zzero use

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Banks gets off…

Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, July 26th, 2012 - 44 comments

Police were unable to establish that Mr Banks had the necessary knowledge that the donation had been recorded as anonymous in the return before he signed and submitted it. As No Right Turn puts it: “So basically they’re letting him off because he didn’t read the thing he signed and was legally responsible for. Its one law for finance company directors, and another for corrupt politicians.”

Another looters’ bonus

Written By: - Date published: 6:57 am, July 26th, 2012 - 26 comments

John Key’s grasp of his own asset sales policy is being revealed to be shakier by the day. He doesn’t know how it would hurt the government books. He flips his position on water rights each day. He doesn’t know how much a looters’ bonus of free shares would cost. And, yesterday, he didn’t even realise that $56m is budgeted to cover sharebrokers’ fees for the looters.

An Auckland view on Labour’s changes

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, July 20th, 2012 - 75 comments

Here’s a guest post from an Auckland Labour Party member with a different take on the constitutional changes. It’s interesting and challenging. Good food for thought. – Let us consider Labour’s proposed constitutional reforms in its moment. New Zealand’s progressives continue to splinter, just as conservative variation contracts. As the progressives splinter, they are also […]

Banks case to Police lawyers

Written By: - Date published: 10:07 pm, July 5th, 2012 - 36 comments

The Police have concluded their investigation into John Banks’  donations to his 2010 mayoral campaign.  The Police legal section will now decide whether or not to prosecute. There are two tests; the evidential test and the public interest test. There is no question that if the evidence is sufficient, prosecution is in the public interest. It comes down to credibility – best decided in court.

About that mandate

Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, June 25th, 2012 - 156 comments

The Right would have us believe that the election was a referendum on asset sales and nothing else. Well, let’s take a closer look at the results of that ‘referendum’. Yeah, there’s no mandate there.

The art of the possible

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, June 20th, 2012 - 60 comments

The Nats’ latest defence of asset sales is ‘if Labour doesn’t say they’ll buy them back,then they secretly agree with the sales’. Well, we would all like Labour to be able to make that commitment but, in the real world, that would be irresponsible . The incoming government is going to have to know how the bad a states the Nats leave the books in first.

Know when to fold ’em

Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, June 19th, 2012 - 8 comments

Key’s ditched  the surplus target that was so important a month ago –  yet another casualty on the way to the brighter future. The Queen may have asked him why he didn’t see European contagion coming. Shearer is right – Europe is an excuse for a government that has run out of ideas. Labour does have a fresh approach – we need to hear more.

Peters smacks down Key

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, June 17th, 2012 - 52 comments

John Key started preparing the ground to work with NZF, looking to forge a “Save Super” platform for 2014. But Winston Peters smacked him down hard.

Cunliffe attacks Nats’ crony capitalism

Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 14th, 2012 - 79 comments

David Cunliffe went to the lion’s den yesterday with a speech telling a meeting of Kensington Swan’s receivership and liquidation lawyers that there would be a lot less work for them under Labour but saying “the Labour Party is not your enemy. Your enemy is inefficiency, corruption, and the wastage of both public and private wealth. Your enemy is a cosy corruption that helps a few friends of the government get very rich at the expense of the community.”

Unable to retire

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, June 11th, 2012 - 11 comments

Sharples and Turia remind me of an old couple running the family store with no kids to pass it on to. They want to retire. If they do, that’ll be curtains for everything they’ve built. Without them, the Maori Party goes to a deserving death. Plus Key will be pressuring them to stay. They’re his only ghost of a chance. How much longer can they keep going? They’ll be 72 and 70 in 2014.

Flip-flop still leaves hole in education budget

Written By: - Date published: 6:28 am, June 8th, 2012 - 65 comments

With its polling slip-sliding away, National had no choice but to dump its ideological class size increases. But why did they dump the spending on teacher quality too? If that was such a priority that it justified sacking 1,000 teachers, couldn’t something else be cut? And what other education spending will now be cut to fill National’s budget hole?

Only money matters

Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, June 6th, 2012 - 12 comments

How did National get it so wrong on the cuts that would costs too many schools far too many teachers?  Did the Nats do any consultation at all?

Postcards from the “brighter” future

Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, June 5th, 2012 - 18 comments

Hey John – where’s our “Brighter Future”? Hey National voters – was this what you voted for?

One law for some

Written By: - Date published: 7:48 pm, June 4th, 2012 - 18 comments

Financially troubled private school Wanganui Collegiate received a $3million grant in Budget 2012, 3 times the annual operating grant of the larger Wanganui City College. Since then it has been advertising its low class sizes and ability to  reduce fees significantly. Private schools will no doubt be using the current outrage over increased class sizes for recruiting purposes, but they should not be doing it with taxpayers’ money.

There is no alternative?

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, June 4th, 2012 - 77 comments

We all know National is on a record borrowing binge. But when they say they need to slash education investment to balance the books, what dumb spending are they leaving untouched? Which leaves the obvious question: why were these Tory sacred cows protected while public education was cut?

Call off the education cuts

Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, June 1st, 2012 - 17 comments

National has no choice but to call off the education cuts. The sooner they do it the sooner it will stop killing them in the court of public opinion.

