corruption
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More snouts in the trough
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, August 4th, 2009 - 78 comments
More Nats have been exposed rorting the out of town allowance for ministers. Bludger Bill is claiming the allowance for living in his own house. The others are claiming because they felt like fancier digs. McCully, Groser, Heatley, and David Carter all own homes in Wellington but have moved out of them into more expensive […]
Bon moat
Written By: - Date published: 5:19 am, August 4th, 2009 - 40 comments
We’ve been puzzling over how Bludger Bill can be spending all the $920 a week he is rorting for living in his family home in Wellington on an allowance meant for out of town ministers. I mean, $920 is a crap load of money. If a solo mum can eke by on $200 a week […]
Do as I say, not as I do
Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, August 3rd, 2009 - 38 comments
What gets me is the entitlement mentality from these senior members of Key’s government. Exactly the same mentality they claim afflicts ‘bludgers’ who get benefits and public servants. Their only response is ‘I’m entitled. I’m not breaking the rules’ English won’t even dip into his $276,700 salary to pay for his own family home. If […]
Something dodgy in Dipton
Written By: - Date published: 10:21 am, August 3rd, 2009 - 102 comments
Bill English is unrepentant over his $47,000 a year rort of the ministers’ Wellington accommodation allowance. He is claiming the allowance, which is intended to compensate non-Wellington-based ministers for the cost of accommodation in the city due to their ministerial duties, for living in his family home in Karori. This exploitation of the system for […]
What goes around…
Written By: - Date published: 5:10 am, August 3rd, 2009 - 53 comments
Paula Bennett appears to have broken the law in releasing private information on members of the public who were critical of National’s “ambitious” cutting of the Training Incentive Allowance. Bennett says she did this to “round out the story”. John Key is “comfortable” with this abuse of power, so presumably now the law doesn’t matter, […]
Double standards
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, August 2nd, 2009 - 45 comments
Paula Bennett has claimed nearly $22,000 in six months for her Wellington accommodation. That’s more, just for a second home Bennett uses maybe half the time, than Natahsa Fuller whose personal details she illegally released in a effort to embarrass her into silence gets in total to raise her three daughters – two of whom have chronic medical conditions. […]
Snouts in the trough
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, August 1st, 2009 - 161 comments
NZPA reports: Taxpayers are contributing nearly $1000 a week to allow deputy prime minister Bill English to live in his own million-dollar Wellington home. According to the title, the Karori home was bought by Mr English and his wife, Mary, for $800,000 in 2003. However, in March this year the title was transferred to Mrs […]
Wee gripes: doublethink
Written By: - Date published: 11:32 pm, July 30th, 2009 - 31 comments
If you read Kiwiblog or listen to talkback radio (basically the same thing – smart guy baiting reactionaries for his political ends) then you’ll have noticed the latest line on Bennett. It boils down to ‘remember how Labour did similar things to Bennett? Like Dalziel and that Sri Lankan girl. They were bad and evil […]
Horrific and ugly
Written By: - Date published: 5:50 am, July 30th, 2009 - 19 comments
That’s what Bennett is calling the Right’s attacks on the women she released confidential information about. As if she didn’t know that would happen. As if she didn’t know that releasing this information on what seems like large amounts of money when you don’t have the facts would send every knuckle-dragging redneck, reactionary in the […]
Apologists
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, July 29th, 2009 - 58 comments
Picture this: Anchor “and now we go live to whatsherface outside the High Court in Christchurch to tell us the latest in the Weatherston trial” Whatsherface “the prosecution is saying that Weatherston committed a grave breach of the Crimes Act but, look, I know of this other guy who killed someone and he was never […]
Beware of unbridled government
Written By: - Date published: 6:53 am, July 29th, 2009 - 33 comments
‘Beware’ that was Mary Wilson’s conclusion to her interview with Paula Bennett yesterday. The audio is here: Beware of Bully Bennett – Beware that if you voice any opposition to a government policy and the minister decides it has been going on too long or it’s too damaging, they will release confidental information on you. – […]
Privileges complaints laid
Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, July 8th, 2009 - 12 comments
A number of poor performing ministers like Paula Bennett, Kate Wilkinson, Anne Tolley, Pita Sharples, Tariana Turia, Rodney Hide, Pansy Wong, and Key himself, have tried to extradite themselves from sticky situations in the House by lying. It was only a matter of time until one of them lied so blatantly that a privileges complaint was […]
It’s not your government, it’s his
Written By: - Date published: 8:56 am, July 8th, 2009 - 12 comments
From Key’s post-Cabinet press conference: Journo: You don’t believe that the public have a right to know why a minister in cabinet would suddenly be booted out of cabinet and resign? Key: No. So, there you have it. This isn’t your government anymore. It’s his. You had the right to know under every previous government. […]
Worth asking
Written By: - Date published: 3:55 pm, July 5th, 2009 - 23 comments
What a world where a supposed journalist writes this: The trouble is Key’s desire to be reasonable. Despite his intention to say no more about his reasons for losing confidence in Worth, he keeps responding to the media interrogation and seems unable to draw a line under the question. The best approach would be, simply […]
Elucidate
Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 28 comments
The woman has dropped her criminal complaint over Worth. Says she is satisfied now the scumbag has lost his career. Police are expected to drop the investigation. Now, can we (pretty please) know why a minister in our government lost his job? Can Key, just for a day, pretend to give a damn about transparency […]
The truth will out
Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, June 24th, 2009 - 28 comments
