Am I the only one who is feeling more than a little perturb about the deathly quite around where the money is coming from for support workers? Where exactly is the cash going to come from to pay the new wages?
We have a government currently dedicated to austerity as an economic policy, we have an opposition who say they will manage the austerity economic policy better. Both seem hell bent on ignoring the costs of support work for the elderly and disabled.
I’m seeing nothing, so I’m going to have a stab in the dark here. That the money is not there, so the people who need the support – will be the ones who suffer. The new wages will be payed, but the hours will be less, and those who are suffering the most will ultimately pay, by getting less (Austrity 101, or making the uber rich happy, by making the poor suffer).
If we had a left that supported social democracy, and choice in political economy then we could have a debate. As it stands, there will be no debate because the left is dominated in this country by people who are committed to austerity. Then there are those who won’t take any criticism, because there is an election. Here though is a real problem, who pays to alleviate suffering? The uber rich point blankly refuse, their hangers on refuse as well.
No one want to engage with the needs going forward we have associated with support work, and extended care. And where is the money, if we can spend billions of our tax on oil, why can’t we pay decent wages and look after our aged and disabled? And why can’t we even talk about political economy or where we want our tax dollars spent?
@BM – agreed, Key ran up debt, sold off the assets and spent the money on his mates and staying in power.
A good time was had by many and it made him popular until his actions came to light, such as the power sell offs would have made more money in dividends already, the state houses are sitting empty and the poor subsidised by tax payers are paying $200 per night for a dodgy hotel with zero signs of any changes and it’s getting worse, the economy is dependant on ponzi scheme immigration scams, the corporations that are taking over Silver Fern Farms and Cadbury are closing down the factories and works and making people redundant. The schools, hospitals and transport networks are overflowing…
P.S. I think Adam is talking about National’s austerity to low paid workers… non workers… and the numbers are growing in the low wage, zero hour contract, economy being created.
And yes, in my view in NZ it is like two different societies operating in alternative universes, Planet Key and Planet Earth, and it’s expanding – otherwise known as inequality.
You really do live in an alternative reality. The money was not “spent oh his mates”.
The increased debt from 2009 to 2013, which amounted to around $50 billion, was to keep the economy going and to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes.
Through 2009 and 2010 there were large increases in welfare spending due to unemployment increasing to around 8% due to the GFC, and a lot of pump priming to keep businesses afloat and increased infrastructure spend.
Then in 2010 and 2011 the earthquakes, which cost about $20 billion in direct govt payments.
In 2010/11 the annual deficit got out to $20 billion (as I recall) due to the combination of the GFC and the earthquakes. I recall thinking we can’t sustain this; we have to get out of this by getting on top of all non essential govt spending. However, there were real increases in health and education spending.
Getting on top of things took another two years. It also meant no wage increases in the state sector in 2010 and 201, though of course people still went up on annual scales (teachers, nurses, police, defence all have 10 step salary scales).
I am sure you will mention tax cuts, but the big shift was largely self funding by reducing income tax, but increasing GST, the “tax switch”.
So in NZ, no real austerity. Fortunately China also meant we got back to positive growth much earlier than the rest of the OECD. But managing govt expenditure is part of that. Look at the contrast with Australia which also has the China market.
EQC dos not cover all the roads, bridges, pipes etc plus the red zone land, most of which can now only be used as parks.
The new govt buildings, such as the justice sector are vastly more than any insurance return.
The $20 billion cost to govt is on top of insurance payouts, which went mostly to homeowners and commercial property owners.
Large sums had to be spent to support businesses, emergency housing, alternative govt services, lots of overtime for all sorts of govt paid workers.
The latest reconstruction estimates are over $40 billion (which covers everything not just the literal cost of new buildings). More than half of which is not covered by insurance.
Sure $40 billion is a boost to the local economy, but the money has to be found, and most of it did not come from insurance. About $20 billion over 5 years or so directly from taxpayers or govt borrowing.
New Zealand’s austerity was far more subtle than in the UK, the USA and Europe.
Anyway, most of our public sector was outsourced or privatised in the 1990’s in Ruth’s first round of austerity.
For instance, Joyce’s pet ministey, MOBIE is a facade with most of its work outsourced to the private sector. It doesnt even own the buildings that it operates on. Same with MSD and MPI.
Let me remind you of the tax cuts for the high income earners.If the budget was under so much pressure then this should not have been done & the rates should have been put up.
And if?? there was a gst/income tax switch then you are confirming that you robbed the poor to pay the rich ” someone’s mates”
But there wasn’t really a Gst /tax switch was there and each of those measures cost about $2 billion a year so $4 billion by 9 years=$36 billion and all of that went to the rich. There would have been a lot of alternative mileage out of that money.
And the size of the welfare bill is a consequence of continuing with strong immigration so we have a bloated workforce – more than we have jobs for
As to China – the Nacts took the best terms of trade we had had in many a long year and made sure none of it trickled down.
Good questions adam.
I fear the problem will escalate rapidly as the boomers age and the following generation voters will not tolerate “excessive” expenditure on the boomers because it is the boomers who have ruined things for them, and there will be overwhelming numbers of aged boomers demanding support. In short we will reap what we have sown.
garibaldi, the boomers as you call them have paid 14% interest rates on their mortgage for their roof over their head. Many have still not paid off their house that does not resemble any of those mansions you see advertised on TV.
They were the first to get hammered with increased education fees and had to go through more than one recession. Not only that, but any savings that were there were squandered away with the swindles of high flyers and the new neo lib policies (i.e. BNZ). There were no breaks for their expenditure when the mother of all budgets hit in the early 80’s. It took most likely more than a good part of 15 years for most to recover from the financial juggernaut. These years are also lost in means of career and getting improvement of income to make up for the losses. We are talking about average people and not magazine cutouts.
Your comments are being devoid of any understanding what the average person out there has to be content with but keeps going without bleating and complaining to get some handout or wealth transfer based on “I am entitled”.
And whilst I understand that things have not improved a hell of a lot as kiwis have voted for a right wing government keeping on with these neo lib policies, it is still true today as it was 100 years ago. Get working, saving and build something for the future. Put a bit aside when ever possible for the so called rainy day. You might not get rich, but you have a chance to build a live like everybody else.
Just don’t pick on the oldies who are in their twilight years and just want to see their life out in reasonable comfort without having to be euthanized off to get the hands on a few dollars.
Vino, I am not so sure and if he is, than I find his comments offensive to anyone who has worked 40-50 years and then get told that they had it too good to deserve any decent living in their twilight years.
There is already enough elder abuse out there without getting this kind of encouragement. If anything will increase, than that kind of abuse will.
What a society – where the weakest are treated like that.
Confession – I was born in 1946, so I am among the first boomers. I believe our generation lost the plot, but were especially tricked by the election when Lange first got in. That is the only time I ever voted for antisocial right-wing policies, but like so many others, I had no idea at the time that bloody Roger and friends were going to screw us all over, and that Lange, for all his wit, would have little idea of what was happening until too late. I thought I was voting left against right-wing Muldoon. (He was right-wing at the time, but nobody explained to us how Roger etc were going to shift all those goalposts and slant the field.)
Like you, I feel it is very unfair to blame boomers, but the fact is that even after Rogernomics, the majority of boomers (and the following generation) were stupid enough to vote for governments that would carry on those policies, not reverse them. Unfair as it is, we may well reap what we few tried to vote against sowing.
Thank you In Vino, you have covered it accurately.
Foreign waka…. We would have very good cover in our retirement if it hadn’t been for Muldoon and his dancing Cossacks.
I’m not picking on the oldies, I am one and I am pointing out the folly of what we, as a generation, have knowingly done.
I understand your sentiment In Vino, especially if I look at the selfish generation that has been raised as a result – pendulum swinging etc.
I do however recognize what is right and what is wrong and having children in poverty and elderly joining is so wrong on so many levels. To point at times past to justify an other horrid chapter is hopefully not what anyone likes to see.
As to the voting pattern, I belief that those who have vested interests will and do vote, but the large portion of younger people think that by not voting they will “show” their discontent. This logic is either just laziness to get involved really or stupidity, lets just name it for what it is. And yes, it is the baby boomers who raised these lazy thinkers.
This ought not to be a precursor to have older people treated like dirt. We have to reiterate the dignity of humanity, it is a duty not a choice. Otherwise we are going backwards, with disturbed minds dishing out cruelty.
Adam, you are right to wonder. I know that hours have been cut for workers who have a range of hours in their contracts. So yes, right rate, less hours.
BM There were many subtle and unsubtle cuts and extra taxes to pay for those tax cuts. Austerity has led to homelessness suicides and an ever growing divide.
Well, given that ‘everyone’ is operating under the umbrella of liberalism, we can confidently say that if money is made available for support-workers on a no-strings basis (unlikely), then money is going to come away from somewhere else.
Same as, if money is going to be made available for children in poverty, then that money is going to be taken away from somewhere or some-one else too.
These is room for reprioritising. But not much.
I look at a liberal economy a bit like how I’d look at a balloon. Squeeze *here* and all that happens is that a bulge pops up *there*. It would be a joke if it didn’t have real world and utterly predictable consequences.
