political parties

What does Key’s promise mean?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 6:11 pm, July 19th, 2012 - 49 comments

Key is already qualifying a promise he’s made on Maori water rights. Does the promise mean anything at all?

Welded to National

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:01 am, July 19th, 2012 - 41 comments

The meeting between Key and the Maori Party leaders last night reached it’s predictable conclusion. From his point of view Key has played this brilliantly.

Not with a bang but a whimper

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:59 am, July 17th, 2012 - 21 comments

There’s some interesting speculation that the Government could collapse within months. The theory goes that the Government could lose its majority due to 1) the Maori Party walking away over the water rights issue and 2) John Banks being forced to resign over illegally anonymised donations in the 2010 Auckland mayoral election. I don’t see it happening, yet.

Asset sale delay likely

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:15 am, July 17th, 2012 - 62 comments

Even John Key is now admitting that the asset sale program is facing a serious legal challenge, and that delays in the sales are likely. Any such delay would have several implications…

Bullying schools – again

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:58 am, July 16th, 2012 - 29 comments

Threats to schools over the contents of their newsletters? The “brighter future” doesn’t like dissent.

Labor Right v Greens

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 5:29 pm, July 13th, 2012 - 37 comments

This weekend the NSW ALP Conference and the New Zealand Labour Party Council will both debate and decide proposals for reform. Prospects look decidedly better on this side of the Tasman for internal reform as well as for relations with the Greens.

Cute with semantics on water

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:22 am, July 13th, 2012 - 82 comments

John Key has been running round repeating that no one owns water. He’s just being cute with semantics. What is the effective difference between owning water, and owning water rights?

Questions on Labour leadership selection reform

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 9:31 am, July 12th, 2012 - 13 comments

Seeing coverage of the apparently unhurried steps towards Labour party members having a say in future leadership bids made me want to stop and ask some questions about whether they are telling the full story.

Key’s fight with Maori no accident

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:13 am, July 11th, 2012 - 145 comments

Just 32 hours after Key started running the line that the Government would ignore the Waitangi Tribunal’s decision on the Maori Council water rights claim if it didn’t go his way, the Maori Party reacted. Key is abusing the privilege of his office by trying to pre-empt a judicial body’s decision says Pita Sharples. Tariana Turia says they will talk about their ‘future’ with National.

ImperatorFish: How Should We Fund Our Political Parties?

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:43 pm, July 10th, 2012 - 22 comments

Scott asks: It’s naive to think donors don’t want something in return, so should we have state funding of our political parties? It would remove any suspicion of influence buying, and would cost only a few million dollars per year.

Key’s press release on exodus to Australia

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 10:25 am, July 8th, 2012 - 29 comments

With news that there are now more Kiwis living in Australia than either Christchurch or Wellington, here’s “John Key’s” latest press release on the topic.

Frogblog: Greens call for inquiry into inquiries

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:07 pm, July 6th, 2012 - 12 comments

A very funny response from the Greens to Key’s complaint that they’re always asking for inquiries: “The Greens have been criticised by Prime Minister John Key, who said, ‘The Greens call for an inquiry on virtually anything.’ The remark prompted immediate calls from the Green Party for an inquiry, which would focus on why the Greens call for so many inquiries.”

Banks case to Police lawyers

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 10:07 pm, July 5th, 2012 - 36 comments

The Police have concluded their investigation into John Banks’ donations to his 2010 mayoral campaign. The Police legal section will now decide whether or not to prosecute. There are two tests; the evidential test and the public interest test. There is no question that if the evidence is sufficient, prosecution is in the public interest. It comes down to credibility – best decided in court.

Kiwiblog: media getting savvy?

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 12:34 pm, July 5th, 2012 - 28 comments

The media have generally just regurgitated David Farrar’s angled statistics, stories and lines. Now we finally see a story that looks behind: this is a blog from one of the National Party elite, so why is he running a story on Police pay? Are National looking to move on this?

A quick question

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:11 am, July 5th, 2012 - 197 comments

The Nats are going to terminate the benefits of those who fail or refuse drug tests. I have a question…

Spin the wheel

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 9:39 am, July 4th, 2012 - 7 comments

Legitimate calls for inquiries

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 7:07 am, July 4th, 2012 - 33 comments

Key has dismissed calls for an inquiry into the Police’s actions in the Dotcom affair. He says that the Greens call for inquiries every week. In fact, they’ve called for 19 in the past year and a half. Is that too many? Well, the Auditor-General didn’t think so: she responded positively to the Greens’ call for a investigation into Key’s dodgy SkyCity deal.

