political parties

Covid and the media

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:42 am, August 29th, 2021 - 54 comments

This week there has been some argy bargy between the Twitterati including the Waitakerati and the media on coverage of Covid in Aotearoa with elements of the media complaining that the criticisms are unjustified. A brief review of some of the offerings this week would suggest otherwise.

Gumming up the works

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 9:05 am, August 28th, 2021 - 53 comments

Last night it was revealed that National and Act had refused to agree to a proposed virtual Parliament sitting where questions could be asked, and instead wanted face to face meetings, even though this would mean a third of the country’s MPs travelling regularly to Wellington from a Covid delta hotspot.

Matt King caught blowing anti vaccination dog whistle

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 11:15 am, August 23rd, 2021 - 22 comments

Former National MP Matt King has been publicly posting anti vaccination propaganda under the ruse of only wanting a conversation.

The importance of Jacinda’s 1 pm press conferences

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 11:50 am, August 22nd, 2021 - 130 comments

Jacinda Ardern has resumed the 1 pm briefings where she communicates effectively the country’s current situation and what the plan is. But National and some elements of the media are complaining, presumably that she is doing too good a job.

Farewell Dr Michael Cullen

Written By: advantage - Date published: 1:52 pm, August 20th, 2021 - 21 comments

Dr Michael Cullen has died, and with him goes a real standard-bearer for Labour for three decades.

RIP Michael Cullen

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:41 am, August 20th, 2021 - 15 comments

Former Labour Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen has died.

The importance of political leadership in dealing with Covid

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:55 am, August 18th, 2021 - 66 comments

Political leadership in the time of Covid is important. As the Government urgently swung into action and imposed a level 4 lockdown after news of a community case of Delta Covid who lived in Auckland and had spent time in Coromandel while infectious, Thames-Coromandel District Mayor and former National MP Sandra Goudie admitted to not scanning regularly.

The strange story about the fake news poll results

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:21 am, August 17th, 2021 - 52 comments

The Politik website’s inadvertant publishing of fake news of a drop in Labour’s support shows how fragile the system of relying on two sources for a story is.

The latest battle in the culture wars

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:49 am, August 15th, 2021 - 79 comments

This week National agreed to the bill allowing gender self identification to proceed to select committee which was a stark contrast to their position on the bill banning gay conversion therapy. I wonder what happened?

The Churchill picture

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:13 am, August 12th, 2021 - 165 comments

National, the party that claims to be focussed on the issues that matter decided to get upset when the Greens requested the replacement of a picture of a former UK leader who had a reputation for engaging in crimes against humanity.

National’s civil war continues

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 9:08 am, August 9th, 2021 - 25 comments

In an extraordinary move National’s board has reselected Peter Goodfellow as Party Chairperson and this has caused former MP David Carter to resign as board member and express no confidence in the leadership or in National’s chances at the next election.

National used to be better than this

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:28 am, August 6th, 2021 - 59 comments

Back in the day National used to have a strong urban liberal wing that gave the impression that it was sympathetic to LGBTQI issues. Yesterday that impression was trashed.

Judith’s last stand?

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:04 am, August 4th, 2021 - 43 comments

Judith Collins has decided to attack the Government on the use of the Te Reo name for New Zealand even though the last National Government regularised its use.

The latest Reid Research Poll result

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:30 am, August 2nd, 2021 - 134 comments

Last night’s Reid Research poll result suggests that the electorate is reverting back to a more conventional dynamic after the stratospheric heights that Labour enjoyed immediately post Covid elimination.

Lies damned lies and Crime statistics

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:39 am, August 1st, 2021 - 13 comments

It should be an offence for political parties to deliberately misrepresent law and order statistics as National has done this week. It should be an aggravating feature if the party is a conservative party that champions law and order issues. After all fraud is an offence and if we don’t punish it appropriately then everyone will do it.

Letting private enterprise handle Covid quarantine is a really stupid idea

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 11:55 am, July 27th, 2021 - 31 comments

Leader of the Opposition David Seymour has proposed that private enterprise should provide quarantine services. The recent experience of Melbourne where private security firms failed dramatically to properly managed quarantine facilities suggests that this is a really stupid idea.

Why aren’t Labour acting on the housing crisis?

