OCKF 2005 April – June

April 2005

• Kiwiblog stats
• Christian Heritage ex-Leader guilty of indecent assault on a young girl
• “John Tamihere is back blogging, and I can not believe what he is saying. His press secretary must be tied up and gagged somewhere.”
• “The Government has had five years to get the technology to block cellphone use in prison. The time for excuses is over – if they can’t protect the public from Scott Watson, they are failing in their fundamental duty.”
• Destiny Church website
• Quote of the Day 2 April 2005 – ” “Election fever is in the wind, with the Labour Government’s answer to Robert Mugabe’s vote-buying initiatives kicking in this week.” – Editorial from Hawke’s Bay Today, 2 April 2005″
• “The Labour Party has deleted John Tamihere’s blog entirely from their website. UPDATE: The SST has a story on the removal. I had to laugh at the part where Clark said she did not intend to have the blog removed, yet an hour later it had been deleted. She must have meant she did not intend to have the blog removed, in the same way she did not intend the painting to be burnt and destroyed “
• “It is a testament to Don Brash that Helen Clark now says she will set a deadline for lodging historical Treaty claims. Pity she is creating new contemporary claims even faster than historical ones are being settled.”
• “I am sure by now everyone knows the story of how the Police said they can not investigate a theft from a dairy, despite the offender being identified and caught on camera. …But now in the latest bizarre twist, the SST managed to track down the suspected shoplifter in just 30 minutes. And get this – the mother complained to the Police saying the SST were harassing her son, and the Police immediately contacted the SST to investigate.” [Emphasis mine – S1]
• Latest on Peron
• Rodney has a good piece on how Helen is suddenly attacking MPs for undermining the Police, and in fact she has attacked them more than anyone else.
• “Stuff reports Helen Clark warning her party against arrogance. Is this not like Paris Hilton warning against pre-marital sex?”
• “Radio and TV have had reports that in the latest Investigate magazine, John Tamihere says what he thinks of some of his colleagues. The PM has just been interviewed on Breakfast TV about this. Tamihere is reported as saying that Labour panders to unions, is anti-men, and too politically correct.”
• “Aaron Bhatnagar has some good details on the mini-scandal around highly ranked Labour Party Candidate Stephen Ching.”
• Even more Tamihere quotes – “Here he has lied to the Leader, abused every single faction of the Labour Party, personally denigrated several MPs, the Leader and her staff, and generally confirmed every Opposition attack line used against Labour.”
• ““The interview reveals an MP who despises many of his colleagues and Labour’s important union and gay sectors, resents the influence of women in the party, suggests that Labour dupes its coalition colleagues into backing laws and saves his finest compliments for National finance spokesman John Key.””
• “Asking the right question” – i.e. on tax cut surveys
• “John Tamihere claimed he had the support of ten Labour MPs in a post-election bid to become Leader. Emails are circulating everywhere with speculation as to who the ten are (or were). The list I have received from informed sources is:”
• “He is not on stress leave, but embarrassment leave, according to Clark. Hooton says that the views he expressed are probably shared by the 10 – 15 other Labour MPs in his faction – they just won’t say it in public.”
• “Dozens of crimes are not being followed up in Wellington due to a shortage of police. The Police Association says Wellington City, with about 280 staff, is about 90 short, but the Government and local MPs have argued Wellington has more than ehough Police officers.”
• A Tamihere apology
• John Tamihere is holding a press conference with Mike Williams at 730 pm tonight. Do doubt it will be the staged apology, and they will blame it all on stress and Rodney Hide. Oh yeah and half a glass of wine.
• Tamihere and gays
• Labour thinks that the story on the police levels was all part of a cunning master plan between the Police Association, the Mayor and Mark Blumsky it seems.It’s a pity that we only knew about the story when we read it in the paper. And considering it has been an ongoing issue for five years now, it was very cunning to start the issue back in 2000 just so one could pull it out of the drawer this week.
• “Labour thinks that the story on the police levels was all part of a cunning master plan between the Police Association, the Mayor and Mark Blumsky it seems.It’s a pity that we only knew about the story when we read it in the paper. And considering it has been an ongoing issue for five years now, it was very cunning to start the issue back in 2000 just so one could pull it out of the drawer this week.”
• Government junior whip Darren Hughes justifies the Government’s walkout of Parliament last night, on the grounds of “if Parliament was sitting music would not have been allowed at the state dinner.”
• [Fun] – The new Tamihere Ten
• “Labour pushes the line that extra spending is always good, and any suggestion of less spending means a decline in quality or quantity of services. The Herald reports how the number of publicly funded acute and elective operations has actually fallen under Labour, from 160,573 to 157,754 despite a huge $3 billion of extra funding.”
• “George Hawkins has backed the use of senior police detectives for traffic duty. …There are a huge number of stories on the Police issue today….”
• [Fun] – “The SST has a wonderful photo of Clark and Tamihere about to kiss. I am not sure who looks more horrified.” [ROTFLMAO! – S1]
• …a personal level I like John Tamihere, and have felt some sadness at his appalling judgement in recent times. Today that changes. As I heard and then read about how he said he was “sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed” I realised this is the last straw. It is an appalling statement for a New Zealand MP to make.
• Tamihere vs Cosgrove
• Tamihere on indefinite leave
• Investigate interview with Helen Clark
• “In her maiden speech, she said supported the need for a more appropriate, gender-neutral term for the occasion of her first speech and that “Inaugural speech would better suit the privilege of introduction to office”. Now that is what we mean, when we say we are sick of political correctness.”
• “Tamihere imploding further – John Tamihere is showing no signs of resigning or standing down as a candidate. He is defying Helen Clark and flying to Wellington for Caucus today, despite being told to stay away.”
• “As I previously blogged, I am appalled that NZ First is pledging to increase the cost of superannuation, when all the forecasts are showing even the current scheme is unsustainable. …Peters has now gone even further and is promising that older people will receive fare discounts and lower line costs for phone, power, rates and gas.”
