Will there be Mana in the House...

There will be MANA in the house ? At long last!

"Something very important happened on Saturday night. For the first time in nearly a century, a revolutionary was elected to the New Zealand Parliament." - Chris Trotter, 28 June 2011



At 2pm on Thursday 14 July 2011, Hone Harawira will be called back into the house where he will be sworn in and take his seat as the leader of MANA, Movement of the People.



Following his swearing in, Hone will give his first speech as MANA leader and its first MP. All supporters of MANA are invited to join with his whanau from the Tai Tokerau to celebrate this wonderful occasion

Voxy NZ

KR says:

Well, thats the opinion of Voxy, but I'm waiting for the general elections. A good win there for Mr Mana could well see a change in the political system here in NZ. A wonderful occasion? I think that is a little premature. The great political redeemer, champion of the poor? I remember Hone as the rascist big-mouth Maori seperatist son of Titiiwhai the rabid female rabble-rouser with a doubtful past . Does a leopard change its spots? Bullshit and jellybeans, perhaps!

Hone and Mana - become a leader with real mana...

Hone and Mana- become a leader with real mana...

Please view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O13SpVjePY


Well that was the easy part Hone Harawira. You have done all the talking, the big-mouthing and the audacious. You are no longer a Maori Party MP for the North - Te Tai Tokerau, but leader of the Mana Party. You now claim to be the representative of the poor and disadvantaged, Maori or Pakeha. Well there are just a few months to the general elections.  You took a margin of thousands and reduced it to hundreds. You now have real opposition in the form of Labour's Kelvin Davis, and you will be out of a job if you lose to him in November. If you win and win well, you could be joined by some compadres in the House of Representatives. You could also be a catalyst for change in government. Phil Goff said he won't work with you in a coalition, but if Goff found he could become prime minister,  he'll find some place on the front benches for the leader of Mana with some real mana?

Cunliffe addresses Key's lies...            

David Cunliffe has addressed Key’s truly uninspiring pre-budget speech this morning.
National have no economic plan, and it shows. Key’s tinkering to fix the massive economic gaps, and his only suggestions are a vague warning that National would reduce the member tax credit, and reverse its own earlier move to reduce the default contribution rate.
Yes: they plan to encourage savings by cutting savings.
But the speech was much more about blame-shifting on to the weather, the earthquakes, the GFC and the previous Government. After 2.5 years, we apparently still shouldn’t blame them.
Cunliffe addresses what he politely calls Key’s ‘misleading’ claims:

Rebutting false claims on Labour’s economic record in Key’s pre-Budget speech
1. Key says: “Government spending increased markedly in the mid-2000s”
Fact: Government spending was 31.0% of GDP in 2000 and 31.2% in 2008. Under National, spending as a percentage of GDP has exploded

Source: Parliamentary Library
2. Key says: “Government spending rose 50 per cent in just five years”
Fact: Between 2003 and 2008, core Crown spending grew 42.9% but this was before inflation and population growth. In real terms per person terms, spending grew by less than 20%, which was in line with economic growth. This money went into programmes like Kiwisaver, Working for Families, and increased infrastructure spending, which National hasn’t scrapped.
Source: Parliamentary Library

3. Key says: “Since 2004 almost 60 per cent of new jobs have been in heavily government-dominated sectors”
Fact: Key is counting the extra teachers, doctors, and nurses Labour funded as if they are ‘bureaucrats’. Core public servants remained roughly 2% of the workforce under Labour.

Source: State Services Commission, Human Resource Capability Survey of Public Service Departments; Statistics New Zealand Household Labour Force Survey. Compiled by the Parliamentary Library.
4. Key says: “export volumes grew only one per cent in total between 2004 and 2008”
Fact: Key is using selective dates and the impact of the global recession to mislead. In reality export volumes grew 42.2% in Labour’s first 8 years in office before shrinking 11 per cent during the recession. Under National, export volumes have just now regained the level they were at under Labour four years ago.

Source: Statistics New Zealand, Infoshare
5. Key says: “since the end of 2004, GDP per person have fallen by an average of 0.1 per cent a year – the weakest period since the late 1980s and early 1990s
Fact: Again, Key is using the recession and his own poor economic record and trying to attribute the blame to Labour. In reality, GDP per person grew 16.8% in the first 8 years under Labour. Since the recession, GDP per person has fallen 5%. National has made no progress on growth, with GDP per capita falling for 6 of its 8 quarters in government so far.

Source: Statistics New Zealand, Infoshare

[Update: now with graphs!]


Acknowledgements: The Standard

Beyond the HuttRiver

Political firestorm - implicating national MP in possible immigration scam...

Political firestorm set to explode;

Labour will today release information from an informant which implicates a National MP in a possible immigration scam

Immigration New Zealand has asked police to look into the activities of an immigration consultant with connections to National MP Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi.