Written By: weka - Date published: 11:30 am, July 27th, 2021 - 68 comments

Bernard Hickey calls Labour’s inaction a scandal, and it’s hard to disagree.

Greens: a Warrant of Fitness for rental homes

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 6:10 am, July 23rd, 2021 - 118 comments

People who rent their home shouldn’t have to get sick or complain before the safety of their home is tested and guaranteed.

Act likes some rights but not others

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:50 am, July 22nd, 2021 - 37 comments

Following on from its campaign to protect freedom of expression Act has come out with policy on gangs which if enacted would involve some pretty egregious attacks on freedom of association and movement and due process.

Mother Nature gives Groundswell NZ the middle finger

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:17 am, July 20th, 2021 - 78 comments

With record floods in Marlborough, half of Westport evacuated, disastrous flooding in Germany and the North East and the threat of record bushfires in the North West of the United States Mother Nature is passing rather cruel judgment on Groundswell NZ’s recent protest.

Why Not Support The Farmers?

Written By: advantage - Date published: 8:43 am, July 17th, 2021 - 106 comments

The Groundswell farmers movement want the new freshwater policy scrapped, the “ute tax” removed, lots of imported labour for farm work, parts of the ETS dumped the new Significant Natural Area policy dumped, the draft policy on indigenous biodiversity scrapped and Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill stopped. How likely is this?

Minister Robertson’s Economic Development Strategy

Written By: advantage - Date published: 7:32 am, July 15th, 2021 - 20 comments

Minister Roberston’s recent speech to the Trans Tasman Business Circle sets out both how this government is using the pandemic to reset whole sectors of the economy, and also how it is getting its head around economic and social challenges. The points made were unsurprising, but his intended direction was unclear.

Rare misstep

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:22 am, July 14th, 2021 - 37 comments

Simeon Brown in his attack on the Government for allegedly funding the Mongrel Mob has shown a disturbing ability to understand how Government works and an even more disturbing inability to perform basic maths.

Demand the debate

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:13 am, July 13th, 2021 - 52 comments

In two separate leaks it has emerged that Judith Collins privately briefed Don Brash on National’s demand the debate campaign and that Brash wrote to wealthy donors seeking $300,000 for an Iwi Kiwi style billboard response.

About the Hate Speech law changes

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 12:06 pm, July 6th, 2021 - 94 comments

The debate about the Government’s consultation on proposed changes to hate speech laws continues, with the level of heat increasing, but the level of actual understanding of what is being proposed in critical shortage.

Oppose this new hate speech bill

Written By: advantage - Date published: 9:43 am, June 26th, 2021 - 206 comments

Hate speech is about to get a lot more criminalised with much stronger penalties. It’s worth going back to what the Royal Commission actually considered, since that’s the basis of proposing this law. The Royal Commission in fact found that trying to protect religion from very strong opinions is simply not a good idea: … we acknowledge that there […]

Stick a fork in them, they’re done

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:58 am, June 25th, 2021 - 84 comments

The details of a particularly brutal National Party caucus meeting that resulted in Todd Muller announced his pending retirement from Parliament have been leaked in detail to the Herald’s Claire Trevett.

Todd’s going … who is next?

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:31 am, June 24th, 2021 - 67 comments

Yesterday National suffered further damage to its ranks when Harete Hipango was outed as the MP with Parliamentary Services resources issues and Todd Muller announced that he will stand down as an MP at the end of this term nominally so that he can eventually spend more time with his family.

Will the last remaining National MP please turn all the lights off

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:08 am, June 23rd, 2021 - 38 comments

Oh dear. There is yet another story about yet another National MP in trouble because of their born to rule impulses. Update: the Herald has reported that the MP is Harete Hipango. These blue on blue attacks are getting out of hand.

He’s baaack

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:56 am, June 21st, 2021 - 30 comments

For the first time since the election Winston Peters has reemerged. But instead of talking about the country’s problems such as climate change, child poverty and recovering from the global pandemic he chose to concentrate on the “over” use of Te Reo, cycleways and gangs.

The Government’s Feebate scheme

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:00 am, June 14th, 2021 - 70 comments

Labour and the Greens have announced the establishment of a Feebate scheme to incentivise the purchase of electric vehicles and disincentivise the purchase of gas guzzlers.