political parties

The Nats’ muddle, your job on the line

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 6:43 am, October 3rd, 2011 - 43 comments

As National muddles through, refusing to reexamine its economic plans after the shock double-downgrade on Friday, the job losses are starting to pile up again. It’s very reminiscent of the last recession, which we will haven’t recovered from thanks to 3 years of muddling. Can we afford 3 more years? Here’s a list of job losses in the past month.

Wedge issue

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:07 am, October 2nd, 2011 - 14 comments

Don Brash has weaved his magic again. He’s going to have a minder now and everything he says will be vetted. But it’s too late. His cannabis speech brilliantly highlighted the disjunction between ACT’s values and those of the man they need to win Epsom. A major ACT donor calls John Banks a twerp, while Don Nicolson has, surprisingly, sided with Brash.

Nats warn of credit downgrade

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:39 am, October 1st, 2011 - 17 comments

The Nats have indulged in a long series of boastful posturings and dire warnings about the risks of a credit downgrade, many of them as recently as August 10th.  Now that they have suffered not one, but two separate credit downgrades, Mr Smile and Wave has some explaining to do.

Gap closes in latest Fairfax

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:01 am, September 28th, 2011 - 56 comments

The latest Fairfax poll has the Labour – National gap closing a bit.

Covert surveillance should not be allowed retrospectively

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 27th, 2011 - 55 comments

mickysavage at Waitakere News blog  has an analysis of the legal and unconstitutional implications of the Nationals dubious plan to override the courts with poor kneejerk legislation. It is rather disturbing as the action appears to have more to do with electioneering than actual legal need.

NRT: A blank cheque

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:25 pm, September 24th, 2011 - 17 comments

No Right Turn points out the salient feature of National’s hysterical response to the Supreme Court’s decision on video surveillance. Reading the blank cheque that they are proposing indicates that the government has no understanding of what “the rule of law” means. It certainly does not include half-arsed measures like this.

Roaring out of recession

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 6:07 pm, September 22nd, 2011 - 30 comments

So here we are then.  “Roaring out of recession”.  Or – not.

National Policy?

Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 9:14 am, September 20th, 2011 - 57 comments

John Pagani has an excellent piece on the lack of National substance in the lead-up to this election.

Like last election we’re seeing Labour say what they would do, presenting one alternative, as National fail to present theirs; relying on that nice man John Key’s image over any policy substance.

118 years on – what would Kate say?

Written By: Jenny Michie - Date published: 4:15 pm, September 19th, 2011 - 15 comments

118 years to the day when NZ became the first country in the world to give women the vote.  You can imagine how incredibly proud Kate and the sisterhood must have been. You can imagine them lifting their eyes to the future and seeing women standing shoulder to shoulder with their brothers, equal in political rights (and determined to […]

Slow follower

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 12:20 pm, September 16th, 2011 - 16 comments

When it comes to making any kind of effort to saving the planet from catastrophic climate change I guess being even a “fast follower” was just a little too ambitious for the Key government.

More Armstrong bullshit

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:38 pm, September 10th, 2011 - 67 comments

John Armstrong wants Labour to come out radically different after the Cup. Having refused to cover Labour’s skills package or its mining policy, he’s suddenly interested in policy. He wants Labour to suddenly adopt league tables and forget the 39% tax rate. Armstrong genuinely doesn’t seem to get it. Parties of the Left don’t pick and swap policies on a whim.

Nats clueless on privatisation consequences

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:01 am, September 7th, 2011 - 17 comments

If electricity assets were part privatised, future governments couldn’t make the kind of reforms that National made earlier this year because of the need to consider private investors’ rights. Pretty simple, eh? Tell that to Hekia Parata. Bill English has his head in the sand on the effect of falling markets and can’t guarantee Kiwi ownership.

No renewables for National

Written By: lprent - Date published: 6:39 pm, September 4th, 2011 - 36 comments

The right sure won’t be able to criticise Labour about a lack of renewal in their list after National’s release of their party list.  If you want an actual example of what a non-renewing list really looks like, I think we now have the definitive one. It looks a lot like their energy policy this week – lots of pious talk about renewables but really just mining the same old things that have been doing for generations.

Hold the front page!

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:29 am, September 3rd, 2011 - 48 comments

Remember those thundering editorials and opinion pieces chastising Labour for focusing on trivia instead of the substantive issues?

Earning or learning

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 1:33 pm, September 1st, 2011 - 92 comments

This afternoon Labour released a substantial policy package targeting youth unemployment.  Once again the public is being offered a choice between Labour’s realistic response to a significant problem, and more do-nothing smile and wave.