Author Archive

Paying MPs’ court costs

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:23 am, April 7th, 2010 - 22 comments

I don’t have a problem with MPs being able to get public funding for court cases arising from their professional activities. You wouldn’t expect private sector employees who are taken to court over their actions in their job to be forced to pay their own way. But what a sense of entitlement Gerry Brownlee has.

How’s that change coming? – Emigration

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:02 am, April 7th, 2010 - 16 comments

That Nice Mr Key promised that, through the power of tax cuts, he would stop so many Kiwi emigrating to Australia. Well, we had tax cuts so what happened to the number of Kiwis heading over the ditch? Must have dried up, right? Sorry kids, after a recession-induced lull, emigration is climbing as Kiwis seek greener pastures in the red country. Just one more promise Key couldn’t keep.

Brownlee still spouting the same garbage on mining

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:23 pm, April 6th, 2010 - 34 comments

The Government is trying to frame the mining issue as a debate between ’emotional’ environmentalists and ‘sensible’ people who want to build the economy. The reality, however, is that the Government has no clue what benefits mining on protected land could bring or the costs. How are we meant to rationally weigh the pros and cons when the Government doesn’t know what they are and has made no effort to find out? The Government just wants to dig and pray.

Will Maori Party stand firm on foreshore & seabed?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:12 am, April 6th, 2010 - 12 comments

The Maori Party was established to win the right for iwi to have what they believe are their rights to use the economic potential of the foreshore and seabed. National’s offer does not deliver on that. Will the Maori Party fold? Early indications are mixed. Hone Harawira will stand strong but a patsy question from rahui Katene last Thursday suggests the leadership might be willing to roll over.

Hide to speak at privatisation conference

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:42 am, April 6th, 2010 - 23 comments

Last year, Rodney Hide said that John Key is a ‘do nothing’ prime minister, and his fellow ministers were lazy and didn’t pay attention what his was up to. Well, they might like to pay attention now: Hide is keynote speaker at a conference on local government later this month where water privatisation is the highlight of the agenda. Does Key support Hide’s push for water privatisation?

Nats fail on crime

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:07 am, April 4th, 2010 - 45 comments

Regular readers of The Standard will know that a primary driver of crime is joblessness. It’s no surprise, therefore, to see that crime went up in the last year. Fewer jobs to go around = more crime. Crime is a symptom of socio-economic distress. It is not, primarily, ‘bad’ people behaving badly because they are […]

What the foreshore and seabed is really about

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:25 am, April 4th, 2010 - 41 comments

Iwi do not want legal recognition of some kind of fuzzy spirital connection with the foreshore and seabed. They want legal recognition of property rights, rights to use the economic potential of what they regard as their property. For Maori rights activists, National’s offer cannot be seen as anything other than a continued denial of the rights that the Maori Party was created to win back

No one owns foreshore – Govt “solution”

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:28 pm, March 31st, 2010 - 16 comments

The Government has released its Foreshore and Seabed policy. It will put the F&S into ‘public domain’ where it will be owned by no one. Maori will be able to take claims for customary rights over parts of the F&S to Court(except those parts that are already owned by private, Pakeha, interests of course).

A day of flip-flops

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:40 pm, March 31st, 2010 - 3 comments

You can say this much for the Key Government – they’re idiots but half the time they’re also cowards. If an issue generates too much public disquiet they’ll flip-flop. It’s easy when they don’t have a real plan or real principles.

Over-promise, under-deliver

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:48 am, March 31st, 2010 - 7 comments

The Key Government is constantly promising us great results and actually do nothing that improves things for New Zealanders. English, Bennett, Brownlee, and Tolley are prime examples of this MO. While they promise great things and fail to deliver unemployment is rising, wages are falling, crime is up, and the government has no plan to move us forward.

Heatley: Not a crook, an idiot

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:58 am, March 31st, 2010 - 26 comments

The Auditor-General has found that Phil Heatley wrongly bought $1,402 worth of private goods and services on his ministerial and MP tabs. That’s OK according to the PM because Heatley didn’t intend to break the rules. Well, I guess that’s OK then. Of course, you have to assume that Heatley is a total idiot in that case.

