the cost”, they cried, which makes me wonder why they don’t propose getting rid of Parliament altogether to save a […]

No credit rating upgrade

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:05 am, May 29th, 2009 - 16 comments

Journalists around the country seem to think (even the learned ones) that the budget has brought about a credit ratings upgrade. Not true. There has merely been a stabilisation of our current credit rating. An upgrade of Standard and Poor’s rating would be shifting from AA+ to AAA. That hasn’t happened. The government’s spin has […]

Budget previews: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:47 pm, May 27th, 2009 - 27 comments

As well as the usual pre-Budget announcements there have been a number of leaks. A quick review: Good Home insulation package: this is the Greens’ baby and could well be a highlight of the Budget in a sea of negatives. It would have been better if they had put in something about forcing landlords to […]

History repeats for Mark Thomas

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:40 pm, May 27th, 2009 - 19 comments

The irony is that Melissa Lee’s campaign manager, Mark Thomas, is no stranger to campaigns that start off with a hiss and a roar only to collapse when abandoned by National’s leadership. Thomas was National’s candidate for Wellington Central in 1996, the first MMP election, in a three way contest with Act’s Richard Prebble and […]

Vote Yes slideshow

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:31 am, May 27th, 2009 - 8 comments

Referendum 2009 – Unicef NZ The Vote Yes campaign is about preserving s59 of the Cirmes Act, which gives children the same right as adults to not be assaulted. More information here. [just a couple of quick suggestions to the Vote Yes people: ‘Vote yes, for a law that’s working’ is a bad slogan, it doesn’t […]

Pigs

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:00 am, May 27th, 2009 - 15 comments

It’s good to see Green MP Sue Kedgley calling on John Key to personally fix the abuse of pigs in sow crates. The chair of Nawac appears incapable of seeing that there’s even a problem, and the Minister of Agriculture has already been caught misleading the public on national television to defend the industry. It’s […]

Some stuff to read

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:00 pm, May 25th, 2009 - 10 comments

A few good posts today that are worth a look if you missed them: Chris Trotter reckons the police and the media are grossly underestimating the turnout at today’s hikoi. If we assume lower Queen Street to be roughly a kilometre in length and about 30 metres wide we get an area of 30,000 square […]

Can’t you play off to one side?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:57 pm, May 25th, 2009 - 93 comments

Last year a small number of truck companies held the ‘truck strike’, they got 4000 trucks to jam the CBDs of every major city in New Zealand because they were unhappy about a 1% increase in their costs from higher Road User Charges. The Right applauded. Lefties, including some on The Standard, criticised the protests’ […]

Talking tough

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:30 am, May 25th, 2009 - 34 comments

Remember – March against National’s undemocratic supercity today 25th, noon, Queen St [More info] Today in the Herald John Key is talking tough, dismissing the Super City hikoi before it’s even begun: Today’s hikoi against the proposed Auckland Super City is unlikely to make a difference, is premature and the wrong forum to raise concerns, […]

Political management or policies at fault?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:59 am, May 25th, 2009 - 16 comments

As the wheels have come off National’s political agenda in the past few weeks, their fanboys have wailed in anguish. Lee, Rankin, the supercity, Waterview, the Budget are not policy problems to the minds of Hooton, Ralston, Armstrong et al. They’re â€˜political management’ problems. Let’s dig a level lower and ask what political management means. […]

Up the Government’s sleeve

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:33 am, May 23rd, 2009 - 8 comments

National may be talking down the budget, but there have been hints coming out of Wellington that suggest the government will announce a significant initiative on budget day to help save jobs. If true, it shouldn’t be unexpected. – The cycleway has been a miserable failure, with no jobs having been created midway into the […]

Nat MPs distancing themselves from Super City

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:20 pm, May 22nd, 2009 - 29 comments

Remember – March against National’s undemocratic supercity Monday 25th, noon, Queen St [More info] National’s Paul Hutchison, whose Hunua electorate lies in Franklin, has written a piece with Mark Ball, the mayor of Franklin, in today’s Herald. The sum of it: Supercity yes, but leave Franklin out of it. Funny because ‘leave me out of […]