Maybe under liberalism, the immediate pressure can be taken off of support workers and others. And in return, roads deteriorate or libraries are shut down – or whatever other slicing and dicing a “creative” liberal government can think up, by way of removing the day to day signs of a society being bled and hammered for the sake of preserving the integrity of an economic and political theory predicated on opportunity and ephemeral individual liberty and benign or impartial market rules and mechanisms.
Liberal capitalism. Fucking over workers since 18 whatever.
But hey! Big thumbs up. We’re free from the shackles of collective identity! Did someone mention class? Silly person. We are free now. And we are working on that equal opportunity thing now. Give it time. Embrace it. Be thankful for what the future will most surely hold. And yes, we’ve always approached the future on our knees.
This is the risk we run, as Māori, when we dig into Australian soil to create places or points of belonging, no matter how well we think we have consulted with indigenous peoples. That soil is not ours and will never be ours.
That doesn’t mean to say we can’t be Māori on that soil. How can we not be? We should guard and protect and develop our cultural expressions — but why not have cultural clubs and centres?
We should protect our language, our rituals, our mourning and our celebrating, even in little ways as our whānau did for our Dad in 2012 when we laid him to rest in Australia.
And there he lies, ever, ever, the manuhiri.
But we must be wary of transplanting our notions of being tangata whenua to the whenua of others, and risk wreaking yet another layer of colonisation upon those home peoples.
We must never forget who we are. And we must never forget who we are not.
Yes I really liked the article and I too found it came from a great angle. I really liked this
“But we must be wary of transplanting our notions of being tangata whenua to the whenua of others, and risk wreaking yet another layer of colonisation upon those home peoples.”
Adam,
No secret at all. It is all provided for in the 2017 budget. That is why no-one suggests, even on the left, that it is all smoke and mirrors.
One good thing about the NZ government finances is that everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures. The benefit of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1993.
It also means alternative budgets of the opposition have to be designed on the basis of the Treasury figures.
I’m not suggesting smoke and mirrors, I’m suggesting that austerity is a policy that does not work. And that the left should stop supporting it.
As for the budget figures, if they like all the ones in retaliation to disabled like the last few years, then I will see them as the mythology that they are.
…everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures.
Apart from Nick Smith when he’s ACC Minister in 2009. Or when the National Party lies about housing affordability. Or how deferred maintenance is a surplus.
Wayne – why are we even having to discuss it? Why not use fulltime job equivalents the way farmers use stock units?
Fact is the current government’s performance has been risible – only the combination of faked or uncollected stats and a sabotaged media has saved them from being stoned in the streets. And the media are becoming wise to the lies.
Heather du Plessis Allen comes out giving some hard stick to English and the Natz over the Barclay issue! The Natz ego massaging media is beginning to wake up to the ugly truth of what Natz is all about, something which HDPA alludes to in her piece.
However, why isn’t Key also getting some stick at the same time? After all he was PM at the time of the whole dirty business and like English covered up what Barclay did, so he also deserves equal condemnation as well.
Don’t wish to disillusion you, but these Tory propagandists will return to type closer to the election. They know which way their bread is buttered.
The left must not rely on the media.
Heather and hubby are shills for nact so this is the ‘balance’ piece they claim a moral high ground with when their obvious bias and scant regard for intellectual rigour is pointed out.
Just leading Labour and the Left with a little teaser to think the media and MSM are not really that bad, just wait for Dirty Politics 3 to get under way, if its anything like the USA & UK Elections we could have a rip snorter of an Election Build Up.
The media & MSM will be trying to paint NZF in a bad light as they realise Winston & NZF are the key to this Election and it is not what their owners the Multinational Corporates and the International Bankers desire ?
I’ve just tweeted this to Radio NZ and Wallace Chapman – who are interviewing the, in my considered opinion, PHONY Suzie Dawson (new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party, this morning Sunday 25 June 2017:
____________________________
Where’s your due diligence on Suzie Dawson Radio NZ?
I am so jealous. Oh if we were to have a Labour leader who was welcomed by the young like this, and who would not be afraid to quote Shelley to them from the pyramid stage:
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
Suzie Dawson (Suzette Maree Dawson) is now the new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party.
BEWARE!
This is what one of Suzette Maree Dawson’s key supporters Ben Cooney said about me on a live-streamed video of the 8 December 2012 anti-TPPA protest in Auckland – which was posted on Suzie Dawson’s PRIVATE website – Occupy Savvy.
“Here’s Penny Bright – SIS informant”
This is why, in my opinion, decent people and genuine political activists should have NOTHING to do with either Suzie Dawson or Ben Cooney.
Day 8 of Penny Bright (Penelope Mary Bright)’s weird fixation on Suzi Dawson. Ever consider you might do better persuading people if you didn’t act like a reject from ACCForum?
Wowzers… the OUTGOING PM is digging himself an even deeper hole on Q+A atm, well worth a watch, good journalism by Corrin, live link stream here, will post interview when it comes up later.
And English shows a complete lacks of transparency and honesty throughout the interview.
Watched this, then the Corbyn speech.
The difference is that Jeremy Corbyn has real integrity and a vision for all of us.
English meanwhile pimps for the elite.
Wow still lying there bill. You said what was on your mind – bullshit. You lied and have continued to lie. Now your fucked cos we all know you lied and you know we know but you can’t change your story because then it is solidified. Lying bastards like you disgrace yourself and your God beliefs.
I’m repeating this here as it is more appropriate than the “Racist attack on a marae” post:
Q&A have just done a hatchet job on Labour. A very good interview with Andrew Little, the content of which was totally ignored by the panel ( Josie Pagani , John Tamihere and Michelle Boag), who proceeded to repeat all the crap of the past few days. And this gem from Josie Pagani:
Labour are hypocrites because they have been accusing foreign students of being the cause of the housing crisis and now they’re bringing them here to work for them.
I kid you not. She said this.
I might add they ignored the content of the marae chairman’s interview too. It was a concerted effort to attack Andrew Little and Labour. Tamihere never stood up for his own people either although his muttering was so bad it was hard to hear what he was saying.
“Using foreign students to campaign against foreign students.”
A real zinger that cuts to quick of the issue.
So Anne, your spinning won’t help. Labour was caught out fair and square. I personally find it unbelievable that Labour could have ever thought it a good idea to bring in 90 overseas students to be the ground workers (90 students working 40 hours a week is a hell a lot of campaign work). And John Tamihere also pointed out the sense of unease about bringing in foreign students to do what a party should be able to do using enthusiastic local people.
After all the rest of us rely on volunteers in the weekend, typically around 20 or so on Saturdays
Sure 20 per electorate that would be about right. We used to routinely get that on week nights for doing isthmus phone calling – and I suspect that they still do.
So how many electorates in Auckland where these volunteers were doing canvassing in? Divide 90 by that. How many in the country on phone dial? Divide 90 by that.
The National party usually pays most of its canvassers at minimal wages (I hear usually below minimum wage), either using students or the Farrar push polling system. Because that is the only way that they can get canvassing work done – I can’t remember the last time I saw any canvassing volunteers in Auckland. Certainly the paid canvassers never report any.
Frankly your example is just hypocritical. Admit it, the main reason that the National party stalwarts are upset about this (apart from the Maori thing) is that these are overseas volunteers rather than paid minions. Something that has become so rare in the National party that they keep looking at it as being a revolutionary activity.
My experience, over a twenty year period in North Shore (not that long ago) is that all local electioneering is done by volunteers, including phoning.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland), a stint at the Takapuna market on Sunday, and phoning on a week night usually with Young Nats. No-one was paid anything, it was all volunteer.
I cannot imagine it has changed in any material way in the last five years, except for digital platforms.
National has a much larger membership base than any other party (in recent years as many as 35,000) so getting volunteers is not that hard. The Young Nats have really grown in the last few years, and are always keen to help. They do so voluntarily. Both at the local level and the national level.
They, like all National activists are motivated by the ideals of choice and personal freedom both socially and economically, and therefore getting National in, and keeping Labour out!
So I don’t believe you about National electorates using paid canvassers.
As for David Farrar, he has his own polling firm, and I guess does polling for all sorts of organisations, not just National. He therefore has to pay his workers, since he is running a business.
Pretending that raffle tickets are membership applications isn’t it?
As for personal freedom, how much personal freedom do homeless people have? If your members are motivated by that then why do your policies destroy so many lives?
The obvious conclusion is that your members can’t tell when they’re being lied to.
OAB
Unlike you National deals in reality. That is the members are actually signed up members, who complete an actual membership form. Maybe that is not the case with the political parties you are most familiar with.
You have the names and addresses of 35k people who don’t know when they’re being lied to? Nah, surely some of them are deceitful and corrupt too: when the lies are exposed, like with Bill English’s lies, for example, they deny and blame someone else.
Still, that’s the company you keep.
[There’s a moderation note for your attention over here] – Bill
National has never dealt in reality. They’re always proclaiming delusion as their driving force.
That’s why they oppose saving the environment.
That’s why they’re for shifting ever more of the countries wealth to the rich while saying that it will make everyone better off.
That’s why they ignore science to ram through their policies.
