sagenz

Now we have competent leadership.

A great result tonight.  Waiting for the Clark concession call but the news is excellent. Election Results -- Overall Status.

Polling Places Counted:	6,232 of 6,304 ( 98.9%)
Total Votes Counted:	2,083,288
Special Votes:	205,386
Less than 6 votes taken in Polling Places:	1,251
Party	Party	%	Electorate	List	Total	right	left unaligned
	Votes	Votes	Seats	Seats	Seats
National Party	941,762	45.44	41	18	59	59
Labour Party	699,680	33.76	21	22	43		43
Green Party	133,548	6.44	0	8	8		8
ACT New Zealand	76,874	3.71	1	4	5	5
Mäori Party	46,654	2.25	5	0	5
Jim Anderton's Progressive	19,396	0.94	1	0	1		1
United Future	18,473	0.89	1	0	1	1
New Zealand First Party	87,361	4.22	0	0	0
			70	52	122	65	52

I have big ups for election organisation for overseas voters.  I simply downloaded a form, printed, signed in front of a witness and faxed it off.  Quicker even than going to a polling station.

The Clark legacy is toxic waste

Russel at Hard News posts

I doubt that history will assess the Clark-Cullen Labour governments as dismissively as their critics do now. Labour's real achievements -- net government debt reduced from 20 billion to two billion before the current crisis; unemployment down to levels many people didn't think possible; a huge drop in the number of welfare beneficiaries, especially per capita; real wage growth; GDP growth that outstripped the OECD for years; a historic turnaround of trends in poverty; the repair of a public sector that was in dire straits by the end of the 90s; a serious attempt to address our savings problem via KiwiSaver and the Superannuation Fund; and a degree of stability that we now all take for granted -- outweigh any counterfactual.

I posted the following as a comment there.  Time again to throw in a few thoughts. I completely disagree with your rosy assessment of Clark legacy. She is the most poisonous politician since Muldoon and arguably rivals him.
You dont see a ringing endorsement of state assistance when the state house bred kid made good beats the boarding schooled child of a rich landowner?
National & Winnie introduced a super scheme in the nineties and Labour opposed it for political reasons. It kept the money in individual accounts rather than the states. So they win now brownie points from history.
Gould identifies productivity growth as being the most important thing to aim for. It trumps working longer as it raises per capita income. And this government has broken the positive trend in productivity growth that started in 1993 after the National government solved the last financial crisis they were left with by a Clark government.

Gould is right that the high interest rates and over valued exchange rates have held NZ back. Both major parties bear responsibility for that poor strategy. They should fear inflation less now and reduce interest rates to US/UK levels.

Key is a pragmatist. Ideology does not win in currency markets. decisiveness and practicality does. he is not going to be blinded by any ideological model but is going to do what works. Which is why you see investment in New Zealand and a willingness to spend money on infrastructure.

Nothing Cullen did broke New Zealand. It was just the slow decline brought about by the owner stripping too much cash out of a business over the long term.

The failure to rein in LAQC was part of the cause of the real estate boom. National will deal with the bust and cretins will be accusing them in future of hard right policies rather than dealing with the mess Clark and ilk created. Just like the last time National took over from Labour.

Teachers say raise the bar on maths and literacy tests - Sunday Star-Times - National News

Outrageous!  Teachers say raise the bar on maths and literacy tests.  They are not wrong.  This selection of questions for 16 year olds in New Zealand is not as hard as the questions my 11 year olds answered in the UK 11+ examination to get into one of the few remaining Grammar schools here

Take the test Would you pass NCEA numeracy? Last year 52,000 students aged about 16 waltzed through by answering questions like these, without calculators:

1. 5 boys share a bag of 55 lollies. How many lollies does each boy get?

2. There were 60 cows inside a shed. 18 walked outside. How many cows were left inside the shed?

3. 38 x 6 = ?

4. David has 35 stamps. Bruce has 70 stamps. How many stamps do they have altogether?

The answers are supplied at the end.  I could accept a 1-2 year difference in difiiculty of questions.  But FIVE years.  It is obvious that New Zealand has serious problems in Education standards.

Its simple. Palin took on corruption in her own party

There has certainly been a huge amount of comment around the Palin pick. As I said over at No Minister.