Key’s excuse for not telling Parliament why he lost confidence in Richard Worth is that it isn’t in the public interest to say. So let’s think about this ‘public interest’ excuse. ‘Public interest’ is very rarely used; Trevor Mallard said he can think of two other times it has been invoked during his time in […]
The scandal that wasn’t there and the one that was
Written By: - Date published: 7:58 am, June 19th, 2009 - 15 comments
The Herald really really wants to uncover an expenses scandal like in the UK. Think of the fun they could have. But they’re not finding anything for two reasons: 1) our expenses system is much tighter than the UK’s 2) MPs in the UK are paid £67,000, not much by London standards, while the $131,000 […]
Thursday theorisin’
Written By: - Date published: 12:01 am, June 18th, 2009 - 15 comments
Great quote from Gordon Campbell: “Faced with the dying embers of the Richard Worth scandal at his press conference John Key reached for gasoline” By being secretive, Key has given members of the media a huge incentive to be the first to find out the secret and publish it. Journalists and media outlets get their kudos […]
Trust me, I’m the Prime Minister
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 17th, 2009 - 30 comments
Some thoughts on Key’s continuing refusal to tell us why he fired Worth. First, it’s tautological to say that a Prime Minister fired a minister because he lost confidence in him. The statement provides no new information. Second, it is completely irrelevant that Worth is no longer an MP. The questions are about Key’s decisions […]
Questionable
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, June 13th, 2009 - 20 comments
I was shocked, shocked, when I pulled up Kiwiblog just now and there wasn’t a long post of quotes by political commentators on how St John had slain the evil Worth interspersed with ‘indeed’. Instead, there was a long post of quotes from the Herald on juries interspersed with ‘indeed’. I quickly discovered why. Worth’s resignation has not […]
Let’s avoid an expenses side-show
Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, June 11th, 2009 - 30 comments
Most people with an interest in politics will have heard about the expenses scandal in the UK. Their system allowed rorts of all shapes and sizes to take place – MPs’ expenses were not questioned because they were Honourable Members. Intense scrutiny has proved quite a few of them otherwise. Could this be happening here? […]
A few facts unpin a lot of spin
Written By: - Date published: 1:06 am, June 10th, 2009 - 108 comments
The Tories are throwing all the muck they can at Goff. Trying to get him to back off on the Worth thing. Their latest is that Labour is spinning out this presentation of texts to Key to drag the issue out. Thought I would take a leaf out of Eddie’s book and do a timeline. Clear it […]
Should Key have appointed Worth at all?
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, June 7th, 2009 - 104 comments
On Q+A this morning, Phil Goff was asked by Paul Holmes for more detail on why John Key wasn’t surprised when he took the sexual harassment complaint against Richard Worth to him. According to Goff, Key said that he had been aware of rumours of similar activity by Worth and that was one reason why […]
Wait, didn’t he say ‘women’?
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 6th, 2009 - 50 comments
There’s still a lot of confusion on the Right, in particular, about the sequence of events in the Worth saga, so I’ve tried to reconstruct it below (btw, thanks to John Armstrong for using his time machine and advising us “The [Dover] Samuels case had negligible impact on the new [Labour-led] government’s subsequent fortunes. The same […]
Looking forward to the weekend
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 pm, June 5th, 2009 - 31 comments
Will be fun to read the Armstrongs, Rolstons, Laws, Holmes, Hooton and the other assorted rightwingers that besmirch our weekend papers. See them desperately to turn Key’s handling of Worth’s philandering into an attack on Goff. There will be claims that Goff made the harassment issue public. When it was Key on Wednesday afternoon. They […]
Time for a change
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, June 5th, 2009 - 112 comments
Sorry for the long post. This is my transcript of John Key’s interview with Mary Wilson on Checkpoint last night. It’s just incredible. Key obviously shielded Worth with a *nudge* *wink* ‘investigation’ into the sexual harassment complaint and his now trying to cover his own arse. I’ve added my own comments in italics and taken […]
Question time
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, June 4th, 2009 - 44 comments
John Key’s making a real hash of this latest Worth scandal. There was the secretive way he went about things yesterday, which is just not acceptable from a Prime Minister in New Zealand. He wasted several opportunities to correct his mistake and give full details during the day. Yet the story is still coming out. […]
Lee down, under; about to be reborn
Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, May 14th, 2009 - 34 comments
Melissa Lee’s recent interviews on Q+A, TV1, TV3 and RNZ proved once and for all that being able to read an autocue doesn’t mean you’re any good at handling the media. When Lee put her hand up to rob the hapless Ravi Musuku of any chance of ever being rewarded for standing in Mt Albert, I […]
The Nats’ campaign vid that you and I paid for
Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 54 comments
I figure the very least the Nats could do after spending our money on their asian-voter campaign video is to share it with us. Strangely, I couldn’t find it on the National Party website as referenced by last night’s Campbell Live piece. Fortunately the YouTube user “NationalAsianTeam” still has their copy up – it’s embedded […]
Worth the while?
Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, May 12th, 2009 - 17 comments
We got a guest post a fortnight ago that we keep meaning to put up with the title “Worth fails to cock-up for a week, apologises to PM”. Lucky we didn’t speak too soon. The background is this. Chris Hipkins, like any good MP does, has been asking written questions to the minister for his […]
Hide on his way to Privileges Committee?
Written By: - Date published: 5:32 am, May 8th, 2009 - 44 comments
Has Rodney Hide breached privilege by seriously misleading the House? This is one for you legal types out there but from a layperson’s perspective it looks like it. Here’s what happened (the full transcripts are below): On Wednesday, Phil Twyford (or Twif-ford as Hide insists on calling him) asked Hide whether “he has costed the super-city proposal outlined […]
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