New Zealand’s Watergate

In 1972, the Deomcratic party’s HQ was the subject of a bungled attempt at a break in. This lead to a scandal that is so well known, that it became known as “Watergate” after the hotel, and almost every scandal in the English speaking world having the “-gate” suffix attached. Why would you break into…

Cunliffe’s backhanded admission of National’s extraordinary economic success

It’s well recorded history that Michael Cullen, back in 1999, declared that anyone on $60,000 or more per year was a “rich prick”. Later, he changed his mind, and changed the Working for Families policy to cover families earning up to $70,000 and in some instances $80,000.  Therefore, that under Labour what was considered Wealthy…

Electoral Finance Act Mk2

Well, I didn’t march down Queen St for this. Three years after the outcry at financial restrictions on independent electoral advertising, the Labour Party has got its way. National has folded on an issue it fought from Opposition, agreeing to restrictions that differ only by degree with the spending limits legislated by the Labour Government.…

Spite.

No Right Turn makes a fair point. The government has released some of the background geologists reports on areas it wants to remove from the protection of schedule 4 and mine. The one on the Parakawai Ecological Area [PDF] makes interesting reading. It identifies the primary resource in the area as “aggregate”. Yes, that’s right…

Another (fake) conflict of interest?

Gosh, they do try don’t they? The Standard has a major scoop this morning, revealing Foreign minister Murray McCully’s conflict of interest over mining. McCully sits around the Cabinet table deciding on issues such as whether to mine on conservation land, and whether to boost subsidies for oil exploration. But according to the MPs’ Register…

“MMP Killed My Imaginary Friend”

Dimpost sort of likes the National Government 1. We didn’t get ’shock doctrined’. Our last two right-wing governments (National in ‘91, Labour in ‘84) used economic crisis as pretexts to introduce radical reforms that they didn’t campaign on and had no mandate for. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for Key and his party to…

Bill English and Ethics

NRT has a bash at Bill, saying he’s unethical. Bill should not have changed his affairs to claim rental allowances for a house he owned. However, he was in good company in the house, not to mention the thousands of New Zealanders who’ve arranged their affairs to maximise their various government payments. The Auditors report…

Urgency

DPF has a post on urgency, which balances some of the more hysterical comments from certain left wing blogs. The problem of lack of time to pass Bills is not one that has just affected this government. That is why Labour is being totally hypocritical over the use of urgency. Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins…

Plain English Advertising

Dim Post: Also during Q & A, there was a strange TVNZ 7 ad featuring Bill English assuring us that the recession is over. The ad was ostensibly aimed at promoting a TVNZ 7 series on the economy, of course it’s really about rebuilding the Finance Minister’s image after his home accommodation scandal. Labour did…

English and Dipton

I spent several hours thinking about Bill English’s situation the other day. Clearly, his family is in Wellington. So what is the difference between her situation and Phillida Bunkle? Then, watching a report that night it was mentioned that Phillida Bunkle was caught claiming allowances she was not entitled to (though it seems reading around…