national
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- same old national (1,617)
The Maori party and a deal with National
Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, March 4th, 2008 - 7 comments
We’ve all seen the polls with National leaping out in front – and over that magical 50% mark. Helen Clark may be saying the poll gap will close once National’s policies are known but there’s another more mundane reason to expect those heady highs to fall. Kiwis don’t like to see a party head toward […]
Key backs the underdog
Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, March 4th, 2008 - 25 comments
The latest Newsroom story [subscription only] about the Government’s move to protect Auckland International Airport from sale to the Canadian Pension Fund reports Labour is taking National to task on the issue of their support. Prime Minister Helen Clark is challenging National to state its position on strategic assets sales after the Government stepped in […]
They’ve got 18 better than him?
Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, February 29th, 2008 - 67 comments
National MP for Northland, John Carter, is ‘up in arms about a decision allowing inmates from Ngawha Prison to play in the Whangarei and Districts Rugby League competition.’ This kind of activity is an important part of rehabilitation. In case you are wondering, yes, this is the same John Carter who, in 1995, rang fellow […]
Behind National’s emigration wailing
Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, February 29th, 2008 - 28 comments
National likes to talk down New Zealand, to portray this great country as underperforming, to exaggerate our problems, and to cast our unique traits and values as barriers to ‘success’ (success is becoming a more homogenised off-shoot of American capitalism). A great way to further the message is wailing about people leaving for Australia – […]
How would Key make wages drop?
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 pm, February 28th, 2008 - 51 comments
Having read our coverage of John Key’s ‘we would love to see wages drop‘ line my brother asked ‘but how can a government make wages drop?’ The answer is obvious to those of us who know about this kind of stuff but my brother’s question, along with Colin Espiner’s naïve statement that ‘[a PM] has […]
What’s the future of Working for Families?
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, February 28th, 2008 - 13 comments
One consquence of the expectations around tax cuts is an examination of some of the policies already have in place – Working for Families for example. This was the topic of a recent article from Ruth Laugesen in the Sunday Star Times. “Coopers chairman John Shewan said that under Working for Families, many households effectively […]
Joining the (blue) dots
Written By: - Date published: 5:48 pm, February 27th, 2008 - 42 comments
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Blue Chip blues? The company is in the news again today, and not just for allegedly breaking a sting of laws. The couple featured in the article have lost their home and hundreds of further ‘mum and dad’ investors may still lose their savings. The photo at left (no, it’s […]
Bill’s Wikipedia edits
Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, February 27th, 2008 - 39 comments
Again from a Parliamentary address, the following passage was deleted from Bill English’s Wikipedia entry in June last year: He married a Catholic GP, Mary, and they now have six children – five boys: Luke, Thomas, Rory, Bartholemew and Xavier; and one daughter, Maria. He is a devout Catholic himself, and upholds his churches opposition […]
National’s history of rewriting history
Written By: - Date published: 3:29 pm, February 26th, 2008 - 16 comments
You think they’d learn. Wikiscanner reports that someone in Parliament has been busy – busy expunging potentially embarassing facts about a variety of MPs. This one’s about Allan Peachey. You might remember Allan from such debacles as the Peachey/Rich bulk funding controversy and also the little number above that he’d evidently rather history forgot – […]
Key’s shameful attack on journalist
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, February 26th, 2008 - 81 comments
One of the more unsavoury aspects of Key’s “we would love wages to drop” saga is the unwarranted attacks by Key and his allies on the journalist who quoted him, Greg Robertson. Key referred to Robertson as some “young guy who was taking notes“. Key said Robertson’s quote was wrong, or that he was joking, […]
Espiner on National’s hypocrisy
Written By: - Date published: 6:14 pm, February 25th, 2008 - 37 comments
From Colin’s blog: It’s time for National to put its mouth where its money is. After a week of climbing into Labour boots and all over the Owen Glenn saga, one thing has become abundantly clear: the Nats have lost any defence of their right to keep their own campaign donations secret. It is the […]
Jones to Key: say it to our faces
Written By: - Date published: 3:25 pm, February 25th, 2008 - 23 comments
Far North Labour MP Shane Jones laid down the gauntlet to Key over the ‘we would love to see wages drop‘ scandal. Jones reminds Key that: “all it takes to ruin a Teflon pan is one scratch” and in a second press release lays out his challenge: ‘there’s only one way for Mr Key to […]
Transcript proves Key is lying
Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, February 25th, 2008 - 76 comments
When it was revealed that John Key had told a business leader he ‘would love to see wages drop‘ it undermined everything he’d told national media about wanting to lift wages. It also had the potential to do irreparable damage to his rhetoric on tax cuts and to show him as being less than honest […]
The deafening silence
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, February 25th, 2008 - 30 comments
At a meeting in Kerikeri last year with a business leader, in the presence of journalist Greg Robertson, National Leader John Key said ‘we would love to see wages drop‘. When this story broke last week, the political commentators were naturally cautious. It is an extraordinary quote. Not because a National leader would think wages […]
Tail-spin
Written By: - Date published: 11:12 am, February 23rd, 2008 - 73 comments
While National is trying to pretend John Key’s quote that “we would love to see wages drop” is a non-issue, behind the scenes they’re floundering. We’ve all heard the multiple and conflicting denials (“I can’t recall”, “I never said it”, “I was misquoted”, “I was talking about Australian wages”), and now thanks to a lazy […]
Key incoherent on pay cut plans
Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, February 22nd, 2008 - 13 comments
Following the revelation that John Key told a business audience “we would love to see wages drop“, bFM asked him to elaborate [MP3, 3.5MB]: Key: The, look I’ll tell you what the situation was there. We were in a, I know I don’t overtly remember it as part of the DVD tour but it was […]