• “Labour hits Tamihere with a wet bus ticket – Good God I would have never believed it. Helen Clark has folded like a sack of soggy potatoes and John Tamihere is back in the fold with only a censure. A censure??? Oh how tough.”
• “In an blatant effort of bribery Helen Clark has announced that over 80 year olds will no longer be required to sit driving tests to ensure they are still able to safely drive.”
• He won, you lost, eat that – ““She told him to take stress leave. He didn’t. She told him not to talk to the media. He did. She suggested he fall on his sword. He declined. She told him not to come to caucus. He came.”
• Peter Metcalfe has a detailed and thoughtful post on Clayton Cosgrove and the different stories on the Clark phone calls.
• Tamihere talkback show
• “The NZ Herald labels the proposal to axe the two-yearly practical driving tests for those aged over 80 as “the latest in a series of Government prevarications and prioritisations that sit oddly with the widespread unease over dangerous driving practices.””
• Frog Blog Started
• “It is very amusing to see Clark and Cullen deny the Tamihere allegations that Cosgrove made late night nasty phone calls to Clark in the 1990s.”
• John Tamihere has delayed his talkback show debut, because Labour have reminded him that he is meant to be on stress leave.
• “The Government leased out the entire South Island power grid to secret US investors, who then leased it back through the tax haven of the Cayman Islands. This netted a cool $35 million which would, in a private business, have your shareholders very pleased with you.”
• Herald Reaction to Tamihere
• The fake spy sky scandal story
• Tamihere poll
• Deborah Coddington retiring
• “The SST has apologised to its readers and those groups targeted by the allegations including the SIS. However instead of leaving it there they defend what they did saying they acted in good faith and that given the nature of the claims they believed they had a duty to put them in the public arena. Totally untrue. Untested claims have no duty of publication.”
• “As many will have seen the latest Marae-Digipoll is bad news for Labour. However there is a lot of confusion over what one can or can not read into them.”
• One Network News Poll
• Audrey Young writes how Tamihere making peace so quickly with Labour has probably doomed him …The article also ridicules Labour Party President Mike Williams who criticised the Marae Digipoll as snake oil
• “The Dominion Post has added its voice to the chorus condemning the dangerous proposal by Helen Clark to allow unsafe drivers to keep driving in their 80s and 90s.”
• Labour gets more than National in broadcastin allocations
• “Almost every editorial in the last few weeks has been criticising the Government’s policies or endorsing National’s. No this is not due to a conspiracy – it is in fact very rare to have such a chorus.”
• “Aaron Bhatnagar posts on how he hopes no-one listened to Dr Cullen’s advice last month to invest in the share market.”
• 6,000 prostitutes in NZ
• “As a postscript to the court case, Donna Awatere-Huata has also been ordered to pay $17,000 in costs, of which $15,000 will go to ACT. I wonder if they will ever actualyl[sic] see it though?”
• Families Commission – “Up until today the only thing of note was to have its Chair attack Don Brash because he wanted to stop some welfare rorts. Today I can add two more items to its list of achievements. It has been running some nice ads on TV telling us how lucky we are to have them around now. …
• [Interest] – No Right Turn on radio
• [Fun] – Wrong House!
• Tax Freedom Day – “Under Labour tax freedom day is twelve days later than what it used to be. Jim Anderton would like it to be in December no doubt.”
• “The Police rang up a farmer at just before midnight to ask him if he could travel 12 kms on their behalf to check out a 111 call made from another farm.”
• Police porn scandal
• “It is very sad, but not toally surprising, that public confidence in the police has fallen under Labour from 71% to 53%. This is not a minor decline but a cataclysmic drop. The have dropped from top place (where police should be) to behing small businesses and primary schools.”
• “…But perhaps we should look closer to home. Some Maori groups are opposing a project to trace the origins and movements of the human race saying: “Indigenous people will be saying we already have our stories about our origins, so we don’t need a scientific rationale to justify our origins.””
• “BBC organises hecklers to disrupt Tory Leader“
• “Small Business Minister Rick Barker managed to offend in 35 minutes basically every single person who attended a meeting with him. Apart from texting during the meeting, he also left the perception that “He appeared to have nothing but contempt for how small business ticked. He thought we were all fat cats”.”
• “Business Confidence down down down …“
• “So rather than have Helen miss photo opportunities in Berlin, or risk Jim Anderton nationalising supermarkets while he has the keys to the house, the Leadership Forum has no-one of significance attend from the NZ Government”
• “Helen Clark has already lost, or had to pay out, on two defamation cases and may be facing a third. The Sunday Star-Times has confirmed Helen Clark as “the apparent source of alleged defamatory statements run by the newspaper” about former Police Commissioner Peter Doone.”
• More on Clark knifing Doone – “It really is incredibly bad judgement to talk off the record to a newspaper, about your own Commissioner of Police, when he is the subject of a formal investigation. If the PM had evidence of wrong doing, then she should have been quoted on the record or released the official report, but to confirm off the record a rumour or allegation is just incredibly unprofessional and disloyal.”
• “I had to laugh at this article in the Timaru Herald where a teeanger thought Don Brash was with the Labour Party, but then when she realised he was National’s Leader wanted to shake his hand.”
• Labour Minister urinates in hotel corridor
• “Winston is trying to scare-monger that by 2022 there will be more Asians than Maori (which is not what the stats say anyway), and the Greens point out that this is not consistent with his calls in the past for Maori to see themselves as New Zealanders first, Maori second.”
• [Fun] – “Basically the person he is threatening to hack tells him that his IP address is 127.0.0.1 (which always point back to the person’s own machine). The moronic hacker gets to work and strangely he disappears. A few minutes later he is back saying “dude be happy my pc crashed otherwise you’d be gone” with no idea of why his PC crashed – his own hacking.”
• MPs Assets – 2005
• “A UMR poll in the NBR has also shown that now 62% of people think they are paying too much tax. I presume the otehr[sic] 38% don’t pay tax!”
• Hotel log: Samuels not sober