They do all that they can to make a few people rich at everyone else’s expense and then get surprised when their polices inevitably fail.
The obvious conclusion is that National Party members want to be presented with lies appearing ingenuous but actually unscrupulous and substantially believable, that they can adopt and embrace.
This is my position in a longer and more detailed version of yours OAB.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland),
Oh you mean those weedy looking kids with ultra short backs and sides… expensive blue and white striped blazers… and matching striped panama hats (must have cost the Nats a pretty penny) who used to lounge around the Takapuna street bars talking loudly and showing off? 😀
He’s just assisting with the “repeat a lie often enough” thing. If Wayne above is correct, he may even be getting paid for it (in fact, I hope so – who would embarrass themselves like that for free?).
Calling the volunteers foreign students is disingenuous – most people understand foreign students to be people on student visas studying in NZ. The volunteers are domestic students in their home countries, volunteering abroad, and attempting to pretend they are in any way related is poppycock.
Ho… listen to you Wayne. You come here regularly and indulge in pure spin and misrepresentation.
Labour was not “caught fair and square”. IT WAS NOT A LABOUR RUN PROGRAMME. It was run by an independent organisation who did not do their homework properly. Even though the participants were genuinely trying to assist Labour (oh, what a shocking sin) they should not have used Labour’s name during the recruitment process. You are are being traditionally selective in your responses and, in the process, I call you out as a cheat. But then we know Nats are especially prone to such behaviour.
I congratulate Labour for picking up the tabs and running with the programme for the sake of the fresh young idealists who are trying to make a difference in this seriously corrupt world. In a bygone era I was one of them, so I understand their enthusiasm and applaud them for it.
Re- Josie Pagani. There were no quote marks around my claim concerning her comment. Unlike you [apparently] I don’t always have the time to check up what exactly was said so I paraphrased. Her level of expertise as a commentator leaves a huge amount to be desired, and it disappoints me that the MSM use her as a so-called left commentator when every intelligent, informed individual knows she is nothing of the sort.
Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys.
“Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys…….”
A new economic consensus is quickly replacing the neoliberal one to which Blair and Clinton, as well as Thatcher and Reagan, subscribed; politicians are scrambling to articulate it, often blatantly breaking with their own history. Certainly, May’s frantic left-wing posturing against inequality and social division confirmed that the Anglo-American revolution of the 1980s — built around a strong prejudice against government and for free markets — is over. At least in Britain. May, the conservative daughter of a country vicar, will probably be best remembered for advancing, inadvertently, a counterrevolution of the left.
Locked out the googlebots at the firewall and the site has calmed down a lot. It explains a lot about the unexpected site dropouts in the past couple of weeks.
They were repeatably from several servers re-requesting the same bad URL over and over again.
The googlebots had been previously exempted from the usual crawler rules because they were so well behaved. And they were running less than the denial of service rules.
🙂 Yeah it is a problem with computing. Damn near every explanation sounds like a excursion into a long fantasy land story arc. Which in many respects is exactly what it is. In particular the whole net is just an extended story of shared perceptions about how it should operate.
Our hospitals are struggling to cope with the numbers of patients and the lack of money. They are also struggling with a Minister of Health who seems to show little interest in cost-effective preventative health measures, like taxing sweetened beverages. The FIZZ Symposium which will be held tomorrow at Auckland Hospital will have the latest information on this issue of sugar and health.
This government is good at ignoring evidence-based information, while it is very susceptible to lobbying by the NZ Initiative, The NZ Food and Grocery Council and the Tax Payers’ Union. I find the Tax Payers’ Union strong opposition to a sugar tax rather at odds with their website slogan: “Championing Value For Money From Every Tax Dollar”
If reducing sugar intake by taxing sugar leads to a reduction in health issues, then surely this will make the tax payers’ health dollar go further.
The aims of the Taxpayers’ Union are:
To reduce wasteful spending by central and local government;
To increase transparency and accountability of government spending;
To increase institutional checks on government spending;
To enable New Zealanders to easily scrutinise government spending;
To lower the tax burden on New Zealanders; and To promote evidence based public policy.
However, it was pleasing to see that the Taxpayers’ Union has questioned the following:
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Auditor General’s office to investigate today’s revelations regarding the use of former Prime Minister John Key’s taxpayer funded ‘leaders budget’ to, allegedly, cover-up allegations of wrongdoing by National Party backbench MP, Todd Barclay.
Jordan Williams, the Union’s Executive Director, said, “We need to know whether Parliamentary Service did acknowledge that there was an illegal recording made by an MP. If so, why didn’t the agency refer it straight to the Police?”
I reckon that they are safe TMM, requesting that as there can be no response to it. But it leaves Taxpayers Union looking good so that they can carry out their real purpose to do the dirty on the Left.
UGH!!!!!
I reread the disgusting Carrick Graham written “Whaleoil “slag-off of Tony Falkenstein who was a speaker at the previous FIZZ symposium. This type of hatchet job (Falkenstein being being called a two-bit-hooker with absolutely no evidence whatsoever) was exposed by Nicky Hager in his Dirty Politics Book, (p 85).
These personal attacks of people working for the public good need to be exposed. There should be no intimidation of those who wish to attend the symposium either.
This not doing anything about sugar laden drinks fits well within the Gnats do-nothing policy (unless there is money in it for them and their patrons.) They are paid to provide a PR cover of interested, concerned appearance.
Have a look at the lovely Gladys Knight as she advises –
Do Nothing Till you Hear from Me. (I think Gnats are looking for a way to use this as their theme at this election, and not pay anything till they hear from the lawyers.)
The only credit that I saw for Bill English over the interviews with Paddy and with Corin, was that Bill did answer the questions. A past PM Key would have skidded, slipped and digressed and was impossible to interview. Bill still ended up in the pooh but he did answer the questions. (Wish Corin would let him speak though!)
Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.
Just think of what would have happened if the MSM in this country had done the same for Key’s lies.
Tax cuts for NZ. The modern economic equivalent of the old medical profession treatment of bleeding the patient to cure them. Poor kiwi lies wan yet still more of the same. When we die the excuse will be ‘It was God’s will’.
This is what we have GST for folks. If they get it up to 20% Roger Douglas’ mob will have got their flat tax.
Received national party advertising propaganda today.
Membership/donation form with an insert about the outgoing PM
Oh hell no don’t be asking me for money or to join your party.. was like wtf… found that tasteless boarding on offensive.
The insert was titled, “We’re working for NZ”, picture of the outgoing PM against a farming background. The flyer was all about him, there was no ‘we’re’ in either of the two images… no I take that back, I see sheep, about six of them. Nada about the local candidate (tbh that really surprised me), just Bill and his six sheep working for NZ.
Baaaaaaa baaaaaa haaahaaa what national getting 25%? After all my post was all about national, gosh Red, if you say so, I mean I’m not a national supporter, but I don’t think I would have guessed that low. But hey this Barclay thing is continually ongoing, so you may be correct.
Will check in with you on the eve of the 23rd, to let you know how close your guess was at national only getting 25%
Dude it’s the lying and lack of action by the outgoing government that has been and is enduring. Standby the news is on, am sure we will hear more about Barclay any moment now.
No one cares, beltway rubbish, news leading with sailing and rugger here a wager if labour win Powerade next election I will self impose a 10 week exile from commenting here, if national led government you do the same, let’s test your convictions You game ?😀
Correction Powerade should read power before spell and grammar zealots on this site hunt me down, site for some reason won’t let me edit and predictive text is not my friend
Hmmm Red I’m all about numbers, I would have gone for 11 or 9 but not 10 weeks. So instead let’s do it from Sabbat to Sabbat
From the midnight the day after spring equinox (23rd September), result should be in by then, until Beltane in the Southern Hemisphere, known in the North as Samhain, also known on a commercial level as Halloween
From midnight on the day after Spring Equinox until the final minute of Sabbat on the last day of October, if National wins I won’t comment on TS.
For you Red, when national loses, no commenting from the first minute of the 24th Sept until the last minute of 31st October.
Hasn’t the intern thing already dropped of the media’s targeting?
On the Barclay/English affair Newsroom just published another piece with new information. And BE also released some new fodder for the MSM and social media. I expect tomorrow’s news will be full of that.
Nah Bill confirming his lies even after those interviews today. I think more to come – we got all next week for the drip drip drip. Gnats are going to use up a few dead cats on this one. Maybe a sex scandal will get it out of the news but I suspect not lol not the way bills going…
60 marae slaves have turned down offers to be relocated. Must be Stockholm Syndrome.
The Todd thing stinks bad, the Nats turned to their arsenal and the biggest ordinate they could spin up and hand to Hootie and The Blowfish is this stupid slaves in slums claptrap.
If that’s the best their armory has to offer they have much bigger problems than axe in hand Bill standing next to the fallen Cherry tree.
Because anonymous internet guy says so? Oh no, we’re fucked!
Comments are only worth the arguments contained in them (whether explicit or implicit). Unsupported assertions have a total value of 0, and repeating unsupported assertions multiplies 0 to get a cumulative value of, er let’s see… oh, yes: 0. Whenever you’re ready, feel free to raise yourself above being a no-net-worth commenter.
