Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, May 1st, 2014 - 199 comments
It never seems to end does it? A National Party Minister contacted a top ranking police officer after a wealthy businessman with close ties to him was arrested on domestic violence charges. The Prime Minister’s office is understood to be considering Maurice Williamson’s future as a Minister, following Herald inquiries into the phone call that he made and over his involvement with Donghua Liu’s criminal case.
Bunji: And he’s gone – resigned as a Minister
Written By: - Date published: 6:29 pm, April 30th, 2014 - 1 comment
‘Allo, Allo, Allo, Allo – Based on the 1980’s Comedy Series, “Allo, allo” – Starring Cameron Slater as Rene and Judith Collins as Edith. Episode Three. (See previous episodes) “Cameron Slater gets starring role in tvnz drama” “Key schemes with media at whaleoil cafe“ By Susan Nact It is just before opening time at the […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, April 26th, 2014 - 108 comments
Karol has already mentioned this in her post from this morning. But in the interests of splitting milk from alcohol…
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, April 26th, 2014 - 32 comments
Judith Colllins & the PM are probably toasting Shane Jones (and Murray McCully) right now: the heat around the Oravida controversy has been pushed off the front pages. Information and marginalised news don’t easily disappear off the web – or Wikipedia. Collins quietly slipped out a press release on the delay of her decision on alcohol pricing – media shy suddenly?
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, April 22nd, 2014 - 36 comments
Another day and another hole in Judith Collins’ description of events surrounding the dinner that she had with senior Oravida figures and a Chinese Official who may or may not have been able to sort out importation problems for Oravida, a company who her husband is a Director of and who has made large donations to the National Party.
Written By: - Date published: 2:29 pm, April 18th, 2014 - 37 comments
The highs and lows and the good and bad of what was a fascinating week in Politics.
Written By: - Date published: 8:14 am, April 18th, 2014 - 30 comments
Judith can’t believe she has to explain this all again
Written By: - Date published: 10:06 am, April 16th, 2014 - 115 comments
Judith Collins, once one of National’s most assured performers, is facing increasing pressure. Her handling of the ACC privacy release form scandal is under scrutiny. And the release of a letter from Oravida to the Government asking for help in handling reputational risk focusses even more attention on the “private dinner” and the identity of the mysterious Chinese Government Official.
Written By: - Date published: 7:13 pm, April 10th, 2014 - 35 comments
Who will it be? Judith? Simon? Hekia? Amy? Or a surprise?
Written By: - Date published: 5:55 pm, April 10th, 2014 - 56 comments
National must be hoping that Judith Collins can answer questions in Parliament better than she did today when questioned about Oravida. Because today she had a shocker.
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, April 3rd, 2014 - 3 comments
Last month, we learned that Judith Collins had taken time off a taxpayer-funded trip to China to endorse her husband’s company – a company which had also donated significant sums of money to the National Party. The endorsement appeared to violate the Cabinet Manual, but John Key stepped up and claimed that the Cabinet Office said it was all OK. Then, just a few days later, he admitted that he’d lied about that. In the process, he implicitly raised serious questions about the quality of the Cabinet Office’s advice.
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, March 24th, 2014 - 22 comments
There is danger of reading too much into polls months out from an election. Commentators were claiming that National was too strong to lose the next election based on a rogue poll. Few looked at multiple polls, accounted for the margin of error nor the trends over past months. The last fortnight has seen a National with the latest Roy Morgan Poll plummeting from the Colmar Brunton result of 51% to 45.5%. And it is based on a lack of ministerial performance…
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, March 20th, 2014 - 57 comments
This week Hekia Parata has achieved what I thought was impossible. She has shown even worse judgment than Judith Collins and is threatening to replace Collins as National’s minister who is most in trouble. Hekia’s days as a Minister must be numbered …
Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, March 19th, 2014 - 58 comments
“Justice Minister Judith Collins’ “cup of tea on the way to the airport” at her friend Stone Shi’s company in Shanghai involved a 30km detour in the opposite direction…”. That’s pretty embarrassing for Collins. Caught, red-handed, again, lying in the Parliament and misleading your boss. I wonder what he will do now?
Written By: - Date published: 4:50 am, March 16th, 2014 - 36 comments
Fran O’Sullivan thinks that the only reason why Collins is still a Minister was Key’s need to save face in his impending visit to China. I think Key may have got a better reception from Xi Jinping if he had followed the Chinese leader’s example of taking a hard line on dinner-table corruption and sacked Collins.
Written By: - Date published: 7:32 pm, March 12th, 2014 - 24 comments
And the winner is …
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, March 12th, 2014 - 46 comments
Last week No Right Turn argued strongly that we needed full transparency over Cabinet Office advice on ministers’ conflicts of interest, because we couldn’t trust the Prime Minister to represent that advice accurately, and we couldn’t trust secret advice to be accurate. And John Key has just proven his point: “Prime Minister John Key has admitted he misled reporters over Cabinet Office advice…”
Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, March 12th, 2014 - 4 comments
[satire] Let me explain. There has been no breach of Cabinet rules. This has been confirmed by the Cabinet Office. Not the real Cabinet Office, but the one that exists in the deepest recesses of my imagination. That particular Cabinet Office always gives me the advice I want to hear, and the one thing I’ve learned from all my years in this place is to always listen to the voices in my head.