May 2005

• “A $1m house is providing accommodation for a family for just $75/week. One could help three or four families into accommodation for the money tied up in that one house.”
• “Clark implicated further in Doone affair… Even after Doone publicly threatened to sue the newspaper, Helen Clark privately reassured the journalists their story had been correct…”
• “Even the Greens, not known for commenting much on these sort of issues, have said that Jonathan Hunt’s inquiries into getting a UK pension, while serving as the NZ High Commissioner to the UK, is embarrassing.”
• “It is truly ironic that we have the Treasury, often categorised as an uncaring agency, defending mothers and pouring cold water on Helen Clark’s plans to get more mums back to work. …However as this advice contradicts what the PM said, it has been removed from the Treasury website.”
• “Rodney Hide has an excellent piece of how the headlines of $3 billion more for defence, may in fact be a reduction in spending on defence as a proportion of GDP. The key issues are how many years is this extra funding spread over, and how much is operational vs capital.”
• “John Key has just pointed out that the amount of cumulative extra tax paid since Labour came into office has been $50 billion. Think if taxation had been kept steady, then the average household would each have around $25,000 more money.”
• Statistical Package for Social Sciences
• “Keith Ng has done some very good work by scooping a story on how the proportion of students receiving a student allowance under Labour has fallen by a massive 32%. Ng points out that Labour made changes to allowances in last year’s budget which they claimed would deliver allowances to 28,000 more students. However the number on allowances actually went down by 3,000 so they were 31,000 out. And of course they have tried to keep this quiet, until Keith did his investigation.” – [Good post, worth a read on the issue – S1]
• Who will replace Helen?
• “…Winston Peters has got something of a hit. He did break the news that someone who worked for Saddam Hussein has been living in NZ. The man actually declared this on his immigration forms, but this was overlooked so the Minister only found out due to Peters. That is shocking, and Peters deserves credit for the detective work involved.” (More here)
• “The SST has claimed that Helen Clark told them that the official reports into Doonegate indicated he said “that won’t be necessary”. Neither of the official reports did say that, which exposes her very badly. She has responded that there was contested evidence on what Doone said. This may be true, but it misses the point.”
• “There has been considerable debate over whether the SST was justified in allowing the PM’s involvement in Doonegate to be exposed. … Long says that having the PM confirm *five* times the incorrect information is a different case as Helen Clark was not uncovering a grave injustice, a conspiracy, or dastardly deeds that needed to be exposed for the public good. Instead the only person benefiting from her actions, was in fact herself. Thus the convention is not there so the most powerful person in the land can misuse her powers against an individual and in the process misled a newspaper, its readers and caused the individual personal damage.
• “Labour is expected to announce an array of new taxes today. They could push up food prices by 1.3% and public transport costs by 1.4%. And what worthy causes does the Government spend our hard earned money on? A glossary of youth speak!!!”
• “The PM on Breakfast TV has just said that she wants more powers for the Immigration Service, to stop a repeat of the Iraqi officials fiasco, so they can do more investigations. This seems to miss the point entirely. The diplomat actually wrote on his form his former role, and NZIS just did nothing with it. No amount of extra powers would fix that. It is the incompetence of NZIS that is the issue.”
• “The more badly the PM has stuffed up, the more ferocious the defence is.  Trevor Mallard did one of his usual performances yesterday when he claimed, under parliamentary privilege, former Commissioner Doone was drunk and interfered with the constable who breath tested his partner. Labour are desperate to make Doone, not Clark, the issue…”
• Jimmy Jangles has a useful list of the 22 new taxes, levies or increases under Labour.
• “As Peters names a third Saddamite in New Zealand, the question has to be asked whether Paul Swain should resign as Minister of Immigration?”
• “The Tamihere saga just gets sadder. It just reinforces the continuing decline in judgement.”
• “One could only imagine the outcry if it was revealed a billionaire who has not lived in NZ for 40 years, had donated half a million to National. Labour would be demanding to know what has been promised in exchange, and that it is evidence of the party putting the interests of foreign billionaires over that of ordinary NZers. However as he gave $500,000 to Labour, then that is okay.”
• [Fun] – Former MP Ross Meurant has auctioned and then sold his former red squad baton for $20,000. He labeled it as a “Minto Bar” which not surprisingly has upset John Minto. Personally if I was John Minto I’d be more upset that someone was willing to pay $20,000 for it. There is no truth to the rumour that the successful buyer was Trevor Mallard
• Nowhere in the world are people so over-taxed
• Labour Party Head Office anonymously posting – “I would not have thought they really want to be known to be egging on someone threatening physical violence against a blogger.”
• The Herald on Sunday has details of how Tamihere’s 1999 election campaign for Labour was funded. The cheques involved were all co-signed by Tamihere and Mike Tolich (who has been charged by the SFO). Tamihere’s defence is that most of the cheques he signed were blank!!!
• “The escalating construction costs [of the new regional hospital] have blown the budget, and tenders have been frozen. Construction prices in Wellington have increased a lot recently. Experts within the industry tell me that one of the reasons is the huge growth in the public sector which is forcing up costs and rental throughout Wellington.”
• As expected, Winston is now overpaying his hand. …Now Peters has dredged up a former Mayor. However the former Mayor says he fled before the Gulf War after falling out with the local Governor and Chemical Ali.
• It is just incredible that despite Labour increasing its funding from $4 million a year to $239 million, that Te Wananga o Aotearoa is on the brink of insolvency.
• Rodney Hide has the statements of evidence in Doonegate.
• When your own actions are so indefensible, the only course of action is to try to shift the focus. Clark has done this by attacking former Commissioner Doone and claiming the substance of the SST story was correct, even if key facts were not.
• CEG (funder of hip-hop tours) was planning a big farewell party but it got squashed. However there were already $32,000 of airfares booked which were lost. So what was Christine Rankin demonised for again?
• Last week all four tyres on the mobile billboard for Mark Blumsky were slashed….I am very dismayed that at such an early stage in the campaign this criminal vandalism is happening, and with such costly and serious damage. There is just no excuse for this.
• “The Press has confirmed that tapes and transcripts exist of the conversations between Clark and the Sunday Star-Times. I presume the Prime Minister will insist they are released, to prove that she did not mislead Parliament.”
• “Clark was just asked in the House whether she was setting a bad example for others by leaking cabinet documents.

