political parties

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Written By: Dancr - Date published: 10:00 am, December 4th, 2009 - 36 comments

According to Vernon Small: Labour leader Phil Goff will be asked to explain his controversial “nationhood” speech at next week’s party caucus meeting. Discontent, especially on the Left of the party, has centred around Mr Goff’s comments on the foreshore and seabed policy. Insiders say the speech was discussed during a “robust” national council meeting […]

Goff: Scrap the 2025 Taskforce

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:26 pm, December 3rd, 2009 - 25 comments

We all know the 2025 Taskforce is a farce and a waste of taxpayers’ money. The Government has disowned it, the critics have panned it. Even Garth George has come out calling for its first report to be recycled into toilet paper. It genuinely appears to serve no function but to subsidise the wacky right-wing […]

Hone back but Maori Party divisions laid bare

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:33 pm, December 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments

So Hone Harawira has been readmitted into the fold of the Maori Party. It’s hard to see how excluding him from Parliament until the end of the year is a punishment, given that he has repeatedly said he detests the place (and who can blame him?). It seems more like political convenience for the Maori […]

Words of wisdom from the 19th century

Written By: lprent - Date published: 12:05 pm, December 3rd, 2009 - 5 comments

One of the most amusing things in the granny today is Garth George, our iconoclast from Rotorua ripping another hole into the credibility of the Brash Taskforce 2025. Absurdities abound, the first of which was the appointment of people like Dr Brash and Mr Caygill who, along with their soulmate, Act Party seat-warmer Roger Douglas, […]

Greens release Green New Deal pt 2

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:57 am, December 3rd, 2009 - 20 comments

Anyone who thinks that our economic troubles are over because the economy grew 0.1% is delusional. And no-one seriously believes that we don’t have to act quickly to stop the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A Green New Deal is as necessary now as ever. The Greens have come out with the […]

With some time to consider….

Written By: Dancr - Date published: 2:30 pm, December 1st, 2009 - 82 comments

I’ve been thinking about the reaction Phil Goff has had to his Nationhood speech, and whether Team Labour would be happy with the way it’s rolled out. Got headlines, tick, got commentators to notice, tick, appealed to demographic ‘non-Labour voting male’, tick, made some positioning statements on policy, tick. But what about the down side? […]

Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 8:00 am, December 1st, 2009 - 10 comments

Everyone played their part in reacting to the Brash Report. Bosses uncritically applauded it. Unions forcefully rejected it. Labour and the Greens exposed it as a strawman. Key bravely slew the strawman. And the Maori Party, well: “One of the recommendations in the report promoted bridging the income gap between New Zealand and Australia, and […]

Stockholm Syndrome and leaky homes at the coast

Written By: lprent - Date published: 4:12 pm, November 27th, 2009 - 47 comments

Bomber over at Tumeke has a good post up on Goff’s speech. Pointing out the Maori Party has Stockholm Syndrome is not race baiting That to me sums up Goff’s speech, far more eloquently than I could. He referred to Eddies earlier post…. ..ouch, did we read the same speech? I don’t think pointing out […]

Goff’s speech

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:12 pm, November 27th, 2009 - 110 comments

Phil Goff’s speech on ‘nationhood’ was always going to be seen as an attempt to pull a Brash, regardless of what it actually said. The narrative was set from the start, and it’s fair to suspect that Goff’s people knew that and thought they’d take the risk anyway. You don’t make a speech on the […]

Shame on you

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:30 pm, November 26th, 2009 - 77 comments

Never in the history of New Zealand politics has so much taxpayers’ money been hurled into the chasm with such contempt for the poor citizens who will pay billions out of their own dwindling pockets forever while rich polluters wreck the earth with impunity and bask in the profits. Never in the history of NZ […]

Maori Party meltdown

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:39 am, November 26th, 2009 - 12 comments

How long can the Maori Party survive before it collapses under the weight of its own contradictions? The idea of a single party to represent all Maori has always been a fallacy. When the Maori Party first appeared, I wished it well as a left-wing fellow traveller but since then, because of its impossible goal […]

Our word is our bond

Written By: r0b - Date published: 8:30 am, November 26th, 2009 - 22 comments

Maori Party policy on the environment: We aspire to work together to make the economy great but not at the expense of our environment. Climate change affects us all and the biggest emitters must take responsibility to change the way they do business. Any cost they pass on to consumers must encourage environmentally responsible choices. […]

National / Maori ETS now law

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:31 pm, November 25th, 2009 - 32 comments

So, the National / Maori ETS is now law. Waiho mÄ te WhakamÄ e Patu. Shame on those who supported this appalling legislation and the anti-democratic process used to ram it in to law.

Sharples and the Maori Party revolt

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:40 pm, November 25th, 2009 - 9 comments

Via Newsroom [offline], Pita Sharples has confirmed reports of an internal revolt within the Maori Party over its support for National’s ETS. The Maori Party will honour its deal to back National’s emissions trading scheme despite many in the party being opposed to much of the ETS bill, co-leader Pita Sharples has said in a […]

Shane Jones on National’s ETS

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:20 pm, November 24th, 2009 - 12 comments

Not all ETSs are created equal

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:32 pm, November 24th, 2009 - 34 comments

On his blog, Colin Espiner writes: “it’s also extremely ironic to hear Labour wringing its hands about the impact of the ETS when…HELLO…Labour passed the Emissions Trading Scheme!!!” Oh dear. That’s like saying ‘Labour is opposed to National’s ACC policy but Labour had an ACC policy of its own, hello!!!’ Labour isn’t (and I really […]

