political parties

Wrong government for the times

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:25 am, September 1st, 2011 - 44 comments

Fran O’Sullivan calls on the government to act on Christchurch. Good luck with that. This is not a government of action. It is the wrong government for these challenging times.

Turning Green

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:40 am, August 31st, 2011 - 49 comments

Tracy Watkins admits today’s Fairfax poll is pretty out of whack but there’s no denying the trend has turned against Labour in the past few months. People back the policy. That’s not the problem. Labour will still be hoping to close up 5% or so in the campaign. On the positive side: what a result for the Greens!

Quake costs blowout

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 1:27 pm, August 30th, 2011 - 51 comments

The estimate of the liability for costs of the Christchurch quakes has just been more than doubled. Thank goodness or the foresight of the first Labour government who set up the EQC in 1947.

Not the ACT party list

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 1:24 pm, August 29th, 2011 - 38 comments

I was going to do a post on the ACT party list. But then I realised that I just don’t care.

Extraordinary attack on Maori Party

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:27 am, August 26th, 2011 - 8 comments

Waihoroi Shortland, the Maori Party candidate in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate, has been warned to “Watch your back, lest it be bitten by the Maori Party dogs”. An extraordinary warning from an extraordinary source…

Freedom and security

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:22 am, August 25th, 2011 - 30 comments

The government is planning a crack down on “organised crime”. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Nats talk to locals in [insert region here]

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:32 am, August 25th, 2011 - 42 comments

John Hartevelt ran a piece yesterday about National’s paint by numbers press releases. The problem here is not with National MPs and candidates using the same words to describe their policies or government spin. It’s when they claim, in identical words, to have had information from the public when that isn’t true, it’s just a cookie-cutter line and a lie.

Substance vs style

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:32 am, August 24th, 2011 - 75 comments

A couple of polls have now confirmed that on key issues voters prefer Labour policy over National. When push comes to shove in November, will Kiwis vote for the style that they like, or the substance that they want?

Sepuloni on why voting matters

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:44 pm, August 23rd, 2011 - 33 comments

Return to [insert region here]

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:11 am, August 23rd, 2011 - 7 comments

Jackie Blue, MP for [insert region here], accidentally unmasked National’s media practices when she published a blog post called “Generic Column – Lifting Education Standards” and forgot to add the ‘personal touch’. Now, the Dimpost has shown that the Nats are still using these [insert region here] columns to spread the party line.

Pull your head in, Curran

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:47 am, August 23rd, 2011 - 109 comments

90% of Labour’s MPs are hardworking, principled, and bloody good at what they do. Cunliffe, Fenton, Parker, Nash, Moroney, Ardern, King, O’Connor, Shearer, Twyford, Davis, Mahuta. The list goes on. It’s the quality of these people and what they believe in that makes me support Labour. A pity, then, that loudmouths like Clare Curran taint their public image.

Only 56%?

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:45 am, August 23rd, 2011 - 55 comments

According to one poll 56 percent of Labour voters say Labour won’t win. Good on them I say.

Labour’s awesome mining policy

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 11:48 am, August 22nd, 2011 - 43 comments

Pike River had lax safety systems. Profits came first. The workforce was highly casualised to weaken the bargaining power of the union. The boss, Peter Whittall, will end up getting the blame. Labour says it will restore miners’ power over their safety by bringing back check inspectors. It’s now up to the Nats to explain why they won’t.

Getting to know Goff 2

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 3:55 pm, August 20th, 2011 - 15 comments

Today Part 2 of The Herald’s profile of Phil Goff is out, and once again it’s a very interesting read. It debunks some of the spin surrounding Goff’s ideology and the Lange / Douglas government.

Epic fail

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:01 am, August 16th, 2011 - 64 comments

Like most of us, Fran O’Sullivan was expecting so much more from the Nats at their conference…

Nats rebel on privatisation

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 5:17 pm, August 13th, 2011 - 27 comments

English is under attack at the Nat conference over asset sales. The neolibs vultures treat the state as a carcass to pick clean. But old school conservatives believe in investing the nation. And business types know you don’t get rich by selling profitable assets. English has no good excuses. All he can offer is expensive measures that make selling even more unprofitable.

Getting to know Goff

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:06 pm, August 13th, 2011 - 115 comments

A few weeks back, I wrote that Labour’s policies are popular but it hasn’t secured the trust it needs to sway swing voters, partly people don’t feel they really know Phil Goff. Today’s Herald piece, reminiscent of one on Key in 2008 (except we get a lot more of the substance of Goff, not just carefully targeted anecdotes), should go a long way to fixing that.