  Her reply was staggering in the arrogance.

  Basically it was that it is up to the PM how all documents are released and “by definition I can not leak”.

  So even bodies with statutory independence like the Police Complaints Authority, are subject to the PM’s whim as to how their reports are made public.

  UPDATE: Dim in the comments provides the comparison quote, which is nicely appropriate:

  ‘If the president does it, it’s not illegal.’

  – Richard M Nixon. 1977″

• “I agree that the magazine is objectionable, both in the legal sense and the wider sense. Peter expresses his deep scepticism that Jim Peron was not the publisher.” [Peron Saga continues]
• “The Dominion Post editorial on the education sector is a must read. The editorial concludes that the education sector looks like a hospital emergency ward, pointing out”
• “I can not resist the temptation to defend the Labour Government from Jordan’s criticism.”
• [Fun] – “Just had to share this tale from the weekend of a young student named Rachel who earlier this year was in a shop. She wanted to know the time so asked the shop assistant if she could tell her the time. The shop assistant it seems replied in an unbelieving tone, “This is a clock store, there are nine clocks in front of you”.”
• The proclamation of our beloved leader yesterday that she “by definition, can not leak” has inspired an artist out there,…UPDATE: Don Brash has just used the Nixon quote in the House, and referred to Fran O’Sullivan’s description of her behaviour as Nixonian. Dim has started something here!
• “Not someone I normally quote but I did like his final line being “If he [Hawkins] believes his own propaganda, he has no right to be in Parliament, let alone Government, but should be under psychiatric care.””
• “The latest round [of Australian tax cuts]will deliver $23 billion of tax relief. And despite the Australian surplus being less than one quarter the size of the ONZ surplus Dr Cullen says he will not give any back, instead he is going to spend it all.”
• “Peters is very effective at attacking others, but in almost 30 years in politics he has achieved almost nothing. Since he returned to the House in 1984 he has gone into every single election voting against the Government of the day on confidence and supply.”
• “I should state for the record that I don’t think anyone thinks Clark has committed crimes and commissioned break-ins etc. The comparison is about the arrogance of believing that your position allows you to do things such as leak incorrect details from an independent report.”
• The 111 system – “Well where do you start? Who thought it was as bad as this?”
• “The behaviour of the PM in Doonegate has been so hard to defend, that it has been significant that the ‘left’ bloggers have almost all been silent on the issue.”
• “The Press has an editorial on Doonegate which I think nicely puts things in perspective. They highlight that Clark was elected promising to bring integrity and honesty to the political process and instead that she acted in a way “that would have made former prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon proud” as questions about the employment of the Commissioner of Police must be handled with complete constitutional propriety.”
• Past behaviour – Clark and Benson-Pope
• “One of the issues which has not got much coverage is the highly misleading nature of the Police statistics with regard to 111 calls.”
• Reaction Roundup on Doonegate
• Investigate Magazine have put the full interview with John Tamihere online.
• “The SST has details of a private training institute that offers tutors $100 for each student who finishes its teacher aide course. Wow that is going to result in high quality standards.”
• “Don [Brash] said “”If we talk to other parties. . . we will not sell our souls just to get into office, and we most certainly will not be offering the leadership of the next government as a bargaining chip.”” – Interesting statement considering recent claims.
• “The key phrase for me is “The state has no right to take more of the earnings of people than it reasonably needs.” An $8 billion surplus is quite simply obscene.”
• “Just got home from work so missed most of Facelist, but tuned in just in time to see a secret witness (Helen Clark) declare that Mark Lundy obviously killed his family. The rationale being that his defence is you can’t drive to Palmerston North in 75 minutes, but the secret witness revealed her chauffeur had managed it in 48 minutes “
• “…the problems facing Mr Benson-Pope. And they are quite grave. As TV3 said yesterday he faces allegations which may not just end his ministerial career, but even force him from Parliament. Not for his discipline methods in the 1980s, but for the fact he has denied them categorically both inside and outside the House.”
• “Another Doone like golden handshake. NZQA Chief Executive gets $50,000 for quitting her job, after the numerous NCEA debacles. Remember, Helen promised to end golden handshakes. We just did not realise she meant only to end calling them golden handshakes.”
• “I was somewhat surprised to hear the PM on Newstalk ZB suggesting the alleagtions against David Benson-Pope are not credible because they were not made at the time, 20 years ago.”
• Finally some blood from the stone – AKA The Chewing Gum Tax Cuts!
• The Budget