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, March 12th, 2014 - 16 comments
The Orivida mess smells worse by the day for National. Yesterday, it turned out the Cabinet Office’s advice clearing Judith Collins of any wrongdoing had failed to even look at the most important piece of the evidence – the Chinese text of Orivida’s website. It had to rush out new advice to cover that off, which Key still won’t release. That is why today John Key will spend much of question time dancing on the head of a pin…
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 4 comments
[satire] It’s early morning at a greasy spoon cafe set in a back street off K Road. Rene (Cameron Slater) is scrubbing the grease off the table where he and John Key sat last night. His wife Edith (Judith Collins) is trying to get a fresh milk stain off her jacket.
Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, March 5th, 2014 - 38 comments
John Key claims Judith Collins was not guilty of conflict of interest re-her visit to Oravida in China. Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins, in the General Debate today claimed that Peter Goodfellow met with an Oravida sponsored group of businessmen to discuss “bi-lateral collaboration.” They claim Key also played golf with an Oravida bigwig.
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 pm, February 17th, 2014 - 123 comments
Good to see Labour has stood up against National’s “harder-to-vote” revisions to the Electoral Amendment Bill, especially making voters now have to state their name to get a voting paper. The reason for this is to allow scrutineers to more easily challenge a voter’s credentials, and is similar to voter intimidation practices in conservative States in the US. Expect National Party scrutineers questioning more voter credentials in the 2014 election.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, February 11th, 2014 - 13 comments
Local bodies writes on the way that National has been concentrating their personal attacks at the Greens. It is a pretty typical display by National in any election year. But you get the impression they’re going to seriously be dumpster diving for dirt this year – especially Judith Collins. National are getting desperate at their disappearing coalition partners. “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win”
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, February 11th, 2014 - 163 comments
Is this election year going to be the most vicious in recent history? There’s always a bit of argy-bargy in politics, and sometimes it’s personal. Despite the best of intentions, it’s impossible for people’s families and backgrounds to never be part of the conversation, because often they themselves bring it up – whether it’s John […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 pm, February 9th, 2014 - 101 comments
For John Key, MMP stands for “Manipulate Members of Parliament”. Senior journalists are beginning to call him on the games he’s playing, and good on them; gerrymander entered the New Zealand political lexicon at Key’s press conference this week. Key wants to push the issues away till closer to the election, when he’ll know what his polling is telling him – I hope the gallery don’t let him.
Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, February 3rd, 2014 - 20 comments
A draft UN report on human rights shows NZ has been slacking off. The government is glossing over its failings: eg on domestic violence, child protection, poverty, ethnic inequalities, discrimination, disability rights, government abuse of urgency. Collins focuses on punishment, surveillance.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, February 2nd, 2014 - 111 comments
National’s attacks on Metiria Turei appear to me as being deliberate and programmed rather than an inconsequential argument on the cost of designer jackets.
Written By: - Date published: 6:40 pm, January 14th, 2014 - 140 comments
I couldn’t give a rats arse about Jordan Williams and his new little Act campaigning vehicle against the State, but I do care about health and safety and the manner in which some of the media have run his latest little ruse against training health and safety representatives in the workplace is a disgrace. Judith Collins has used it as a cover to announce the end of worker health and safety training by unions beyond this year, leaving workers unable to access the powers under the Health and Safety Act to issue hazard notices and represent their workmates.
Written By: - Date published: 3:06 pm, December 11th, 2013 - 31 comments
Seems that Collins likes to call others bullies, but doesn’t mind being simply abusive and derogatory in her own language. Let’s call it what it is: more insults fly from the obnoxious right who like to play the man and not the ball, especially when the facts are inconvenient. It’s not surprising that the Collins faction has been associated with Cameron Slater.
Written By: - Date published: 3:51 pm, November 23rd, 2013 - 6 comments
Police have called on Bob’s expertise to establish if the crime actually happened. We now all know thanks to Bob’s expertise, that women don’t get raped unless they are attractive, dress sexy and go out beyond their front gate at night. Besides women can’t drive like a guy or have fun like a guy. Bob knows just how women think – at least better than the police?
Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, November 12th, 2013 - 23 comments
In today’s Herald Judith Collins again sidesteps the questions on trial processes on sexual abuse cases posed last week by Jan Logie and Andrew Little. The Minister for No is now dead keen to be seen to be doing something. I think she should take up Metiria Turei’s suggestion to set up an all-party group to consider the issues. One thing is absolutely clear; all wisdom does not reside in the mind of this Minister.
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