I have certainly been entertaining myself over at hard news(we are over 500 comments & counting), so guilty as charged your honour.

I think the single thing that defines if is that Palin & the reason she is on the ticket took on corruption in her own party and won.

Obama would be an interesting but risky choice for the world. I dont like his 130 high indecision and I dont like his attitude to trade.

Insofar as how it impacts. We are all citizens of the world. I have ties to 3 countries, one of which was liberated from oppression by the US of A. I like what McCain has to say about improving democracy.

Labour scared to say they are socialists

Labour candidates are obviously scared to admit they are socialists.  Labour candidate Jacinda Ardern -  Kiwi Vote - your guide to voting in the 2008 elections while overseas.

Jacinda has been in the UK for just over 2 years where she's worked as a policy advisor for the UK government. She's currently the President of an international youth organisation called IUSY.

That would be the International_Union_of_Socialist_Youth.

Winston First is aiming for a comeback.

Clarks agenda is simple.  Get ETS passed so she can move on to a UN job having demonstrated her dedication to the voodoo.  Clark knows she is extremely unlikely to win and knows that Key would simply pass the same scheme as the Aussies.  So she wants credit.  Letting Peters stand down temporarily is the price.

There is nothing to the SFO investigation.  Winnie will get off the hook.  The money went to help out who it was supposed to help out and Liddell has already decided the scampi info is not credible enough.  The Vela money is going to be found to not have had an influence.  Far too difficult to pin down.

Peters big problem is that the donations were not declared.  That is definitely a privileges issue but is probably time barred for penalties arising from non declaration.  That will be enough to take his party below 5%.    It stinks.  Peters has made a career out of being whiter than white and eventually it was the cover up that got him.  So he got money from Glenn, the Velas & Jones. Big deal. It was hiding this & denying it that caused Peters to blow his credibility

On reflection I do not believe that Ron Mark will take Rimutaka and get them back in.  It would be funny if the 2.1% NZF had in polls dropped so that even if Mark did win he would not drag Winston back.

Key has done the right thing.  It is a clear choice now between corruption and incompetence from the government and a change to calm integrity.  Key played his only card at the perfect time.  He will carry his currency skills through to government.

Wow -McCain chooses female Alaska governor Sarah Palin

Thats one gutsy pick.  She also sounds like some kind of woman.  Pro Gun, anti abortion, pro drilling and cust pork big style. McCain chooses female Alaska governor Sarah Palin as running mate - Times Online.

Mrs Palin was also believed to be a longshot ..wildly popular as governor in a state beset with political corruption. She ran in her gubernatorial campaign as a clean-government reformer and scourge of wasteful spending. ...She took a pay cut, dispensed with the gubanatorial jet, and successively killed the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” project that had become a nationwide symbol of wasteful, pork-barrel spending that Mr McCain has made a cornerstone of his campaign. “As governor I’ve stood up to politics as usual,” Mrs Palin said. “I’ve stopped wasteful spending, cut taxes, and put the people first.

I have believed for a long time that McCain will win.  IMHO this firmly tips the balance.  McCain has waited until Obama named slick Joe and has trumped the Dems big style.

Obama would not be where he is were he not black, but it is easy to believe that McCain would have taken a pork cutter like Palin who is so pro gun & anti abortion. 

The great thing is that if McCain does do four years Palin will have received exceptional training and would be ready to be elected in her own right.  All McCain has to do is to give her the remit to cut pork.  He gets on with governing and she goes hunting pork.  What a team.

McCain Palin is as good as it gets.

Peters is toast, Clark is compromised, Key is a brilliant tactician

This is one of the more astute comments I have read on the whole Peters corruption and lies debacle. A vote for Peters is a vote for a Labour Government | Kiwiblog. I have been absolutely gripped.  The first time in probably 3 years that I have watched 2 question times back to back.  Mind you it has been fairly busy the last few years.

Watching Parliament yesterday I was irritated by the way John key was questioning Helen Clark. He was not going over the top and fulminating at her. I was disappointed that he was not making much progress. She batted back Keys questions easily and expressed her confidence in Winston, her Foreign Minister. When he announced his plans to ditch Winston it dawned on me that she walked right into his carefully laid trap. What a finesse. When JK pulled the plug on Winston she became forever linked at the hip with a man without integrity. She made the election National versus Labour/Winston. She committed electoral suicide.