Cinny
I had to stop after 3.5 minutes. What a long shaggy sheep song, very good, and well understoood. And using some sharpened No.8 fencing wire for the needle on the vinyl – that’s creative.
National promoting further tax cuts and increased wages at the National Party Convention, relief at last for the lower socio-economic groups here in NZ ?
Bill must have been an awesome dad. “Yes, the baby did just spend some time with a very intent expression on his face and now the room smells of shit, but the fact of a full nappy hasn’t been established – so I’m off down the pub.”
I’ll be honest I’ve never seen such a group of slow learners as the people I see here on the standard, it’s really head scratching stuff because you guys aren’t dumb there just seems to be quite a disconnect with reality.
Key was no God, he was as polarising as he was popular.
English’s more conservative “gee shucks” country boy approach has far more supporters than it does detractors, he’ll probably end up more popular than Key.
Maybe unless Barclay taped himself telling blinglish about taping, and blinglish’s subsequent advice or lack thereof. And Collins might want a 2 month gig as PM for her CV – it’ll really help with the prospective log and milk customers.
Yeah he was a real hero for the gnats last time he led them to an election record loss wasnt it? You think those gnat MPs have forgotten that? I dont think so. And here he is again stuffing it up lol go billshitter go
Because if you asked random people to list their top 50 concerns Todd would be lucky to make many lists. Unfortunately for Bill I think the tiny bit that will stick in the minds of people more concerned about Shortland Street plots than Todd whatisname is ‘Bill fibbed’.
That’s why nats are so shit at workplace safety: their instinct is to minimise the perceived extent of their own offending, isolate themselves from their colleagues’ offending, but the thought of eliminating tory corruption never occurs to them.
None of this is going to effect Bill English in the slightest.
I expect not. Right-wingers don’t seem to have a problem with either crimes or the covering-up thereof by their leaders. However, those of us who expect better are free to try and promote that as a concept.
“The board and the selection committee knew Barclay had:
– already broken National Party rules by releasing the name of a challenging candidate.
– breached the rules by speaking to the media between the close of nomination and the close of the pre-selection process.
– spoken to his electoral office staff about employment matters that breached a confidentiality agreement.
– not declared police had asked him to be interviewed over the taping of conversations of staffer Glenys Dickson on his candidate nomination form.
– got staff in his Gore electorate office to canvass delegates to support his reselection when it was outside their contractual obligations and a misuse of taxpayer money.
And there were issues around a $5000 loan Barclay had been given by the party for campaigning. At this point the loan had not been repaid or disclosed in the campaign donation register.”
I must say tomorrow mornings live interviews with the outgoing PM will be interesting. And what do you know, Radio Live are talking about the Barclay thing as I’m typing.
In late February the police began investigating Barclay about the use of an interception device to unlawfully record Dickson.
Davie says not long after, he also got a “rark up” from another board member Glenda Hughes about supplying the police with the text messages he’d received from Bill English .
“They made up part of my statement to the police and Glenda was furious I’d given them to the police.”
After Dickson complained to the police, Hughes urged her to withdraw the complaint.
Gee thanks Cinny. Just when Bill must have believed that it was all over, ka-boom. Some of the details were already known but there is more and linking it all together is great.
Though there is less to bother Bill than I had hoped. Expect Bill tomorrow on Morning Report he will say every Board has its moments of disagreement so nothing new. He will suggest that Labour has its troubles too etc etc.
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
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Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
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Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa, a new incorporated society dedicated to ending harmful drug policies, officially launched today, seeks a new fit-for-purpose drug law for Aotearoa New Zealand, rooted in science, experience and evidence. ...
The Corrections Minister admits he "muddied the water" after he and the Prime Minister repeatedly provided incorrect information about a $1.9 billion prison spend-up. ...
It took a post-post-cabinet statement to confirm that 810 new beds will be built at Waikeria, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Lili Tokaduadua was only 15 when she left her family in Fiji to pursue her netball dream in New Zealand. She’d been playing the sport for 10 years and was offered a netball scholarship at Auckland’s Howick College. Now, in her first year out of high school, the 19-year-old defender ...
The beloved local grocers lost a legal challenge to stop a new cycleway outside their store. Joel MacManus reports. In the annals of New Zealand legal history, there are a few brave people who have dared to stand up to the powers that be, no matter how bleak the odds ...
How what we produce and what we eat connects us to the world beyond our shores, visualised. Walking around a supermarket or vege shop, it might be obvious that everything on the shelves came from somewhere. But you might ...
A $1.8b funding boost for Pharmac still won’t enable it to buy more drugs, raising questions about the Government’s approach to the agency The post Can Pharmac do more with the same pot of money? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Professor Jemma Geoghegan, of the University of Otago, Otakou Whakaihu Waka, co-leads a Te Niwha project aimed at understanding how and where avian influenza could affect Aotearoa New Zealand, as the highly infectious H5N1 virus spreads globally. The virus has now spread to all continents except Oceania and was recently ...
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Opinion: Last week, important recommendations for our criminal justice system were made by the international community. Every five years, each member of the United Nations has its human rights practices reviewed. This rolling event – the Universal Periodic Review – is the culmination of a government reporting on its human ...
Highly pathogenic avian influenza – H5N1, or bird flu – has been flying around the world since the late 1990s. New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands are so far free of it, but now it’s been discovered in mainland Antarctica and scientists say it’s only a matter of time ...
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The following interview with auto electrician and former caver Stu Berendt, 68, of Charleston on the West Coast, came about because he was part of the caving team that found the rare and amazing fossil remains of the giant Haast eagle, the subject of one of the year’s best books, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Stokan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County If you live in one of the most economically deprived neighborhoods in your city, you might think the government is directing a smaller share of public funds to your community. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Adams, Professor of Corporate Law & Academic Director of UNE Sydney campus, University of New England Last August, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched legal proceedings against Qantas. The consumer watchdog accused the airline of selling thousands of tickets ...
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Councils from Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City will meet this Friday to work together on a plan for a Greater Wellington region water deal. ...
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Am I the only one who is feeling more than a little perturb about the deathly quite around where the money is coming from for support workers? Where exactly is the cash going to come from to pay the new wages?
We have a government currently dedicated to austerity as an economic policy, we have an opposition who say they will manage the austerity economic policy better. Both seem hell bent on ignoring the costs of support work for the elderly and disabled.
I’m seeing nothing, so I’m going to have a stab in the dark here. That the money is not there, so the people who need the support – will be the ones who suffer. The new wages will be payed, but the hours will be less, and those who are suffering the most will ultimately pay, by getting less (Austrity 101, or making the uber rich happy, by making the poor suffer).
If we had a left that supported social democracy, and choice in political economy then we could have a debate. As it stands, there will be no debate because the left is dominated in this country by people who are committed to austerity. Then there are those who won’t take any criticism, because there is an election. Here though is a real problem, who pays to alleviate suffering? The uber rich point blankly refuse, their hangers on refuse as well.
No one want to engage with the needs going forward we have associated with support work, and extended care. And where is the money, if we can spend billions of our tax on oil, why can’t we pay decent wages and look after our aged and disabled? And why can’t we even talk about political economy or where we want our tax dollars spent?
Christ, the National government did the complete opposite of austerity.
You guys really do live in some alternative universe.
@BM – agreed, Key ran up debt, sold off the assets and spent the money on his mates and staying in power.
A good time was had by many and it made him popular until his actions came to light, such as the power sell offs would have made more money in dividends already, the state houses are sitting empty and the poor subsidised by tax payers are paying $200 per night for a dodgy hotel with zero signs of any changes and it’s getting worse, the economy is dependant on ponzi scheme immigration scams, the corporations that are taking over Silver Fern Farms and Cadbury are closing down the factories and works and making people redundant. The schools, hospitals and transport networks are overflowing…
P.S. I think Adam is talking about National’s austerity to low paid workers… non workers… and the numbers are growing in the low wage, zero hour contract, economy being created.
And yes, in my view in NZ it is like two different societies operating in alternative universes, Planet Key and Planet Earth, and it’s expanding – otherwise known as inequality.
Save NZ
You really do live in an alternative reality. The money was not “spent oh his mates”.
The increased debt from 2009 to 2013, which amounted to around $50 billion, was to keep the economy going and to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes.
Through 2009 and 2010 there were large increases in welfare spending due to unemployment increasing to around 8% due to the GFC, and a lot of pump priming to keep businesses afloat and increased infrastructure spend.
Then in 2010 and 2011 the earthquakes, which cost about $20 billion in direct govt payments.
In 2010/11 the annual deficit got out to $20 billion (as I recall) due to the combination of the GFC and the earthquakes. I recall thinking we can’t sustain this; we have to get out of this by getting on top of all non essential govt spending. However, there were real increases in health and education spending.
Getting on top of things took another two years. It also meant no wage increases in the state sector in 2010 and 201, though of course people still went up on annual scales (teachers, nurses, police, defence all have 10 step salary scales).
I am sure you will mention tax cuts, but the big shift was largely self funding by reducing income tax, but increasing GST, the “tax switch”.
So in NZ, no real austerity. Fortunately China also meant we got back to positive growth much earlier than the rest of the OECD. But managing govt expenditure is part of that. Look at the contrast with Australia which also has the China market.