The department says it received information last month concerning Mr Singh Bakshi and interviewed an informant. As a result it decided to refer the case to police.

It is understood the case centres on allegations false job offers have been used to secure visas and permits for immigrants.

Police confirm they are investigating an immigration consultant, but say the man has now left the country. They are not commenting further, nor making any statement about Mr Singh Bakshi's connection.

Mr Singh Bakshi is unavailable for comment, but he has previously denied he has broken any rules in relation to immigration matters. He is currently six weeks into an eight week absence from Parliament, as he recovers from heart bypass surgery.

The Labour Party will be gunning for the National MP in Parliament this afternoon. Labour MP Pete Hodgson says he will go public with a statement from an informant. His comments will be protected by Parliamentary privilege.




Acknowledgements: NZCity, NewsTalkZB

As the political giants depart, the pygmies play together...

The departure of the two political giants leaves a multitude of pygmies in Parliament. Helen Clark and Michael Cullen will not be replaced for many a day. While its off to New York and the United Nations for Helen, it will be to Post Bank for Mike, to join the man Labour put up as head of Post Bank early in Labour's tenure, former PM Jim Bolger.

National has shown its hand early as it proceeds to kick the state sector hard in its slats. What next? And who replaces these state employees?

John Key may well be an affable bloke, but I think he is politically naive - he is being manipulated left, right and centre by Bill English and his buddies. Just how long will he last before he departs to take up a position in the World Bank or something similar?

National's destiny is in Labour's hands...

Contary to opinions being expressed by editorials and other so-called political experts, National shows all the signs of a one term government - it hasn't really introduced any real rightwing philosophically influenced legislation, apart from the '90 Day hire and Fire Act'.

It is not National that is in control of its destiny, it is actually Labour! The power, the brains and the intestinal fortitude of Labour left parliament when Helen Clark and Michael Cullen decided to retire from politics and resign from the parliamentary Labour Party. It is shades of 1975, and 1990 all over again - a Labour Party without a real leader, not a disembelled Labour caucus though.

This Labour caucus will be back to business as usual with a longterm leader, which is not "Phil-in" Phil Goff!

Will there be another Helen Clark? Not during the remainder of my lifetime. Such people come along every couple of generations. The good people die in office; and the real leaders come along every fifty years or so. I don't include David Lange in that capacity - he comes under the capacity of orators. He had no intestinal fortitude to stand up to Roger Douglas; he could have promoted Helen clark as his deputy and taken on the Act Party's ancestors, Douglas and Prebble and Company!

Helen Clark right to apologise for the 4th Labour Government...

I congratulate and as a New Zealander, accept Helen Clark's apology for the excesses of the Fourth Labour Government, of which she was a cabinet minister. That government had never been given a mandate for its market economic policies. Some have said that retrospectively speaking its economic policies were badly needed. I don't know about that, but New Zealand as we knew it was changed for ever in many respects.

What the Fourth Labour government did was to provide a springboard for the subsequent National Party government's even more excessive economic and social policies, such as the Employment Contracts Act, which harmed new Zealand socially more than any policy in sixty years, outside the 1951 Holland Emergency Powers regulations during the Watersiders Lockout.

The ECA on its own disempowered the trade union movement, reduced real wages, gave employers the flexibility to totally change the hours of work from 40 hours to a seven day week economy without, in many cases, any compensation for extra hours worked; and destroyed many full time positions in the process, replacing them with part-time and temporary positions, something not changed to this day . Double overtime rates have become a historical curiosity - many workers lost 100-200 dollars a week from the initial changes. Senior workers became the biggest casualties of such changes. Employers were very happy and grateful for the millions of dollars in savings made because of the imposition of the ECA on the New Zealand workforce.

The Lange/ Douglas regime used its anti-nuclear legislation to hide the affects of its market economic 'Rogernomics' from the New Zealand population. Initially Lange didn't want a bar of the anti-nuclear legislation, but soon came around to the Douglas cliche way of thinking. Lange became an ardent public supporter of the anti-nuclear legislation, using his impressive oratory powers to convince doubters of its value to NZ. Even the following National Government was loath to make any changes, because of the value of the legislation to NZ as a country.

Helen Clark was a female member of a sexist cabinet and was advised to keep her head down, perform her duties and not to interfere in other portfolios. Being politically ambitious she wisely accepted the advice given, and has politically outlived the others in that government. She has become a survivor and the New Zealand people have benefitted from her three terms as one of New Zealand's most capable prime minister's of a most progressive government.

As I wrote earlier, I thank Helen Clark for her apologies of being involved in the excesses of Rogernomics. She must be elected for a fourth term as prime minister. We must continue with a progressive left of centre government. We can not afford as a nation and a society to a return to a reactionary right wing administration.

Just what do the Aussie election results mean for the West...

