national
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- same old national (1,617)
Nats ignored Treasury’s warnings on cancelling Cullen Fund payments
Written By: - Date published: 2:27 pm, June 27th, 2009 - 18 comments
In the newly released Budget papers Treasury acknowledges that cancelling the Cullen Fund contributions would only reduce debt by 5% (more than offset by increase in assets) and it will put our ability to pay for superannuation at risk in the long-term: While the contributions holiday component of the package helps to reduce gross debt, […]
Tax cuts, one-off payment, or something better?
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, June 27th, 2009 - 46 comments
Budget papers just released reveal that Treasury recommended a package of measures to reduce debt including an 8-year suspension of the Cullen fund contributions, new operating allowances of $1 billion, rather than $1.75 billion and cancelling the tax cuts and giving New Zealanders $1billion worth of one-off payments instead. This either would have taken the form […]
A Rankin headache
Written By: - Date published: 7:14 pm, June 23rd, 2009 - 33 comments
There must be an automatic recoil on the Government benches when Christine Rankin’s name is mentioned. Even Bill Ralston has noticed the difficulty in which they find themselves with her latest embarassment: We now have the ludicrous position where a Families Commissioner appears to run a shadow campaign by proxy, through surrogates, completely contrary to […]
National’s growing silence explained
Written By: - Date published: 6:08 pm, June 23rd, 2009 - 23 comments
Judy Callingham (partner of Brian Edwards) has a new post, one of a series of media tips they write on. The latest tip might suggest National are slowly learning the hang of managing the media and explains why National are already clamming up and failing to front on so many important issues. Yet while Callingham […]
Rhetoric & Reality 4: Tertiary Education
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, June 23rd, 2009 - 5 comments
National sure does talk a good game before an election. This time we’re looking at their rhetoric on education, especially tertiary education: Key: I’m passionate about ensuring today’s young people get the education they need to succeed. Education is a liberator.. It’s what makes it possible for a kid from even the most challenging background […]
Lessons unlearnt
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 am, June 22nd, 2009 - 12 comments
Matt McCarten, who has managed more than a few election campaigns, does a good post facto analysis of where National went wrong in Mt Albert: Despite what the Nats said after the by-election, their internal polls (and Labour’s) at the start of the campaign showed they had a chance of winning. At the very least, […]
Roger Douglas on Key and English
Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, June 21st, 2009 - 19 comments
Commenting on Key’s policy to force the Guardians of the Super Fund to invest 40% of funds in New Zealand, ACT’s Roger Douglas notices a pattern we’ve posted on here at The Standard before: “This only enforces the emerging trend we have seen between Mr Key and Mr English. Mr Key announces a stupid idea […]
National still hate women
Written By: - Date published: 7:34 pm, June 17th, 2009 - 65 comments
Despite women being 51% of the population, and it being women who won National the last election, they are still showing their contempt for us. State Services Minister Tony Ryall decided that pay equity isn’t important, dropping a study into why female public servants are still paid less than their male counterparts in the same […]
Key’s female trouble
Written By: - Date published: 10:03 pm, June 16th, 2009 - 51 comments
Key is obviously lying about having an unavoidable commitment in Taupo keeping him from Melissa Lee’s election night do. He would tell us what it was if it were true. He would have told journos at the start that he wouldn’t be there if there really had been some long-standing commitment. Truth is he abandoned […]
F*ck tha police…
Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, June 16th, 2009 - 18 comments
…that seems to be National’s plan as it moves to cut 10% of the police vehicle fleet (why are so many of National’s cuts 10%?). Given the politicking National and its front-groups did on law and order last year you’d think that the last thing they’d do would be make it even harder for them […]
Hooton’s bizarro world strikes again
Written By: - Date published: 4:16 pm, June 15th, 2009 - 52 comments
I think it’s fair to say that David Shearer’s thumping victory in Mt Albert has been widely viewed as securing Phil Goff’s leadership over the Labour Party. Any sane observer will recognise that Goff’s position has been strengthened by the victory, that the party has gained a huge boost in confidence and that Shearer will […]
A bribe is not a plan
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, June 15th, 2009 - 39 comments
As recently posted here, there is a vast gulf between National’s rhetoric and the reality on tax cuts. Before the election National sold its tax cut programme as the answer to every question. Tax cuts were the centrepiece of National’s economic plan and its response to the economic crisis: Key: Tax cuts are a top […]
A disgrace
Written By: - Date published: 8:55 pm, June 13th, 2009 - 23 comments
I’m stunned by National. Their leader didn’t support his Mt Albert candidate by turning up tonight and now nobody will talk to the media. There’s being a poor loser and then there is this kind of behaviour. At the very least front up, concede and thank your supporters and the electorate. Lee is a disgrace. […]
Back to basics
Written By: - Date published: 5:07 pm, June 11th, 2009 - 50 comments
Radio NZ is playing John Key saying that, following the letter from the woman in the sexual harassment saga, he has “washed his hands” of Richard Worth. It seems likely he will move to have Worth expelled from caucus. Good to see he chose a sensible path rather than the ‘attack the woman’ strategy the […]
National: targeting the victim
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, June 10th, 2009 - 129 comments
So National’s latest tactic in the Richard Worth affair appears to have been to leak the identity of the first complainant against Richard Worth (the one with all the “textes”). Why do I say this? Simple. The story that broke on the TV news tonight first appeared earlier today on the website of National Party […]
Crosby – Posturing with little substance
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
Lynton Crosby of the political spinners Crosby/Textor, who ‘advised’ both John Key and Don Brash, has finally given up on trying to pursue a unwinnable defamation case against Nicky Hager and Radio NZ.The case appears to me to have been started largely as intimidation by the Crosby (and maybe the National party) to find out […]
Kneecapped
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
Until now, Melissa Lee’s only remaining selling point in this train wreck of a campaign has been that the party she’s standing for is currently in Government. As she said in her press release yesterday: ‘I am the only candidate that Mt Albert voters can vote for that will be inside John Key’s Government.’ Unfortunate […]
Key endorses Banks
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, June 8th, 2009 - 59 comments
As if denying Aucklanders the chance to have their say on the super city wasn’t enough National now seems determined to tell them who their mayor’s going to be too. It’s absolutely unacceptable for the PM to be endorsing John Banks as the mayor of the super city.
