Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, July 29th, 2014 - 34 comments
Rob Salmond at Polity has discovered that amongst the $212 million worth of road projects to be accelerated by the Government is a bridge that will speed up Bill English’s trip to his Queenstown home. But officials have said that under current policy settings it is unlikely that the bridge will ever be built.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, June 30th, 2014 - 135 comments
Bill English has stated that a third term Key government would majorly reform the government’s budgeting & spending. It’s a major move towards privatisation of public services, & full spectrum digitally-enhanced monitoring of individuals’ lives: especially those of the already demonised and harassed single mothers on benefits.
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, June 20th, 2014 - 24 comments
Rob Salmond offers some advice to the National smear team. When you screw up and start contradicting each other’s stories, you look like a pack of low-rent numpties. And it reveals your tactics for all to see, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place. Bill English and John Key should really communicate so they don’t trample over each others stories. And the spectacle of Michael Woodhouse changing his mind within hours about when he first saw the letter, and what he did with it? Pure comedy
Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, June 19th, 2014 - 123 comments
So, the Deputy Prime Minister insists that no-one from the ruling National Party knew of an eleven year old letter from Labour’s David Cunliffe asking Immigration about time frames for decision making. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister states he knew of the letter for some weeks. Scandalously, some ministers from the ruling National Party have sought […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 16th, 2014 - 174 comments
National must be worried about its prospects in this year’s election. Because its budget did not have the normal hard right policies that we have come to expect of it and it is trying to lessen the attraction of some of Labour’s announced policies.
Written By: - Date published: 3:18 pm, May 15th, 2014 - 40 comments
Earlier this week I predicted the Budget would be Labour-lite. I was right, but only in part. By far the biggest disappointment is in housing. The government signalled help for home buyers would be a highlight in the Budget. A few pathetic morsels isn’t a highlight. This will make next to no difference to the housing affordability crisis. First home buyers aren’t $3,500 short of a house. They are hundreds of thousands short, because there aren’t nearly enough homes.
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, May 15th, 2014 - 72 comments
The real story of the coming election is what was revealed in Bill English’s reported pre-budget speech to the National Party’s Southern Region conference at the weekend. He signalled an intention to reduce the proportion of government spending to 26% of GDP over the next 6 to 7 years. The current level at 30% already places NZ in the lowest quartile of OECD countries, having fallen from 35% of GDP in 2008. Most developed nations spend a significantly higher proportion of GDP on government goods and services.
Written By: - Date published: 6:47 pm, May 12th, 2014 - 58 comments
No Right Turn shows that John Key has no real understanding of the economic and political history of this country. Probably because the last time another economic illiterate from National said that the prospect of reducing unemployment in NZ to below 6% was “a hoax”, John Key wasn’t here. He probably heard it from that illiterate, who once again is our minister of finance. Unemployment under Labour was as low as 3.3%
Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, April 17th, 2014 - 72 comments
Genesis Energy’s shares have been sold at a price well below their value. And despite considerable demand from local mum and dad investors one in four of the shares has been sold to overseas institutions.
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, April 12th, 2014 - 28 comments
All inequality measures are not equal. The GINI Coefficient is widely used but it doesn’t show the impact of vast increases in inequality between the richest and poorest Kiwis; it doesn’t show increasing experiences of hardship: it can mask vast inequalities in wealth & asset ownership.
Written By: - Date published: 4:28 pm, April 9th, 2014 - 13 comments
Local bodies points out a couple more of the National government’s sad-sacks. For some strange (but obvious) reason a warmish market for milk powder doesn’t do much for NZ apart from destroying our environment. English’s taxcuts for his wealthy mates have destroyed the fiscal base of the government and done nothing to cause any investment in the productive and employable parts of our economy. Tim Groser has also made an artform of making NZ worse off.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, April 7th, 2014 - 7 comments
Tracy Whatshite, Cadet Reporter, attended the “Bellies” (held at Bellamy’s) and found out who the winners were in this year’s competition for the Best Political Song of 2014. She spoke with the judge Frankie Stevens.
“Competition was particularly intense this year and the top entries included some old favourites, but also some surprizing new comers,” he said.
Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, March 24th, 2014 - 27 comments
Rob at Polity points out National’s intensely unstrategic view about investments and asset sales. In a down market where all the indications said “buy,” National sold our assets for a pittance, and refused to invest in the Super Fund. The Super Fund has been making returns of 21%, far exceeding the Crown’s cost of borrowing. And National will only start investing in the Super Fund when equities are expensive again. It is almost as if they wanted to waste taxpayers funds eh?
