Don Brash

Niko Kloeten reckons that Maurice Williamson could bury Len Brown in the mayoral race in October.

There are a number of reasons.

Less baggage:

A number of political figures on the right believe Mr Williamson would have a better chance of success than fellow MP and ACT Party leader John Banks did when he ran for Auckland mayor three years ago and was thumped by 65,000 votes (234,459 to 169,862).

Councillor Dick Quax, who represents the Howick ward which largely overlaps with the Pakuranga electorate, says Mr Williamson has a very good reputation in the area, with one of the largest majorities of any MP (almost 14,000 votes).

He says Mr Williamson doesn’t carry as much “baggage” as Mr Banks in the eyes of voters, particularly those in area outside the old Auckland City Council.

“The reason why John Banks didn’t do very well was for many people the amalgamation of Auckland was seen as a takeover by Auckland City,” he says.

“They saw John Banks as part of that takeover by Auckland City of the rest of the region and when a credible candidate from outside of the area put his hand up a lot of the votes automatically went to Len Brown.

“A lot of voters in Pakuranga and Howick voted for him because he wasn’t John Banks.  That won’t be the case this time.”

Mr Quax says Mr Williamson will also benefit from not being associated with the unitary plan, which many Aucklanders are not happy with.  Read more »

Matthew Hooton, not one to turn down a glass of wine, nails Aaron Gilmore, the Clown of Christchurch East:

I am the last person to criticise someone for getting rolling drunk.

By some measures, the volume of wine per person reported to have been drunk at National List MP Aaron Gilmore’s infamous Hanmer Springs dinner was positively temperate.  (Although, despite many years of trying, I have never had a wine waiter at a flash restaurant deny me service, so perhaps there is more to this part of the story.)

In a country where, rightly or wrongly, binge drinking remains acceptable and commonplace, what really does in Mr Gilmore is not his drunkenness but the horrible way he is reported to have treated the waiting staff, including clicking his fingers and abusing them, and – perhaps even worse – his idiotic threat to have the prime minister fire one of them.

On this point, I yesterday found myself in complete political agreement with the ‪Service and Food Workers Union, something no doubt damaging to both me and the union.

The shame of Hooton writing that last line must be immense, which makes it all the more powerful.

When previous MPs have run into trouble for drinking they have survived because their uncouth behaviour has not crossed the line into personal abuse.

When Mr Gilmore’s fellow Christchurch MP, Labour’s Ruth Dyson, was picked up one night for drink-driving, there was no suggestion she had been rude to the police and she had the integrity to resign as a minister before the sun came up.

Similarly, when Mr Gilmore’s fellow National Party MP, trade minister Tim Groser, got himself well-and-truly inebriated at the bar of an Emirates A380 flying home after a disastrous Middle Eastern trade mission to bury his mother, there was no suggestion he abused anyone (except, I was told by my spies on the flight, me – after he found out what I, after a few wines, had written about the trade-mission fiasco for that Friday’s NBR).

In any event, both Ms Dyson and Mr Groser were valuable to their prime ministers and governments.  Mr Gilmore has no such advantage.

He has no redeeming political features at all, and I doubt he will even make the list come the next election, despite his impressive CV.

To say Mr Gilmore’s political career is going nowhere is an understatement.

Reportedly never popular even within the National Party in his home district of Canterbury, he was National’s 2008 sacrificial lamb in the safe Labour seat of Christchurch East, losing to Labour’s Lianne Dalziel by over 5000 votes.

Nevertheless, he snuck into parliament on the list, but received no promotion in his first term as an MP, indicating the low regard in which he is held by John Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce, and much of the rest of the National cabinet and caucus.

Meanwhile, his 2008 contemporaries Nikki Kaye, Simon Bridges, Hekia Parata, Amy Adams and Michael Woodhouse have become ministers, and the next in line for ministerial jobs, Todd McClay and Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, already chair the powerful Finance and Expenditure and Social Services select committees respectively.  There will never be any such promotions for Mr Gilmore.

Undeterred at having achieved nothing in his first term except attract publicity over a false CV, he sought re-election but was awarded the lowest place on National’s 2011 list among incumbents except for newbie Jami-Lee Ross, only elected as MP for Botany earlier that year, and the unloved Paul Quinn.  He was also put up again for Christchurch East.

In the 2011 election, it turned out that is not just National Party officials and MPs that seem to have a particular dislike of Mr Gilmore but also the good voters of Christchurch East.

His career, such as it is is over. He may as well just piss off. He won’t though such is his hubris.

As of this morning, the Prime Minister and his office appear almost to be begging for a formal complaint from the Heritage Hotel which they could hand over to Ms Upston as a first step towards getting rid of Mr Gilmore.

Any of the next few names on National’s list – Claudette Hauiti, Jo Hayes or Leonie Hapeta – would offer the party more in terms of electoral appeal than Mr Gilmore.