Rhetoric & Reality 3: Crime
Written By: - Date published: 11:57 am, June 8th, 2009 - 19 comments
One of the most tedious and predictable right wing electoral tactics is to try and whip up a frenzy of fear about crime, especially violent crime. Mix in some “fear of youth” dog whistling for extra impact. Last election National were guilty as usual. The rhetoric: Key: I am extremely worried about the youth crime […]
Brains Trust
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, June 8th, 2009 - 36 comments
Whaleoil, John Key, and Melissa Lee. National’s policy wonks discuss transport modalities in an oil- and carbon-constrained future.
Wait, didn’t he say ‘women’?
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 6th, 2009 - 50 comments
There’s still a lot of confusion on the Right, in particular, about the sequence of events in the Worth saga, so I’ve tried to reconstruct it below (btw, thanks to John Armstrong for using his time machine and advising us “The [Dover] Samuels case had negligible impact on the new [Labour-led] government’s subsequent fortunes. The same […]
Iz satisfard
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, June 4th, 2009 - 2 comments
hattip: Maia, Anthony Karinski
Nat discovers the virtues of listening
Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 3 comments
Here’s an exert from Nick Smith’s speech to the 2009 New Zealand Planning Institute Conference: I acknowledge, that while the bulk of submissions have been supportive of the Bill, there is considerable debate over the provisions that remove the non-complying activity class, that restrict blanket urban tree protection, that limit plan appeal rights and which […]
If you’re gonna cut, make it clean
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 97 comments
How titillating. Worth has resigned and he won’t say why. ‘Personal reasons’ eh? Heard that one before. Key’s not talking either. He describes it as a ‘private reason’. Got to wonder what’s in the Tories’ heads on this one. Don’t keep a secret unless you really need to. Bad look. The public has a right […]
Transparency
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 1 comment
Strange isn’t it that Key can support transparency yesterday but not today. Political expediency at its worst.
Worth’s gone
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 20 comments
Link on Stuff. UPDATE: The “personal reasons” we know about so far: He personally profited from his trip to India to discuss aviation training. He personally visited the victim of an attack involving the son of a mate of his. He’s been personally summonsed to give evidence in a defamation suit involving a gossip columnist.
Tip of the spear
Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, June 2nd, 2009 - 16 comments
You’ve done your job as a spin doctor when journalists start repeating your spin sub-consciously. The credit downgrade ‘issue’ is a great example. There was never any threat of a downgrade, as long as the tax cuts were dropped. The journalists all acted like there was a huge threat. They parroted the government’s line that […]
Sweet rides
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, June 1st, 2009 - 41 comments
A few weeks back, in the best traditions of tabloid TV, Q+A took time to mention Lockwood’s ride, the macho muscle car Ford Falcon Cobra – a car that screams red-blooded heterosexuality. It got me wondering. I heard Helen Clark used to drive a Mitsi when she was PM. Boring. But what sort of cars would […]
Government waste
Written By: - Date published: 3:11 pm, May 29th, 2009 - 16 comments
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the right when Labour and the Greens filibustered the other week to draw the public’s attention to the supercity bill being rammed through Parliament. ‘Think of the cost”, they cried, which makes me wonder why they don’t propose getting rid of Parliament altogether to save a […]
Here we go again
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, May 28th, 2009 - 18 comments
In the 1990’s the National government of the day dealt with recession by cutting spending. The tragic result was to suck cash out of an already stalling economy and lengthen the recession. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of New Zealanders suffered unnecessarily. Today the National government met the current recession by cutting spending. So […]
Broken promises
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, May 28th, 2009 - 27 comments
National have already broken lots of pre-election promises and policies. Their policy to consult on local government and Auckland has been contemptuously ignored. Their pre-election welfare policy promise on benefit abatement thresholds, broken. They broke their promise to include Playcentre in ECE 20 Hours Free. They broke their promise to protect jobs, and particularly to […]
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