• “The changes for tertiary students are so small (even smaller than the so called tax cuts) that they barely come to $15 million/year. It is interesting that the Government is raising the income threshold for which students can earn money, but not raising the parental income threshold.”
• “The NZ Herald has concluded that David Benson-Pope is unlikely to survive as an MP. On the face of it he has lied to Parliament, as there are five separate witnesses who contradict what he said.”
• “But Labour have made what I consider to be a strategic blunder. …Making people wait three years, when you have an $8B surplus is basically insulting.”
• “In the Dominion Post, Dr Cullen says “National can’t propose large-scale tax cuts without large-scale expenditure decrease at the same time”. This is absolute lies of course. First of all one could for example deliver $6 billion of tax cuts over three years without even touching expenditure. It is simply known as a smaller surplus. And you know both this year and next year it is going to be $8 billion or so.”
• “The net migration to Australia increased by a massive 59% last year. It was 11,387 and is now 18,186. I can’t recall such a huge increase for many years.”
• It is appalling to have Labour’s Jim Sutton accuse such a loyal civil srervant of betrayal, simply for deciding to stand for Parliament. As No Right Turn points out, this is hypocrisy when you consider the huge number of civil servants which stand for Labour. In fact Sutton’s reaction displays the arrogance all too common with this Government. We see this with Clark also – that not backing the *Labour* Government is somehow unpatriotic.
• “I have some sympathy for any party, when a candidates turns out to be bad….. Considering the allegations (to which there are witnesses) are that Ching offered Government appointments in exchange for money, I think Labour has to come clean and reveal how much money Ching has donated and raised for Labour “
• “That means expenditure growth will outstrip GDP by 45%. Labour with a large surplus is somewhat akin to an alcoholic in charge of a brewery.”
• Another Labour lie – “Helen is looking for people to blame over the fact the budget was a fizzer. And has decided it is the media’s fault.”
• “The Press editorial says that the Government would be cutting off the nose to spite the face, if it insists on having Tim Grosser resign his WTO role. They ask whether our trade interests are best served by Groser retaining his chairmanship of such an important WTO committee and that the only answer to that question is a resounding “yes”.”
• “If you have not done so already, check out Rodney’s blog where he details how a caller to National Radio was praising Labour’s budget. And then it was revealed she is the wife of the head of the PM’s Communications Unit.”
• “The Government has done a total u-turn on Tim Grosser. From calling him a traitor, and demanding he stop all WTO work immediately, they are now saying they will resource him to carry on as chair of the WTO Agriculture Negotiating Group until nominations day. Normally u-turns are because they have polled on an issue, but this one was so fast they must have worked some things out for themselves.”
• Blumsky rejects pork barrel – “The National Party’s Wellington Central candidate, Mark Blumsky is rejecting the US-style pork barrel politics espoused by Labour’s Marian Hobbs. Ms Hobbs seems to be saying that unnecessary jobs should be retained, purely because they are in her (current) electorate. This is the worst aspect of US system, where politicians put their own interests ahead of the national interest.”
• “How the Government can get away with saying the service is world class is beyond me. There is no way it should take two hours to decide whether to launch a helicopter.”
• True prediction – “Nevertheless I don’t expect the Police will lay charges. Just like Paintergate they will find that prima facae a case exists but not in the public interest to lay charges (never mind they pursued Shane Ardern over such a trivial issue). The Government will then try to spin that this means he has been cleared.”
• “The media always focus on the one worst case example, in this case a $250,000 student loan. … What is less attention grabbing is that the median loan balance is only $10,206.”
• Polls are close
• The latest immigration rant from NZ First is highly offensive and bordering on paranoid. Peters proposes an immigration “flying squad” staffed by patriotic New Zealanders.
• SST Poll
• “They have thrown $3 billion more at health and $3.3 billion more into education (the wananga thanks you for your generosity). So what do the public think of these portfolios under Labour? Well only 16% of NZers think education has improved under Labour and 44% say it has got worse. And for health 18% say better and 38% worse. A dismal failure in both areas.””
• Tax under Labour
• “The National Ban’s monthly business outlook survey for May 2005 is out, and it is not pretty…. I’ve graphed the series below. It is not just a 17 year low, but almost an all time low. The post 87 crash period is the only lower time.”
• “Colin James has a thoughtful column on the Greens and environmentalists.”
• “Staff unions are threatening to withhold students’ first semester marks, unless they get their 10% pay rise. Any students’ association worth its salt should be out there defending the interest of its (generally compulsory) members … But instead we have the WSU President (2% turnout in their last election) saying they supported the staff doing this!!!!”

