Author Archive

PC scourge claims another victim

Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, June 1st, 2008 - 9 comments

A recent newsletter from anti-PC campaigner Murray McCully led with this comment supporting the right of the Burmese people to decide for themselves what their country is called: The US State Department asserts the preference for ‘Burma’ ‘due to consistent, unyielding support for the democratically elected leaders’, and the UK Foreign Office notes that ‘Burma’s […]

Herald Digipoll

Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, May 30th, 2008 - 22 comments

Another Herald Digipoll is out today, with a sample taken both before and directly after the Budget. The poll pretty much confirms what Roy Morgan showed us last week – the gap between the two main parties remains about fifteen percent and the controversial and highly publicised Fairfax poll was probably a rogue. Of course, […]

Some facts on benefit numbers

Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, May 28th, 2008 - 34 comments

Hear that sound? It’s Judith Collins banging the sickness beneficiaries drum again. Fresh from a sensationalist report on the front page of the Dom today, Collins is demanding the Government and the Department of Work & Income: “admit they are failing beneficiaries and failing doctors because Labour is more focused on pushing people on to […]

Kremlinology: National and Kiwisaver

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, May 28th, 2008 - 15 comments

National’s refusal to say what it stands for is becoming so ridiculous we have resorted to the Cold War art of Kremlinology. Today, we look at Kiwisaver. National has had a tortured relationship with Kiwisaver. When it was first introduced in 2005 John Key described it as a “terribly designed system” and spent the next […]

Reality check

Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, May 28th, 2008 - 29 comments

Housing NZ’s decision to hold a conference for 94 staff at the luxury Tongariro Resort raises serious issues about extravagance in the public service. My first instinct, like others, was to assume the worst and condemn the Ministry for its extravagance with public money. Clearly $65,000 for a 90-person conference sure sounds like a lot […]

Tax cut calculator

Written By: - Date published: 5:27 pm, May 22nd, 2008 - 7 comments

As much as I despair to see our political discourse descend into a bidding war on taxes, it’s worth looking at Infometrics’ online online tax cut calculator here. Just plug in your income and it’ll tell you your new effective tax rate and how much you’ll get in your pocket from October 1 through to […]

Nandor to stay in Parliament until election

Written By: - Date published: 12:50 pm, May 21st, 2008 - 20 comments

Nandor Tanczos has just announced he will not be standing down from Parliament early to let Russel Norman in because former MP Mike Ward has refused to step aside. According to Nandor’s statement: “I had hoped that I might step down soon and allow Co-Leader Russel Norman to take my place before the election, however, […]

Beat-up

Written By: - Date published: 6:17 pm, May 20th, 2008 - 94 comments

Well, I’ve seen the video of Goff on Alt TV and I really can’t see what all the fuss is about. Phil Goff’s stated the obvious by saying there’s a chance Labour could lose the next election, he’s reaffirmed his support for Helen Clark and hinted that if the leadership were open after the election […]

Sockpuppet

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, May 20th, 2008 - 18 comments

Fairfax poll

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, May 17th, 2008 - 27 comments

This morning’s Fairfax poll is bad news for Labour, with National easily having the numbers to govern alone. Following the hugely popular rail buyback it’s hard to see what could have caused a swing of this size, so it’ll be interesting to see if the next few polls show a similar trend. The Greens and […]

Bill Ralston: independent commentator?

Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, May 16th, 2008 - 43 comments

If you’ve been reading Bill Ralston’s columns in the Herald on Sunday over the last few months you’ll have noticed how they’ve started to read more and more like long-form National Party press releases. To date I’d put it down to pure laziness – after all, why would you bother coming up with an original […]

Batman Politics

Written By: - Date published: 5:57 pm, May 14th, 2008 - 14 comments

Who would have thought? Murray McCully as The Penguin. Hat tip: onegoodmove

Rio Tinto threats backfire

Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, May 14th, 2008 - 72 comments

Rio Tinto’s threat of capital strike appears to have backfired on them, with a political consensus emerging that the multinational has overplayed its hand on this one and some even starting to question whether we might be better to just shut the smelter down and be done with it. CAFCA were particularly blunt: Campaign Against […]

Roy Morgan

Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, May 12th, 2008 - 36 comments

There was a new Roy Morgan poll out on Friday. No major changes – Labour continues to hover around the mid-30s and National around 50. The minor parties are still all over the place and New Zealand First remains a wildcard. Interestingly Roy Morgan also reported results for Auckland vs the rest of the country […]

Stop ANZ National’s race to the bottom

Written By: - Date published: 6:06 pm, May 8th, 2008 - 37 comments

A few weeks back ANZ National announced that over the next 12-18 months they plan to export 400-500 New Zealand jobs to Bangalore. In response, the bank workers’ union Finsec has started a campaign to stop them in their tracks. If it goes ahead this will be the largest offshoring of jobs ever in the […]

Daily Show on the Pollies

Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, May 7th, 2008 - 3 comments

The Daily Show’s John Oliver goes behind the scenes at the Pollies, the US awards ceremony for political ad consultants. Hilarious. Watch the nominees tell Oliver how to destroy hope, make voters fear black people and hang your fragile ego on a yard sign. I’m sure our mate John Ansell would feel right at home. […]

Agenda

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, May 5th, 2008 - 7 comments

Wat Tyler at KBB has an interesting comment on Agenda’s dreadful panel discussion yesterday: Agenda on Sunday was awful. The panelists didn’t want to listen to the people they were interviewing (both Russell Norman and David Parker did very well) and had their own agendas to pursue. Jenni McManus was a disgrace. Argumentative and rude, […]

Who do you want answering the phone?