The chch eq were from a government expenditure POV close to a zero to small financial gain.
EQC dos not cover all the roads, bridges, pipes etc plus the red zone land, most of which can now only be used as parks.
The new govt buildings, such as the justice sector are vastly more than any insurance return.
The $20 billion cost to govt is on top of insurance payouts, which went mostly to homeowners and commercial property owners.
Large sums had to be spent to support businesses, emergency housing, alternative govt services, lots of overtime for all sorts of govt paid workers.
The latest reconstruction estimates are over $40 billion (which covers everything not just the literal cost of new buildings). More than half of which is not covered by insurance.
Sure $40 billion is a boost to the local economy, but the money has to be found, and most of it did not come from insurance. About $20 billion over 5 years or so directly from taxpayers or govt borrowing.
Um no,that figure is one of those imaginary memes,that spread around media releases,without attribution.
Being an arbitrary number,it is questionable.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/the-rebuild/70084887/How-much-is-the-Government-really-spending-to-fix-Christchurch
The total infrastructure roads and pipes etc is met by the insurers in part,with the remainder being the sector (port ,orion, council and government)
The total cost to date is 7 billion on infrastructure.
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/-/media/ReserveBank/Files/Publications/Bulletins/2016/2016feb79-3.pdf
New Zealand’s austerity was far more subtle than in the UK, the USA and Europe.
Anyway, most of our public sector was outsourced or privatised in the 1990’s in Ruth’s first round of austerity.
For instance, Joyce’s pet ministey, MOBIE is a facade with most of its work outsourced to the private sector. It doesnt even own the buildings that it operates on. Same with MSD and MPI.
That bit really pisses me off. It’s always far, far cheaper for a government to own the buildings they use than paying rent to a capitalist.
But paying rent to a capitalist increases GDP and profits. It just doesn’t actually improve the nation.
Let me remind you of the tax cuts for the high income earners.If the budget was under so much pressure then this should not have been done & the rates should have been put up.
And if?? there was a gst/income tax switch then you are confirming that you robbed the poor to pay the rich ” someone’s mates”
But there wasn’t really a Gst /tax switch was there and each of those measures cost about $2 billion a year so $4 billion by 9 years=$36 billion and all of that went to the rich. There would have been a lot of alternative mileage out of that money.
And the size of the welfare bill is a consequence of continuing with strong immigration so we have a bloated workforce – more than we have jobs for
As to China – the Nacts took the best terms of trade we had had in many a long year and made sure none of it trickled down.
Good questions adam.
I fear the problem will escalate rapidly as the boomers age and the following generation voters will not tolerate “excessive” expenditure on the boomers because it is the boomers who have ruined things for them, and there will be overwhelming numbers of aged boomers demanding support. In short we will reap what we have sown.
garibaldi, the boomers as you call them have paid 14% interest rates on their mortgage for their roof over their head. Many have still not paid off their house that does not resemble any of those mansions you see advertised on TV.
They were the first to get hammered with increased education fees and had to go through more than one recession. Not only that, but any savings that were there were squandered away with the swindles of high flyers and the new neo lib policies (i.e. BNZ). There were no breaks for their expenditure when the mother of all budgets hit in the early 80’s. It took most likely more than a good part of 15 years for most to recover from the financial juggernaut. These years are also lost in means of career and getting improvement of income to make up for the losses. We are talking about average people and not magazine cutouts.
Your comments are being devoid of any understanding what the average person out there has to be content with but keeps going without bleating and complaining to get some handout or wealth transfer based on “I am entitled”.
And whilst I understand that things have not improved a hell of a lot as kiwis have voted for a right wing government keeping on with these neo lib policies, it is still true today as it was 100 years ago. Get working, saving and build something for the future. Put a bit aside when ever possible for the so called rainy day. You might not get rich, but you have a chance to build a live like everybody else.
Just don’t pick on the oldies who are in their twilight years and just want to see their life out in reasonable comfort without having to be euthanized off to get the hands on a few dollars.
As I read his last sentence, I suspect that Garibaldi himself is an oldie boomer, Foreign Waka.
Vino, I am not so sure and if he is, than I find his comments offensive to anyone who has worked 40-50 years and then get told that they had it too good to deserve any decent living in their twilight years.
There is already enough elder abuse out there without getting this kind of encouragement. If anything will increase, than that kind of abuse will.
What a society – where the weakest are treated like that.
Confession – I was born in 1946, so I am among the first boomers. I believe our generation lost the plot, but were especially tricked by the election when Lange first got in. That is the only time I ever voted for antisocial right-wing policies, but like so many others, I had no idea at the time that bloody Roger and friends were going to screw us all over, and that Lange, for all his wit, would have little idea of what was happening until too late. I thought I was voting left against right-wing Muldoon. (He was right-wing at the time, but nobody explained to us how Roger etc were going to shift all those goalposts and slant the field.)
Like you, I feel it is very unfair to blame boomers, but the fact is that even after Rogernomics, the majority of boomers (and the following generation) were stupid enough to vote for governments that would carry on those policies, not reverse them. Unfair as it is, we may well reap what we few tried to vote against sowing.
Thank you In Vino, you have covered it accurately.
Foreign waka…. We would have very good cover in our retirement if it hadn’t been for Muldoon and his dancing Cossacks.
I’m not picking on the oldies, I am one and I am pointing out the folly of what we, as a generation, have knowingly done.
I understand your sentiment In Vino, especially if I look at the selfish generation that has been raised as a result – pendulum swinging etc.
I do however recognize what is right and what is wrong and having children in poverty and elderly joining is so wrong on so many levels. To point at times past to justify an other horrid chapter is hopefully not what anyone likes to see.
As to the voting pattern, I belief that those who have vested interests will and do vote, but the large portion of younger people think that by not voting they will “show” their discontent. This logic is either just laziness to get involved really or stupidity, lets just name it for what it is. And yes, it is the baby boomers who raised these lazy thinkers.
This ought not to be a precursor to have older people treated like dirt. We have to reiterate the dignity of humanity, it is a duty not a choice. Otherwise we are going backwards, with disturbed minds dishing out cruelty.
Hi Foreign Waka
Horribly True? Let’s hope not. You are right in saying that young people need to engage and vote. Let us pray…
Adam, you are right to wonder. I know that hours have been cut for workers who have a range of hours in their contracts. So yes, right rate, less hours.
BM There were many subtle and unsubtle cuts and extra taxes to pay for those tax cuts. Austerity has led to homelessness suicides and an ever growing divide.
Perhaps it would help a bit to read this, Adam. Grant Robertson’s speech to business people down south.
http://www.labour.org.nz/grant_robertson_speech_to_otago_southland_employers_assn
Well, given that ‘everyone’ is operating under the umbrella of liberalism, we can confidently say that if money is made available for support-workers on a no-strings basis (unlikely), then money is going to come away from somewhere else.
Same as, if money is going to be made available for children in poverty, then that money is going to be taken away from somewhere or some-one else too.
These is room for reprioritising. But not much.
I look at a liberal economy a bit like how I’d look at a balloon. Squeeze *here* and all that happens is that a bulge pops up *there*. It would be a joke if it didn’t have real world and utterly predictable consequences.
Maybe under liberalism, the immediate pressure can be taken off of support workers and others. And in return, roads deteriorate or libraries are shut down – or whatever other slicing and dicing a “creative” liberal government can think up, by way of removing the day to day signs of a society being bled and hammered for the sake of preserving the integrity of an economic and political theory predicated on opportunity and ephemeral individual liberty and benign or impartial market rules and mechanisms.
Liberal capitalism. Fucking over workers since 18 whatever.
But hey! Big thumbs up. We’re free from the shackles of collective identity! Did someone mention class? Silly person. We are free now. And we are working on that equal opportunity thing now. Give it time. Embrace it. Be thankful for what the future will most surely hold. And yes, we’ve always approached the future on our knees.
A very interesting article.
https://e-tangata.co.nz/news/and-there-he-lies-ever-ever-the-manuhiri
Thank you for posting this article. It provides a perspective that I had not previously considered and deserves to be widely read.
Yes I really liked the article and I too found it came from a great angle. I really liked this
“But we must be wary of transplanting our notions of being tangata whenua to the whenua of others, and risk wreaking yet another layer of colonisation upon those home peoples.”
Adam,
No secret at all. It is all provided for in the 2017 budget. That is why no-one suggests, even on the left, that it is all smoke and mirrors.
One good thing about the NZ government finances is that everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures. The benefit of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1993.
It also means alternative budgets of the opposition have to be designed on the basis of the Treasury figures.
I’m not suggesting smoke and mirrors, I’m suggesting that austerity is a policy that does not work. And that the left should stop supporting it.
As for the budget figures, if they like all the ones in retaliation to disabled like the last few years, then I will see them as the mythology that they are.
When you say you re going to stop austerity, this happens.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/jeremy-corbyn-glastonbury-speech-review-pyramid-stage-donald-trump-bridges-not-walls-a7806641.html
…everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures.
Apart from Nick Smith when he’s ACC Minister in 2009. Or when the National Party lies about housing affordability. Or how deferred maintenance is a surplus.