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, March 24th, 2014 - 22 comments
There is danger of reading too much into polls months out from an election. Commentators were claiming that National was too strong to lose the next election based on a rogue poll. Few looked at multiple polls, accounted for the margin of error nor the trends over past months. The last fortnight has seen a National with the latest Roy Morgan Poll plummeting from the Colmar Brunton result of 51% to 45.5%. And it is based on a lack of ministerial performance…
Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, March 14th, 2014 - 24 comments
The Government is continuing with the Genesis share float. Shares with an anticipated yield of 15% are being sold to pay off debt on which interest at 5% is being charged. What sort of economic lunacy is this?
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 pm, February 27th, 2014 - 57 comments
What do you call someone who knowingly relies on false information to defend his case?
Bill English.
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, February 27th, 2014 - 17 comments
The Government has effectively conceded that the Genesis share float will not meet expectations and is softening New Zealand up to the prospect that only 30% of the shares may be sold. It makes you wonder why they are still going a head with the sale.
Written By: - Date published: 9:41 am, February 20th, 2014 - 42 comments
Tracey recounts the rise and fall of the `financial genius` John Key’s pet financial hub for NZ to emulate the paragon economies that tried it. Like Ireland – the home of the jobless and deserted housing projects.
Fortunately he was somehow prevented from stuffing NZ in this way. However he did put in some legislation of dubious value to allow NZ to be used as a haven for hot money fleeing taxes…
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, January 15th, 2014 - 15 comments
Rob Salmond at Polity has been having a look at Bill English’s “neutral” tax change in 2010…
Bill English recently heralded his tax switch as making net tax more progressive. He lied. It actually made net tax at least $500 million more regressive.
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, December 15th, 2013 - 138 comments
A Herald poll this morning has Labour on 40% with many expressing concern with the asset sales programme. And John Key displays a disturbing lack of numeracy literacy.
Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, November 25th, 2013 - 34 comments
In a surprising development, John Key has taken to bringing “a friend” with him to serious media interviews. Key was accompanied by Bill English. Key justified the new approach stating that their unique “chemistry was obvious to all in parliament” and he wanted the public to know, just how well they got on. When questioned whether this was relevant and important in the lives of ordinary Kiwis he said “…frankly its one of the key platforms we will be contesting the 2014 election on”.
Written By: - Date published: 4:40 pm, November 17th, 2013 - 294 comments
The Government has announced that the sell down of Air New Zealand shares will occur over the next two days.
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, November 8th, 2013 - 48 comments
So far seven National MPs have announced they will not stand in next year’s general election and more announcements are rumoured to be in the pipeline. Is the writing on the wall for this Government and will it become the first two term National Government in history?
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, October 31st, 2013 - 86 comments
Why is Treasury providing the government with advice on spinning and disguising widespread changes to Education? In this way, NZ’s democracy is undermined, and changes are continually made that benefit the few and make life more difficult for the many. Government MO or renegade Treasury?
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, October 29th, 2013 - 51 comments
A charity is taking on the funding of the essential work on monitoring poverty, in the face of Paula Bennett, Bill English and John Key et al failing to do their job: a return to Dickensian & Edwardian times.
Written By: - Date published: 8:33 pm, October 23rd, 2013 - 34 comments
The Government has announced the results of the Meridian Share float and the results are all bad. The country will receive up to $1.1 billion less than the shares were worth in 2011 and overseas entities will own 13% of the shares. Remind me why we are selling the shares ?
Written By: - Date published: 9:26 am, October 23rd, 2013 - 49 comments
At least one MP if not the whole of National’s caucus knew that the news concerning Len Brown and Bevan Chuang would break soon eight days before it did. Slater’s and Palino’s claims are becoming more and more difficult to believe. And in a comment yesterday Bad12 sums up why this is such bad news for National.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, September 22nd, 2013 - 51 comments
In a previous post at The Standard I did a wee bit of math and came to the conclusion that National has already made $5.26 billion worth of spending promises out of the Future Investment Fund, the not-actually-a-fund chunk of cash they plan to make from selling taxpayer-built infrastructure to their mates. Things have developed. […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, August 12th, 2013 - 106 comments
The Nats’ PR-managed conference stifled democratic debate & bright ideas, and diverted from significant issues. Armstrong attempts to talk it up, while exposing Key’s win-at-all-costs ruthlessness. Meanwhile: speakers announced for democratic meeting to Kill the GCSB Bill [Updated – Hagar also speaking]. [Update: Gordon Campbell – ‘Nanny National‘]
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, July 8th, 2013 - 18 comments
The Government is planning to spend up to $100 million from the sale of one SOE, Mighty River Power, to prop up another SOE, Solid Energy. And the Prime Minister thinks one day that it definitely isn’t and the next day it may but it probably won’t and it is all too complex. Confused?
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, July 2nd, 2013 - 67 comments
The simmering leadership struggle in the National party doesn’t get a lot of attention in the mainstream media, but here’s an exception. Judith Collins will not be pleased.
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