national/act government

Categories under national/act government

Late analysis on the reshuffle

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, January 24th, 2013 - 15 comments

I’ll say this for Key’s media people, they’re masters of the undersell when it comes to the insubstantial. And they know the media love to be surprised. But how ‘ruthless’ was Key really in the reshuffle? Two mediocre ministers with little political clout got the chop, but the real under-performers were too powerful for Key to touch.

The year in review

Written By: - Date published: 4:58 pm, December 31st, 2012 - 68 comments

Most of the years in review I’ve seen in the couple of weeks have concentrated on gossip and rating individual MPs. Most of what matters not a jot outside the beltway. What matters is how the parties are doing in terms of progressing or thwarting the government’s policy agenda – how’s the government doing at governing? – and how polling is shaping up for 2014.

I wish it could be Xmas every day…

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, December 21st, 2012 - 27 comments

… then maybe more attention would be given to increasing numbers of people struggling to get the necessities of life. Record queues outside Auckland’s City Mission. The Brighter Future never comes. Revisit The Spirit Level.

Bad news govt: it must be recess

Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, December 13th, 2012 - 11 comments

The House went into recess yesterday. Today there is a rush of stories that are bad news for the government.  Collins and the Binnie report, unsuccessful boot camps, and counter-productive anti-union and anti-worker policies.  What else?

When ideology fails: a Dickensian Govt

Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, December 6th, 2012 - 53 comments

The Key government’s sham and failed ideology of freedom and democracy can be seen in two Bills that were before the House this week.  This government is increasingly autocratic and anti-democratic, while enabling the powerful to exploit and control the powerless, including children.

Kate Wilkinson resigns portfolio

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, November 5th, 2012 - 184 comments

Breaking news: Kate Wilkinson has resigned her portfolio due to the Pike River Mine report.  Updates: News reports.  Damning official report: cold comfort for the families of the victims. Video of John Key’s press conference today.  International news coverage. Video of Shearer’s response (7 mins)

Planet Key, Planet Paula, and the War on the Poor

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 19th, 2012 - 67 comments

Over the last week, the government’s off-world set of distorted realities has come to the foreground: those of “Planet John Key” and “Planet Paula”. These worlds highlight the way Bennett’s latest welfare reforms wage war on the poor and undermine fairness and democracy.

Big trouble for Groser

Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, August 31st, 2012 - 63 comments

Suspicion is turning to Minister Tim Groser as the person who leaked information on Murray McCully’s botched reforms of Mfat. As I understand it, the suspicion is not that Groser directly told Goff but that Groser was ‘too loose’ in talking to some public servants about his criticisms of McCully’s botched reforms, who then became conduits for the information to Goff.

Curing Tobacco

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, May 28th, 2012 - 125 comments

So tobacco is a ridiculously addictive drug that offers no accompanying high for the user. It has pretty dire health consequences and was promoted for years as harmless, chic and sophisticated and the government even gave it away to combatants during WWII by the carton load.

But now the government wants it gone.

Performance pay for ministers to be introduced

Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, May 17th, 2012 - 10 comments

In a surprising pre-Budget u-turn, Prime Minister John Key has announced the Government will drop its policy of incrementally introducing performance pay for teachers and, instead, introduce it for ministers. “Listening to Hekia Parata fluff her way through her spin lines on the teacher cuts, I had a kind of epiphany” said Key. “Any fool […]

Emails reveal Key & Banks’ Dotcom links

Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, May 16th, 2012 - 102 comments

John Key might be regretting his moan about the media yesterday. His reward has been to be shown to be lying in the banks.com affair. Key has previously claimed he first heard of Dotcom the day before he was arrested. A new email, however, shows Dotcom’s staff met with Key personally months earlier over his attempt to purchase the Crisco mansion.

Ask no questions?

Written By: - Date published: 9:02 pm, May 2nd, 2012 - 4 comments

There’s the facts, the questions and the legal opinions. Today in Parliament John Key stuck to his lack of interest in detailed questions, and adherence to Banks’ reliance on  legal opinions. He even alleged that the Labour Opposition agreed with these opinions. Not likely. The Police need to ask all the relevant questions that have so far not been answered by Banks or asked by Key, then their veracity and reliability should be established by a judge.

Best stick to the polling, Farrar

Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, March 19th, 2012 - 103 comments

David Farrar has had a go at David Clark for supposedly blaming (or crediting, Farrar can’t make up his mind) National for the revenue loss resulting from Labour’s 2008 tax cuts after Clark said that National’s tax cuts have sucked 2.5% of GDP out of the Crown’s revenue, widening the deficit by $5b a year. Either Farrar can’t read or he’s desperately spinning.

Juking the stats

Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, March 16th, 2012 - 12 comments

There’s some odd omissions from Key’s new ’10 targets’. There’s nothing hard. Nothing about closing the gap with Australia, formerly goal number 1. Nothing about creating jobs, despite 170,000 being promised. Nothing about the cycleway that was going to end the recession. It invites a closer look at the 10 targets. And then you discover, they’ll all happen anyway.

Imperatorfish – Meet the firebugs

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, March 8th, 2012 - 2 comments

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here: Widespread industrial action, economic growth projections revised downwards, more job losses, attacks on the welfare safety net, selling our strategic assets, and no strategy to grow our economy.

