national/act government

Categories under national/act government

Arrogant and out of touch

Written By: - Date published: 6:25 pm, December 10th, 2008 - 55 comments

The Manawatu Standard has a good op-ed piece today on how National has squandered its honeymoon with its arrogant and out-of-touch behaviour on the fire at will bill. The National party rose to power on the back of, among other things, scathing accusations that a supremely arrogant Labour party had “lost touch” with the people. […]

HRC calls for consultation on fire at will

Written By: - Date published: 4:17 pm, December 10th, 2008 - 18 comments

This just in: the Human Rights Commission has called for the fire at will bill to be put to select committee: The Human Rights Commission has urgently requested the Government to reconsider its decision not to allow the 90-day bill to go to a select committee. “Rushed legislation is potentially risky legislation and this is […]

F*ck Democracy II

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, December 10th, 2008 - 20 comments

This from Lew in the comments section of my last post: Shortly after the House resumed at 0900, Darren Hughes requested that the bills about to be debated be tabled so members could read them before debating them. Just before 1000 he asked what progress had been made, and was told by the Speaker that […]

F*ck democracy

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, December 10th, 2008 - 17 comments

No Right Turn has an excellent post pointing out that National is misusing urgency in a manner unseen since the bad old days of Douglas and Richardson: You have to go back to Douglas and Richardson to see this sort of abuse of the Parliamentary process. And if this is how National intends to run […]

Some questions for Kate

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 pm, December 9th, 2008 - 23 comments

Kate Wikinson, John Key’s hapless Minister of Labour, has told NZPA the public shouldn’t get to have their say on the fire at will bill because, apparently, we already had our chance with Wayne Mapp’s private member’s bill back in 2006. This argument is complete bollocks, and she knows it. Perhaps that’s why she refused […]

Oh dear

Written By: - Date published: 5:14 pm, December 9th, 2008 - 55 comments

Rodney Hide on National and ACT’s select committee into the ETS: “I am especially pleased to see that the issue of the scientific and trade implications will be considered alongside the impacts on the economy. “There is definitely not a monolithic view on the fact of human induced climate change and I welcome this government’s […]

Spin-busting: Probationary periods

Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, December 9th, 2008 - 22 comments

National has been working hard to push the idea that its fire at will policy introduces a ‘probationary period’ of employment. This is not true. The Employment Relations Act already allows for probationary employment periods, it simply requires that workers are given the right to fair process and natural justice. All National’s proposed legislation would […]

Bringing it home

Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, December 9th, 2008 - 16 comments

These ads made by the ACTU to oppose John Howard’s removal of unfair dismissal rights sure bring home what National’s fire at will law will mean for working families. No wonder National wants to curtail any real debate by ramming it through under urgency. Part two is here.

Ramming it through

Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, December 9th, 2008 - 51 comments

I’ve just been informed that the National/ACT Government has put its 90 day fire at will bill on the Order Paper and could ram it through under urgency as early as tomorrow. This is frankly an astonishing abuse of our democracy. A piece of legislation that will remove basic work rights from hundreds of thousands […]

No longer at the back of the class

Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, December 9th, 2008 - 17 comments

Word is National’s David Bennett will be chairing the Transport & Industrial Relations select committee. After his unhinged performance over the youth minimum wage bill (audio below) where he screamed that the bill was “communism” and that we need to protect our hierarchical society, I’m not surprised John Key doesn’t want to send the 90 […]

Work rights? Gone by Xmas

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, December 9th, 2008 - 40 comments

Tracy Watkins reports that the National/Act government will be taking all work rights from anyone in a new job in a firm with 20 staff or less and they’re going to do it under urgency. I’ve heard that the question of whether to proceed with the bill under urgency was still being hotly debated within […]

Kiwisaver changes

Written By: - Date published: 9:20 pm, December 8th, 2008 - 16 comments

NZPA reports that the Government is looking at reviewing its changes to Kiwisaver so that workers who don’t earn enough to get the full $20 tax credit in a revised 2% scheme are not unfairly discriminated against. The changes are expected to cost $700 million over five years. This is a good measure, and in […]

Unambitious

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, December 8th, 2008 - 89 comments

National/ACT has cancelled the Buy New Zealand Made programme. So, this is that ambitious and positive vision for New Zealand we’ve been hearing so much about?

Taking responsibility, a trait of government

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 pm, December 7th, 2008 - 13 comments

I was looking back at posts from last year to get some idea of traffic patterns over the December period. I found this interesting post from Tane titled Personal responsibility. It made me think of the poor performance of the National-led government over the last couple of weeks as a government. Tane’s post was about […]

What to do with Treasury

Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, December 5th, 2008 - 38 comments

It’s good to see Treasury’s extreme right-wing prescription for New Zealand has not been wholly embraced by the National Party – and it’s easy to see why. While Bill English (a former Treasury wonk himself) no doubt agrees with the policy ideas and direction outlined by Treasury, he has the disadvantage of being accountable to […]

Govt’s ACC spin working

Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, December 5th, 2008 - 32 comments

We’ve covered the National/ACT government’s latest ACC beat-up extensively already. IB spelled out rather well here the techniques being used by the government to undermine ACC in order to create a sense of crisis and soften up the public for privatisation. And it pains me to say it, but it’s working. And it’s working well. […]