Just what do the Australian election results mean for the West? What do they mean for Bush's foreign policy initiatives? The Aussie boys will be coming home pretty soon George Junior!

The Australian left of centre Labor Party won the Federal elections by a landslide. Now all the states and the Federal government are all Labor administrations.

The new Australian Prime Minister, 50 year old Queenslander, Kevin Rudd, has stated that Australia will sign the Kyoto protocol, something George Bush opposes, and will be withdrawing Australian combat troops from Iraq.

Mr Rudd is a Mandarin speaking former diplomat. He is also only the second Queenslander to be elected as Australian prime minister. He is expected to forge even closer ties with New Zealand and other friends and allies. He assured George Bush of the centrality of the US alliance in Australia's approach to foreign policy.

My Kiwi Riverman weblog team...

My Kiwi Riverman weblog team:

Why not visit and read some interesting posts. You are invited!


Kiwi Riverman: http://kiwiriverman.blogspot.com General posts

Pete's Kiwi Forum: http:// peteskiwiforum.blogspot.com NZ politics

Down by the Huttriver: http://peter-petterson.blogspot.com NZ local politics

Huttriver 8: http://huttriver8.blogspot.com Kiwiana


See you some time?

Bob Jones just a crass, bigotted, biased, foolish old pensioner...

Bob Jones is a crass, bigotted, foolish old pensioner...

I don't accept the legitimacy of knighthoods for people like Bob Jones,Roger Brierley or Roger Douglas. - they only received their titles for making money and their service to capitalism and the market - not New Zealand society or the average Kiwi in the street. As a consequence their titles shouldn't be used.

Bob Jones is just a crass, bigotted, biased , foolish old pensioner who has never made a positive contribution to New Zealand society, except when he lives overseas. Just a wheeler, dealer devotee to the god of mammon and the free market.

I remember the reports years ago of him assaulting a traffic cop because he didn't appreciate being given a ticket by an idiotic traffic cop. Yeah right! And on state television we watched the aftermath of Bob Jones assaulting a television reporter because he interfered with Bob Jones'privacy. Jones hit him in the face and gave him a bloody nose.

The man was obviously out of control like some interbred pitbull, protected by his millions, which he will use to try and intimidate anybody that he, Jones, thinks is threatening him.

He always publicly insulted or put down those he disagreed with personally, or politically, or those lesser mortals that this Naenae College educated, punch drunk, third rated boxer considered. Such an example was his election campaign to bring about the downfall of the Robert Muldoon( another undeserved knighthood)National Government, not because he really supported the Labour Party.

John Key's a dick - ask his son!

The new National Party leader in New Zealand learned his first personal hard lesson - don't ask children for advice, especially your own!

He recently asked his eleven year old son, Max, for feedback on a television appearance.

Apparently Max's response was something like this: " Well Dad, you looked like a dick. You sounded like a dick. And the guy interviewing you was convinced you were a dick!"

He won't be asking for advice from young Max again in a hurry. Was Max right? Most people really think he is a dick. I think he is a dick because he and National still don't have anything positive to offer New Zealanders. As for the people of South Auckland, they know he is a dick!

A National past-time - dreaming of political office in New Zealand

The New Zealand National party, the opposition party in this country look like staying there for a long, long time!

The new leader, in a string of leaders since Jenny Shipley stabbed Jim Bolger in the back and lost the Treasury benches for National after nine years, eight with Bolger as PM. New Zealand had had a gutsful of the right wing party which had become obsessed with what had become known as New Rightism and privatisation for the sake of it.

Well, the Don of the National Party has gone - before he became another Julius Caesar and was knifed in the back too! The foolish, politically naive Brash, who was a bit like Bill Clinton and couldn't keep his fly done up and his long fingers out of another man's snatch has been replaced.

But is John Key the " key to the kingdom" for National? If his keynote address ( all these puns?) is any example they will be in opposition for a total of twelve years!

He concentrated on society, claiming that an underclass exists, kids go without breakfast, others leave school without qualifications; gangs are a problem in NZ etc. Spare the bloody rod, John, your party turned a social problem into a bloody catastrophe, for god's sake. We see and hear about an underclass, drugs like methamphetamine ( known here as "P"), which is involved in every major crime or murder in this country, every night on TV.

He really showed how out of touch he was with NZ society. This millionaire who happened to be brought up by his widowed mother in a state house in Christchurch and went on to become a millionaire. A NZ dream? Hardly! During his address he spoke about NZ kids - the Samoan, the Maori, the Asian and... the Kiwi kids? You have to be white to become a "Kiwi kid"? Ask John Key - he said it and it was not taken out of context or was a misquote! What does that tell you?

I don't think Labour will have too much to worry about with Key at the National helm. Bill English may have been a different story, second time around with his Bolgeristic attributes - a big Catholic family!