Author Archive

Recentralisation? A whole lotta nothing

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:16 am, March 7th, 2010 - 5 comments

During the neoliberal revolution, the 4th Labour Government and the Nats decided to break up the big ministries into lots of little ministries and autonomous agencies. The idea was that the ministries were like big lumbering dinosaurs that suffered inefficiencies of scale. Smaller bodies would be more nimble, better able to adapt and change, and […]

Armstrong and class interest

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:56 am, March 6th, 2010 - 28 comments

The poor don’t need tax cuts for the top 12% to to inspire them to want to get out of poverty. Poverty is inspiration enough. But thepoor cannot all become rich. To function capitalism needs poverty. There’s got to be lots of people doing the shitty, dangerous, hard jobs for cheap. And the wealth will always flow to the elite few who own capital or defend their interests.

O’Sullivan and Garrett, strange bedfellows?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:37 am, March 6th, 2010 - 6 comments

Fran O’Sullivan is a pro-business liberal or libertarian, David Garrett is a knuckle brain conservative. But actually, they’re not so far apart. It seems both believe in freedom for the rich and control over the poor. Incredibly O’Sullivan goes into bat for Garrett over his sterilisation comments.

Labour says ‘hands off Radio NZ’

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:29 pm, March 5th, 2010 - 5 comments

The campaign to save Radio New Zealand from funding cuts and commercialisation is going well. Well attended rallies have been held in Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch. The Facebook group, which now has 17,800 members and is close to overtaking the John Key supporters’ group, has attracted a lot of media attention. Now Labour have put their […]

Legitimate spending vs rorts

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:33 am, March 5th, 2010 - 32 comments

It’s pretty rare that I agree with John Key but he got it right when he voiced concern that journalists are attacking MPs for legitimately using their budgets to do their jobs. Do we really want to force parties to rely on private funding for communicating their positions? That makes politics a rich man’s game. There are plenty of actual rip-offs and rorts for the media to root out.

Where are Hide & Key on Garrett comments?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:28 pm, March 4th, 2010 - 99 comments

Colin Espiner reports that Rodney Hide has gone into his shell as outrage over David Garrett’s appalling sterilisation comments builds. Since Irish broke the story of Garrett’s comments yesterday, it has spread like wildfire through the blogosphere and the msm. And nowhere will you find a reaction from anyone in ACT or from their coalition partners.

Collins and the fist of the state

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:08 pm, March 4th, 2010 - 39 comments

An ugly side of the Right, one that a lot of people thought was long defeated, has reemerged in recent weeks. Yesterday we had David Garrett’s ‘sterilise the poor because they might become criminals or breed criminals’ and last week we had arguably more disturbing comments from Judith Collins about how she wanted to restore “fear” of the Police.

World Cup TV fiasco

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:58 am, March 4th, 2010 - 18 comments

How’s this for insanity: the finals in the World Cup will be broadcast live on four free to air channels as well as Sky. That’s pretty much the definition of overkill and it has got to have cost a bomb, thanks to the Government’s disastrous handling of the issue.

Kick in guts for recesson victims

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:59 am, March 3rd, 2010 - 10 comments

The recession has forced tens of thousands of people out of work. There are now 276,000 jobless Kiwis. The lucky ones (only a third of the officially unemployed) can get the unemployment benefit. Now, the Government is letting inflation eat into their meager benefit payments. Benefit payments are meant to be adjusted for inflation. This […]

Goff calls for SAS to come home

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:00 am, March 3rd, 2010 - 48 comments

The Nats put the SAS in Afghanistan out of a Boy’s Own worldview that glamorises war and violence by authority. But war isn’t a game and we shouldn’t be fighting unless it’s for a good cause. Our solders shouldn’t die or kill to prop up Hamid Karzai’s corrupt regime.

GST hike boon for tax cheats

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:42 pm, March 2nd, 2010 - 34 comments

Some contractors and small business owners record private costs as business expenses and claim back the GST. The cheats who claim enough GST back get payments from IRD. Hiking GST puts more of our money in the pockets of these tax cheats.

Axe the tax

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 2nd, 2010 - 60 comments

Labour’s ‘Axe the Tax’ campaign has hit the road. Phil Goff is travelling around New Zealand explaining why Labour opposes National’s plan to hike GST on everyone to pay for tax cuts that will primarily go to the well-off. National are worried. They’re not promoting their package anymore, they’re lashing out at Goff.

Unemployment even more widespread than numbers suggest

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:20 am, March 2nd, 2010 - 12 comments

276,000 jobless, of which 168,000 officially unemployed. 115,000 more underemployed.

Big numbers, but remember that the unemployed aren’t a static group being added to every day as the Key Government sits on its hands. In fact there’s a continual churn of people into unemployment and into work much larger than the net increase.

Aussie pay gap widening, Key does nothing

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:32 am, March 2nd, 2010 - 28 comments

The total pay packet fell for Kiwi workers last year and it will get worse in coming years. Aussie wages continue to rise, their unemployment is falling. If Key is serious about catching Australia he needs a full employment policy. Instead, he will keep doing nothing.

Nats raise tax cut expectations

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:27 am, March 1st, 2010 - 33 comments

John Key has promised to make tax changes that are revenue neutral, give huge payouts to the wealthy elite, and somehow mean the “vast bulk of taxpayers will be substantially better off”. But it’s a money-go-round. How you can make everyone better off with the same amount of money you’ve taken off them?