June 2005

• May 2005 NZ Political Blog Statistics
• [Fun] – DPF 13th most powerful person on NZ internet, threatens female populace with corny pickup line
• “Unless it is a case of mistaken identity again, the latest Iraqi in NZ attacked by Peters is an engineer who has lived here for nine years!”
• “However I think the most interesting part of this story is that the NZ Herald reports him as warning the press gallery they were at Parliament only with the permission of the Speaker. This reads to me as a threat to journalists that if they displease the Government, then the Speaker may remove their accreditation.”
• “Labour and the Greens have done a deal over the prisoner compensation bill. Now the bill will be an awful unprincipled piece of law. How do I know this? Because it has a sunset clause which means it expires in a few years.”
• How Labour thanks the Greens
• “Westpac has pointed out that Cullen is planning to increase crown spending from 29.6 per cent of GDP in 2004 to 32.3 per cent in 2009. And even with all that (much of which would be wasteful) there would be large surpluses.” – but to win the 2008 election, they’ve now spent even more than that!
• “The Greens say student loan debt is growing at $78,000 an hour. … But I am unsure what they mean by saying people can get their loan written off by doing unpaid work. Does this mean become a full-time activist for Greenpeace and we will write your loan off for you??””
• “Frog has confirmed that under the Greens policy that one could become a fulltime Greenpeace activist and have $12,000 of debt a year written off, plus no doubt receive their universal living allowance of around $10,000 a year.”
• “According to this story, it seems likely the source for Winston Peters’ latest allegations is someone who has lost lawsuits against the two men named by Peters as being high officials in Saddam’s regime.”
• According to this story, it seems likely the source for Winston Peters’ latest allegations is someone who has lost lawsuits against the two men named by Peters as being high officials in Saddam’s regime.
• Greens get personal
• Don’t forget Doonegate
• “Core health spending has skyrocketed by $3.5 billion under Labour – from $6.1 billion to $9.6 billion – yes a massive near 60% increase.

But what has happened to waiting list and operations?

* Waiting lists total 180,000 a number described by Annette King in 1999 as “criminal”
* Operations have increased by around 1% – from 269,252 to 272,881

However one health outcome has improved greatly. The number of health bureaucrats has increased by over 40%”  [Wayback]