A plague on both your houses

Written By: r0b - Date published: 10:15 am, November 24th, 2009 - 35 comments

So, as far as National and Maori leaders are concerned, it’s a done deal: “Maori Party to support ETS – bill to become law in days”. Unless (as suggested by Eddie) some Maori Party MPs remember their principles and vote against it, National’s ETS will be forced through parliament under urgency. NRT weighs in with […]

Harawira and Katene to cross the floor?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:15 am, November 24th, 2009 - 14 comments

National wants to get its shambolic ETS through the House this week. It’s not quite clear what the hurry is; there’s no actual reason why it should be passed before the Copenhagen meeting in December, it’s just an artificial deadline that National have set themselves. We already know the ETS will cost taxpayers hundreds […]

Kevin Hague blasts Nats on ACC

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 3:38 pm, November 23rd, 2009 - 11 comments

Good video from the Greens’ Kevin Hague. Gotta love the dirty mo:

Another Key foot in mouth

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:17 am, November 23rd, 2009 - 39 comments

John Key sure is a class act. Not. Latest example*: Stadium funds: We’re not Indian-givers, says Key Prime Minister John Key yesterday said the Government was unlikely to ask for its $15 million back if the Forsyth Barr Stadium is not finished in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. … The issue of whether […]

Key opens rich mates’ marina, slaps local Maori

Written By: Michael Foxglove - Date published: 8:59 am, November 22nd, 2009 - 45 comments

Unbelievable. John Key has opened the environmentally destructive Whangamata Marina. This was a battle between rich property developers, against the serious concerns of local Maori, surfers, and environmentalists. Key has come down firmly on the side of his rich mates. But not only that, he’s promised more marinas! The building of marinas along popular coastal areas […]

What I did on my holidays – by [insert name here]

Written By: lprent - Date published: 11:04 pm, November 20th, 2009 - 38 comments

Ohmigod, after Red Alert informed me that the National MPs had started a blog, I nearly died!!!!!!! And after I’d finished that and resurrected, I went and had a look at it. Yep, I was right. These buggers know nothing about what blogging is about. Some moronic PR flack somewhere (is that a parliamentary crest […]

Doctors speak up against ETS

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:41 am, November 19th, 2009 - 4 comments

A couple of days ago I raised (again) the question of why we don’t see more experts, scientists and academics contributing to public debate. Well here’s one example where they are doing so: Docs say emissions trading scheme will hurt Kids Senior doctors today said that the intended changes to New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme […]

Key needs to face the facts

Written By: r0b - Date published: 11:03 am, November 18th, 2009 - 24 comments

Nice Mr Key may be feeling the strain a bit. He’s starting to sound quite snippy: Meanwhile, Key has also slammed Treasury predictions that the proposed changes to the ETS would add $50 billion to the price tag of the scheme. “The numbers from Treasury are nonsense. Treasury can’t tell us what the deficit is […]

Nats could lose, but can Labour win?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:59 am, November 18th, 2009 - 29 comments

If you had told me a year ago that, just a third of a way through its term, this government would have lost a minister in secret circumstances, had a minister openly acknowledge that the Prime Minister “doesn’t do anything”, muddled its way through legislative debacle after debacle of policies that over-promise and under-deliver, and […]

Total shambles

Written By: r0b - Date published: 10:45 am, November 17th, 2009 - 61 comments

The government’s handling of the ETS is a total shambles at every level. Even their fans at The Herald are pointing out the elephants in the room: Another sorry chapter in emissions farce It is rare that all-party select committees of Parliament cannot agree on some improvements to a Government bill even if some parties […]

Urgent action needed on job creation

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:29 am, November 17th, 2009 - 9 comments

We’ve talked a lot about the negative effects of unemployment on the unemployed and their communities (depression, crime, family breakup, poor health, poor educational outcomes for children etc) but there’s another group that benefits from fewer people being on benefits – people with jobs. Check out the graph. At the end of the 1990s, there […]

Maori Party shafts Maori workers

Written By: Michael Foxglove - Date published: 7:59 pm, November 16th, 2009 - 12 comments

The Maori Party says it will support John Key’s emissions trading scheme in exchange for a lucrative deal for the wealthiest Maori. According to TV3: Five of New Zealand’s richest iwi, who have already signed multi-million-dollar treaty settlements, will gain millions more in the deal. Basically, Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples don’t give a sh*t […]

Key’s loose government

Written By: Michael Foxglove - Date published: 10:31 am, November 16th, 2009 - 12 comments

Over the weekend r0b reckoned the shambles of the Key government would start to really hurt. I was sceptical. Winning the next election for the left is going to bloody hard. But Key’s cracks are showing. As the ever thoughtful Colin James noted in his Dom Post column this morning (currently offline): Too many distractions […]

Failures of leadership: English, Hide, and Harawira

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:57 pm, November 15th, 2009 - 66 comments

I know this point/counterpoint series of posts on Hone Harawira maybe getting a bit tiresome but I have to disagree with the assertion in a couple of recent ones that Harawira has been treated more harshly Bill English and Rodney Hide or, by implication, than a Pakeha in his situation would have. And I think that those […]

Iwi tuaroa is Maori for spine

Written By: the sprout - Date published: 8:41 am, November 15th, 2009 - 15 comments

Throughout the mana enhancing relationship between the National and Maori parties, we haven’t yet seen a lot of give and take. Well, I guess that’s only half true – we’ve seen a lot of taking for granted by National and a lot of giving concessions by the Maori Party, but none of the other way […]