Steven Joyce

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Polity: Mr Angry tries to reheat 2011 campaign

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, August 11th, 2014 - 13 comments

Steven Joyce is asking about how Labour can afford their policies. Half of the money is what National is planning to spend unwisely. The rest is from documented increases in revenue in a fiscal plan. Unlike National’s mythic surplus, these are solid values. They will produce a solid surplus to pay down National’s debt.

How Labour and the Greens win it from here

Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, August 11th, 2014 - 81 comments

A great campaign launch from Labour on the weekend, a couple of bad weeks for National and suddenly there is a chance that David Cunliffe may be our next Prime Minister.  But how does he succeed and what can progressives do to help?

Polity: Shifting ground?

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, August 7th, 2014 - 19 comments

Rob Salmond looks at the recent shifts in media opinion pieces. Perhaps the National strategy of getting the house to rise too early has backfired. It appears to be giving opposition parties more room to showcase their policy, more room for National to showcase its arrogance, and more time for the polls to close.

Polity: In search of National’s ideas

Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, August 5th, 2014 - 14 comments

Rob Salmond has noticed recently that National likes to talk a lot about everyone else’s ideas, but it prefers not to discuss its own.

Hang onto our land – it’s all we’ve got left

Written By: - Date published: 8:22 pm, August 2nd, 2014 - 77 comments

Steven Joyce says Labour’s opposition to the sale of 13,800ha Lochinver station to Shanghai Pengxin is based on “xenophobia.” It’s not, its basic economic sense. The benefit from our land should stay here. And Joyce’s open door has seen rail wagons bought cheap and fixed dear by Chinese workers at the expense of good local jobs and crucial Kiwi skills. Labour is simply standing up for New Zealand. It’s the right thing to do.

Steven Joyce is a pillock

Written By: - Date published: 7:16 pm, August 2nd, 2014 - 131 comments

If you need proof watch this morning’s TV3 debate with Grant Robertson.

Local Bodies: Novopay Exemplifies National’s Governance

Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, July 31st, 2014 - 26 comments

This National led Government is strong on ideology, weak on process and reluctant to accept responsibility. The Novopay debacle exemplifies all of these well. When questioned about Novopay, National Ministers will never accept full responsibility. Stephen Joyce has just announced that the Government will be taking over the management of Novopay after almost two years of stress and wide-ranging issues. No matter what National and its Ministers claim, Novopay is largely their fault, and taking responsibility and making apologies are not what this Government does readily.

Polity: The ENV debate: Some more data

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, July 11th, 2014 - 14 comments

Rob Salmond presents the David Farrar / Steven Joyce / John Key argument that 2011 non voters are a National-leaning bunch. Then he shows that a better look at their own data undermines their claim. This matters because it helps us understand which bloc has more to gain from voter mobilization efforts in 2014.  This means the left has a lot more to gain than the right from mobilization in 2014.

Polity: Who do the “missing million” like?

Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, July 2nd, 2014 - 17 comments

National appear to have been indulging in wishful thinking for some time based on dubious analysis of voter turnout.  Their latest round of silliness comes from kiwiblog. Sure there were some National supporters who chose not to vote in 2011 out of complacency. But it is probably a minority, and that most of the new non-voters (who voted up to and including 2008, and then stopped) are lefties. The survey evidence points that way, and so does the E9 evidence when looked at properly.

Polity: Economic plans compared

Written By: - Date published: 7:08 pm, May 12th, 2014 - 9 comments

Labour looks at increasing jobs, wage growth, and having the government run surpluses. National looks at a 1% wage growth after inflation after years of falling real wages and no drop in real unemployment as being a sign of a healthy economy? Yeah right. Most of the growth in the economy is simply passing wage-earners by. It is going elsewhere. That is National’s legacy: strong growth for the fortunate few, lagging and insipid growth for everyone else

Polity: Why Joyce is full of it on monetary policy

Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, May 5th, 2014 - 33 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity just saved me from having to write something like this post explaining economic basics to Steven Joyce. Joyce demonstrated again why his tenure at MoBIE has been a failure for the overall economy. He fixates on one thing like the business selling milk powder to the exclusion of the overall picture. In part that is why we have neither expanding innovation or employment in our economy at present. He is a good tactical politician. But he is a fool on strategy.

The housing bubble

Written By: - Date published: 8:38 am, April 20th, 2014 - 176 comments

Another week and another report suggesting that New Zealand’s housing market is heading towards a potential crisis.  The Government’s primary response is to blame Labour.  The Greens and Labour have a collection of policies which would improve matters significantly.  But the politics are difficult because who would want to threaten the value of the family home?

Bugger the polls!

Written By: - Date published: 8:56 am, April 6th, 2014 - 83 comments

Auckland Against Poverty protest the Young Nats Ball and Paula Bennett’s war on the poor.  Steven Joyce is cynical about the polls. A Stuff poll shows everything that is wrong with the media’s poll beat ups.

LocalBodies: National Slumps in Polls As Ministers Struggle

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…

Invermay: Meddling Joyce Ignores the Evidence

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, March 10th, 2014 - 8 comments

My brother has posted across at Red Alert on Steven Joyce’s bungling oversight of AgResearch’s current $100 million restructure. The Crown Research Institute is New Zealand’s largest, and a recipient of generous Government support. Andy West, the former head of AgResearch stands to gain as head of Lincoln University from a plan that independent review […]

Polity: Minimum pass rates at University are silly

Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, March 8th, 2014 - 21 comments

The government has imposed mandatory minimum pass rates of tertiary education. If Universities (and Polytechs, Waananga, and others) do not meet a government-imposed minimum pass rate (which ratchet up every year, and may go as high as 85%), then the institution risks losing some of its government funding. That is crazy town.