Absolute trustiness.
Right – like the lie that counts one hour a week as employment.
And the failure to collect data on poverty.
That’s smoke.
Stuart Munro,
80% of all new jobs are full-time.
Wayne – why are we even having to discuss it? Why not use fulltime job equivalents the way farmers use stock units?
Fact is the current government’s performance has been risible – only the combination of faked or uncollected stats and a sabotaged media has saved them from being stoned in the streets. And the media are becoming wise to the lies.
Wasn’t that stat about 80% of *all* jobs including recent ones? Got any links for just the past few years?
Heather du Plessis Allen comes out giving some hard stick to English and the Natz over the Barclay issue! The Natz ego massaging media is beginning to wake up to the ugly truth of what Natz is all about, something which HDPA alludes to in her piece.
However, why isn’t Key also getting some stick at the same time? After all he was PM at the time of the whole dirty business and like English covered up what Barclay did, so he also deserves equal condemnation as well.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11881114
Don’t wish to disillusion you, but these Tory propagandists will return to type closer to the election. They know which way their bread is buttered.
The left must not rely on the media.
Heather and hubby are shills for nact so this is the ‘balance’ piece they claim a moral high ground with when their obvious bias and scant regard for intellectual rigour is pointed out.
Dogma all the way with Nats media poodles.
Just leading Labour and the Left with a little teaser to think the media and MSM are not really that bad, just wait for Dirty Politics 3 to get under way, if its anything like the USA & UK Elections we could have a rip snorter of an Election Build Up.
The media & MSM will be trying to paint NZF in a bad light as they realise Winston & NZF are the key to this Election and it is not what their owners the Multinational Corporates and the International Bankers desire ?
I’ve just tweeted this to Radio NZ and Wallace Chapman – who are interviewing the, in my considered opinion, PHONY Suzie Dawson (new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party, this morning Sunday 25 June 2017:
____________________________
Where’s your due diligence on Suzie Dawson Radio NZ?
What is her proven track as a NZ ‘activist’?
Seen this?
http://www.indymedia.org.nz/articles/715
Penny Bright
‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption campaigner’.
NZ political activist since 1972.
2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki.
Exposing the $1.6 billion Tamaki ‘Regeneration’ – GENTRIFICATION $CAM.
Pretty petty penny
I am so jealous. Oh if we were to have a Labour leader who was welcomed by the young like this, and who would not be afraid to quote Shelley to them from the pyramid stage:
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154970248731939/
So jealous!
Inspirational
IMHO Corbyn’s inspirational speech at Glastonbury would make fine video post all of it’s own here on a damp Sunday.
I can even helpfully provide a link to the whole thing….
The absolute boy.
Wow.
Just wow.
Here’s the EVIDENCE – which proves why, in my considered opinion, Suzie Dawson is ABSOLUTELY not to be trusted.
https://www.facebook.com/1261190663892805/videos/1743674342311099/
Suzie Dawson (Suzette Maree Dawson) is now the new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party.
BEWARE!
This is what one of Suzette Maree Dawson’s key supporters Ben Cooney said about me on a live-streamed video of the 8 December 2012 anti-TPPA protest in Auckland – which was posted on Suzie Dawson’s PRIVATE website – Occupy Savvy.
“Here’s Penny Bright – SIS informant”
This is why, in my opinion, decent people and genuine political activists should have NOTHING to do with either Suzie Dawson or Ben Cooney.
Penny Bright.
‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption campaigner’.
NZ political activist since 1972.
2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki.
Exposing the $1.6 billion Tamaki ‘Regeneration’ – GENTRIFICATION $CAM.
#ThinkForYourself
Day 8 of Penny Bright (Penelope Mary Bright)’s weird fixation on Suzi Dawson. Ever consider you might do better persuading people if you didn’t act like a reject from ACCForum?
For the keen, Penny’s previous demented shrieking about this can be found here: https://thestandard.org.nz/the-return-of-kim-dotcom-and-the-internet-party-and-the-nz-journalist-seeking-asylum-in-russia/
In my CONSIDERED opinion and as a PROVEN collector of placards in my yard, someone needs to get a new hobby.
Penny, you are not alone, stay strong
Wowzers… the OUTGOING PM is digging himself an even deeper hole on Q+A atm, well worth a watch, good journalism by Corrin, live link stream here, will post interview when it comes up later.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/live-stream-q-a-q15157
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/full-interview-said-in-my-mind-time-bill-english-defends-public-statements-todd-barclay-affair?auto=5482458693001
Interview is up.
And English shows a complete lacks of transparency and honesty throughout the interview.
Watched this, then the Corbyn speech.
The difference is that Jeremy Corbyn has real integrity and a vision for all of us.
English meanwhile pimps for the elite.
Cheers for that Craig.
Wow still lying there bill. You said what was on your mind – bullshit. You lied and have continued to lie. Now your fucked cos we all know you lied and you know we know but you can’t change your story because then it is solidified. Lying bastards like you disgrace yourself and your God beliefs.
Bet key is smirking about all this.
I’m repeating this here as it is more appropriate than the “Racist attack on a marae” post:
Q&A have just done a hatchet job on Labour. A very good interview with Andrew Little, the content of which was totally ignored by the panel ( Josie Pagani , John Tamihere and Michelle Boag), who proceeded to repeat all the crap of the past few days. And this gem from Josie Pagani:
Labour are hypocrites because they have been accusing foreign students of being the cause of the housing crisis and now they’re bringing them here to work for them.
I kid you not. She said this.
I might add they ignored the content of the marae chairman’s interview too. It was a concerted effort to attack Andrew Little and Labour. Tamihere never stood up for his own people either although his muttering was so bad it was hard to hear what he was saying.
Josie Pagani.
Need I say more?
Better still, Josie said;
“Using foreign students to campaign against foreign students.”
A real zinger that cuts to quick of the issue.
So Anne, your spinning won’t help. Labour was caught out fair and square. I personally find it unbelievable that Labour could have ever thought it a good idea to bring in 90 overseas students to be the ground workers (90 students working 40 hours a week is a hell a lot of campaign work). And John Tamihere also pointed out the sense of unease about bringing in foreign students to do what a party should be able to do using enthusiastic local people.
After all the rest of us rely on volunteers in the weekend, typically around 20 or so on Saturdays
Are you happy with our ranking of 34 mount of 41 for child wellbeing?
Is your conscience clear about your contribution to this?
What about lying bill english Wayne. You happy with his lies? You comfortable with that level of integrity?
Wayne. Please don’t be a spinner.
Sure 20 per electorate that would be about right. We used to routinely get that on week nights for doing isthmus phone calling – and I suspect that they still do.
So how many electorates in Auckland where these volunteers were doing canvassing in? Divide 90 by that. How many in the country on phone dial? Divide 90 by that.
The National party usually pays most of its canvassers at minimal wages (I hear usually below minimum wage), either using students or the Farrar push polling system. Because that is the only way that they can get canvassing work done – I can’t remember the last time I saw any canvassing volunteers in Auckland. Certainly the paid canvassers never report any.
Frankly your example is just hypocritical. Admit it, the main reason that the National party stalwarts are upset about this (apart from the Maori thing) is that these are overseas volunteers rather than paid minions. Something that has become so rare in the National party that they keep looking at it as being a revolutionary activity.
My experience, over a twenty year period in North Shore (not that long ago) is that all local electioneering is done by volunteers, including phoning.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland), a stint at the Takapuna market on Sunday, and phoning on a week night usually with Young Nats. No-one was paid anything, it was all volunteer.
I cannot imagine it has changed in any material way in the last five years, except for digital platforms.
National has a much larger membership base than any other party (in recent years as many as 35,000) so getting volunteers is not that hard. The Young Nats have really grown in the last few years, and are always keen to help. They do so voluntarily. Both at the local level and the national level.
They, like all National activists are motivated by the ideals of choice and personal freedom both socially and economically, and therefore getting National in, and keeping Labour out!
So I don’t believe you about National electorates using paid canvassers.
As for David Farrar, he has his own polling firm, and I guess does polling for all sorts of organisations, not just National. He therefore has to pay his workers, since he is running a business.
a much larger membership base
Pretending that raffle tickets are membership applications isn’t it?
As for personal freedom, how much personal freedom do homeless people have? If your members are motivated by that then why do your policies destroy so many lives?
The obvious conclusion is that your members can’t tell when they’re being lied to.
OAB
Unlike you National deals in reality. That is the members are actually signed up members, who complete an actual membership form. Maybe that is not the case with the political parties you are most familiar with.
You have the names and addresses of 35k people who don’t know when they’re being lied to? Nah, surely some of them are deceitful and corrupt too: when the lies are exposed, like with Bill English’s lies, for example, they deny and blame someone else.
Still, that’s the company you keep.
[There’s a moderation note for your attention over here] – Bill
National has never dealt in reality. They’re always proclaiming delusion as their driving force.
That’s why they oppose saving the environment.
That’s why they’re for shifting ever more of the countries wealth to the rich while saying that it will make everyone better off.
That’s why they ignore science to ram through their policies.
They do all that they can to make a few people rich at everyone else’s expense and then get surprised when their polices inevitably fail.
