political parties

Mana a victory for the Left

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:44 am, June 26th, 2011 - 177 comments

A victory for Mana or a victory for Labour? Actually, it was a win for both, and a win for the Left. The losers in Te Tai Tokerau were the true enemies of the Left – the kupapa Maori Party and National. Turia put up a weak candidate hoping to concentrate the anti-Hone vote behind Davis. Now, the Maori Party faces a three-way fight it can’t win.

Congratulations Hone Harawira, MP for Te Tai Tokerau

Written By: the sprout - Date published: 8:21 pm, June 25th, 2011 - 165 comments

Hone Harawira has won the by-election for Te Tai Tokerau, despite the best efforts of the msm, John Key’s endorsement of Kelvin Davis, dirty tricks from the Maori Party, and despite Labour’s typically ill-considered, hamfisted attempts to wipe out Mana at its first election.

The best man won.

River of Kiwis now flood to Oz

Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 2:29 pm, June 22nd, 2011 - 56 comments

3300 Kiwis left for Australia last month, breaking a 32-year-old record. Remember when John Key promised to stop the flow of Kiwis across the Tasman? Well, now it’s a flood…

[and mostly it’s not from Christchurch either]

Turia on Te Tai Tokerau

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 10:37 am, June 22nd, 2011 - 25 comments

Were Tariana Turia’s comments on her own candidate in the Te Tai Tokerau by-election some kind of cunning plan, or just a simple stuff-up?

Gamechanger?

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 5:29 pm, June 20th, 2011 - 50 comments

The Te Tai Tokerau by-election has the potential to be a game-changer. If it comes off for Kelvin on Saturday the result may shake up a few other predictions for the general election – another example of the wisdom of Harold Wilson’s famous remark that a week is a long time in politics. Now it’s down to who goes out on the day. After the battle of the hustings will come the battle of the explanations – they will be fascinating.

Labour to entrench SOEs

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:00 pm, June 20th, 2011 - 92 comments

Phil Goff has just announced that Labour is putting up a private members’ bill to entrench SOEs. This would mean they could only be sold either with 75% support of Parliament, or with majority support in a referendum. Great Stuff. These are our assets. They should not be sold without our permission.

Labour proposes asset sales law

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 11:55 am, June 20th, 2011 - 57 comments

Labour proposes a new law to stop asset sales. More like this please!

Squeezing the life out of the economy

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:13 am, June 20th, 2011 - 41 comments

Are we “roaring out of recession”? No. Is there an “aggressive recovery”? No. What’s going wrong? The problem is that the Nats are squeezing the life out of the economy.

Nats’ election strategy – all about Key

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:21 am, June 16th, 2011 - 28 comments

National’s election platform is pretty much out. It shows that National is very much dependent on Brand Key. They released the Budget and then the rest of their major policies in rapid-fire succession. This shows National doesn’t believe its policies are vote-winners. They want policy to take a backseat and all the focus on Key’s smile.

Nat websites publicly-funded

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 9:30 am, June 16th, 2011 - 30 comments

Ianupnorth does ‘the Whale’ and has a dig around the National Party websites. It turns out they are registered and run by Parliamentary staffers. In fact, National and ACT’s MPs’ sites are all publicly-funded, while other parties’ MPs’ are not. Is NACT breaking the rules? No doubt everyone’s least favourite cetacean will be on to it.

Scaremongering on credit cards

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:22 am, June 16th, 2011 - 100 comments

The Nats’ blogging poodles are still trying to spread disinformation about credit card details (we have the proof). Are they just stupid, or do they know they’re spreading lies? Either way it amounts to the same thing, they are deliberately trying to upset innocent members of the public. The usual scummy tactics.

The silence of the poodles

Written By: r0b - Date published: 8:31 am, June 15th, 2011 - 87 comments

National’s first dirty tricks operation of the 2011 election campaign has ended in an embarrassing own goal. But they’ll be back with more of the same. Because the last thing National wants is an election campaign focused on the issues.

Blown up in National’s faces

Written By: r0b - Date published: 6:26 am, June 14th, 2011 - 385 comments

National’s raid on Labour donor data was a grubby, amoral little operation, with no point except to intimidate innocent individuals.

Unfortunately for the Nats it has blown up in their faces.

Nats plan lower wages for workers

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 13th, 2011 - 18 comments

So you support Maori being paid less than Pakeha for the same work? What about men being paid less than women? No, that would be discrimination, eh? Same work, same pay. So, what about paying a 17 year old less than a 18 year old for the same work? That’s what National is planning if we are stupid enough to give them a second term.

Curiouser and curiouser

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:38 am, June 13th, 2011 - 209 comments

It looks like the Labour party site was breached from National HQ.

Does this mean National are still laundering their dirty tricks though their pet bloggers?

Thank you donors!

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:34 am, June 13th, 2011 - 126 comments

At 9am today Slater is probably going to publish a list of some of the donors to the Labour Party. A big thank you to every person on that list! To anyone who is angry at being named, please don’t blame some hapless web admin working for Labour. Please blame the people who took this information and illegally made it public.

Weaving the magic

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 8:12 pm, June 12th, 2011 - 19 comments

Watch Kelvin Davis on Q+A with Hone Harawira. He was superb. He says the message he is giving about being part of the future for Maori is resonating around the Tai Tokerau. I’ll bet it is. The by-election result could be very interesting indeed. I liked his take on leadership too – it’s about being focussed on the objective and doing what is necessary to achieve it. Couldn’t agree more.

Nats steal Labour donor data

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:57 pm, June 12th, 2011 - 433 comments

National knows that the public oppose its agenda of asset sales, lower wages, and service cuts. So they’re going to campaign dirty. They’re running this week’s muck-throwing via sickness beneficiary* Cameron Slater. The Nats breached the Labour Party website and stole a list of online donors. Hardly the stuff of scandal, just an attempt to intimidate.

You can’t make this stuff up

Written By: r0b - Date published: 10:21 am, June 12th, 2011 - 95 comments

The Nats, a party which runs as a franchise of an Australian company (Crosby Textor), reckon that the presence of a mate from Australia at a regional Labour Party meeting shows that Labour is “subject to foreign influence”.

Encouraging savings the National way

Written By: r0b - Date published: 8:53 am, June 12th, 2011 - 15 comments

Amongst the many vacuous claims made in relation to the last budget, the claim that cuts to KiwiSaver would encourage savings always struck me as the dumbest. Now the facts are in, and guess what…

Mining II: The Empire Strikes Back

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:53 am, June 11th, 2011 - 52 comments

A little over a year ago the biggest single protest march in this country since 1938 put the final nail in the coffin of the Nats’ amateur hour plans to mine our most precious conservation land. Or so we thought…

Drifting

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:49 am, June 10th, 2011 - 27 comments

The Nats haven’t got a clue how to run a successful country, and most of the things they do try just make matters worse. We’re drifting…

Nats plummet, Lab soars post-budget

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:27 pm, June 9th, 2011 - 93 comments

The latest Roy Morgan is the first poll taken after the Budget has had time to sink in. Nat+ACT+UF fell from 55.5% to 51% while Lab+Green went from 38% to 42.5%. Labour rose a massive 8%. New Zealanders do not want asset sales, fewer work rights, and National’s nasty agenda and are realising they have to vote against that ‘Nice Man Mr Key’.

Bradford and the Greens

Written By: r0b - Date published: 6:25 am, June 8th, 2011 - 69 comments

Is it just me, or is Sue Bradford working harder, and getting more media coverage than all of the Greens put together? She’s not just campaigning for beneficiaries. Yesterday Bradford came out with a strongly worded attack on the Greens’ positioning for the November election.