Parliament

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Key, Brownlee & McCully have questions to answer

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, December 22nd, 2010 - 45 comments

It seems we don’t have a government at the moment. John Key is incommunicado in Hawaii. The Acting PM, Bill English, and Key’s press people refuse to speak for him. Someone needs to front up because serious questions are emerging about the honesty of statements Gerry Brownlee and Murray McCully made in Parliament and to the New Zealand people.

A-G sure to launch Wong probe

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, December 10th, 2010 - 12 comments

The Auditor-General seems certain to launch an  investigation into the Wongs’ taxpayer-funded travel as even more  evidence shows the Parliamentary report isn’t worth the paper it’s  written on. A majority of Kiwis want her to resign. Why John Key hasn’t already called on the A-G to investigate, as he did  with Phil Heatley, is beyond me.

I beg your pardon, Mr Key

Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, December 7th, 2010 - 17 comments

A reader responds, pretty curtly, to John Key’s wholly inadequate explanation for why the select committee hearings on extending the SIS’s already broad powers will be secret. “It won’t be in the public interest to have it open, for a whole bunch of reasons I don’t want to go into,” Just doesn’t cut it.

Congratulations Kris

Written By: - Date published: 8:14 pm, November 20th, 2010 - 50 comments

With a majority of votes counted it’s clear that Kris Fa’afoi is going to be the next Labour MP for Mana. We’re sure Kris will show his mettle in standing up for the people of Porirua and Mana in Parliament. All the best Kris. Show those Nats what you’re made of.

Informed debate from Jonathan Coleman

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, November 10th, 2010 - 22 comments

Yesterday, Jonathan Coleman was handed the job of doing the introductory speech on the Taxation (International Investment and Remedial Matters) Bill 2010. Coleman was reading from a prepared speech that someone had handed him, and it was the wrong speech for the wrong Bill. Coleman, without seeming to realise anything was amiss, proceeded to repeat verbatim a speech Peter Dunne gave a year ago for the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill.

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.

Labour and Greens lead on transparency

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 12 comments

Last week Speaker Lockwood Smith rolled back transparency on MPs expenses, by making travel spending secret again.  John Key came out “against” the move.  Yesterday Labour and the Greens called his bluff by releasing their details.  Over to you John, once again you’re too late to lead, but you can still follow…

Rolling back transparency

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, October 30th, 2010 - 43 comments

Last year MPs’ spending was opened up to public scrutiny, and many hailed a “new era” of openness. Well it didn’t last long.  Now MPs’ travel costs are to become secret again.  We won’t get to know about cases like Rodney Hide and Chris Carter.  This will prevent incidents like the Carter witch-hunt. But on balance I have to come down on the side of transparency.  This move to start rolling it back is a mistake.

A rushed law, a bad law

Written By: - Date published: 5:11 pm, October 29th, 2010 - 56 comments

The Hobbit Enabling Act is meant to do is say ‘you’re an employee if you are called an employee in your contract, if not, you’re a contractor’. But it doesn’t say that and it doesn’t override the Bryson case that caused the ‘uncertainty’ Warners supposedly feared. Now, nobody knows what the law actually is. Well-founded disagreements will mean court cases.

Harawira off foreshore committee

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, October 28th, 2010 - 7 comments

Select committees are very important. They take Bills after first reading, hear submissions, and recommend alterations. Ministers do not (usually) sit on them and they are not meant to be mere rubber stamps for the government. But Harawira’s removal from the foreshore committee shows this government doesn’t care about good lawmaking.

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.

Without a trace of irony

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, October 1st, 2010 - 20 comments

Rodney Hide has taken a complaint to Parliamentary Services over Phil Twyford EA sending a message from his work email calling on people to vote for Len Brown. Wow, free emails. What a huge abuse of taxpayer cash. Not exactly on the scale of a trip to Disneyland. You’ve got to love Hide’s total lack of self-awareness.

Open letter on the CERRA

Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, September 28th, 2010 - 25 comments

A group of 27 legal scholars from New Zealand and overseas has written an open letter outlining their deep concerns over the constitutional implications of the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act 2010.

Asbestos City

Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, September 26th, 2010 - 20 comments

In the aftermath of the twin towers, the dust that accompanied their collapse gave rise to a health crisis in the medium/long term that continues to play out to this day.  And given the prevalence of asbestos in Christchurch buildings, it just might be that the earthquake will result in a number of preventable deaths after all…

Re: Chauvel on CERRA

Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, September 24th, 2010 - 18 comments

A few days ago Charles Chauvel wrote a piece on Red Alert on why Labour voted for CERRA. I have two big problems with it. 1) Labour may have won concessions that improved CERRA but they didn’t get the key one. 2) There’s a dangerous mindset in the position that Labour had to vote for dictatorship or get pilloried in the media and lose votes.

The Smiths: Getting it Right

Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, September 24th, 2010 - 11 comments

Lockwood and Nick did good work yesterday.  So praise where praise is due: Keep it up boys.

Cosgrove slams McVicar’s role in Garrett affair

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 23rd, 2010 - 10 comments

Great video of Clayton Cosgrove getting right stuck into the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s Garth McVicar over his hypocrisy on  David Garrett. Cosgrove’s certainly no bleeding heart liberal so I’d say McVicar’s credibility on law in order is now pretty much shot.