The obvious conclusion is that National Party members want to be presented with lies appearing ingenuous but actually unscrupulous and substantially believable, that they can adopt and embrace.
This is my position in a longer and more detailed version of yours OAB.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland),
Oh you mean those weedy looking kids with ultra short backs and sides… expensive blue and white striped blazers… and matching striped panama hats (must have cost the Nats a pretty penny) who used to lounge around the Takapuna street bars talking loudly and showing off? 😀
‘At some point people are going to admit this 2 month old story about a Labour intern slave scandal was just a distraction from Bill & Todd.’
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/06/24/at-some-point-people-are-going-to-admit-this-2month-old-story-about-a-labour-intern-slave-scandal-was-just-a-distraction-from-bill-todd/
No was rebranding of labour to slavelabour , Catchy, will stick a lot longer than Barclay gate
Troll
He’s just assisting with the “repeat a lie often enough” thing. If Wayne above is correct, he may even be getting paid for it (in fact, I hope so – who would embarrass themselves like that for free?).
Calling the volunteers foreign students is disingenuous – most people understand foreign students to be people on student visas studying in NZ. The volunteers are domestic students in their home countries, volunteering abroad, and attempting to pretend they are in any way related is poppycock.
Ho… listen to you Wayne. You come here regularly and indulge in pure spin and misrepresentation.
Labour was not “caught fair and square”. IT WAS NOT A LABOUR RUN PROGRAMME. It was run by an independent organisation who did not do their homework properly. Even though the participants were genuinely trying to assist Labour (oh, what a shocking sin) they should not have used Labour’s name during the recruitment process. You are are being traditionally selective in your responses and, in the process, I call you out as a cheat. But then we know Nats are especially prone to such behaviour.
I congratulate Labour for picking up the tabs and running with the programme for the sake of the fresh young idealists who are trying to make a difference in this seriously corrupt world. In a bygone era I was one of them, so I understand their enthusiasm and applaud them for it.
Re- Josie Pagani. There were no quote marks around my claim concerning her comment. Unlike you [apparently] I don’t always have the time to check up what exactly was said so I paraphrased. Her level of expertise as a commentator leaves a huge amount to be desired, and it disappoints me that the MSM use her as a so-called left commentator when every intelligent, informed individual knows she is nothing of the sort.
Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys.
“Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys…….”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11881739
Courtesy of cinny on OM. Released this evening. 😉
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/06/25/35873/barclay-affair-what-the-board-knew
Yes it was disappointing that the panel today consisted of three right wingers. No balance.
The Rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the Death Throes of Neoliberalism
Take that as you will.
How come we get Hosking and Garner and Mulligan
five days a week on television, but never see this guy?….
This is great and he has also done this interview, which is well worth listening to.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/jun/23/frankie-boyle-grenfell-tower-residents-were-treated-as-less-than-human
Beard, waist coat, glasses, champagne socialist be weary
Is the word you were struggling for ‘wary’?
Silly boy..
curse you lot unmasking my atrocious spelling daily, I Can’t deny it, it’s bloody poor, Like angry Andy I need to improve 😀
Ahh, don’t we all? This still leaves you on the wrong side of the argument, sorry.
And I’m going to have to change my tipple- I used to drink chardonnay.
What about Richardson – the worst..
Best test opener for black caps however for some while , does not take himself to seriously, what’s your beef
His extremist right wing views expressed on Garner’s awful show.
His commentary is about as aesthetically pleasing as his 5 runs off 50 deliveries.
He is quite a repulsive person
Why do you watch it ?
No.
Do you care about our ranking at 34 prof 41 in the OECD for child wellbeing ?
Ed – he doesn’t watch that…
They should bring back the excellent Paul Henry.
Do you care about the level of child poverty in New Zealand?
Stunned Mullet – are you so stunned that you have confused the meaning of ‘excellent’?
Ed, so glad you brought that up
OMG isn’t he horrid, I’ve been hitting mute and switching streams when he speaks.
He should stick to sports and the block because he comes across as an arrogant tosser, on the AM show.
We should get him to tour.
Locked out the googlebots at the firewall and the site has calmed down a lot. It explains a lot about the unexpected site dropouts in the past couple of weeks.
They were repeatably from several servers re-requesting the same bad URL over and over again.
The googlebots had been previously exempted from the usual crawler rules because they were so well behaved. And they were running less than the denial of service rules.
Complained to google.
Thanks for that unintelligible explanation lprent. (Just joking. Some learn a lot and some a little with every communication from you.) Thanks.
🙂 Yeah it is a problem with computing. Damn near every explanation sounds like a excursion into a long fantasy land story arc. Which in many respects is exactly what it is. In particular the whole net is just an extended story of shared perceptions about how it should operate.
Our hospitals are struggling to cope with the numbers of patients and the lack of money. They are also struggling with a Minister of Health who seems to show little interest in cost-effective preventative health measures, like taxing sweetened beverages.
The FIZZ Symposium which will be held tomorrow at Auckland Hospital will have the latest information on this issue of sugar and health.
This government is good at ignoring evidence-based information, while it is very susceptible to lobbying by the NZ Initiative, The NZ Food and Grocery Council and the Tax Payers’ Union. I find the Tax Payers’ Union strong opposition to a sugar tax rather at odds with their website slogan: “Championing Value For Money From Every Tax Dollar”
If reducing sugar intake by taxing sugar leads to a reduction in health issues, then surely this will make the tax payers’ health dollar go further.
http://www.taxpayers.org.nz/what_we_stand_for
I look forward to the Taxpayers’ Union supporting the evidence-based policy which could arise from the FIZZ symposium.
https://www.iticket.co.nz/events/2017/jun/taxing-sugary-drinks
However, it was pleasing to see that the Taxpayers’ Union has questioned the following:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1706/S00271/thats-taxpayer-money-not-your-hush-money.htm
I reckon that they are safe TMM, requesting that as there can be no response to it. But it leaves Taxpayers Union looking good so that they can carry out their real purpose to do the dirty on the Left.
UGH!!!!!
I reread the disgusting Carrick Graham written “Whaleoil “slag-off of Tony Falkenstein who was a speaker at the previous FIZZ symposium. This type of hatchet job (Falkenstein being being called a two-bit-hooker with absolutely no evidence whatsoever) was exposed by Nicky Hager in his Dirty Politics Book, (p 85).
These personal attacks of people working for the public good need to be exposed. There should be no intimidation of those who wish to attend the symposium either.
This not doing anything about sugar laden drinks fits well within the Gnats do-nothing policy (unless there is money in it for them and their patrons.) They are paid to provide a PR cover of interested, concerned appearance.
Have a look at the lovely Gladys Knight as she advises –
Do Nothing Till you Hear from Me. (I think Gnats are looking for a way to use this as their theme at this election, and not pay anything till they hear from the lawyers.)
The only credit that I saw for Bill English over the interviews with Paddy and with Corin, was that Bill did answer the questions. A past PM Key would have skidded, slipped and digressed and was impossible to interview. Bill still ended up in the pooh but he did answer the questions. (Wish Corin would let him speak though!)
T r u m p ’ s L i e s
Just think of what would have happened if the MSM in this country had done the same for Key’s lies.
Politican less than truthful, newsflash
Why do you think that’s acceptable?
Or is it just that they’re your preferred politicians and you don’t mind them lying?
Headline nobody has seen, ever: “Trump statement reasonable and truthful.”
Did you thoroughly search Breitbart, Fox and RT before making that assertion?
My mistake, I should have written “News headline[…]”
English tries to put a bad week behind him by promising tax cuts
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/94055949/pm-bill-english-tries-to-put-a-bad-week-behind-him-by-promising-tax-cuts
Tax cuts for NZ. The modern economic equivalent of the old medical profession treatment of bleeding the patient to cure them. Poor kiwi lies wan yet still more of the same. When we die the excuse will be ‘It was God’s will’.
This is what we have GST for folks. If they get it up to 20% Roger Douglas’ mob will have got their flat tax.
Received national party advertising propaganda today.
Membership/donation form with an insert about the outgoing PM
Oh hell no don’t be asking me for money or to join your party.. was like wtf… found that tasteless boarding on offensive.
The insert was titled, “We’re working for NZ”, picture of the outgoing PM against a farming background. The flyer was all about him, there was no ‘we’re’ in either of the two images… no I take that back, I see sheep, about six of them. Nada about the local candidate (tbh that really surprised me), just Bill and his six sheep working for NZ.
I feel a sheep song coming on ….. just for the outgoing PM and his six sheep who are working for NZ 😀 Maestro… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG6JFrWjGTE
25pc cinny , 25pc I say again, lower than Cunner same time in 2014
Do you care about the fact we are 34th out of 41 OECD countries for child well-being?
That’s a silly subjective stat ed, 25pc is simply fact, government must be doing something right
Baaaaaaa baaaaaa haaahaaa what national getting 25%? After all my post was all about national, gosh Red, if you say so, I mean I’m not a national supporter, but I don’t think I would have guessed that low. But hey this Barclay thing is continually ongoing, so you may be correct.