• “Labour learnt that Auckland business groups were planning to campaign on the lack of progress on roading, and a draft strategy included having a website called www.revupthegovt.co.nz The business groups had not yet registered the domain, …so Labour … registered to David Talbot who bizarrely is the candidate for Clutha-Southland, yet lives in Wellington! Oh wait, now all is clear – his biography says he works for Marion Hobbs.”
• “I have to say I was naive, and never for a second did I consider the Speaker may not refer the Benson-Pope issue to the Privileges Committee, but she has refused. I thought it was beyond dispute that it would go to the Privileges Committee, as the facts were so clear cut. DBP denied some very specific allegations in the House, and since then several former students have come forward to say they were true.”
• “ Dr Cullen is trying to scare-monger that tax cuts under National will be inflationary and lead to interest rate hikes. This misses the point that $1 of spending is more inflationary than $1 of tax cuts. … now Dr Cullen is worried about interest rate increases. Interest rates have gone up a whopping seven times in the last 18 months. And why? The OECD blames it on the run-away Government spending.”
• “Trotter makes several points:
  * The Opposition’s newly erected billboards speak eloquently of a quantum shift in National’s propaganda capability.
  * A fortnight ago rumours flew around the capital that the Prime Minister’s hitherto highly effective propaganda team was on the verge of mutiny and, some whispered, disintegration
  * Six years of unprecedented spending on health and education have not produced the anticipated results.
  * New Zealand’s bureaucratic structures would appear to have an inexhaustible capacity to absorb taxpayers’ dollars“
• G-Man has a lengthy and well researched post on how outraegous the decision by Speaker Wilson is.
• “It started with the Budget backlash being blamed on the President, and now we learn that Dr Cullen has apologised on behalf of Mike Williams to Michael Barnett, yet Mr Williams was totally unaware of the apology on his behalf….. And as I predicted Labour have scored another own goal by grabbing the suggested domain name for the Auckland business campaign. They have merely got an shorter, far better, domain name (www.revup.co.nz) and all the days of publicity…”
• “Labour votes to keep Treaty clauses” (In spite of not seeming to believe in them)
• “Labour has inspired an artist, but not in the way they woudl like. The talented Rose Ritson Trenwith is selling on Trade Me a painting expressing her “distaste in the government we have today in power”.”
• “Sue Bradford has had her private members bill to ‘ban smacking” drawn from the ballot…..The NZ Herald … [leaves one] with the imnpression that no parents who beat their children have ever been convicted because of S59.”
• Mallard ignored advice to authorise Wananaga payment
• “Dr Cullen says that reducing the number of bureaucrats will reduce productivity.” – good read
• “Very rare for me to back NZ First, but it appears Labour is acting in very bad faith with regards to the agreement thay had over the foreshore legislation. NZ First backed the law on the condition that there would be no extension of legal aid eligibility. However Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta has now introduced a private members bill to do just that…. an MP only introduces a private members bill after it has been approved by the party leadership and/or Caucus. So it is purely semantics to claim this will not be a breach of the agreement with NZ First.”
• “Jonathan Milne writes how Labour President Mike Williams is the one man Helen Clark can not sack, as much as she would like to. The article is a nice trip down memory lane of all the people she has sacked, and also all the ones she should have sacked – but hasn’t”
• [Fun] – “It’s one thing to do sleep deprivation and humiliation in interrogating al Qaeda detainees, but when you force them to listen to Christina Aguilera music that is a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions.”
• Tax Relief – “Useful article in the NZ Herald detailing that National has confirmed all working New Zealanders will get tax relief, which will be passed into law before Christmas, to come into force from 1 April.”
• McCully’s Newsletter – “The Auditor-General wanted to reform the rules for parliamentary spending, and approached both Don Brash and Helen Clark for co-operation. Disgracefully Clark has refused to even meet.” – another key point on the $800,000 theft
• [more from above link] And most outrageous is that any prosecution of David Benson-Pope needs the consent of the Attorney-General. This is the same Michael Cullen who has been publicly defending DBP, making veiled threats on his behalf, and defaming TV# with false allegations. Now Dr Cullen has delegated the decision in this case to the Solicitor-General, but can anyone believe the SG would not be aware of the AGs very public stance on this issue?
• ” Dr Cullen has attacked “the myth of big government and the myth of high tax.” His only problems is neither are myths. Government spending has increased by unprecedented amounts, and an extra $50 billion of tax has been taken since 1999, over 1999 levels.”
• Legal Aid for Foreshore claims
• The Jim Anderton Party – “Really, what sort of ego does it take to think you own the party? Mind yoiu he really does, as the Alliance members found out the hard way. On the other hand he may be worried Matt Robson is plotting a coup”
• “Labour appointed their former Mana MP, Graham Kelly, to be High Commissioner to Canada. And thanks to Mr McCully’s newsletter, the Maori Party have found out what a good job he is doing in representing New Zealand.”
• Corrections Dep. tries to create research to suit his own ends – “This really should be a major scandal. The integrity of all Corrections Department research is undermined, and it also illustrates vividly the point that some fiscal discipline on the government is actually a good thing, in stopping rorts like this.”
• What it takes to avoid being sacked – very little indeed. “High Commissioner Graeme Kelly will not be sacked because “he has shown energy and enthusiasm for representing New Zealand””
• “I really have to laugh at Peters calling Don Brash a “beginner”.”
• Greens want to tax computers
• Parliamentary Privilege continued
• “…I reckoned one could double the amount of money spent on health, and you would still find demand still exceeding resources. Now Labour has actually gone halfway there – funding has increased by about 50%, and yep you guessed it – the change has hardly been noticed.”
• “The supporters of the Sue Bradford bill claim that it will not criminalise smacking, yet I get nervous when I read her effectively labelling smacking as a “level of violence”.”
• Cullen discovers fiscal restraint – or maybe not. Apparently (according to Jordan in comments) he had been complaining for years about how his spending was unwise.
• “If a High Commissioner has become such an embarrassment that the Government doesn’t think he can show his face in NZ, even to attend one of his closest friend’s funeral, then isn’t that pretty clear that he shouldn’t be carrying on in that role?”
• The TV3 poll is normally the one which is the worst for National, so when even it shows a 7% decline in the gap between Labour and National, you know that things are happening.
• The $3 billion [Kyoto] cock-up – “UPDATE: As it was Pete Hodgson who in 2002 said “that not to ratify would be to set fire to a very big cheque”, I’ve got a fair idea where the firings shold start.
• More on Kyoto stuff-up
• “You know National is serious about tax cuts, when it is even giving them to race horses!… What is Labour’s position. They will instead look to increase the tax on casinos to match that on gaming!!” – Did National recieve some of the Vela money?
• “The worst mistake is misreading the public mood on tax cuts, compounded by a blunder over the Budget strategy. That strategy, which even the Government now acknowledges was flawed, allowed expectations of cuts to build up and then delivered what most voters would have rightly considered a joke”
• Coalition Options
• “…the latest updates on the Waipareira Trust, but can’t fail to note the HOS story which shows “he or his family got benefits of at least $9500 from the account” , which $20,000 of the stolen $100,000 was paid into. Remember Helen and Michael say that all the allegations were false, and Tamihere did nothing wrong.”
• “The SST has a story on Merilyn Tweedie’s refusal to talk to media, despite receiving $500,000 of taxpayer funding. Painter Grahame Sydney has defended this, saying “Tweedie had no obligation to explain herself or her work” and “The public isn’t in this equation”.”
• The Budget apears to have been the Tipping Point in public opnion
  
