national/act government

Categories under national/act government

Ministers’ housing claims up 17% as rorts continue

Written By: - Date published: 12:22 am, November 4th, 2010 - 48 comments

Weren’t Bill ‘Double Dipton’ English and other  ministers caught rorting the housing allowance system last year? Didn’t the Government revamp the system by giving ministers capped allowances, supposedly to save money and stop rorts? Why then are we, as I predicted, paying more than ever while ministers blatantly rip us off?

Nat’s Mana strategy: exploit Parliament

Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 47 comments

National is finding new exploitative ways to try save their by-election campaign in Mana.

Charging for the foreshore

Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, November 2nd, 2010 - 9 comments

I don’t know about you, but I have certainly been confused about ACT’s move to insert a last-minute clause into the new Marine and Coastal Areas (Takutai Moana) Bill (proposed replacement for the Foreshore and Seabed Act). Canterbury legal academic David Round sets out some of the issues involved.  With deep divisions within Maoridom, and a growing conservative backlash, this mess isn’t going away any time soon…

Tax Cuts or High Wages?

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 27th, 2010 - 17 comments

At the last election we chose tax cuts and unemployment instead of stimulus and stability – which was the more ambitious, high wage way to go?

National are not fulfilling their government’s core reason for existence: closing the wage gap with Australia.  No, we’re fast going backwards on that score, and it’s predictable: high unemployment causes low wages.

The Hobbit ‘crisis’: cui bono?

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, October 22nd, 2010 - 171 comments

Does anyone believe that a $660 million project moves countries over the ‘threat’ of a few actors wanting better standards? Would Jackson really betray NZ when Weta is based here, the casting is underway, and Hobbiton is built? Cui bono, this talk of ‘crisis’: how much will the Government fork over to appease the threat of foreign capital flight?

Brand Key & the supercity

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, October 14th, 2010 - 35 comments

When you boil it down, John Key’s much-vaunted political nous is about keeping his personal brand clean. He farms out anything controversial to ministers and leaving them to it. The problem with that approach is muppets are left to run things with no oversight resulting in political cock-ups. Case in point: the Supercity.

Ambitious for New Zealand

Written By: - Date published: 7:56 am, October 12th, 2010 - 18 comments

Don’t need to add much to these Herald headlines:
‘Tight-fisted Key deals blow to Brown’s rail plan‘. Do Nothing strikes again.
‘30 homes on offer in flagship Govt scheme‘. Thinking big. Genuine commitment.
‘CV error made by ‘somebody else’‘. For Nats, it’s always someone else’s fault.

Key’s culture of impunity

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, October 11th, 2010 - 18 comments

Despite a slew of scandals, Key has not enforced any ethical or professional standards on his ministers (apart from Worth, for whatever he did). Ministers know that Key will keep his personal brand clean but won’t do anything to pull them into line. This has created a culture of impunity in the government, which has started to spread wider.

A Case of IHG?

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 pm, October 6th, 2010 - 31 comments

Seems these days that when people get in to financial strife, the Government is all too happy to offer a helping hand loaded down with wadges of cash.  Sometimes…

And then sometimes something altogether more short and sharp is offered. Depending…

Why are the National ministers so afraid of each other?

Written By: - Date published: 8:16 am, October 6th, 2010 - 10 comments

Ministerial staffers who have worked under the National and Labour governments of recent years have begun commenting on some of the differences between each.

Apparently, one key difference has been that National ministers refuse to hire staff from other ministerial offices to avoid being labelled by their ministerial colleagues as staff-poachers.

Caption Contest

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, September 30th, 2010 - 39 comments

“The Cabinet Manual clearly states that Ministers are responsible to me for their ethical behaviour, not for their judgment.” “Mr Hide has carried out his affairs in a personal and private capacity to a high ethical standard.” John Key, 22 Sep 2010

Caption Contest

Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, September 23rd, 2010 - 31 comments

“All I can say is that in the 22 months that Mr Hide has been a minister in my Government he’s shown very good judgement and he has my full support.” John Key, 17 Sep 2010

Key backs Hide’s lies

Written By: - Date published: 12:47 pm, September 20th, 2010 - 31 comments

John Key doesn’t want to touch the Garrett fiasco with a barge-pole. He wants to keep his brand clean. But here he is backing Rodney Hide, the shyster who kept Garrett’s secrets from the public, as one of his ministers. In the fight to keep his government together, all Key’s supposed principles go out the window.

Day of the Jackoff

Written By: - Date published: 4:04 pm, September 15th, 2010 - 87 comments

So ACT’s nutcase extraordinaire, the man whose only talent is to make John Boscawen look stable, has done it yet again. Forever getting attention for all the wrong reasons, David Garrett has now admitted he’s been found guilty of a particularly distasteful dishonesty offence – stealing the identity of a dead infant for the purpose of […]

Absolute power? Absolutely

Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, September 15th, 2010 - 151 comments

The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act gives the Government the power to pass Orders in Council overriding nearly every law. That makes ministers, not Parliament, the sovereign power in this country. Scary stuff, which I haven’t seen justified by the facts of the quake recovery.

Youz iz racists. Nah, only jokez!

Written By: - Date published: 4:20 pm, September 5th, 2010 - 30 comments

John Key says Maurice Williamson was just joking when he called us racists for not wanting to sell more of our country into foreign ownership.

Does he really expect us to believe that? Why compound an insult with a lie?