Where’s Murray?

Written By: - Date published: 11:08 pm, February 27th, 2012 - 16 comments

As controversy swirls over Murray McCully’s leaked emails and the government’s secret position on “restraining China” and McCully is nowhere to be found to answer questions, John Key says “I have absolutely no clue where he is“. Funny, cause he was the one who approved McCully’s travel. Seems a lot of ministers are taking to hiding when the heat comes on.

Why hasn’t Key sacked McCully?

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, February 16th, 2012 - 10 comments

If you or I or, say, an Mfat official were storing confidential work files or, worse, officially classified information in our personal email and those files were hacked, you or I or the Mfat official would get the sack for gross misconduct. So when’s McCully being fired? Or is Key’s flippant “if it was really sensitive it would be out by now” what passes for security standards in the government?

Maori Party to quit Govt?

Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, January 31st, 2012 - 86 comments

News in on the Herald says the Maori party are talking the talk over National’s latest insult to Maori.

Will they quit the Government?  Or will the smell of those limo seats  mean another backdown in a couple of weeks?

ImperatorFish: Nats Must Act Urgently To Save Us From The Sun

Written By: - Date published: 1:58 pm, January 25th, 2012 - 22 comments

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here

The biggest solar storm for six years is headed our way. What is John Key going to do about it?

Absolutely damning

Written By: - Date published: 6:04 pm, December 30th, 2011 - 25 comments

We have a government department which has acted deliberately to thwart judicial and Ombudsman oversight, for reasons of its own convenience, apparently in violation of New Zealand law. The question is whether the Minister will act – or whether he will effectively endorse this situation with his silence.

Right-wing Herald element goes OTT

Written By: - Date published: 8:29 pm, December 10th, 2011 - 61 comments

John Armstrong’s column today – not yet on website – is extraordinary. “Elements on the left cried wolf about National having a secret agenda” Armstrong’s faux outrage is generated by the fact that National’s charter schools policy was not part of any election mandate, and some people have pointed this out. Funny how people on the left are always “elements” – couldn’t possibly have a mind of their own.

ImperatorFish: The Two Most Powerful Arguments They Can Muster

Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, December 10th, 2011 - 5 comments

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here 

National seem to be backing Charter Schools on the premise that if the teachers don’t want them, they must be good.

 

ImperatorFish: Not Irony #2

Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, December 8th, 2011 - 38 comments

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here

David Farrar is running National’s line that anything the teachers don’t want must be good for the education of our children…

 

ImperatorFish: Not Irony #1

Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, December 8th, 2011 - 28 comments

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here

David Farrar applies some wonky logic in order to blame everything bad the Nats do on the left. If any group of voters is to blame for the National/ACT deal, it’s those voters who gave National their party vote and/or John Banks their electorate vote.

Ambrose to sue Key for defamation

Written By: - Date published: 9:18 pm, November 19th, 2011 - 107 comments

Bradley Ambrose, the cameraman widely maligned by John Key and his pudgey lapdogs David Farrar and Cameron Slater for daring to hold the PM to some basic standards of accountability, is demanding an apology from John Key or he’ll take the PM to court for defamation.

UPDATE: The final week of the campaign will kick off with a police raid on the Herald Monday morning.

Epsom: spit or swallow?

Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, November 14th, 2011 - 66 comments

Oh to be an Epsom voter – what an enviable menu of options you have. A National candidate who cares so much about the electorate that he goes to extraordinary lengths to discourage people from voting for him, or a racist former National politician soundly rejected by all of Auckland after a dismal ‘Supercity’ mayoralty who’s actively campaigning to undermine his own racist former National politician party leader.

What a shonkey farce!

A cup of tea and a lie down

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, November 11th, 2011 - 34 comments

 

hattip: the jackal

Australia bound?

Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, August 31st, 2011 - 20 comments

Some advice if you are planning on joining the many kiwi’s that have left the country to go to Australia since National made it their aspiration to do something about that migration trend. They certainly have massively increased the outflow – one of their few success stories. But where to go to in aussie?

Cuts and consequences

Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, August 25th, 2011 - 23 comments

The government reckons it can cut the number of public sector workers without cutting services. That wasn’t the experience of the 80s and 90s when vital institutional knowledge and expertise were lost in a frenzy of asset sales,  privatisation and brutal job cuts– when public service numbers dropped from around 85,000 public servants  to under  30,000 […]

Cuts for you, tax cuts for Brash

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, August 11th, 2011 - 56 comments

ACT’s Spending Cap Bill is coming to Parliament. It would cap government spending and only let it grow each year by inflation and population growth. At first blush, and assuming that you don’t want the government to do anything it doesn’t do now, this might seem like a way to maintain current services without adding more. But reality ain’t that simple.

Protests in the North and South

Written By: - Date published: 6:57 am, July 10th, 2011 - 6 comments

Yesterday, hundreds of parents protested cuts to early childhood education on Queen St and gave Phil Goff a 60,000 signature petition to take to Wellington. 1000 people in the Octagon called on the government to consider Kiwi jobs when awarding contracts. What is wrong with the priorities of this government that puts tax cuts ahead of kids and job?