Polly Parata

Written By: - Date published: 12:11 am, June 1st, 2012 - 69 comments

Hekia Parata is demonstrating how political lines endlessly repeated can go horribly wrong if you have nothing else to say. Her Polly Parrot repetitions are wrongly-based, and the longer she and Key go on about how fewer teachers and larger classes  is going to improve the quality of teaching the worse its going to get for National. The hubristic Parata  has galvanised and united the education sector and more backdowns are likely, both in policy and politics.

Banks’ vote protects him from Jones-like accountability

Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, May 31st, 2012 - 26 comments

Labour’s got its Auditor-General inquiry into Jones’ approval of Yan’s citizenship. We’ve seen this movie before. In a year, the report will recommend better procedures but nothing more. Jone will be reinstated. The politics is more important. Shearer’s shown he has the power to control his senior MPs and set a high standard of accountability. When will Key match that standard and stand down Banks?

Key’s future gets shorter

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, May 31st, 2012 - 60 comments

Budgets allocate money not just for 1 year, but for the next 4. When National says its putting $511m into education, that’s actually $128m a year over 4 years (less than inflation). So, it stands out like a sore thumb that National has promised to limit teacher loses at 2 per school for only 3 years. After that? Seems like Key doesn’t expect it’ll be his problem.

Sacking ‘only’ 400 teachers ‘good news’ say Nats

Written By: - Date published: 7:41 am, May 30th, 2012 - 87 comments

National has copped a hell of a backlash for increasing class sizes. The internal polls are said to be diabolical. There are a million parents of school-age kids out there, and they’re pissed off. Now, they’ve flipp-flopped and dipped into the emergency money. They won’t say how many teachers they’re cutting but it’s at least 400, probably 1,000.

Budget app a waste of money

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, May 29th, 2012 - 17 comments

National is crowing that 8,600 people downloaded the Budget App. Pity it doesn’t work.  And, of course, you can view the budget via your phone or tablet’s browser already without an expensive app. The Nats reckon the $59,000 cost is ‘free’ because it came from printing fewer paper editions – a bit like how if you save $100 at a sale it doesn’t matter if you set $60 on fire.

Your choices for PM: a thinker or a ‘glib performance artist’

Written By: - Date published: 7:59 am, May 29th, 2012 - 96 comments

Colin James contrasts Shearer with Key: At a post-budget standup on Thursday he lacked leader-like fluency, deferring readily – and necessarily – to finance shadow minister David Parker who had his lines off pat.This factor should diminish over time as Shearer settles – though don’t expect him to become the sort of glib performance artist John Key has become. Shearer is too earnest and too aware of complexity.

Who’s National looking out for?

Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, May 29th, 2012 - 45 comments

We’re told that these are tough times and we all have to share in the pain. Yeah, right. National dug this hole with $2 billion in ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts, billions in subsidies to polluters, and white elephant motorways that aren’t worth what they cost. And who’s being made to bear the cost? The rich are doing well, while the poor and middle class go backwards.

Spin update

Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, May 28th, 2012 - 20 comments

Just as a quick update on my pre-budget Spin v reality about a Government that has the worst growth record of any since before Michael Joseph Savage, and has a 52% increase in unemployment despite more than 1,000 NZers leaving for Australia each week.

Budget nasties

Written By: - Date published: 8:27 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 37 comments

This afternoon a couple of ‘hidden treasures’ have come out of the budget. In changes not announced, but discovered 1122 teachers could be losing their jobs and changes are being made to the assets old people are allowed to keep once in residential care. Sneaky, Bill, sneaky…

ImperatorFish: Budget’s School Report

Written By: - Date published: 2:31 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 5 comments

Budget is a sluggish student who shows no enthusiasm or energy, and must be coaxed into making even the tiniest effort. His attitude is all wrong. He is something of a braggart, repeatedly telling all of his peers how fast he is, even though when challenged to a race he always finds an excuse to back out.

National’s budget priorities: Roads to Nowhere

Written By: - Date published: 1:58 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 4 comments

The 3 most expensive items in the Budget: 1. $10.24 billion: Superannuation, 2. $3.69 billion: Debt Servicing, 3. $3.32 billion: National Land Transport Agency (Roads of National Signficance etc) – up $334 million. National are prepared to sack teachers, raise prescription costs and pick paperboy’s pockets to defend their roads that make no economic sense.

Caption competition

Written By: - Date published: 12:58 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 41 comments

Key’s plan arse backwards

Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, May 25th, 2012 - 23 comments

Getting back to surplus is not the first step to growing the economy. It’s the other way round.

Mr Australia waves goodbye

Written By: - Date published: 6:46 am, May 25th, 2012 - 170 comments

In his Budget speech, David Shearer labelled John Key ‘Mr Australia’. Because that’s where he’s pushing us. The zero hope budget offers a thousand and one nasty little cuts for students, for kids, for low-income workers, for schools, for community groups, for your public services. All to barely – if rosy growth forecasts come true – achieve a micro-surplus in 2014/15 for purely political reasons.

Fail Budget

Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, May 24th, 2012 - 106 comments

Budget reaction here. Seems the Nats’ preferred budget tag line is ‘Investing in the future’. Should have called it ‘Waiting for Godot’. Here’s a quick summary: Zero = Fail.

Update: Nats planning to tax kids’ after school jobs. No, not joking.