• Now only do 75% of NZers want tax cuts, so do 67% of Labour voters. Now Labour is planning a scare campaign that tax cuts means cuts in public services (in fact can be funded out of surpluses alone) but even if they do mean a cut in public services, you still have over half in favour.
• “…Press editorial this morning: “For this [support for withdrawing from Kyoto] the Government has only itself to blame, or, more accurately, Pete Hodgson, the Energy Minister. It was his responsibility to get the calculations right. Not only did he fail to do so but he advocated our participation in the convention, largely, on the carbon credits coming our way.”
• “ One News had a Colmar Brunton poll on tax. With regard to Labour’s miserly budget tax changes, 13% say this made them more likely to vote National, and 7% more likely to vote Labour.”
• “The PM is correct in saying the promise by NZ First to boost superannuation payments to 72.5 per cent of the average wage is a bad thing.”
• “The u-turns have started”
• “Colin James on the Government”
• “Personally I can be persuaded to amend or remove Section 59 as a step towards lessening child abuse, but it does seem the real motivation for some is to use this as a proxy to campaign against smacking children at all, and equating smacking with child abuse is daft. The vast majority of parents know what is best for their child, and that may include smacking them if for example they try to run accross the road by themselves. The law should protect the children from the small minority of families who are abused, but should not be used to equate smacking with abuse.”
• “The scare campaign begins” –“So trying to equate tax cuts when faced with an $8 billion surplus, with necessitating the expenditure cuts of 1990/91 which was due to a $5 billion deficit is dishonest on many levels.”
• OBERAC vs Cash Surplus(Interesting)
• ” Heh heh Speaker Margaret Wilson just evicted the Prime Minister from the House for disorderly behaviour!…. UPDATE: Heh, heh. I had been thinking of commenting that one would never see Don Brash ejected, but just as well I didn’t as he also got kicked out a minute ago. They are lively today!”
• [Fun] – St Molesworth: Top 10 thinnest books of 2005
• “The net number of NZers leaving to live in Australia increased by a massive 60% in May. People are voting with their feet. Who remembers Jim Anderton in 1999 arrogantly telling young NZers overseas – you can come home now. What’s happened Jim?” –  Quite, I remember too well!
• “The Auditor-General has released his report calling for a review of what sort of advertising can be funded by the taxpayer. National has said it supports tougher rules. Helen refused to meet with the Auditor-General to discuss the issue.“
• “For some weeks and months as I have watched question time, I have been very disquieted by the way certain Labour MPs always interject “take your medicine” when Nick Smith is interjecting. …. There was an incident about a Labour Spokesperson in the 1990s which National left alone. Mark Peck’s problems were also treated with sympathy, as should be the case. This is in total contrast to what Labour are doing.”
• “Orchardists marched on Wellington yesterday… So knowing we have a great case, which we are guaranteed to win, they are understandably upset the Government is refusing to stand up for them.”
• “Comparing the Stories” (More on Nick Smith)
• “I’m annoyed with this article in the Press, repeating some invented figures by Cullen, trying to guess what National’ tax relief and extra spending may total…. Labour is desperate to panic National into showing its hand too early.
• “The plan is obvious. Invent the most extreme interpretations of what it could be, have everyone scaremonger on it, and then use the refusal of National to panic and shows its hand, to scream loudly that it must all be true. In case anyone is unconvinced, have a look at the Dom Post article which quotes from, get this, “Labour’s qualitative research”. So Labour Party focus groups are now the basis of judging what National will do!!!”
• Orewa effects still happening – “Now, 18 months on, and just a few weeks before the 2005 election, they have announced they will change more than a third of its ethnically targeted programmes and well over half of the rest could be altered or axed once further reviews are done.”
• The ultimate in knee-jerk spending decisions
• Consistency on Immigration – NZF proves that it really is a racist party
  
• [Fun] – “A reader e-mailed me this extract from the Maori Party constitution: 4.4 All decisions of the Council shall be by consensus (Consensus may be defined as “the view of the majority”).”
• “I don’t think a single journalist believes Helen Clark’s claims that the timing of the announcement on the Israeli apology was a coincidence that it was on the same day as Don Brash’s conference speech. Yes, I am sure she did not even realise the conference was on. And one always makes foreign policy announcements on a Sunday.” … “Fran O’Sullivan points out that the PM all but lied outright in claiming the timing was at the request of Israel.”
• Let’s not get too precious – What is humor and what is insulting?
• Labour continues to fall
• “If I was even more cynical than I am, I would suspect the Government doesn’t actually want to stop the cricket tour to Zimbabwe, it just wants to be able to keep banging on in public about how it is going to try and do something.”
• [Fun] – Quote of the Day 28 June 2005““Am looking forward to the (Political) Apprentice. Instead of ‘You’re fired’, the NZ version would have ‘You’ve been promoted to ambassador’.”- heh
• “Labour are backing down on forcing farmers to provide public access near waterways.” – Another EFA story here, they ran ads on TV opposing the govt
• “Once upon a time nothing would have kept Dr Cullen away from a good debate, but alas he is too busy to take part in tonight’s one hour tax debate.”
• “How to get around election restrictions” (by funneling money through unions) “It is so obvious and blatant, that even the NZ Herald Editorial registers its unease at it.”