Author Archive
Time for change
Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, October 12th, 2012 - 19 comments
Unions, businesses, and political parties will come together today to form a united front on the need for change to save manufacturing in New Zealand. If National want to stand isolated against the new consensus, that’s their problem.
The incredibly incurious and forgetful Mr Key
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 pm, October 11th, 2012 - 144 comments
“So what?” says Key as allegations emerge from within GCSB that Key cracked jokes about the spooks’ (illegal) involvement in the Dotcom raid when he was briefed by them on February 29th. It either means you realised their spying and are incompetent for not questioning its legality or that you knew all about the illegal spying and didn’t care – that’s what.
Action on poverty missing from Bennett’s plan
Written By: - Date published: 1:09 pm, October 11th, 2012 - 26 comments
I don’t have a problem with more information-sharing on vulnerable children. But Bennett could have done something substantial to improve the lives of children – extending the child payment to beneficiary families. National won’t spend the money on kids. So, after 4 years, all Bennett can produce is a bit of bureaucracy to look like she’s taking action.
Key’s growing Dotcom problem
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 10th, 2012 - 29 comments
People don’t just vote for politicians because they like their policies. Just as important are trust and perceived competence. Key’s policies were never popular. He won on the other two – particularly trust. That’s why the Dotcom saga is so ruining for him. As more details of what Key knew or should have known come out day by day, perceptions of Key’s competence and trust in him plummet.
Nats give the middle finger to Kiwi workers
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, October 9th, 2012 - 60 comments
When foreign companies want hand outs, John Key says ‘ how much?’ But there’s no such concern for Kiwi workers.
Young people need work – National gives them a pay cut.
40,0000 manufacturing jobs lost – Key turns a blind eye.
Mr Wrong
Written By: - Date published: 7:51 am, October 9th, 2012 - 32 comments
No wonder Key’s losing his credibility. He just keeps on getting it wrong.
- 24 Sept: I wasn’t briefed on GCSB’s spying on Dotcom. Yes, he was.
- 28 Sept: there’s no need for a Police investigation into the GCSB. Yes, there is, say Police.
- 4 Oct: It’s highly unlikely I’ll discuss Dotcom in Hollywood. He discussed Dotcom in Hollywood.
- 5 Oct: I won’t offer incentives to Hollywood. He offered them more incentives.
- 8 Oct: Intervening in the currency is “whacky”. Governments are intervening in all the free-floating currencies, except a handful of third world countries – and us.
- 8 Oct: There’s no crisis in manufacturing. 40,000 lost manufacturing jobs say otherwise.
Govt defends tax haven
Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, October 8th, 2012 - 31 comments
So, it turns out that our ‘foreign trusts’ regime is being exploited so that billionaires from developing countries can avoid tax in their countries. We’re a tax haven. And the Government sees nothing wrong with that. It’s legal, so it’s OK. Yes, we’re helping a foreign elite avoid paying their fair share and rip off poor people, but hey, this is a National Government – that sounds like paradise to them.
From cock-up to cover-up
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, October 6th, 2012 - 49 comments
The narrative that the Government has tried to sell, and which has been largely accepted to date, is that the GCSB’s illegal spying on Dotcom was a cock-up. They claimed that Key wasn’t briefed, when he was. The Nats also claimed only a change in immigration law in 2009 protected Dotcom. Now, we know that’s rubbish. Cover-up it is.
A red herring?
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, October 4th, 2012 - 23 comments
Call me cynical but I just don’t think it’s credible that it took over two weeks after Key supposedly learned of the GCSB’s involvement in the Dotcom raid before they realised he given a presentation featuring Dotcom by GCSB a month after the raid. They’re amateur, they’re not that amateur. No, I think the ‘presentation on a laptop screen’ is a red herring.
One video exposes Key, GCSB’s & Banks’ Dotcom lies
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, October 4th, 2012 - 115 comments
Watch this video of John Key being interviewed by the media on January 24th. 1: Key is clearly well-briefed on Dotcom. 2: he knows that Dotcom is a resident, so why didn’t he raise that a month later with GCSB? 3: How did Key know that Dotcom was a resident and GCSB didn’t? 4: Banks has told media he had dined at the mansion with Dotcom – months before denying remembering that meeting.
Collins’ faction tries to magic up an ally
Written By: - Date published: 9:32 am, October 2nd, 2012 - 35 comments
It’s been interesting to watch the Collins Faction of National talk down the Conservative Party all year. It’s not hard to see why – they occupy space/take votes that a Collins-led National would want for itself. What the Collins Faction would like is a decent liberal-right party. That would allow National to swing conservative and give up liberal votes to an ally, rather than to the Left.
Key needs to read the GCSB Act
Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, October 2nd, 2012 - 23 comments
Key says that we would all be very scared if he had control over the GCSB. That’s wrong. Key is the only democratic control on our spies and he has extraordinary oversight. Every warrant the spooks need has to be approved by Key. Is he exercising that role properly, or is he just signing whatever the GCSB puts under his nose?
On Planet Key, the market always provides
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, October 1st, 2012 - 16 comments
We’re told 36,000 workers are needed for the Christchurch rebuild. But since the earthquakes began 2 years ago, 9,000 people with the skills needed for the rebuild have left New Zealand. We’re making no effort to keep the skilled workers we have but the Government thinks those 36,000 workers will just magically appear when needed.
Neazor report proves inadequate cover for Key
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, September 29th, 2012 - 83 comments
Labour has written to Key calling for a much wider-ranging investigation into the Dotcom spying affair than Neazor’s narrow, tell-us-nothing-we-don’t-already-know report. They would have been better to go straight to the Auditor-General. The Greens have gone for the established illegality and called in the cops on the GCSB – cleverly citing the same offence Key claimed in the teapot tapes.