Will check in with you on the eve of the 23rd, to let you know how close your guess was at national only getting 25%
Ok, Barclay gate, employment spat will disappear, slavelabour Has an enduring quality about it
Dude it’s the lying and lack of action by the outgoing government that has been and is enduring. Standby the news is on, am sure we will hear more about Barclay any moment now.
No one cares, beltway rubbish, news leading with sailing and rugger here a wager if labour win Powerade next election I will self impose a 10 week exile from commenting here, if national led government you do the same, let’s test your convictions You game ?😀
Correction Powerade should read power before spell and grammar zealots on this site hunt me down, site for some reason won’t let me edit and predictive text is not my friend
Hmmm Red I’m all about numbers, I would have gone for 11 or 9 but not 10 weeks. So instead let’s do it from Sabbat to Sabbat
From the midnight the day after spring equinox (23rd September), result should be in by then, until Beltane in the Southern Hemisphere, known in the North as Samhain, also known on a commercial level as Halloween
From midnight on the day after Spring Equinox until the final minute of Sabbat on the last day of October, if National wins I won’t comment on TS.
For you Red, when national loses, no commenting from the first minute of the 24th Sept until the last minute of 31st October.
Deal?
Deal 😀
Deal.. virtual handshake and all that. 😀
Your desperation has an endearing quality about it.
Hasn’t the intern thing already dropped of the media’s targeting?
On the Barclay/English affair Newsroom just published another piece with new information. And BE also released some new fodder for the MSM and social media. I expect tomorrow’s news will be full of that.
For political junkies may be for the average voter slavelabour will hang around a lot longer on the campaign trail and in voters subconscious
Nah Bill confirming his lies even after those interviews today. I think more to come – we got all next week for the drip drip drip. Gnats are going to use up a few dead cats on this one. Maybe a sex scandal will get it out of the news but I suspect not lol not the way bills going…
We still don’t know why National backed Barclay for so long, including at the last selection process 😉
Plus there’s the police investigation, and the Clutha-Southland selection investigation process.
Mate, it’s being hammered in the media, and the PM just pointed out that he’s been lying again.
60 marae slaves have turned down offers to be relocated. Must be Stockholm Syndrome.
The Todd thing stinks bad, the Nats turned to their arsenal and the biggest ordinate they could spin up and hand to Hootie and The Blowfish is this stupid slaves in slums claptrap.
If that’s the best their armory has to offer they have much bigger problems than axe in hand Bill standing next to the fallen Cherry tree.
LOL
But know one cares, it won’t move the polls, slave labour will
Because anonymous internet guy says so? Oh no, we’re fucked!
Comments are only worth the arguments contained in them (whether explicit or implicit). Unsupported assertions have a total value of 0, and repeating unsupported assertions multiplies 0 to get a cumulative value of, er let’s see… oh, yes: 0. Whenever you’re ready, feel free to raise yourself above being a no-net-worth commenter.
Oh dear, a campaign all about Bill English, what could go wrong….
I think I saw that picture before, 2002 wan’t it?
Cinny
I had to stop after 3.5 minutes. What a long shaggy sheep song, very good, and well understoood. And using some sharpened No.8 fencing wire for the needle on the vinyl – that’s creative.
National promoting further tax cuts and increased wages at the National Party Convention, relief at last for the lower socio-economic groups here in NZ ?
So Barclay offered to play the tape to english – spose that confirms one lie.
Too many bill you’re not going to make it…
Bill must have been an awesome dad. “Yes, the baby did just spend some time with a very intent expression on his face and now the room smells of shit, but the fact of a full nappy hasn’t been established – so I’m off down the pub.”
From the house in Dipton, or the one in Wellington?
I think Bill is probably a fantastic Dad, he’s a good bloke. Good blokes are crappy liars. His words and body language/tone have been juxtaposed.
That’s ok, we all lie. Now back to what matters. How can we get more of us saying ‘Geeez, I’m loving life.’
None of this is going to effect Bill English in the slightest.
Of course..
Did it have any effect on John Key?
No, no it didn’t.
I’ll be honest I’ve never seen such a group of slow learners as the people I see here on the standard, it’s really head scratching stuff because you guys aren’t dumb there just seems to be quite a disconnect with reality.
I’m guessing it must be a left wing thing?
Is Bill English John Key?
Um, I won’t answer that, it’s the subject of a police investigation, um, I really don’t want to answer that, um, no, I guess no he isn’t….
Key ain’t English remember?
Key was no God, he was as polarising as he was popular.
English’s more conservative “gee shucks” country boy approach has far more supporters than it does detractors, he’ll probably end up more popular than Key.
Maybe unless Barclay taped himself telling blinglish about taping, and blinglish’s subsequent advice or lack thereof. And Collins might want a 2 month gig as PM for her CV – it’ll really help with the prospective log and milk customers.
Yeah he was a real hero for the gnats last time he led them to an election record loss wasnt it? You think those gnat MPs have forgotten that? I dont think so. And here he is again stuffing it up lol go billshitter go
English failed because of Shipley and he was up against Clark
That woman was fucking hideous and so disliked I doubt Key would have done much better than English in 2001.
So what you’re saying is that we consistently overestimate the ability of the RW voter to give a damn?
The alternative is a complete shit sandwich, no one’s in a hurry to have that.
That’s what the RW voter always gives us because they’re so accepting of the lies of their leaders.
Do you care about our ranking at 34 out of 41 in the OECD for child well-being ?
I find it disturbing that you’re fine with politicians lying so blatantly and engaging in crimes tghat should be sending them to jail.
Of course, if it was Left politicians lying you’d be screaming blue murder.
So why did Key go BM?
Sounding a bit hollow there lol
True. Coz the bit of his soul that might have been affected was in the 49% he sold off a while back.
Nor should it, he’s a first rate farmer.
David, you seem a bit more on to it than most around here.
Why do think the Todd Barcley “scandal” will have little effect on Bill English’s popularity or how people vote?
Because if you asked random people to list their top 50 concerns Todd would be lucky to make many lists. Unfortunately for Bill I think the tiny bit that will stick in the minds of people more concerned about Shortland Street plots than Todd whatisname is ‘Bill fibbed’.
Very true.
Your last sentence, Like you, say everyone tells the odd fib can’t see it being the career ender everyone on here thinks it’s going to be.
Good you admit he’s a liar. Pity he’s too weak to own up – I spose he has always got another Sunday coming up hasn’t he.
“Odd fib”
Odd fib!
Orchestrated litany, this stream, this gush, this torrent, BM.
That’s why nats are so shit at workplace safety: their instinct is to minimise the perceived extent of their own offending, isolate themselves from their colleagues’ offending, but the thought of eliminating tory corruption never occurs to them.
Prima facie, He’s been covering up a crime and that comes with up to seven years of jail.
That’s not the odd fib. That’s an orchestrated series of lies designed to mislead and prevent the application of justice.
RWNJS: Law N Order – for the little people but not for RWNJ politicians.
What won’t you defend?
‘affect’ is the verb you are struggling for, BM (back at 21, where BM demonstrates weakness in syntax, along with other nonsense.
Fuck off you boring pedantic ball bag.
Shouldn’t there be a comma after “fuck off”?
Lost cause – BM is a semi-literate dumb-arse, who is still spouting nonsense.
He’s a RWNJ which has being ‘a semi-literate dumb-arse’ as a pre-requisite.
You’re so good at sticking to blog etiquette.
None of this is going to effect Bill English in the slightest.
I expect not. Right-wingers don’t seem to have a problem with either crimes or the covering-up thereof by their leaders. However, those of us who expect better are free to try and promote that as a concept.
They don’t have to behave better – as long as they face a robust set of punishments.
Oh to have a dictophone rolling in the Fresh Sir JK’s place.
“Oh don’t tell them that Bill….too late. They’ve got you on toast now Sport.”
Weka you’re bang on in your comments 18 above.
MSN just published more info via Newsroom..
“The board and the selection committee knew Barclay had:
– already broken National Party rules by releasing the name of a challenging candidate.
– breached the rules by speaking to the media between the close of nomination and the close of the pre-selection process.
– spoken to his electoral office staff about employment matters that breached a confidentiality agreement.
– not declared police had asked him to be interviewed over the taping of conversations of staffer Glenys Dickson on his candidate nomination form.
– got staff in his Gore electorate office to canvass delegates to support his reselection when it was outside their contractual obligations and a misuse of taxpayer money.
And there were issues around a $5000 loan Barclay had been given by the party for campaigning. At this point the loan had not been repaid or disclosed in the campaign donation register.”
Lolz the dodgy board lead by Peter – let’s not change the fishing laws because I’ve shares in Sanford – Goodfellow. What a surprise, not.
I must say tomorrow mornings live interviews with the outgoing PM will be interesting. And what do you know, Radio Live are talking about the Barclay thing as I’m typing.
Excerpt from Newsroom story:
Well I never. And a former senior police officer.
In the morn billshit could well lie and say he slept well last night.
Gee thanks Cinny. Just when Bill must have believed that it was all over, ka-boom. Some of the details were already known but there is more and linking it all together is great.
Though there is less to bother Bill than I had hoped. Expect Bill tomorrow on Morning Report he will say every Board has its moments of disagreement so nothing new. He will suggest that Labour has its troubles too etc etc.