Another Nat lie on GST

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:27 pm, February 28th, 2010 - 51 comments

You have to double-check every ‘fact’ the Nats tell you. Bill English, for example, has been caught out lying on Labour’s growth record.
For the last couple of weeks, John Key has been claiming that when Labour increased GST from 10% to 12.5% in 1989 there was no compensation for taxpayers. That too is a lie.

High ministerial standards

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:54 pm, February 27th, 2010 - 13 comments

No, it’s not one of the Nats or their hangers-on. It’s Shane Jones. Following revelations that National ministers have been essentially stealing taxpayer money by using their ministerial credit cards for prohibited purchases, Jones has recounted an incident from his time as a minister. When Jones was Building Minister in 2008 he hosted a dinner […]

Heatley’s redherring cover for Brownlee

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:45 am, February 27th, 2010 - 20 comments

Fran O’Sullivan agrees with my theory on the real reason for Phil Heatley’s resignation and the reason why an excuse was invented. The real reason was what amounts to Heatley’s theft of taxpayer money by using his ministerial credit card, and the receipt excuse was invented to protect Gerry Brownlee who had also misused his credit card

Heatley story full of holes

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 7:10 am, February 26th, 2010 - 84 comments

Ministers don’t resign for describing a trivial expense in a perfectly legitimate way. I’m thinking Phil Heatley really had a crisis of conscience over the credit card ‘misuse’ and wanted to resign but that would have put Gerry Brownlee in the gun too. So they invented the receipt excuse. What’s your theory?

Cunliffe slams English; English misleads House

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:14 pm, February 25th, 2010 - 44 comments

Today in the House David Cunliffe took Bill English on over his lies regarding Labour’s record on economic growth. Rather than admit that he had been using the wrong figures in an effort to make Labour’s record look worse, English compounded his sins by lying to the House.

Punishing unemployed won’t help

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:11 am, February 25th, 2010 - 22 comments

Another day, another anti-beneficiary story beaten up by Paula Bennett to justify her bennie-bashing policies. Punitive measures against people who genuinely want to find work will not help them. All it does is waste WINZ’s resources re-approving genuinely unemployed workers leaving fewer resources for helping people into work.

Trev nails Tolley, other Lab MPs fail

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:00 am, February 24th, 2010 - 27 comments

Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.

‘Atlases’ don’t deserve a tax cut

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:47 am, February 24th, 2010 - 67 comments

This man is Paul Reynolds, CEO of Telecom. He has overseen the largest corporate disaster in recent New Zealand history. The Nats are planning to give him over $6,600 a week in tax cuts. Apparently this screw up on a $7 million salary is the kind of guy New Zealand needs.

Nats’ sense of entitlement behind credit card abuse

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:42 am, February 24th, 2010 - 40 comments

Yesterday the Dominion Post caught out National Party Ministers using their taxpayer funded credit cards for personal use. This was a gross betrayal of public trust. Housing Minister Phil Heatley knew what he was doing, but did it anyway. John Key should sack Heatley for turning his nose up at the Kiwi taxpayer.

Garner: poor GST compo will cause backlash

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:43 am, February 23rd, 2010 - 13 comments

Duncan Garner: “Key must get the compensation [for GST] right or there will be a backlash from voters” Problem is, you can’t get everyone to put some money in a bucket, give a large chunk of it to the rich and then compensate everyone else for what they put in with what is left. It can’t add up.

Signs of a more confident Labour

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:28 am, February 22nd, 2010 - 61 comments

Labour is a pretty risk-adverse organisation. Making those two unorthodox attacks on those two ministers, and pulling it off both times, shows that Labour has got the measure of Key’s drop-kick ministers and is feeling more confident in itself.

Oram on the ‘step change’

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:55 pm, February 21st, 2010 - 25 comments

An excellent piece by Rod Oram in the SST. More sophisticated governments are focusing on smart and sustainable growth but National thinks wealth comes from more milk and selling off our irreplaceable natural resources as quickly as possible.

Abbott laughingstock for saying Aussie should copy Key

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:42 pm, February 21st, 2010 - 27 comments

The new Aussie Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, has been widely derided for saying Australia should ape National’s economic policies. “Abbott’s remark came the day that Australia’s unemployment rate fell from 5.5 to 5.3 per cent. The NZ rate? It’s 7.3 per cent.” We should copy their stimulus policy, not the other way round.

Labour, don’t stand by while English lies

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:30 pm, February 19th, 2010 - 29 comments

I am flabbergasted that Labour has remained silent on Bill English’s repeated lie that the economy grew just 0.9% a year in Labour’s last term in government. This is your reputation and your legacy the little creep is lying about, guys. Stand up for yourselves.

Pansy Wong bids for worst minister award

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:22 am, February 19th, 2010 - 11 comments

When you’ve got a Finance Minister who can’t get stats right, a Social Welfare Minister who can’t define her flagship policy, and an Education Minister who can’t explain her flagship policy, it’s easy for an incompetent Women’s Affairs Minister to slip through.

Armstrong on Clueless Tolley

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:30 pm, February 18th, 2010 - 19 comments

John Armstrong: â€œAnne Tolley’s reluctance to explain [national standards] left the distinct impression she was less than 100 per cent sure.â€ It was a bit more than an impression, and it was a bit less than 100%. Tolley clearly had no clue what she was talking about.