Key fails to guard the guardians
Written By: - Date published: 8:41 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 87 comments
Our government’s spies are overseen by two people – the Prime Minister and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The former asked the latter to investigate he found out the GCSB had been illegally spying on two Kiwis. And, guess what, the report blamed underlings. It didn’t even investigate the question of oversight.
What does Key have to gain by lying?
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, September 27th, 2012 - 138 comments
John Key put on a display of incompetence in the House yesterday over the Dotcom spying affair. He claimed not to know a laundry list of basic facts that, if he didn’t know them before, he bloody well ought to have been briefed on by now. In some instances, his memory failed him over Dotcom. Yet he then showed he could recall exchange rates from 20 years ago. I think he’s lying. The alternative is too scary.
Many questions left unanswered in Banks affair
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, September 26th, 2012 - 43 comments
“Ignorance gets us nowhere”, it’s National’s new slogan and it certainly applied with Key’s feigned ignorance in answer to questions on Banks’ corruption last week. Key’s behaviour is jeopardising our reputation as a democracy that doesn’t tolerate corruption. And he’s got a lot of questions still to answer. Two particularly interesting angles are what exactly […]
Will Key read the GCSB report?
Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, September 26th, 2012 - 75 comments
Key has said we all have to wait and see what is in the Neazor Report on the GCSB spies’ illegal spying on Kim Dotcom.* He won’t even answer basic questions like: ‘what section of the law did the GCSB breach?’ Funny that Key’s so keen for us to wait to read this report. But will he read it? Or will it be like the Banks Police Report, which he won’t read? And when will anyone get to read Banks’ statement?
Bennett’s fantasy world breaks down
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, September 24th, 2012 - 45 comments
Paula Bennett on Q+A: “I don’t think that every child actually needs to be in early-childhood education” says Bennett. There will be cases where parents can do just as good or better job for their child. Yet, her policy is to take away half the incomes of parents and children on benefits who don’t go to ECE. The gap between Bennett’s spin and what she is actually doing has never before been so clearly revealed.
Garner on the exodus to Oz
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, September 21st, 2012 - 51 comments
John Key is one kind of Wizard all right – a Wizard of Oz. He can make people disappear there. Duncan Garner rips in to him.
Nats say: land owned collectively
Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, September 20th, 2012 - 30 comments
Anyone notice that the Right’s arguments against ownership of water – apart from being a willful confusion of ownership in rights to water, which is what iwi are actually inserting and which are clearly enjoyed by a range of people under our law at present, and ownership of water itself (something, apparently, limited to bottled water sellers) – would apply equally to land?
Dotcom shows Key and Banks how to play
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, September 20th, 2012 - 52 comments
I think that Kim Dotcom is actually a very savy operator. Turning up to Parliament on the second day of questions (not today, when Key won’t be in the House) was inspired. It ensured another day of coverage. Then, his words: “I think the Prime Minister has had to make a choice, am I going to uphold high ethical standards or do I want to remain in power?”
Sam Lotu-Iiga for mayor?
Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, September 18th, 2012 - 7 comments
Slater/Lusk are spending a hell of a lot of time talking about how the Key Government’s one-seat majority is at stake if a dissatisfied, bored backbencher decides to quit. One name that keeps popping up is Sam Lotu-Iiga. I understand the next stage will be a ‘Draft Sam’ faux mayoral campaign to pressure Key and Joyce into making him a minister.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, September 17th, 2012 - 10 comments
The Collins Faction is tooling up again. While Judith Collins herself has been trying to present a more reasonable face in the House, her Slater/Lusk campaign team is trying to undermine her challenger, Joyce, and the incumbent, Key. Upping Tau Henare’s ridiculous run for Speaker is naked opportunism – but a closer read of Whaleoil, and some inside tips, point to a far more ambitious play on the way
None so blind
Written By: - Date published: 7:53 am, September 17th, 2012 - 75 comments
So, this is what Key is reduced to: refusing to read the Police Report on John Banks so that he can avoid answering questions on it. Key’s circular position is that Banks will remain a minister as long as he has Key’s confidence. The test: Banks’ll continue to have Key’s confidence as long as Key trusts him and Key has to believe whatever Banks tells him.
Banks’ story coming apart; Key too weak to act
Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, September 14th, 2012 - 61 comments
John Banks is trying to blame the Police for the fact that the transcript of his 3-hour interview with detectives over his campaign donations was held back from the OIA release of the Police file. Another lie. It was Banks’ choice for the transcript to be withheld. So much for “nothing to fear, nothing to hide”. And, now, his press sec’s dropped him further in it.
Labour hits the motherlode
Written By: - Date published: 7:16 am, September 13th, 2012 - 82 comments
The Police Report into the Banks.com affair, which Labour has distributed to the media, is a gold mine. Banks is shown to be a liar and completely unethical. He insisted that Dotcom’s donation be anonymised. He used the donations, which he had told media he didn’t remember, as an excuse not to help Dotcom while a minister. Banks is lying low now. Key has to sack him.
On good and bad welfare
Written By: - Date published: 6:31 am, September 12th, 2012 - 248 comments
So the government is announcing the “lifetime cost” of social welfare payments today to soften the ground for cracking down on beneficiaries.
By coincidence they’re also in the process of rushing through changes to the emissions trading scheme that will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars in corporate welfare.
CIR & the silience of the citirats
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, September 10th, 2012 - 6 comments
The Nats’ lines on the citizens-initiated referendum on asset sales are very weak: ‘we don’t care because we have a mandate’ and making up stories about invalid signatures. Those lines will only hold until the petition is certified by the Clerk of the House later this year. Then, they’ll have to grow up a little. Their first decision will be when to hold the referendum.
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