Written By: - Date published: 3:41 pm, April 30th, 2008 - 71 comments

Just received this parody of Hillary Clinton’s 3am ad, but with a New Zealand twist. Very funny.

Herald Digipoll

Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, April 30th, 2008 - 33 comments

Today’s Herald Digipoll has National up 2 points and Labour down 2, a result the Herald describes as the “Nats pulling away”. As ever you can’t read too much into a single poll, but the pattern continues to show National coming off the highs in the mid 50s it reached earlier this year and Labour […]

Interview the leaders VI: United Future

Written By: - Date published: 4:47 pm, April 28th, 2008 - 19 comments

Thanks to ACT leader Rodney Hide for participating in our ‘Interview the leaders’ series this morning. Our next leader is the Maori Party’s Tariana Turia. The general question remains: Of which of your achievements in politics are you most proud? For the two other questions we’ve gone with Higherstandard’s question: Can you envisage a NZ […]

Clem Simich stepping down

Written By: - Date published: 3:13 pm, April 28th, 2008 - 14 comments

Clem Simich has just announced he will be stepping down at the election. As regular readers may have noticed I’m not generally a fan of National MPs, but Simich’s liberal voting record made him one of the better ones. To see Simich leaving to make room for the likes of Stephen Franks is not encouraging. […]

Fairfax reporting staggeringly awful

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, April 26th, 2008 - 36 comments

This morning’s Dom Post buys into National’s “Aussie exodus” spin with a lead story claiming “A staggering one in 10 voters are considering a move to Australia” in the next twelve months. The facts, of course, are somewhat different. As we’ve shown before, as few as 0.67% of New Zealanders actually emigrate to any country […]

Roy Morgan

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, April 24th, 2008 - 32 comments

No real surprises in the latest Roy Morgan poll, but Gary Morgan’s hilariously bad political analysis continues. You’ll remember in the last Morgan poll our man Gary put the thirty percent increase in the Greens’ support down to Earth Hour, and this week he’s at it again: the Greens are down 2.5% to 6.5% – […]

Conflicting polls

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, April 21st, 2008 - 11 comments

The two political polls on TV last night say far more about the limitations of political polling than they do about the likely makeup of the next Parliament. Last night’s TVNZ poll, conducted by New Zealand’s least reliable polling company, showed National gaining ground, Labour down in the dumps and the Greens dropping out of […]

Herald’s anti-EFA campaign in tatters

Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, April 18th, 2008 - 14 comments

As predicted by The Standard earlier this week, the Press Council has upheld the Coalition for Open Government’s complaint against the NZ Herald’s Electoral Finance Bill campaign. The Press Council found that the Herald’s front-page editorial last year contained a “mis-statement of fact”, which the paper should have promptly corrected. At heart was the paper’s […]

Roy Morgan

Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, April 14th, 2008 - 37 comments

Now this is looking better: As usual Gary Morgan’s analysis is laughable, attributing the thirty percent increase in the Greens’ support to… Earth hour. Yes, Earth hour. Stick to the polling Gaz, and leave the punditry to the pundits.

“I can’t even remember”

Written By: - Date published: 5:54 pm, April 13th, 2008 - 18 comments

A reader sent us this very good video of John Key’s repeated memory lapses over where he stood on the Springbok tour: The tour was the defining event of a generation, and it’s simply not plausible that a politically aware university student would not have had a position one way or the other. While I […]

Still no apology

Written By: - Date published: 3:42 pm, April 10th, 2008 - 19 comments

Last Tuesday Bill English stood up in Parliament and accused the CTU and the PSA of breaking the Electoral Finance Act. Problem for Bill was he’d got it completely wrong, and as we noted at the time the appropriate course of action was to make a formal apology in Parliament. Well to Bill’s credit he’s […]

Too stupid for words

Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, April 10th, 2008 - Comments Off on Too stupid for words

I’m not usually big on the Bush-bashing, but this is classic: Say what you like about Reagan, at least the dude could read from an autocue. Hat tip: onegoodmove

Campbell grills Peter Brown

Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, April 3rd, 2008 - 61 comments

Now this is what Campbell needs to do more of. Last night the man ripped poor old Peter Brown to shreds over his racist comments about Asian immigrants, and it was brutal. You almost had to feel sorry for the guy:

Interview the Leaders – reminder

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, April 3rd, 2008 - Comments Off on Interview the Leaders – reminder

Just a reminder, there’s still time to get your questions in for the Greens in our upcoming Interview the Leaders series. You can place your questions in the comments section of this post. Remember, keep them above the belt but make them tough. Jim Anderton will lead off the series on Monday answering your questions […]