National’s ICT failures.

Written By: - Date published: 10:55 pm, March 4th, 2014 - 23 comments

After having the past five and bit years with National’s negative policies about anything to do with new technologies, it is really nice to see some partially formed red-tinged morning ideas about how to encourage local usage of the net appearing on the sky’s horizon.  National’s ICT strategy seems to see how uselessly slow they can do everything and how much they can slow down the development of ICT in NZ.

Muddying the Waters

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, February 13th, 2014 - 62 comments

Dave Hansford contrasts the way that France handles its usage of waterways by farmers with the unsustainable degradation of NZ farmers. For that matter with the way that farming in the France is targeted at high value rather than commodity factory farming.  Let’s have the really tough conversation: is a low-value, mass-market business model really the best we can do? Are cheap, anonymous, industrial commodities our finest work? And are they worth the hidden cost to farmers, taxpayers and the environment?

National’s first strategic mistake

Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, January 22nd, 2014 - 109 comments

John Key  has made a major strategic mistake with his early announcement of the parties National could go into government with.  In framing the 2014 campaign as a contest between two blocs he has given away National’s trump card for gaining Winston’s support – support the largest party. Opportunity time for a positive alternative from Labour/Greens.

The puppet party, the Mega party and the pro assault party

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, January 12th, 2014 - 201 comments

Politics for the year is shaping up to be very interesting.  In news today ACT puppet master Steven Joyce has failed to persuade Rodney Hide to stand again for Epsom, the Conservatives are aiming to legitimise the use of violence by parents against children and Kim Dotcom is said to be ready to announce his new political party this month.

Public transport vs private transport. Don’t waste money on fasttracking motorways

Written By: - Date published: 1:08 am, November 26th, 2013 - 99 comments

Ok, I know this image has a lot of issues. It is a 256 color animated gif. Dithered to hell. Bad colour balance, tilt and even a moving focus point. But it certainly makes its point about what kind of road space we’re paying for to inefficiently fill with cars? Have the idiots at NZTA and in this incompetent National government not read their own statistics? Roads aren’t filling up. Public transport does.

Nat government treachery destroys public broadcasting

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, November 21st, 2013 - 30 comments

Key’s government has destroyed the weak attempts by Labour to enable some public service broadcasting on Freeview.  The NActs have employed ideologically-driven, irrational, bad faith, underhand, agreement-breaking moves to protect commercial monopoly. The CBB is campaigning for non-commercial TV channels.

Lucy Lawless to Steven Joyce: ‘U killed NZ film industry’

Written By: - Date published: 2:23 pm, October 25th, 2013 - 103 comments

NZ needs government legislation & financial support to maintain local screen productions.  Steven Joyce makes some hollow noises about prioritising NZ-focused productions, while allowing the Auckland industry to decline.  Lucy Lawless blames Joyce for NZ Film tax rebates & prioritising BIG Oil.

Large representative bodies – “slow”, “unwieldy”

Written By: - Date published: 8:26 am, October 4th, 2013 - 22 comments

That would be Steven Joyce describing university councils, but he could be describing any democratic governance.

Will DunnoKeyo Lead National into Next Year’s Defeat?

Written By: - Date published: 4:02 pm, October 1st, 2013 - 80 comments

Te Reo Putake starts speculating on when, how, and by whom John Key will be knifed in the back by. The question of if it is before or after the losing the next election. So far only Keith Holyoake has managed to retire as a leader of National, so after Labour’s tidy leadership changes we’re all looking forward to the political splatterfest that only National can provide.

Doing what we’re best at

Written By: - Date published: 2:37 pm, September 24th, 2013 - 53 comments

National is a very traditional party. They think that NZ is good at clearing land and raising animals, with a bit of mining on the side. The population is there to service farmers and miners on low wages. That may have been the case in the 1950’s. But as usual they’re hopelessly dated. Sometimes in recent years it has appeared to me that Labour thinks that way as well. But it looks like David Cunliffe is intent on refocusing us back on the burgeoning hi-wage and hi-growth hi-tech sector.

NRT: Rewarding failure

Written By: - Date published: 3:27 pm, September 18th, 2013 - 17 comments

What seems to be the defining feature of this government is in providing corporate welfare to incompetents who underbid their competition for government work or want bigger subsidies at the taxpayers expense. Give them the vaguest excuse and Key or Joyce will wilt like a flower in a desert and throw money at companies who […]

Cunliffe’s not so shabby question: broadband costs

Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, September 18th, 2013 - 41 comments

The MSM largely reported on Cunliffe stumbling over the word Chorus in his first question yesterday to PM Key.  But Key’s answers and later replies to the media, indicate corporate-friendly, cronyist manipulations and dodgy phone advice. [Update: Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing]

John Key’s anti-democratic government

Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, September 17th, 2013 - 48 comments

John Key tries to smear the winner of Labour’s democratic leadership contest as “far left”, while his government continues in its anti-democratic, plutocratic ways: sale of Meridian to avoid referendum; Joyce’s Broadband pricing “arm twisting”.

Post Key leadership struggle goes mainstream

Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, July 2nd, 2013 - 67 comments

The simmering leadership struggle in the National party doesn’t get a lot of attention in the mainstream media, but here’s an exception. Judith Collins will not be pleased.

Out of the shadows

Written By: - Date published: 8:25 pm, May 31st, 2013 - 38 comments

Well, its not taken long for the counter-strike. After Judith Collins’ main brain, Simon Lusk (better known as the cogent Whaleoil) went public last weekend threatening backbenchers that their careers would be short if they didn’t back Collins’ leadership bid when Key goes. Now, documents by Lusk talking about a ‘party within a party’ have been leaked.