Nats say: if you don’t like it, riot

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:19 am, August 11th, 2011 - 82 comments

National has brought out some of the biggest protests in decades. Petitions of tens of thousands have called on the government to raise the minimum wage, support Kiwi manufacturing through Kiwirail, and protect early childhood education. It’s core policy – asset sales – is opposed 2 to 1. The message from National: if you don’t like it, riot.

NRT: Brownlee’s excuse

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 11:23 am, August 10th, 2011 - 27 comments

I/S at NoRightTurn has John Key and Gerry Brownlee floundering to explain why Brownlee hired National Party crony Jenny Shipley and other members of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Review Panel at double the normal rate. Brownlee’s excuses are weak and nonsensical. It’s not good enough.

Turia knows the Maori Party is toast

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 12:42 pm, August 9th, 2011 - 48 comments

The Maori Party leaders have racked up the highest ministerial expenses after the PM – despite not being in Cabinet. What is even more extraordinary is Tariana Turia’s response to being questioned on this.

Mana vs. Maori

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:34 am, August 7th, 2011 - 49 comments

Like the American debt limit deal, I always thought that Mana and Maori would find some kind of bloody compromise at the eleventh hour. But they’ve passed the point of no return now.

Key’s own goal on poverty

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:09 am, August 3rd, 2011 - 56 comments

A bad mistake by John Key in the House yesterday. Phil Goff asked him about the gap between rich and poor. Key cited a new report on falling inequality. But he should have read the report properly. It credits Labour policies for driving down poverty and inequality.

The Peters principle

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:16 am, August 2nd, 2011 - 70 comments

There’s been a lot of coverage of Winston Peters lately. Most of his announcements have been perfectly predictable, but for me there have been two real surprises.

Reconnecting with voters

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:51 am, July 30th, 2011 - 167 comments

On paper Labour is doing everything right, but they are not yet getting traction in the polls. Labour needs to get voters’ attention again, and then their trust. So how to “reconnect with the public”? What should Labour be doing differently?

Polls and policies

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:30 am, July 28th, 2011 - 160 comments

Much ado in the commentariat about the latest Farifax poll, another poor result for Labour. But some of these commentators could do to brush up on their history…

Too many hungry kids

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:13 am, July 27th, 2011 - 180 comments

Making sure that children don’t go hungry is not the responsibility of charity, it is the responsibility of all of us, of society. It is the responsibility of government. The National government is failing.

The Auckland Disease (var. North Shore)

Written By: ChrisH - Date published: 8:42 am, July 26th, 2011 - 27 comments

There is a long and sordid relationship between National governments and developers. Just how many favours have National done for developers over the years? Are the so-called ‘Roads of National Significance’, especially the Holiday Highway, just a continuation of this practice? Is it any coincidence that Nicky Hager’s Hollow Men are all Shore Boys?

Who grows better? Labour or National?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:05 pm, July 22nd, 2011 - 89 comments

Under the last Labour-led government the GDP per capita rose 15.6%. Under John Key’s National, it has fallen 1.9%. ‘Ah but Labour was just lucky and Key has just been unlucky’, say the righties. The data, however, shows conclusively which party has the best record on growth.

Yet more dodgy Nat numbers

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:56 pm, July 18th, 2011 - 61 comments

If you’re a blogosphere regular, you’ll have noticed that recently every monkey with a copy of the Fountainhead and a crush on John Key has been spouting the line that the top 10% of taxpayers pay 71% of net tax. Sounds incredible, eh? That’s because it’s not credible. It’s more cheap tricks from the Nats.

Bad poll but not for CGT

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 6:29 am, July 18th, 2011 - 138 comments

The latest ONE News / Colmar Brunton poll is bad for Labour, and not great for the Left. But it isn’t a verdict on Labour’s CGT proposal – the polling period finished before the policy was announced.

Apparently the undecided in this poll was 14%. I wonder why that was missed out of the reporting?

More dodgy Nat numbers

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 10:23 pm, July 17th, 2011 - 102 comments

The Nats can’t tell us how much their asset sales policy will cost in lost dividends and sales costs, yet they’ve magicked up some numbers with all kinds of dodgy assumptions that supposedly show Labour’s tax package doesn’t add up. Well, I suppose they would know something about borrowing for tax cuts but their attacks on Labour aren’t credible.