A farmers’ coup in Canterbury

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:31 am, March 31st, 2010 - 38 comments

National’s mates in the dairy industry were annoyed that the elected councillors in Enviornment Canterbury wouldn’t let them have all the water they want. So National has sacked the councillors and suspended local democracy for four years. The diary farmers will pay along with everyone else for their short-termist ‘science be damned’ attitude. But not before they’ve caused long-term damage.

Does mining meet Key’s tests?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:20 am, March 30th, 2010 - 22 comments

John Key have given three tests that mining on protected land would have to meet to satisfy him that it ought to be permitted- creates jobs and benefits the local economy, economically viable, and environmentally sensitive. Mining on Schedule 4 land fails to meet Key’s own tests but that’s not going to be enough to stop National. Only determined pubic opposition will stop them.

Mining secret agenda emerging

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:51 pm, March 29th, 2010 - 12 comments

It’s becoming clear that National had their policy to mine on protected land all planned before the election and hid the truth from the public because they feared it would make them unelectable. National needs to front up with the records of their pre-election discussions with the mining industry. Labour should challenge them to come clean in the House today.

Let’s not repeat Ireland’s mistakes

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:25 pm, March 29th, 2010 - 26 comments

The eXileD has a piece on Ireland’s woes and how they got there. The 1980s neoliberal revolution and dodgy deals for the Right’s mates are familiar. Ireland became a tax haven for bludging international financiers. It’s all come crashing down but John Key wants to copy their mistake by creating an offshore financial centre here.

Nats fail to keep biggest promise (and the rest)

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:20 am, March 29th, 2010 - 51 comments

The economy finally managed to grow faster than the population in the December quarter but it was still slower than Australia. With weak growth, wages falling in inflation-adjusted terms, and unemployment now 2% higher than in Australia and rising the question has to be asked: when is John Key going to keep his promise to close the gap with Australia?

Bennett: a complete failure

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:06 pm, March 28th, 2010 - 72 comments

What a complete failure Paula Bennett is. If you could bear to sit through her interview on Q+A yesterday, you would have heard nothing but vacuous crap completely divorced from reality and her actual policies, which are opposed by Treasury, Health, and the Attorney-General. There are 67,000 more working age people on benefits than when Bennett became minister and she has no plan to reverse that.

Hide plays dictator of local government

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:24 pm, March 28th, 2010 - 79 comments

Andrew Williams, mayor of North Shore, is clearly a bit of an odd-ball. Maybe the people of North Shore simply feel that a bit of public urination is a small price to pay for having a good mayor. I don’t know or care. But it’s outrageous, frankly, to see Hide once again over-stepping the constitutional limitations on his office. It is clear his call for Williams’ resignation is politically motivated.

Laissez-faire or fairly lazy?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:33 pm, March 27th, 2010 - 5 comments

Fran O’Sullivan’s write: “Till now, Key has operated a rather laissez-faire approach to Cabinet management.” I think she meant “fairly lazy”. She points out that Gerry Brownlee and Paula Bennett have been allowed to go out and essentially lie to the public about their policies only to be embarrassingly exposed by an increasingly awake media (helped by the blogosphere) because Key isn’t paying attention.

More Act infighting

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:03 pm, March 27th, 2010 - 78 comments

It’s getting nasty in the ACT party. Rodney Hide can’t last as leader. Heather Roy, Roger Douglas, and John Boscawen each have factions backing them to replace him. Disintegration is a real possibility. The consequence of ACT’s straying from it’s economically and socially liberal roots under Douglas and Prebble to reactionism under the nihilist Hide. If a collapse does take place, Key may have to call an early election.