John Key did not lose his skills when he became leader of the opposition.  He now has Clark exactly where he wants her.  He faked her out completely.  She thought she could bully on through but she has simply compromised her own integrity in the electorate eyes.  There is no question but that Key must have known about that Owen letter for a week.  It is dated 19 August.  Great discipline to let Hide do the primary running.  He knew full well during question time that he was going to announce afterwards that he was not going to do a coalition with Winston.  Just get Clark right onto the hook irrevocably.  Brilliant!!!

Winston is not blogging, his minions are

I use Bloglines | Subscribe to read blogs.  I quickly picked up a subscription to Winston says.  It turns out that bloglines describes the author.  And the author is not winston.  It appears to be "frank" and "lauralee" among others.  I always knew Winston is a fraud.  He is just pretending to be blogging.  There is no disclosure of other authors on the blog itself, but this is hidden in the post metadata.

National’s true agenda was on Agenda

By frank on General

Grey Power has a point…

By frank on Retirement

there’s only one poll that counts…

By lauralee on General

I am a market democrat

dpf links to a new political philosophy at Kiwiblog. Craig Emmerson, an Australian Labour MP

In a market democracy governments should serve the people instead of seeking to subjugate the people to the will of government through high taxes and heavy regulation. By allowing markets to reward hard work, risk-taking and entrepreneurship without unnecessary interference, market democrats advance freedom and self-fulfilment.

And with that thought I finally identify my true political philosophy.  A strong belief in markets democracy and equality of opportunity.  I have always struggled with the libertarian view that education is the obligation of parents.  That makes life a total lottery mostly determined at birth.  But I have never been able to cope with cradle to grave welfarism.

And the authoritarian instincts of some fellow National party members leaves me totally cold. 

I look forward to reading more about the description of this philosophy.

It describes why I felt joy that Ireland rejected the perfectly sensible "treaty" that they Eurocrats are trying to implement in a completely anti democratic way and the delight that David Davis had the honour to resign his seat and fight the fascist authoritarian tendencies of this Brown government in the UK.

42 days detention without trial is not a requirement.  It is an indication that you have lost precisely what you are supposed to be fighting for - freedom and the right to habeus corpus

Parliamentary Service is breaking the law?

Interesting point by Graeme Edgeler. Taxpayers financing Labour's Budget ad .   Surely it is outside Parliamentary Services powers to make campaign donations whether they are acknowledged on the ad or not?

Mr Edgeler also said that under the new law, the cost of the leaflet might have to be declared as an election donation by the Parliamentary Service to the Labour Party. "If I gave the Labour Party $30,000 worth of leaflets it would be a donation - just as if they printed off $30,000 worth and sent me the bill and I paid it, that would be a donation. "I really don't see the difference between them sending a bill to me, or getting the leaflets from me, and them sending the bill to the Parliamentary Service or getting the leaflets from the Parliamentary Service." That was not how Labour intended the act to operate and would be another big embarrassment for it.

I would be interested to know how you get past that paradox

paying the cost of socialist mistakes

Just Left: Cost of Living asks what can be done about the current cost of living crisis.  So I told him.

Quite willing to take undeserved credit for the good but not willing to take responsibility for the bad. Cullen is reaping what he sowed. Your socialist policies of increased middle class welfare and taxing the bejesus out of everyone so that net of tax people have not gained income on average is the root cause of these problems. There is a culture formed that people do not need to take responsibility for their own actions. The best thing Labour can do is call an election now so that National and a competent administration can take over. The problem is also caused by the high exchange rate meaning too much easy money flowing into New Zealand. While US & UK have a housing crisis the median mortgage servicing problem in NZ is far in excess of those. Incomes need to rise to service the debts. The only way that will happen is over the long term. That means cuts in corporate tax and increased capital allowances. But that is the honest option and Labour are too gutless. You want to buy some peace now. Cullen needs to drop taxes enormously and increase disposable incomes and incentives for business to invest. Raising the market demand for staff will raise incomes. But that wil take time and Labour do not have it. Cutting GST will fuel inflation. Cullen needs to force down the exchange rate. Bollard must drop interest rates

OMG - Helengrad is going to sell state assets

In a sign  of total panic Labour announced today that they intend to sell state assets to key elements of their core constituency - PM announces shared equity scheme for home buyers .

