Posts Tagged ‘national’
Key’s shameful attack on journalist
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, February 26th, 2008 - 81 comments
One of the more unsavoury aspects of Key’s “we would love wages to drop” saga is the unwarranted attacks by Key and his allies on the journalist who quoted him, Greg Robertson. Key referred to Robertson as some “young guy who was taking notes“. Key said Robertson’s quote was wrong, or that he was joking, […]
Espiner on National’s hypocrisy
Written By: - Date published: 6:14 pm, February 25th, 2008 - 37 comments
From Colin’s blog: It’s time for National to put its mouth where its money is. After a week of climbing into Labour boots and all over the Owen Glenn saga, one thing has become abundantly clear: the Nats have lost any defence of their right to keep their own campaign donations secret. It is the […]
Jones to Key: say it to our faces
Written By: - Date published: 3:25 pm, February 25th, 2008 - 23 comments
Far North Labour MP Shane Jones laid down the gauntlet to Key over the ‘we would love to see wages drop‘ scandal. Jones reminds Key that: “all it takes to ruin a Teflon pan is one scratch” and in a second press release lays out his challenge: ‘there’s only one way for Mr Key to […]
Transcript proves Key is lying
Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, February 25th, 2008 - 76 comments
When it was revealed that John Key had told a business leader he ‘would love to see wages drop‘ it undermined everything he’d told national media about wanting to lift wages. It also had the potential to do irreparable damage to his rhetoric on tax cuts and to show him as being less than honest […]
The deafening silence
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, February 25th, 2008 - 30 comments
At a meeting in Kerikeri last year with a business leader, in the presence of journalist Greg Robertson, National Leader John Key said ‘we would love to see wages drop‘. When this story broke last week, the political commentators were naturally cautious. It is an extraordinary quote. Not because a National leader would think wages […]
Tail-spin
Written By: - Date published: 11:12 am, February 23rd, 2008 - 73 comments
While National is trying to pretend John Key’s quote that “we would love to see wages drop” is a non-issue, behind the scenes they’re floundering. We’ve all heard the multiple and conflicting denials (“I can’t recall”, “I never said it”, “I was misquoted”, “I was talking about Australian wages”), and now thanks to a lazy […]
Key incoherent on pay cut plans
Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, February 22nd, 2008 - 13 comments
Following the revelation that John Key told a business audience “we would love to see wages drop“, bFM asked him to elaborate [MP3, 3.5MB]: Key: The, look I’ll tell you what the situation was there. We were in a, I know I don’t overtly remember it as part of the DVD tour but it was […]
MPs respond to Key’s wage drop wish
Written By: - Date published: 12:41 pm, February 22nd, 2008 - 30 comments
Following revelations that John Key told a business audience “we would love to see wages drop“, I sent an email to all 91 MPs whose emails addresses are listed on their bio page on the Parliament website. The email read: “John Key is quoted in the Bay Report, 20/12/07, saying “we would love to see […]
Key: pay cuts for you, backhanders for my mates
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, February 21st, 2008 - 32 comments
Even as he flounders from one excuse to the next over his ‘we would love to see wages drop’ statement, it has emerged that John Key is offering hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to his big business mates. Key promised a $200 million suspensory loan to a new merger of Southland meat exporters. Not […]
John Key’s plan to cut your pay
Written By: - Date published: 10:46 am, February 20th, 2008 - 144 comments
“We would love to see wages drop”. You would think that given the simmering debate about our wage gap with Australia at the moment that would be the last thing you’d expect to hear from the leader of the National Party. Especially when he’d gone on record in the national media just a week ago […]
Labour with its claws out
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, February 19th, 2008 - 31 comments
The Press has a good article on the political blogs. The Standard and our mates Kiwiblogblog are referred to as “Labour with its claws out”. As has been explained before, we are not Labour: we are a loose group of Leftwing writers, some of whom are associated with the labour movement, but the image is […]
Claims of Aussie brain drain a myth
Written By: - Date published: 12:04 pm, February 18th, 2008 - 29 comments
Refreshing to see the fourth estate challenging the political spin from time to time. The Independent Financial Review has this on the myth of the Aussie brain drain: Far from losing our “best and brightest” as business lobby groups insist about half of Kiwi migrants are blue collar or “no collar” workers, according to departure […]
And the Nats want this man in parliament?