MPs respond to Key’s wage drop wish
Written By: - Date published: 12:41 pm, February 22nd, 2008 - 30 comments
Following revelations that John Key told a business audience “we would love to see wages drop“, I sent an email to all 91 MPs whose emails addresses are listed on their bio page on the Parliament website. The email read: “John Key is quoted in the Bay Report, 20/12/07, saying “we would love to see […]
Key: pay cuts for you, backhanders for my mates
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, February 21st, 2008 - 32 comments
Even as he flounders from one excuse to the next over his ‘we would love to see wages drop’ statement, it has emerged that John Key is offering hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to his big business mates. Key promised a $200 million suspensory loan to a new merger of Southland meat exporters. Not […]
John Key’s plan to cut your pay
Written By: - Date published: 10:46 am, February 20th, 2008 - 144 comments
“We would love to see wages drop”. You would think that given the simmering debate about our wage gap with Australia at the moment that would be the last thing you’d expect to hear from the leader of the National Party. Especially when he’d gone on record in the national media just a week ago […]
Labour with its claws out
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, February 19th, 2008 - 31 comments
The Press has a good article on the political blogs. The Standard and our mates Kiwiblogblog are referred to as “Labour with its claws out”. As has been explained before, we are not Labour: we are a loose group of Leftwing writers, some of whom are associated with the labour movement, but the image is […]
Claims of Aussie brain drain a myth
Written By: - Date published: 12:04 pm, February 18th, 2008 - 29 comments
Refreshing to see the fourth estate challenging the political spin from time to time. The Independent Financial Review has this on the myth of the Aussie brain drain: Far from losing our “best and brightest” as business lobby groups insist about half of Kiwi migrants are blue collar or “no collar” workers, according to departure […]
And the Nats want this man in parliament?
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 pm, February 16th, 2008 - 72 comments
I was just checking out the blogs and discovered this little gem on Kiwiblog: # Stephen Franks Says: February 16th, 2008 at 7:18 pm Britain’s had an independent enquiry into Blair/Labour’s ‘Cash for Honours’ scandal. Anyone want a bet on the chances of getting anything similarily cleansing here? One problem – Scotland Yard still has […]
Katherine’s tangible policy presence
Written By: - Date published: 10:05 pm, February 16th, 2008 - 11 comments
It’s been a few days now since the announcement of Katherine Rich’s decision to stand down from politics, but articles such as in today’s NZ Herald continue to try and explain “why”. Perhaps they also have that sense that her departure could be a turning point, the significance eluding us until we’re further down the […]
The power behind the Nats’ message discipline
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, February 16th, 2008 - Comments Off on The power behind the Nats’ message discipline
Had to laugh at this in The Herald on Rich’s retirement: She has told all her caucus colleagues only that morning that she’s retiring. One of them – Simon Power, who entered Parliament on the same date in 1999 – is quietly sitting beside her now for moral support. “It’s like having Big Brother right […]
Rich reaction roundup
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, February 15th, 2008 - 44 comments
Colin Espiner reckons that Rich’s departure will hurt the Nats. “She represented”, he says, “precisely the sort of social liberal, moderate, youthful face that the party needs to counter the tougher, drier, and more conservative side of National. The one that the public is still, sometimes, afraid of.” He accepts her reason for leaving though, […]
National’s house of straw
Written By: - Date published: 5:38 pm, February 14th, 2008 - 13 comments
Affordable housing is the topic de jour. The foundation of affordable housing in New Zealand and other developed nations has long been houses built by the government and rented cheaply: state housing. Since the construction of the first state house in 1937, it has been a history of Labour building them and National selling them […]
The Dummies’ Guide to National’s wage policy
Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, February 14th, 2008 - 68 comments
I never really understood how National planned to make wages grow because every time our man John Key is asked about our wage-gap with Australia he starts talking about cutting taxes. Here’s a recent example from Morning Report: Key: Firstly we will raise wages. I mean, after-tax wages will be rising under a National government. […]
National’s last moderate falls on her sword
Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, February 13th, 2008 - 36 comments
Katherine Rich was one of only 2 women on National’s front bench and its last moderate MP. The only surprise in her resignation is that she resisted the National hierarchy’s pressure to leave for so long. National’s all-male inner circle never had any time for this young, independent-minded woman with a social conscience who wouldn’t […]
Rich resignation a huge blow for the Nats
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, February 13th, 2008 - 39 comments
The Press reports that “Senior National front-bencher Katherine Rich has resigned her education portfolio and will quit politics altogether at the election…” Rich ran the “compassionate conservative” line hard during her time in parliament. She was the more acceptable face of the the Nats on social issues and the only Nat MP to support the […]
Key conjures up cuts
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, February 12th, 2008 - 10 comments
John Key tells us that he would cut ‘wasteful government spending’ to pay for upper-bracket tax cuts bigger than Labour’s cuts. But do the facts match the rhetoric? Remember National’s wastewatch website? It listed $900 million in ‘waste’ since 1999 only 0.2% of government spending, which won’t pay for many tax cuts. And most of […]
Getting ALL the facts right
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, February 12th, 2008 - 26 comments
This contribution was sent through by a reader who did some digging after reading that Helen Clark’s research is letting her down in terms of the National party’s voting record on settlement of historical claims (NZ Herald, Political Diary, 9 Feb 2008, offline). It looks like National weren’t that thorough either. The suggestion that National […]
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