Spin, Entitlement & deception. When is it corruption

Ruth Laugesen has an excellent piece in the SST. Spinning govt yarn costs $47m.   

Government agencies have hired more new communications staff in five years than all the journalists working at Television New Zealand, Radio New Zealand, the Sunday Star-Times and the Dominion Post newspapers put together.

The Ministry of Social Development topped the list with 54 communications staff and contractors, making it bigger than Radio New Zealand's entire workforce of journalists.

Think about that.  Social Welfare has more than the main public radio station.  Does that tell you something about priorities?  Apparently "only" 15 deal direct with the media. But there is only 1 social welfare reporter in Radio New Zealand.  So every time there is something newsworthy the massed ranks of "communications" employees in social welfare can be brought to bear.

The standard has a hilarious attempted rebuttal.  Its all the nasty capitalists fault.  thestandard.org.nz.

The basis of the article is that the number of spindoctors employed by the Government has greatly increased - we’re told it’s doubled from five years ago and is much much larger than it was in 1984. This is totally true. But one of the aspects of good spin is what you leave out.

There are a lot of reasons general communications staff might increase, most notably the fact that it takes a lot of people and effort to maintain an up-to-date website and having no website or an out of date one leaves you open to a lot of criticism (especially if you’re a ministry). Y’see, nearly every newsroom in New Zealand has had the guts ripped out of it by its owners.

The really disturbing piece about this is the justification.  Labour feels it has to get its message out because newsrooms are being cut.  NO statistical basis for that whatsoever, unlike Laugeson who sticks to the facts.  And the argument is completely circular.  The government must according to standard employ more people to generate more press releases to make up for the reduction in MSM journalists. So apparently the MSM have retrenched journalists because it is cheaper just to regurgitate the government spin.  What next? Parliamentary Services takes over news corp?

Aparently the ministry needs to have up to date websites.  Apparently not all of them disclosed.  Here is what part of your $47m pays for.

Kiwiblog » Blog Archive » The Standard hosted by the Labour Party?.  Apparently The Standard is hosted by the Labour Party on servers that also host the Labour party website.  The main Labour party website has the parliamentary crest meaning it is paid for from public money.

The following is a comment I wrote at Kiwiblog. -   To summarise my understanding of facts & inferences so far. Labour party rented servers & one of a block of reserved IP addresses are used to host the standard. - not in dispute The fact that the labour party pays for but does not authorise the site appears to be a breach of the EFA - not yet disputed The standard bloggers are self described not members of the labour party. - Whilst not being paid up financial members allows them to truthfully assert they are not members I wonder whether d4j or redbaiter would get the same charitable offer of server space from the friendly labour party. Some of the Standard bloggers appear to work in the communications area for EPMU. - not disputed yet. But there is a difference between someone whose job description is to blog and someone, whose bosses understand that these staff are “fighting the good fight” by spending part of their working hours blogging. The output from the standard is to high to be done in that limited time outside working hours with a normal social life. I pay for my own site on sixapart. It costs me about $10 a month. No doubt dpf’s costs are worth substantially more due to the higher traffic. The biggest cost is time.I surmise that some of the standard bloggers have moved gradually to a situation where they spend part of their working hours at EPMU blogging on labour party hosted servers. Under the current law that would appear to require authorisation and disclosure.

We are not talking huge sums of money. It is the principle. It would be the highest delicious irony for the first breach of the new law to be a labour supporting group. I can see a complaint to the electoral commission coming on.

Taxpayer money is being used to fund people in the New Zealand blogging community to rebut the time of people like myself who think it is worth their own time and money to argue against the evils of this current government. 

At what point does the misuse of taxpayers funds become corruption?

We knocked the bastard off

Sir Edmund Hillary has died.  They quoted his famous - "We knocked the bastard off" on Radio this morning.  Interesting contrast with yesterday morning when they replayed what the first astronauts to leave Earths orbit - on Apollo 8 - said.  They quoted a passage from Genesis.

I guess that says something about the respective national characters.

A very sad loss.  Respect.

The Year in Online Video 2007

Wired Mag- you have to check out the mtv presenter emo to "Leave Britney alone", then 5 fellas dry humping an ottoman,  this is worthy of ricky gervais.  Brilliant!!! The Year in Online Video 2007.