The long game on mining

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:25 am, March 27th, 2010 - 20 comments

Beyond this opening gambit on mining, National clearly has a larger plan. It is going to back down over Great Barrier, whether or not that was never part of the plan all along. But it is lining up more areas for later on. Areas like Dun Mountain near Nelson. Supposedly there’s gold in that there hill. But it also happens to be the site of one section of the John Key Memorial Cycleway…

Nats’ last gasp counter-attack falls flat

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:18 pm, March 25th, 2010 - 57 comments

The Nats are saying Labour supported mining in office and opposes it now. The truth is that Labour has consistently supported environmentally responsible mining but never on the special parts of the conservation estate in Schedule 4 (see diagram: the dark area is what everyone agreed was out of bounds until the Nats’ flip-flop).

‘Dig & hope’ – Nats’ great plan

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:30 am, March 25th, 2010 - 43 comments

National’s mining policy is ‘dig and hope’. That’s the only conclusion one can draw after Gerry Brownlee and Nick Smith admitted National has no idea of the value of the minerals supposedly under the protected lands they want to dig up. Remember, this is National’s lynch-pin economic policy. They are we have dig up these protected lands for the sake of the economy but have no idea of what’s there.

Super bill for Supercity

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:27 am, March 25th, 2010 - 6 comments

When pressed very very hard, Rodney Hide described the set up costs of the Government’s Supercity as “minuscule” even though he couldn’t put a number on it. Now, we have some a number on what “minuscule” is in Hide’s book. The Auckland City Council alone faces a $34 million bill to establish the Supercity.

Nats’ wage drop plan progressing well

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:16 pm, March 24th, 2010 - 11 comments

How’s that brighter future looking? A couple of years back, Steve wrote a piece on how National could reduce pay packs accordance with John Key’s statement that he “would love to see wages drop”. Now, wages are dropping thanks to a combination of government neglect on job creation and policies that are actively designed to suppress wage rises. Let’s see how the plan is playing out:

The numbers on mining don’t stack up

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:22 am, March 24th, 2010 - 38 comments

There’s a hell of a lot of mis-information and confusing numbers about the economic potential of mining around, and that suits Gerry Brownlee and National because it lets them exaggerate the case for opening up the National Parks. Remember, more mining is the government’s one big plan for the economy but they can’t even give a ballpark figure on how much they expect the country to gain.

Jobs only real benefit reduction policy

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:02 am, March 24th, 2010 - 18 comments

You can’t ‘force beneficiaries back into work’ by ‘giving them a kick in the pants’ if there’s no jobs for them to go into. This supposed ‘get tough’ approach won’t get people off the benefit. It’s a cynical exercise in political marketing to make the government look active and distract from the real issues. It is no coincidence that this policy was released a day after the mining policy.

Obama delivers change

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:30 am, March 23rd, 2010 - 36 comments

It has taken nearly a year and cost President Obama a lot of his popularity, thanks to the spineless behaviour of many House Democrats, but the final barrier has been passed to the US getting universal health-care. Obama’s health reform bill passed the House yesterday by a narrow margin. It now needs to win a […]

Who is paying for Wellywood ads?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:00 am, March 23rd, 2010 - 4 comments

I wonder who is paying for this ad pleading for people to join the pro-Wellywood Facebook group. The pro-Wellywood group has the bland artificial feel of a piece of astro-turfing, probably from Prendergast or the airport judging by the content. And it stands to reason that the ad is paid for by the creators. Is ratepayer money being used to try to get people to join a Facebook group?

Nat kneejerk over Waihopai 3

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:52 pm, March 22nd, 2010 - 17 comments

Key is talking ‘toughening’ the law in the wake of the Waihopai 3 acquittals. He clearly doesn’t understand that a jury decision, let alone one in a district court, has no precedent effect. Others Nats are muttering about canning jury trials. It’s scary the way the Nats resort to heavyhanded tactics so quickly. They never work either, just ask the boyracers in their uncrushed cars.

I got it wrong: tax cuts for rich even bigger

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:09 am, March 22nd, 2010 - 100 comments

I made a mistake in my calculations of the effects of the leaked tax reforms. In the corrected numbers, the poor get less, the rich get more. The wealthiest 13,000 taxpayers get a quarter of a billion in tax cuts between them – nearly $20,000 a year each. The poorest half $1.25 a week and higher rents to pay. This ‘tax reform’ package is really a mask for a wealth grab from the many to the few.