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Polity: Armstrong on National on Labour

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 1:20 pm, April 7th, 2014 - 13 comments

It isn’t a new ploy from National or its supporters. “Mortgage rate rises under National: Good. Mortgage rate rises under Labour: Dreadful!”. I’ve seen David Farrar argue both that a recession is the perfect time to cut taxes because it stimulates the economy, and a recovery is also the perfect time to cut taxes to provide a dividend. It reminds me of that old chestnut, most recently applied to Don Brash: “The answer is tax cuts. What is the question again?”

Act thinks the IPCC is scaremongering

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:38 am, April 1st, 2014 - 65 comments

The latest IPCC report has been released and not only are scientific views on the existence of climate change hardening, but the effects are becoming more pronounced. Meanwhile ACT has described action to try and save the planet as “moral exhibitionism” and has said that not improving the ETS is a bottom line for any future coalition with National. If you need any reason to work to get rid of this Government this has to be it.

LocalBodies: National Slumps in Polls As Ministers Struggle

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 9:19 am, March 24th, 2014 - 22 comments

There is danger of reading too much into polls months out from an election. Commentators were claiming that National was too strong to lose the next election based on a rogue poll. Few looked at multiple polls, accounted for the margin of error nor the trends over past months. The last fortnight has seen a National with the latest Roy Morgan Poll plummeting from the Colmar Brunton result of 51% to 45.5%. And it is based on a lack of ministerial performance…

Labour and the Greens announce forestry policies

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 3:48 pm, March 19th, 2014 - 39 comments

Labour announced policies today seeking to reinvigorate the Forestry Industry and to promote more local processing of logs. And the Greens have announced a policy designed to increase the use of wood in local buildings.

NRT: An economic upgrade?

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 2:24 pm, March 17th, 2014 - 60 comments

No Right Turn reacts to David Cunliffe’s speech on Friday. “…one thing is clear: we need to move our economy away from a focus on milk. Our environment can’t sustain it, and its not delivering for anyone other than a narrow class of wealthy farmers.” “… rich economies have multiple sources of income. And they consciously develop them through industrial policy.”

Guest Post – What is Shane Jones doing?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 9:02 am, March 15th, 2014 - 149 comments

A guest post on Shane Jones and what effect his recent behaviour is having on Labour’s election chances.

David Cunliffe’s speech to the New Zealand Institute

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:13 pm, March 14th, 2014 - 124 comments

Speech notes from today’s address to the New Zealand Institute. “Trickle-down economics and its neoliberal parentage have failed New Zealanders and left many of our emerging businesses starved of investment capital and skills. The opportunity gaps have widened and there is no clear, shared strategy to a high value, high income future. That’s something Labour will change. We want an economy that works for all New Zealanders.”

LB: Greens hit the ground running

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 11:50 am, March 13th, 2014 - 35 comments

Dave Kennedy (aka bsprout) at Local Bodies is the Green candidate for Invercargill. He posted this on Monday in response to Josie Pagani’s pundit post. It is on the preparedness of the Green party for this election It got overshadowed in the news cycle by burst of corrupt stench of self-entitled elitist behaviour from National, but is worth reposting anyway. It is going to be interesting to look at this election campaign where National is fighting two large parties on the left.

Beltway blues: serving the public interest?

Written By: karol - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 10th, 2014 - 32 comments

Gower’s one-dimensional, distorted, gotcha reporting, highlights the failings of TV3 news & The Nation. Corin Dann and Qu &A are less one-dimensional, but speak within the B-Hive-Media Loop, that speaks for the comfortable middle & Business classes, & manufactured a “problem” week for Cunliffe.

Guest post – Who is David Cunliffe?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 8:41 am, March 10th, 2014 - 182 comments

A guest post on the enigma that is David Cunliffe by David Craig.

Auckland Council CCO 2 step

Written By: karol - Date published: 10:42 am, March 7th, 2014 - 13 comments

Mai Chen argues that the current review of Auckland Council CCOs will put them on a tighter leash. Tony Holman argues against the whole CCO set up: it’s a trojan horse, 2 step towards privatisation of Auckland assets. Aucklanders need to have their say. Vote out Team Key to prevent such sales.

National’s ICT failures.

Written By: lprent - Date published: 10:55 pm, March 4th, 2014 - 23 comments

After having the past five and bit years with National’s negative policies about anything to do with new technologies, it is really nice to see some partially formed red-tinged morning ideas about how to encourage local usage of the net appearing on the sky’s horizon. National’s ICT strategy seems to see how uselessly slow they can do everything and how much they can slow down the development of ICT in NZ.

UK Labour goes OMOV

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 8:35 pm, March 2nd, 2014 - 9 comments

UK Labour’s special conference yesterday changed the Party’s rules for leadership selection, and the basis for affiliate involvement. One-person-one-vote is the general rule, and block voting for leadership and selection by affiliates including unions is replaced by individual and intentional involvement.

The Genesis share float has problems

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:21 am, February 27th, 2014 - 17 comments

The Government has effectively conceded that the Genesis share float will not meet expectations and is softening New Zealand up to the prospect that only 30% of the shares may be sold. It makes you wonder why they are still going a head with the sale.

Labour’s new Parliamentary chief of staff …

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 1:22 pm, February 26th, 2014 - 376 comments

David Cunliffe has announced his new chief of staff following Wendy Brandon’s resignation because of ill health. It is veteran strategist Matt McCarten.

On polls and things

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 9:16 am, February 25th, 2014 - 106 comments

The periodic agony and ecstasy attached to opinion poll results has kicked in with a pessimistic TVOne poll result being released on the weekend. But how accurate are they and are we in danger of damaging an election campaign by focussing too much on them?