New Zealand should be a leader in hydrogen solutions

A blog I only recently discovered and already much admire, The Hive has an excellent post on realistic commercial solutions for New Zealand energy needs.  It is a position I have long believed in.  Use sustainable sources to generate and store hydrogen and then use that stored energy when you need it.  This gets around the fundamental problem that sustainable energy sources generally have, which is that the time of generation is not the same as the time or requirement and traditional storage methods are not commercially viable.

New Zealand for example has a wonderful opportunity to lead the way in hydrogen solutions. We have a relative abundance of energy (both power from renewable sources such as wind and hydro and huge coal reserves – 1,000 years worth of coal reserves) and we have lots of water. If the wind is blowing and we have a heavy snow melt or lots of rain, New Zealand has more energy than it can use. The spot price for electricity drops to close to zero. Why not turn it into hydrogen? All you need electricity and water. The hydrogen could be used to power cars, trucks and busses, and even buildings or groups of buildings. New Zealand’s greenhouse gas contribution could reduce substantially.

For instance the Waitaki Hydro scheme had total average energy output of 6,744 GWh.  Its station generation output is 1526.2 MW.  The scheme is operating at around 50% of its theoretical capacity of 13,369 GWh is all stations were run 24 hours a day all year.

Obviously drought and maintenance would substantially reduce the difference but there is still an enormous opportunity to capture the energy value of all that water going over the spillway rather than through the turbines.

Use of a party logo makes it election spending

The way this law has been written is actually going to force huge unintended change. Interpreting bill 'almost impossible'.

The problematic clause 80 says parties' election expenses do not include anything done by an MP if it was "in his or her capacity as a member of Parliament".

I would argue that any inclusion of a party logo on any advertisement or any link to a party site would make this an election expense.

If indeed the publication of a information on a subject such as WFF is required it does not follow that the party that promoted that policy is part of the information required except for one reason.  That reason is promoting votes for that party or person.

The publication of an MP office hours for consituents to visit is clearly acceptable.  Publishing their views on any topic makes it election advertising.

Look forward to some challenges in court for anybody attempting to combine parliamentary services crest and a party logo.  This law will make advertisments like this party political.

I really doubt the public will look kindly at state funding by the back door.

Donate Bullshit to the Labour party!!!

OK - So who wants to anonymously give $5000 worth of bullshit to the Labour party.  Just pass it though the electoral office: Crays caught in electoral pot - 22 Nov 2007 - Political News - New Zealand Herald.

Under new protected disclosure provisions in the bill, the commission takes donations of more than $1000 if the giver wishes to remain anonymous and passes them to political parties "But donations are money, goods and services," Dr Catt said, "so if you wanted to give $3000 worth of wood to a political party or 300 crayfish and remain anonymous, you would have to give it to us and we would have to do something with the wood or crayfish before we could pass it on."

Brilliant!!! if only for the incompetence

Seen over at hard news.  TVNZ is about to be banned from running election advertisements

Posted at 12:28PM on 20 Nov 07. Permalink.

But we shouldn't be depending on the whole-of-house committee to fix new and remaining problems over a few days in Parliament.

Agreed. On this topic, have a look at the new section 55B:

The following persons and bodies may not publish or cause or permit to be published any election advertisement:
(a) the chief executive (however described) of a department of State or a Crown entity:
(b) a department of State:
(c) a Crown entity:
(d) a State enterprise (within the meaning of section 2 of the State Owned Enterprises Act 1986) or a Crown owned company:
(e) any other instrument of the Crown.

I'm not sure, but would this prevent TVNZ from broadcasting any of the parties' election advertisements? TV3 might not mind that, but I'm sure it wasn't intended.

The way this is going, I don't think I trust parliament to remove more errors than they're going to introduce. If they reduced the regulated period to a uniform 90 days, they wouldn't be in so much of a rush.

Tim
<><

P.S. Graeme, I'm looking forward to reading your blog post on this.

Graeme Edgeler
From: Wellington, New Zealand
Since: Nov 2006
Posts: 343

 

Reply

Posted at 12:48PM on 20 Nov 07. Permalink.

Tim - I haven't completely thought it through, but I think you're right (or at the very least this clause of the EFB and sections of the Broadcasting Act are in direct conflict).

I'll add it to my list :-)