And since when would it be OK for Williamson to jokingly call us racists?

It’s outrageous

Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, September 3rd, 2010 - 45 comments

Whatever flimsy and tattered remains of Labour-lite which National used to disguise itself at the 2008 election has well and truly disappeared. Thank goodness we can now call a spade a spade. National is making its priorities crystal clear to the public. On a week when up to 500 elderly or disabled people in the […]

NACT attack on Roy gets personal

Written By: - Date published: 1:46 pm, August 22nd, 2010 - 60 comments

We’ve heard stories about the, to quote the Herald, “depth” of Heather Roy’s relationship with her former senior advisor Dr Simon Ewing-Jarvie for some time. But this isn’t Whaleoil and adults’ personal lives are their own. What’s surprising is that the Right have decided to use it against her.

The threat in today’s Herald is clear: If she doesn’t toe the line, her family life is not out of bounds.

ACT’s demise bad news for neo-liberals

Written By: - Date published: 6:33 am, August 20th, 2010 - 37 comments

No wonder Winston Peters is smiling. His personal vendetta with Hide must be at on the forefront of his mind as he watches his nemesis sink.

But what does ACT’s impending demise actually mean for other parties? It’s not good news for National.

Douglas adds to Key’s ACT headache

Written By: - Date published: 4:07 pm, August 19th, 2010 - 34 comments

ACT’s meltdown continues, with comments from ACT founder and current MP Sir Roger Douglas illustrating that all is not well in the caucus. According to Stuff,  Sir Roger Douglas is saying he is not sure he will stand at the next election. He also said the party had to show it was stable. “I don’t […]

An Authoritarian Act

Written By: - Date published: 2:52 pm, August 18th, 2010 - 14 comments

So Rodney can’t keep 4 other people on side. The liberal and authoritarian split in Act has had its blood-letting and the authoritarians have won. Where will the neo-liberal idealogues go? And how will Epsom react to this change in philosophy in a year’s time?

Does Key know why he replaced Roy with Boscawen?

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, August 18th, 2010 - 31 comments

We’re in a depressingly familiar position under this Key government: We don’t know why one of our government’s ministers was forced to resign yesterday. It’s not good enough in this age of supposedly open and transparent government. The really scary thing this time is it appears the Prime Minister doesn’t know either.

How to be a lazy politician

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, August 17th, 2010 - 9 comments

When John Steinbeck said “No one wants advice – only corroboration” he could well have been describing the numerous working groups the Government has established in many areas of significant economic and social policy. Too lazy to spend its nine years in opposition developing a detailed policy prescription, National now picks groups to tell it what it wants to hear.

National’s Economic Plan Found

Written By: - Date published: 2:38 pm, August 7th, 2010 - 10 comments

After half a government term of insisting that NACT had an economic plan, it has been ‘misplaced’. The full plan, said by informed sources to have been found in a brief case (along with a pie and a men’s magazine) and written on the back of an old rental expenses claim form, reveals that the government expects significant economic development will be lead by the construction of a single national transport infrastructure, namely a National Cycleway.

First they came….

Written By: - Date published: 2:45 pm, August 6th, 2010 - 78 comments

This guest post quotes the statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller in Germany after World War II about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power. The comparison to NACT policies towards the education sector is striking.

Aspiration and absurdity

Written By: - Date published: 1:28 pm, July 4th, 2010 - 7 comments

John Key’s government has had many “aspirational goals”. One of them was a secret plan to end whaling. With the recent collapse of the international whaling negotiations in Morocco that plan, if it ever really existed, has failed. In response, Foreign Minister Murray McCully takes the politics of aspiration to a whole new, some would say absurd, level.

Questions the government will not answer

Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, July 3rd, 2010 - 10 comments

Over at No Right Turn, I/S I filed an OIA request for specific information on the handling of Cabinet conflicts of interest. The request has been declined. In the following post (reprinted) I/S sets out the “Questions the government will not answer”.

Grass roots and astroturf

Written By: - Date published: 7:56 am, June 28th, 2010 - 23 comments

National are still cruising in the polls, and no doubt feeling pretty confident about the next election. But ticking the blue box is easy – how firm is that support? We’re seeing big protests against this government. Is there any significant National policy that isn’t attracting popular protest, criticism from the experts, or both?

What would you have done, Prime Minister?

Written By: - Date published: 11:36 pm, June 23rd, 2010 - 33 comments

A very strange statement from Timaru financier Allan Hubbard in this story from the Herald after his company had been put into statutory liquidation by Justice Minister Simon Power: Power said on Sunday there was not adequate documentation of loans made on behalf of 407 investors who were owed NZ$98 million. “I think if Mr […]

Buyer’s remorse on both sides of the Tasman

Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, June 8th, 2010 - 30 comments

Aussies are looking more and more likely to elect Abbott. Terrible. Guy’s a chauvinistic prick who admitted you can’t trust a word he says. Shows how poorly Rudd has done some things. People are thinking the Liberals weren’t so bad after all. Likewise, Goff is in with a decent sniff in 2011. Solely because of […]

Creeping privatisation in local government

Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, June 2nd, 2010 - 5 comments

It’s an innocous looking bill but Rodney Hide’s Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill packs a wallop when you unpick it. Not only does it open the door for the privatisation of our water services, it positively ushers it in, takes off its coat and says ‘stay a spell, why don’t you?’, 35 years in fact.