Trans-Tasman ratings

Written By: - Date published: 2:39 pm, December 7th, 2009 - 18 comments
Categories: Parliament - Tags:

In a sure sign the silly season is upon us, the Trans-Tasman has released its annual MP ratings. Considering the writers of the Trans-Tasman are rabid rightwingers who view John Key as the second-coming, it’s hardly a surprise that Nats get high scores and the Left get low ones.

Anne Tolley, a woman so stupid she literally went on a taxpayer funded chopper flight because she was told she needed a helicopter view of her portfolio and who has enacted national standards that she herself admits might be a disaster in the face of universal criticism from the experts, out scores every Labour and Green MP save Annette King. Even allowing for the Trans-Tasman’s pathetically shill-like stature, some of the rankings still elicit a laugh of surprise:

Bill English gets an 8 out of ten. For what? For cancelling contributions to the Cullen Fund, which is going to cost us $8 billion over the next decade? Maybe for ripping off the taxpayer to line his own pockets and trying to use his family as human shields when he got caught? For sitting on his hands while unemployment doubled? For setting up bodies to suggest economic and fiscal reform only to reject their findings?

Nick Smith goes up from 6.5 to 7.5. This is the minister who has turned everything he touches to crap. Hardly a week goes by without a protest thousands-strong opposing his policies. Nowadays he can’t even turn up to a meeting in a Tory suburb without the crowd turning on him.

Sharples and Turia each get 7 despite having precisely zero achievements this year, unless you count not selling out quite as much as you could have as a win.

Gerry Brownlee gets an 8 despite the fact that Parliament runs like a Polish shipyard under his direction as Leader of the House. When Parliament isn’t in urgency, it’s out of legislation – so the taxpayer ends up paying both for the added cost of urgency and for Parliament’s staff to sit idle when normal sitting time is wasted. Half the time he mucks up the procedure, wasting more time and money. The hatred between him and Lockwood Smith is becoming more and more unsettling to watch.

These silly ratings only serve to tell us about the personal biases of the people assigning the points. Still, I confidently predict our opposite number in the blogosphere will soon have a post up giving us a detailed statistical breakdown of these nonsense numbers.

18 comments on “Trans-Tasman ratings ”

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  1. mickysavage 1
    7 December 2009 at 2:53 pm

    Tolley was given a 6. On which planet do they spend most of their time on?

  2. bobo 2
    7 December 2009 at 2:57 pm

    What a piece frontpage gold for the Tories hoorah, living in NZ lately is like being stuck in an the movie The Body Snatchers filmed in wonderful technobeige.

    “The duplicates live only five years, and they cannot sexually reproduce; consequently, if unstopped, they will quickly turn Earth into a dead planet and move on to the next world.”

    • Tigger 2.1
      7 December 2009 at 3:37 pm

      Most of the government MPs wish they were half as interesting as pod-people… And at least the pods set some targets and try to fulfil them…

      • bobo 2.1.1
        7 December 2009 at 4:24 pm

        I dunno some of them are about as interesting as talking to a pot plant. The plant is a better listener.

  3. Tigger 3
    7 December 2009 at 3:01 pm

    I’m all for giving praise where it’s due but these ratings are so sycophantic as to be laughable.

    In any just ranking Power would rank higher than anyone else, as would Collins (despise her but she’s been effective).

    • Tigger 3.1
      7 December 2009 at 3:12 pm

      That should read ‘than anyone else in government’. You have to rank government and Opposition separately – ‘effectiveness’ is surely a very different creature between the two.

  4. gobsmacked 4
    7 December 2009 at 3:28 pm

    Trans Tasman, standing guard in front of the curtain, declaring: “You can’t go back there!”

    Where’s Toto when you need him?

  5. Jim McDonald 5
    7 December 2009 at 3:33 pm

    Tell us more about this thing called Trans Tasman.
    Who runs this thing? Who are the contributors? How is it funded?
    How objective and independent is it?
    Is it a puppet or beholden to any particular interest? How does it declare its interest?

    • snoozer 5.1
      7 December 2009 at 3:52 pm

      http://transtasman.co.nz/home/about

      Rob Hosking, Ian Templeton. Rightwing nutters basically.

      The Trans-Tasman is a weekly newsletter that businesses and govt bodies purchase. It’s meant to be an insider’s guide to political events. In recent years it has become shallower and shallower, and more forthrightly rightwing. It’s lost any usefulness it once had.

      A couple of months ago they wrote something like ‘Labour hates Bennett and Tolley because they think they should be on a benefit somewhere, not in Parliament’. It’s full of nonsense like that.

      • Jim McDonald 5.1.1
        7 December 2009 at 4:58 pm

        Thank you for your response and thanks to others.
        Would it sound then like the Trans Tasman is increasingly turning into a rightwing messenger?

  6. Tim Ellis 6
    7 December 2009 at 3:48 pm

    So when you get the message that your side is losing (which is backed up by every poll result week in and week out) you blame the messenger.

    Classy.

    • mickysavage 6.1
      7 December 2009 at 3:52 pm

      Matthew Hooton on RNZ today hinted at support for National dipping in the next couple of polls.

      There is plenty of time.

      The last two party gap was 18% (Roy Morgan) and a percent a month is more than enough. All the nats need is a few more weeks like the last two and it will happen.

      • Tigger 6.1.1
        7 December 2009 at 4:01 pm

        I wouldn’t describe that newsletter as a ‘messenger’. More a ‘massager’ if the way they’re massaging government egos is anything to go by.

    • snoozer 6.2
      7 December 2009 at 3:59 pm

      Don’t worry, Tim. No-one’s coming close to your level of class.

  7. Evidence-Based Practice 7
    7 December 2009 at 3:50 pm

    One of the Trans Tasman people is a regular on Jim Mora’s afternoon panel. His opinions are far right, even by the standards of that extremely conservative forum.

  8. Zaphod Beeblebrox 8
    7 December 2009 at 4:14 pm

    I’d be happy with Brownlee, Tolley and Smith getting high ratings if I were Labour. The longer they stay in their current jobs the better. Nice easy targets for their shadows.
    I’m sure the Nats felt the same about some of the ministers in the last govt.

  9. Cal 9
    7 December 2009 at 4:53 pm

    When I saw they called Key a “political phenomenon” I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. And then Goff got a low score not because of poor performance, but because everyone loves Key. Not even Fox News could come up with something this blatant!
    It’s kinda sad that this is what the country has come to, the majority thinks that photo-ops and being relaxed = an amazing politician.

  10. Scribe 10
    10 December 2009 at 8:23 am

    When I saw they called Key a “political phenomenon’ I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

    Whether you love Key or hate him — and most on here fall into the latter camp — I think it’s hard not to concede he IS a political phenomenon. Such a term doesn’t actually have an inherently positive spin, as you suggest, Cal.

    I heard him on one of the FM breakfast shows this morning and he is unlike any PM we’ve had in my lifetime — which basically dates back to Muldoon. He’s not afraid to let his hair down and crack a few jokes with breakfast jocks or the cricket commentators on Sky this past weekend.

    Sure, he wasn’t elected to do those things, but when combined with his swift ascent to the top of the New Zealand political mountain, from a business background, it’s hard to say he’s not a “political phenomenon”.

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