Polity: A bad week

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 9:11 am, February 24th, 2014 - 142 comments

There’s no skating around it – Labour didn’t have a good last week. And the biggest shame is that beltway errors have been allowed to eclipse real progress on issues that actually matter to New Zealand families. The lack of direct relevance in the errors does not matter, because these issues matter for perceptions. If Labour is perceived as bumbling, or as lacking self-awareness, that will certainly be reflected at the ballot box. But there were a few bright spots.

Labour’s Manukau East candidate selection

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 1:22 pm, February 22nd, 2014 - 42 comments

Today the Labour Party selects its candidate for the Manukau East seat. The seat is one of the safest Labour seats in the country and whoever wins could be in Parliament for a long time. There is a strong lineup of candidates and the selection is a wide open one. Update: and Jenny Selesa has been selected.

Home thoughts from abroad

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 7:19 pm, February 20th, 2014 - 55 comments

Porirua mayor Nick Leggett has put up a couple interesting posts about Labour’s prospects in the upcoming election in progressonline. I think his political message is timely and true: Labour’s approach to this election cannot be “just a list of things that you’re against,” rather it should focus on what it’s for, and what it will do for New Zealanders. That could be very popular with voters.

David Cunliffe’s home

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 2:56 pm, February 20th, 2014 - 227 comments

National is now targeting David Cunliffe and his family. Metiria Turei was attacked for living in a castle and wearing designer jackets, and now David Cunliffe is being attacked for being wealthy. The criticisms miss the point. There is nothing inherently wrong with being wealthy. But there is everything wrong in setting fire to the ladder of social support after you have had the opportunity to climb it.

Poverty on the agenda

Written By: karol - Date published: 10:26 am, February 19th, 2014 - 81 comments

The documentary ‘Mind the Gap’ and an interview with a UNICEF advocacy manager focus on poverty and inequality. Zombie “neoliberal” policies have increased poverty & inequality, damaging the futures of too many children. We will all benefit from good government policies underpinned by a commitment to collective approaches and responsibility.

Fairfax quotes Government cheerleader

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 2:06 pm, February 16th, 2014 - 30 comments

Fairfax posted an article recently where three businessmen were interviewed on what they thought the political parties should be discussing this election year. The comments from the first interviewee were basically a John Key love in so I thought we should try and provide some balance …

John Key, Blogsters and the Dotcom leaks

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:34 am, February 15th, 2014 - 170 comments

This week has seen how sophisticated the publicity campaign against Kim Dotcom has been. The surprising detail that a Herald Socialite columnist has published with political implications potentially represents a new tactic by National. And the confirmation that Key is regularly in contact with Cameron Slater shows how deep the relationship is between National and the Sewer is. And there was the use of, as Key calls them, blogsters to smear opposition MPs with hints of corruption. This is going to be an interesting year …

Dotcom’s extradition and the 2014 general election

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 11:51 am, February 12th, 2014 - 94 comments

In further news about Dotcom he has said that if the Internet Party has not reached 5% in the polls before the printing of the ballot papers he will endorse another party. An endorsement could be the difference between the left winning and losing the next election. And the Greens have raised the prospect of a Ministerial Veto of any extradition order.

NRT: National hates transparency

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 7:54 am, February 12th, 2014 - 56 comments

Yesterday Labour tried to put forward a Parliamentary motion calling on the government to release the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement before signing it, on the simple democratic grounds that the public deserved to know what agreements were being made in our name. National refused to. The upshot: National hates transparency. It also hates democracy.

It’s past time for fair employment laws

Written By: Stephanie Rodgers - Date published: 1:53 pm, February 8th, 2014 - 35 comments

After David Cunliffe’s state of the nation speech at the end of January, the spotlight was, appropriately, on the big policy announcement he made: the Best Start package for Kiwi kids. (It wasn’t the friendliest spotlight, unfortunately.) But there was a sentence at the end which hasn’t had a lot of pickup, and which could […]

NZ Herald watch – history repeats

Written By: karol - Date published: 10:50 am, February 7th, 2014 - 146 comments

The NZ Herald has a long history of opposing Maori resistance and supporting colonisation. It has always been right wing with a strong commercial focus & MO. Yesterday it censored news of Waitangi Day protests. Today an editorial spins in slippery style, for the Govt’s failing PowerCo sales.

Some thoughts on Waitangi Day

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:01 am, February 6th, 2014 - 147 comments

Some thoughts on the nature of the Treaty of Waitangi and the need to continue with the treaty settlement process.

Dear RadioNZ – the largest party does not necessarily win the election

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 9:06 am, February 3rd, 2014 - 150 comments

Radio New Zealand this morning keeps saying that National could “win” the election but struggle to form a Government. This statement suggests that the Country’s foremost current affairs radio station may be struggling with the concept of MMP.

National’s election year strategy and designer jackets

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 9:30 am, February 2nd, 2014 - 111 comments

National’s attacks on Metiria Turei appear to me as being deliberate and programmed rather than an inconsequential argument on the cost of designer jackets.

No details, please, we’re gallery hacks

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 1:17 pm, January 31st, 2014 - 175 comments

Blue has a look at the the gallery hacks and what they’re looking for from a politician. The answer is – not much. Political journalists do not require any special qualifications. They go to journalism school to learn how to structure an article and avoid being sued. There is no test you must pass to become a Gallery hack proving that you understand policy, economics or statistics. Their job is write ‘colour’ pieces about the ‘cut and thrust’ of politics….