An indelible stain on parliamentary lawmaking

Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, September 20th, 2010 - 11 comments

Andrew Geddis (Associate Professor of Law at Otago and writer at Pundit) is an expert on democratic theory.  He has become required reading for politics junkies.  His latest piece — a brutally honest analysis of the recent work of the Law and Order select committee — should be required reading for everybody.

The Shock Doctrine

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, September 19th, 2010 - 23 comments

The ‘shock doctrine’ is how (capitalist) elites use moments of crisis to make power grabs while the normal checks are offline and/or the political opposition and media are swept up in a ‘unity’ mantra that prevents them acting to protect democracy. Last week, National used it to make us a dictatorship.

A Busy Week In Politics

Written By: - Date published: 11:41 pm, September 17th, 2010 - 19 comments

It’s been a very big week this week, so I thought I’d do a round-up, just so we don’t forget some of the ‘lesser’ lights that may have been big news had we not had so much to go on…

Garrett resigns from ACT

Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, September 17th, 2010 - 80 comments

David Garrett has resigned from ACT and has indicated he will almost certainly resign from Parliament. Good, He is a scumbag, a liar, and a hypocrite. He is only resigning because he was caught. Now attention must turn to Rodney Hide. He can’t now pretend to be administering justice when he harbored Garrett and kept […]

More thoughts on the Gerry Brownlee Enabling Act

Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, September 16th, 2010 - 32 comments

The Gerry Brownlee Enabling Act is a Dictator’s Charter, and all we can do is hope Brownlee doesn’t abuse it. Even the Herald is against the unwarranted and excessive powers that have been conferred on one man with no meaningful checks or balances. This isn’t about Left or Right but too many on the Right seem happy with unfettered State power.

Labour grassroots revolt against Quake Act betrayal

Written By: - Date published: 7:51 am, September 16th, 2010 - 154 comments

A couple of days ago Labour MP Brendon Burns posted a self-congratulatory piece over at Red Alert celebrating the ‘rare unity’ among parliamentary parties in voting to make Gerry Brownlee dictator of New Zealand for the next 18 months.
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The response from Labour’s grassroots in the comment section was swift and brutal. The Parliamentary Labour Party may have abdicated its role as opposition but that doesn’t mean everyone is happy.

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.

Armstrong slams National’s “disgraceful” arrogance

Written By: - Date published: 7:58 am, August 7th, 2010 - 41 comments

Herald political editor John Armstrong has slammed National’s “arrogant” behaviour in Parliament saying it verges on “being a disgrace to itself and the institution”. This is incredibly strong language from a senior journalist. It is the result of a government which is undermining democratic accountability in Parliament by lying and obfuscating in answer to opposition questions.

Who’d be an MP?

Written By: - Date published: 7:14 am, July 13th, 2010 - 12 comments

Who’d be an MP? In many ways it’s a dog of a job, and the prospect of really “making a difference” seems remote. Politics seems to bring out the worst in people, and too many politicians have earned the low esteem in which they are held by the public. But despite all this, some people are drawn to politics for all the right reasons. Good on you all. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Pro-choice responses to Chadwick’s Abortion Bill

Written By: - Date published: 9:47 pm, July 5th, 2010 - 157 comments

Been a bit disappointed that there hasn’t been a post up here yet on the news out on Saturday that Steve Chadwick is seeking support for a Member’s Bill to make abortion truly on demand in NZ, to 24 weeks.  Then I remembered that I still have posting rights from doing the 2008 General Election […]

The reverse midas touch

Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, July 4th, 2010 - 8 comments

David Farrar leapt to a “they did it too” defence of the taxpayer-funded ‘survey’ that National MPs are sending to selected voters around the country. I reckon he wrote the questions. It was Farrar’s dodgy polling that convinced National to run Melissa Lee as the candidate in Mt Albert. I guess Lee getting caught out with a dodgy ‘survey’ is just Farrar’s reverse midas touch striking again.

The education of Anne Tolley

Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, July 2nd, 2010 - 18 comments

Tolley’s snookered herself. Either: Parliamentary Library republishes the paper with the few phrases that annoy her gone = Looks like Library has caved to her attacks. Tolley’s a bully. Has attacked the Library’s neutrality. Or they decide the phrases are substantively OK. Republish = Tolley looks like an idiot. Her National Standards further undermined.

Nats push-polling on your dime?

Written By: - Date published: 1:19 am, July 1st, 2010 - 61 comments

A reader sent us these images of an addressed ‘survey’ he received in the mail from Melissa Lee. It makes interesting reading because it’s not actually an attempt to gather our opinions to inform National’s policies. It’s a cynical attempt to influence our views while pretending to care what we think. And the Nats are using our money to fund it.

Yet more abuse of Urgency

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, June 26th, 2010 - 20 comments

This week, the Government slammed through the Policing (Involvement in Local Authority Elections) Amendment Bill. It lets Police stand for local elections under the same rules as other public servants. It’s an issue that deserves to be debated. Instead, it was rushed through by this government in yet another shameful act of disregard for transparent government and active democracy.

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