Treasury – Labour left us in good shape

Written By: - Date published: 12:23 pm, December 5th, 2008 - 17 comments

Treasury’s briefing to Bill English as the new Minister of Finance must’ve pissed him off big time. Aside from the expected ideological burp (already covered in depth by No Right Turn) it reads like a long list of Labour achievements and calls on National is reign in its irresponsible promises. Here’s a taste of some […]

The moral high ground

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, December 5th, 2008 - 15 comments

Murray McCully has just used his recently acquired ministerial discretion to allow Fiji’s under-20 soccer team to enter New Zealand in transit on its way to a tournament in Tahiti. This is broadly at odds with the Labour government’s sanctions following the coup in 2006 (though they did grant the Fiji sevens team permission to […]

Spinbusting: the anchor-story

Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, December 4th, 2008 - 52 comments

There’s a lot of talk about the ACC budget deficit and National’s use of the issue to create an environment in which their privatisation scheme can roll with the minimum political fall-out. Any doubt I had that this was their plan evaporated this morning when I heard Nick Smith on RNZ moving the story along […]

Laying the foundations

Written By: - Date published: 4:33 pm, December 3rd, 2008 - 46 comments

Let’s not fool ourselves that what we’ve seen from National over the last 24 hours on to the shortfall in the ACC non-earners account hasn’t been carefully managed in a way to lay the foundation for their arguments in favour of privatising the scheme. I won’t go into a lot of detail around their motives, […]

Nowhere to Hide

Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, December 3rd, 2008 - 37 comments

“Far too much irksome regulation is putting unnecessary burdens on households and businesses,” says Rodney Hide. Problem is, for all his rhetoric, Rodney can’t actually name any ‘irksome’ or unnecessary regulations. Now, he is “appealling” to us to stop him looking like a puffed up idiot. He wants us to do his job for him […]

A smoke-screen for the privatisation brigade

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, December 3rd, 2008 - 21 comments

Now that didn’t take long. Well rehearsed from the 1990s, National has already started using the privileged position of government to conjure up bogeymen to get their unpopular privatisation agenda past the public. John Key called an urgent press conference yesterday to beat-up a $1b shortfall in ACC funding. ‘OMG, this ACC thing is out […]

Mythbusting: we can’t cut emissions from agriculture

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, December 2nd, 2008 - 27 comments

This classic myth is used by National/ACT as an excuse to not do anything about climate change and, now, to attempt to undermine emissions reduction targets in the international climate change agreement to succeed Kyoto. And it is nothing more than a myth. Between 1990 and 2005, agriculture became 30% more efficient in terms of […]

CTU calls for fairer tax cuts

Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, December 1st, 2008 - 50 comments

The Council of Trade Unions is calling on National to re-jig its tax package to give it more balance. And fair enough too – despite the media narrative about National’s ‘moderate’, ‘centrist’ policies the figures show its tax package is actually incredibly regressive. In fact, you could argue it’s been explicitly designed to divert money […]

The housing question

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, December 1st, 2008 - 55 comments

Good housing is a foundation of a healthy society, and it is something that New Zealand has long lacked. Despite leading the world with our state housing in the 1930s, we have fallen behind. Housing in most other first world countries is much warmer and drier than here. That has important consequences; a study by […]

Anatomy of a honeymoon piece

Written By: - Date published: 8:50 pm, November 30th, 2008 - 33 comments

Most of our political journalists are more than capable of producing informative, insightful pieces. For instance, Claire Trevett wrote an excellent series of pieces that confirmed John Key had stolen Coldplay’s ‘Clocks’ for his ‘Ambiguous for NZ’ DVD. She researched the legalities of the issue, consulted a musicologist on the tune, brought forward a confession […]

Wailin’

Written By: - Date published: 2:25 pm, November 29th, 2008 - 44 comments

Foreign Minister and Whaling Spokesperson Murray McCully has announced that New Zealand will be breaching international law by not undertaking search and rescue operations if whalers or protesters get into trouble in New Zealand’s zone of responsibility. Great. So, in a week and a half our new government has abandoned its part in the global […]

Just wondering

Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, November 29th, 2008 - 8 comments

“National’s honeymoon has to run its course. The public – not Labour or the media – will decide when that honeymoon is over” writes John Armstrong. I’m just wondering: how does the public gather information on what the Government is up to, to decide if it wants the honeymoon to continue? And, how do we, […]

Brownlee’s blow-out

Written By: - Date published: 11:33 pm, November 27th, 2008 - 47 comments

National/ACT has only been in power a week, but the flip-flops keep coming. Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee will not confirm that that National/ACT will reversing the new light-bulb standards. This after they campaigned hard against these standards and Key repeatedly promised that under a National government people would not be told which type of light-bulbs they can use. Brownlee […]

‘Become a nation of savers’

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, November 27th, 2008 - 35 comments

That’s Finance Minister Bill English’s message to Kiwis. So, that would be why he is cutting our Kiwisaver nesteggs in half to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, eh?

Small-target governing

Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, November 27th, 2008 - 28 comments

Yesterday it was a $7bn rescue package. Today it’s preparing a contingency plan to bail out big business. But do we get details? Of course not. I’ve got a bad feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that there’s no real plan here, or if there is it’s one that the public wouldn’t like […]

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