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 pm, February 16th, 2008 - 72 comments
I was just checking out the blogs and discovered this little gem on Kiwiblog: # Stephen Franks Says: February 16th, 2008 at 7:18 pm Britain’s had an independent enquiry into Blair/Labour’s ‘Cash for Honours’ scandal. Anyone want a bet on the chances of getting anything similarily cleansing here? One problem – Scotland Yard still has […]
Katherine’s tangible policy presence
Written By: - Date published: 10:05 pm, February 16th, 2008 - 11 comments
It’s been a few days now since the announcement of Katherine Rich’s decision to stand down from politics, but articles such as in today’s NZ Herald continue to try and explain “why”. Perhaps they also have that sense that her departure could be a turning point, the significance eluding us until we’re further down the […]
The power behind the Nats’ message discipline
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, February 16th, 2008 - Comments Off on The power behind the Nats’ message discipline
Had to laugh at this in The Herald on Rich’s retirement: She has told all her caucus colleagues only that morning that she’s retiring. One of them – Simon Power, who entered Parliament on the same date in 1999 – is quietly sitting beside her now for moral support. “It’s like having Big Brother right […]
Rich reaction roundup
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, February 15th, 2008 - 44 comments
Colin Espiner reckons that Rich’s departure will hurt the Nats. “She represented”, he says, “precisely the sort of social liberal, moderate, youthful face that the party needs to counter the tougher, drier, and more conservative side of National. The one that the public is still, sometimes, afraid of.” He accepts her reason for leaving though, […]
The Dummies’ Guide to National’s wage policy
Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, February 14th, 2008 - 68 comments
I never really understood how National planned to make wages grow because every time our man John Key is asked about our wage-gap with Australia he starts talking about cutting taxes. Here’s a recent example from Morning Report: Key: Firstly we will raise wages. I mean, after-tax wages will be rising under a National government. […]
National’s last moderate falls on her sword
Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, February 13th, 2008 - 36 comments
Katherine Rich was one of only 2 women on National’s front bench and its last moderate MP. The only surprise in her resignation is that she resisted the National hierarchy’s pressure to leave for so long. National’s all-male inner circle never had any time for this young, independent-minded woman with a social conscience who wouldn’t […]
Rich resignation a huge blow for the Nats
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, February 13th, 2008 - 39 comments
The Press reports that “Senior National front-bencher Katherine Rich has resigned her education portfolio and will quit politics altogether at the election…” Rich ran the “compassionate conservative” line hard during her time in parliament. She was the more acceptable face of the the Nats on social issues and the only Nat MP to support the […]
Key conjures up cuts
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, February 12th, 2008 - 10 comments
John Key tells us that he would cut ‘wasteful government spending’ to pay for upper-bracket tax cuts bigger than Labour’s cuts. But do the facts match the rhetoric? Remember National’s wastewatch website? It listed $900 million in ‘waste’ since 1999 only 0.2% of government spending, which won’t pay for many tax cuts. And most of […]
Getting ALL the facts right
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, February 12th, 2008 - 26 comments
This contribution was sent through by a reader who did some digging after reading that Helen Clark’s research is letting her down in terms of the National party’s voting record on settlement of historical claims (NZ Herald, Political Diary, 9 Feb 2008, offline). It looks like National weren’t that thorough either. The suggestion that National […]
KiwiSaver – what if…
Written By: - Date published: 4:56 pm, February 7th, 2008 - 25 comments
Kiwis are showing their canny side in the way we’ve been flocking to sign up to KiwiSaver – now over 400,000 strong and still growing. It’s another dead rat that John Key has swallowed to make National an electable brand but let’s not forget that in 1975 National abolished Labour’s universal superannuation scheme. Bryan Gaynor […]
Spot the difference
Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, February 5th, 2008 - 30 comments
I’ve just had a chance to read Key’s speech properly. Call me a nit-picker but I don’t reckon it was a “state of the nation” speech at all. Of 4788 words, 3185 were on youth issues – and of these, 2012 words were about youth crime and focussed almost exclusively on a subset of “1000 […]
Mobile democracy
Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, February 5th, 2008 - 5 comments
Another release on the state-owned telecommunications company Kordia from Murry McCully this morning which starts: Helen Clark’s claim that Kordia’s cellphone tower work for the repressive Government of Myanmar (Burma) somehow contributes to democracy in that country is fanciful, says National’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, Murray McCully. An astute reader just sent us a great link […]
Apologies for Burqa Bob
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, January 25th, 2008 - 109 comments
It would appear David Farrar is deeply concerned about the amount of traffic his mate Bill has been drumming up for The Standard this week, judging by his strange attack on our site this evening over a trifling error in our earlier post on Bob Clarkson. The article in question was a repost of an […]
Burqa Bob to stand in Tauranga
Written By: - Date published: 2:33 pm, January 25th, 2008 - 49 comments
After much speculation, National MP Bob Clarkson has finally announced he will be standing again in Tauranga, apparently to work on housing affordability issues. What a gift. For those who missed it last time, here’s Bob’s entire contribution to Parliament since August last year: (17 Oct 2007) Interjection : “Bureaucratic!” (10 Oct 2007) Interjection : […]
An emerging threat to MMP?
Written By: - Date published: 5:36 pm, January 24th, 2008 - 100 comments
After Brash and the extreme right were exposed in The Hollow Men the Nats changed their leader hoping for a fresh start. What’s becoming apparent is that National’s shady backers haven’t changed. The policy and the cash are coming from the same people they always have – people like Peter Shirtcliffe who’s evidently now helping […]
They just don’t learn
Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, January 22nd, 2008 - 109 comments
I see the Free Speech Coalition hasn’t learned anything from the ramshackle PR fiasco that was their launch and have posted up another billboard in Invercargill today, this time featuring Robert Mugabe and criticising the government’s ‘silencing’ of Mayor Shadbolt, who is ironically one of the least silent people in the country at the moment. […]
Shadbolt campaign funded by Hollow Men
Written By: - Date published: 7:02 pm, January 18th, 2008 - 96 comments
Remember how I asked who was funding Tim Shadbolt’s campaign to “bring down the government”? Turns out the Southland Times was interested too and they’ve found out his move to deliberately break electoral law is being propped up by the Talley brothers, who appear to have a bit of a history of that themselves. Now […]
What’s National cooking up for 2008?
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, January 13th, 2008 - 195 comments
Well, I saw my first Farrar billboard in the real two days ago and I gotta tell you I laughed. I was with a companion who is politically aware and has a pretty good idea about the EFB and when I pointed it out to her she was baffled. When I told her the story […]
Granny Herald (finally) outs Julian Robertson as National donor
Written By: - Date published: 8:58 pm, January 1st, 2008 - 78 comments
In a front-page article about New Year’s honours focussing on expatriate Kiwi Owen Glenn’s contribution to the Labour Party, Auckland University, and numerous other New Zealand charities, the Herald stated that wealthy American billionaire Julian Robertson, “who contributed to National last election”, is now banned from giving money to political parties here. Until this admission, […]
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