It certainly looks like someone has leaked Labour’s internal polling to the Herald cartoonist.
Numbers starting with two aren’t much fun and certainly explains the panic and leaking going on from within Labour.
Snapped on NZ476 to Auckland last night.
Obviously Tigger had been talking up his mayoral prospects to the whole plane and poor old Cunners simply couldn’t take it anymore after a hard day in the trenches watching Grant Robertson continue his march to the leadership that rightfully belongs to David Cunliffe. It might be the camera angle but I swear Cunners is leaning to the right.
Word to the wise big fella, all that winking and glad eyes that were were giving the ladies in the Koru Lounge will get you in trouble. Read more »
David Farrar reckons that Labour won’t change their leader because caucus really don’t want David Cunliffe to take over, and the members like Cunliffe.
Here’s why Shearer is probably safe. The caucus would happily replace Shearer with Robertson if the polls do not improve. He’s already in charge of all the important stuff such as the leader’s office, strategy, campaign etc. Read more »
Politicians love using weasel words…these are the words that they drop out all the time that can’t and won’t get them in trouble.
“No plans” is a classic weasel words statement by politicians.
“No plans” is nothing but a convenient way to avoid being straight with the public and heading off potential political attacks. It might serve the politicians well, but it insults the public and needs to be eradicated.
Which brings us to last week’s report by Infrastructure Australia into asset sales to funding public works.
The federal government’s infrastructure body published a $220 billion wish list of asset sales in the states and territories.
For NSW, the stand outs were the publicly-owned utility, Sydney Water, and the Snowy Hydro, which is jointly owned by the NSW and other governments. Read more »
The world needs leaders with conviction, what I call a gut politician. New Zealand desperately needs the same. Leaders like Margaret Thatcher who did what was required because it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately we get the limp “aspirational” politicians.
The nostalgia of the past week following the death of the former Conservative prime minister has shown that voters want a sense of moral mission.
The magic word of the week was “conviction” – which replaced “aspiration” as the one every political leader had to utter as many times as possible in every public pronouncement. There was no longer any question, apparently, about whether “conviction politics” was a good or a bad thing, or whether it was an optional extra for political leaders. (How did that notion ever get off the ground, anyway? After all, what is the alternative: lack-of-conviction politics?) Convictions are simply strongly held, principled beliefs. What business would you have pursuing power if you had no strong principled beliefs about what was right for the country?
Unfortunately, until about 20 minutes ago, it was fashionable to imply that there was something faintly demonic about being a conviction-led leader: that it was tantamount to demagoguery or just implacable bloody-mindedness. And no one was more guilty of perpetrating this fiction than the present generation of Tories. But let’s not go over that ground again. I have said it before and I repeat it here: the great Modernising Terror is over.
The events of this past week, when the ragged anti-Thatcher protest failed to gain any traction, and the nation seemed united in respect and admiration (to the manifest surprise of the BBC), snuffed out any remaining flicker of doubt. It is safe now to speak with reverence about what the Conservatives accomplished in the 1980s. Something like real politics is back. Even if nobody is absolutely sure what it might consist of, we have a pretty clear idea of what it should look like. It is fairly crucial that the people who espouse it sound as if they believe in something. Using the word “convictions” all the time without embarrassment is not quite the same thing as having them. But it’s a start. Read more »
Socialists are the biggest hypocrites known to man. None more so though that Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey socialists.
The other day David Cunliffe was criticising the government for raising Kiwisaver contributions on Red Alert.
Next week thousands upon thousands of New Zealanders will wake up to a cut in their take-home pay because of policy decisions by the National/United Future government.
From 1 April 2013 the minimum KiwiSaver contribution is increasing from 2% to 3%, while the Student Loan compulsory repayment jumps a whopping 20% to 12 cents in every dollar earned over the repayment threshold. Read more »
APN/The Herald have an article covering that Apple NZ paid 0.4% tax on TURNOVER of $541 million – a story pushed by Labour and David Cunliffe.
Apple’s New Zealand division made sales of $571 million last year but paid only 0.4 per cent of that in tax.
Labour’s Revenue spokesman David Cunliffe said that’s akin to paying nothing at all, and letting a corporation get off “scott free” is something New Zealand taxpayers shouldn’t have to stomach.
Apple’s New Zealand sales topped the half billion dollar mark in 2012 after rising to $414 million in 2011, according to its financial results for the 12 months ended September 29. Apple is the world’s biggest tech company and makes iPads and iPhones.
Its local unit recorded a tax paid profit of $5.5 million in the year, down 40 per cent from its 2011 earnings. Income tax fell to $2.5 million, amounting to 31 per cent of pretax earnings, from $5.1 million a year earlier.
Nowhere in the story does it state want percentage of profit was paid in tax. The story seems to be pushing emotion while being light on facts and data.
But since APN think tax should be paid on turnover I thought I’d check what they paid. After all if you are going to point the finger at other corporates you had better be a corporate citizen than they are. Read more »
Kevin Rudd has bottled yet another coup, good grief but the man is a coward.
Even worse he left his numbers man Simon Crean out on a limb and he is now sacked.
Crean had previously backed Gillard and swapped in a very public fashion today to force the leadership ballot that never happened because Kevin Rudd showed all the courage of David Cunliffe.
Before the ballot took place Obeid’s mate and Labor powerbroker said:
“If she wins, she is dead in the water anyway.”
In the end Rudd bottled it. Read more »
Matthew Hooton is the latest to call out Labour and the Green Taliban over their tax payer funded political party initiated referendum on asset sales.
Labour have yet to declare their buy back regime. If they truly believed that the state should own 100% of the assets then they should present their buy back policy before the shares are listed.
Two years ago, John Key surprised the political establishment by announcing plans to sell up to 49% of five state-owned companies, dramatically contradicting year his reputation for policy timidity at the start of election year.
Following Mr Key’s script, Labour built its entire election campaign on the slogan “Stop Asset Sales.” It achieved 27.5% of the vote, its worst result since 1928.
Since then, Labour has continued prattling on about the sales, even siding with Maori efforts to fully privatise water to stop the sale of minority stakes in dams.
Unsurprisingly, Labour has remained below 35% in the polls, bouncing up only when David Shearer has provided some bloodsport in dealing to David Cunliffe. Read more »