Iwi and the riverbeds

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:51 am, July 3rd, 2012 - 15 comments

The only remaining possible legal threat to the Nats’ plans to sell off our power companies is a Treaty based claim to water rights or riverbeds.

National has no intention of ever enforcing ETS

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:08 am, July 3rd, 2012 - 59 comments

As many of us expected, National has no intention of ever enforcing the ETS in the area where it makes the most difference to NZ emissions – agriculture.

What did Key really know about Dotcom?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:48 am, July 2nd, 2012 - 57 comments

We know that the Police overstepped their authority following their Hollywood wannabe raid on Dotcom’s home. They used invalid warrants to take property of Dotcom’s that they weren’t entitled to, and gave that data to the FBI. Now, we learn that Key’s office was involved in advising the Department of Labour on shutting down a leaked email.

Parata was briefed on teacher cuts

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:56 am, June 30th, 2012 - 26 comments

It seems that Parata was fully briefed on teacher cuts after all, but she somehow “did not have enough time to mention it”. The government’s most recent humiliating bungle just got worse.

Wrong headed _and_ incompentent

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 5:21 pm, June 29th, 2012 - 39 comments

So here is the story that will probably summarise this government in the history books. The whole cabinet delegated responsibility to John Key and Bill English to achieve their promised land of surplus in 2014/15. They defined themselves as the only party that could deliver this goal, they jettisoned all other goals in pursuit of a single number, and they can’t even achieve it…

Patsy of the year

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 3:03 pm, June 29th, 2012 - 19 comments

Such is the abundance of talent in the National Party that they can’t even ask a patsy question right…

Funding fraud

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 12:50 pm, June 28th, 2012 - 23 comments

It’s not acceptable for the government to keep funding a service provider after fraud has been clearly reported. It’s not acceptable for a Minister to be aware of “problems” and not even read the audit report before allocating further funding. Will anyone be held to account?

Katherine Rich on the Health Promotion Board: The next outrageous piece of Nat cronyism

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 10:35 am, June 28th, 2012 - 50 comments

Putting the CEO of the leading lobbying agency and industry promotional group for companies promoting sales of sugar, fat and alcohol on the Board of the public health agency supposed to prevent harm to young NZers is an outrageous act of cronyism.

Competition, cooperation, schools

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 12:14 pm, June 27th, 2012 - 12 comments

Competition is the wrong model for education, and National’s nonsense “league tables” are going to make it worse…

When photo-ops backfire

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:42 am, June 27th, 2012 - 41 comments

3 years ago, a National minister dancing on a flattened boyracer car would have been a PR coup. And certainly that’s how National’s spin doctors expected it to play out last week. But times have changed. Now, it’s being criticised as an unseemly act and a waste of money through-out the media. These tipping points creep up on governments. Strengths suddenly become weaknesses.

Privatisation bill passed

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 5:17 pm, June 26th, 2012 - 239 comments

They’re quite literally selling our country down the river.

Doubts over Cameron’s welfare blitz

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 12:57 pm, June 26th, 2012 - 2 comments

That’s the Guardian headline. Supposedly designed to give the Tories “political momentum”, it is late and over budget. The Treasury is resigned to the programme costing money rather than providing savings. The LibDems won’t have a bar of it. Critics describe it as “pitch-rolling”, preparing the ground for further “reforms”. More like spin-bowling here.

A meaningless list

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 6:53 am, June 26th, 2012 - 69 comments

National’s latest plan to save the country – make another list of targets! What no-one has pointed out yet is that we won’t know whether these target have been achieved or not until 2018 – National would need to be a 4 term government to ever be held accountable to these targets. The list is a curious mix of the utterly unambitious, the impossible, and the deceptive.

Spot the difference

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 9:37 pm, June 25th, 2012 - 39 comments

There – “Cameron announces Tory plan to slash benefits.” Here – “The Government wants Work and Income to cut the number of long-term beneficiaries on a working-age benefit, John Key has just announced.” Tories normally do this when they are in trouble.