But they do have to move carefully.

Unlike, say, NZ First, National is a democratic party and, as Jim Bolger found with Mr Peters, Bill English with Maurice Williamson and Don Brash with Brian Connell, it is extremely hard to get rid of a recalcitrant MP.  Even in the recent NZ First case, Mr Peters failed to drum the disgraced Brendan Horan out of parliament altogether.

Mr Key just announcing Mr Gilmore is fired achieves nothing.  He needs to be encouraged to resign.

Of course, he probably won’t.  Mr Gilmore will never get a job as well paid as this one, especially now we know he doesn’t have the high-level finance-sector qualifications that were once claimed.

Right now, for doing pretty much nothing, he earns $142,000 a year, plus free air travel and subsidised Bellamy’s booze.

Sadly, he’s probably not going anywhere.

Unless of course all the other scandals associated with Aaron Gilmore surface in short order. They will.

Don Brash has suggested the government axe interest free student loans in order to assist in paying for the Christchurch re-build.

Former National Party and ACT leader Don Brash says the Government should use the increased cost of the Christchurch rebuild as an excuse to ditch interest-free student loans.

Prime Minister John Key yesterday said the estimated cost of rebuilding the quake-hit city was now $40 billion, up from $30 billion in December. The direct cost to the taxpayer has been bumped up by another $2 billion, but Mr Key said this wouldn’t impact on the Government’s plan to get the books back into surplus by 2014/15.

Speaking on Firstline this morning, Dr Brash said the last Labour Government introduced “a number of very unfortunate spending programmes” which should be cut back.

“National criticised those… but has left them all in place,” he says.

“You’d think with the Christchurch earthquake costing the Government itself an estimated $15 billion, they would have used that to explain to New Zealanders why some of those programmes have to change.”  Read more »

In 2004 the political dynamic changed with Don Brash’s Orewa speech. Don said what a good cross section of New Zealand were thinking, New Zealand should be a place where there is one standard of citizenship, and Maoris should stop bludging.

Don’s speech reached out to middle New Zealand who couldn’t understand why Maori were getting so much tax payer largess, and why taxpayers should be funding them. His speech touched a raw nerve that the liberal elite didn’t know existed, and got a huge number of voters to consider voting National. Don stood up to PC bullshit, and for the first time National had Helen Clark under pressure as Prime Minister.

Grant, being a confirmed member of the liberal elite, and having lived most his adult life in the rarified airs of the beltway has apparently not taken on board this lesson. Waitakere Man (and Woman) don’t like seeing their kids miss out so Maoris can get ahead in the queue, yet Grant seems spectacularly unaware of this.  Read more »

I am on The Huddle this afternoon at 1740 with Larry Williams and Bill Ralston

• First up the Dotcon part two launch.
• The wash up from the Lance Armstrong attempts to save himself.
• Don Brash says that illegal workers in Christchurch should be left to get on with the rebuild rather than dealt with by the authorities.

You can listen online or through usual methods.

I will put up the audio tomorrow morning for those who miss it.

This story from John Armstrong brought back memories…

An angry David Shearer intends to confront the threat to his leadership by telling David Cunliffe this week to put up or shut up regarding a challenge to his job.

First memory:
Just yesterday David Shearer was telling us Cunliffe was on totally board.

He refused to say whether Cunliffe would be disciplined for refusing to rule out a challenge and insisted he had no reason to doubt Cunliffe’s loyalty.

“He gave me his loyalty last week . . . I can only take him on his word.”

Second memory:
Bill English tried something similar with Don Brash.  Note to Shearer – make sure your numbers man can count. (Don’t use Farrar)

Third memory:
Banishing Maurice Williamson to the back bench for white-anting the leader worked for Bill English – Not.

Fourth memory:

Matthew Hooton examines the lunacy of Labour and the Greens:

Labour, the Greens and their cheerleaders are delirious about work by staffers at the International Monetary Fund.

Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy was written in 2010 by French and Italian nationals Olivier Blanchard, Giovanni De’Ariccia and Paolo Mauro. Professor Blanchard has followed it up with Monetary Policy in the Wake of the Crisis.

The work is being cited by Labour’s David Parker and the Green’s Russel Norman as justifying all sorts of nonsense, including Dr Norman’s loony idea of printing money despite the official cash rate being above zero.

Left-wing cheerleaders Selwyn Pallett [sic], John Walley and Rod Oram have picked up the theme at events like the EPMU’s “crisis” summit.

Profound changes, we’re told, are needed to New Zealand’s monetary and wider economic policy. Funnily enough, their proposals would transfer wealth to Mr Pallett [sic] and Mr Walley from savers, consumers, taxpayers and the EPMU’s lower-paid workers.

Selwyn Pellett just absolutely loves corporate welfare.

On the role of government, Professor Blanchard argues for much tighter fiscal policy in good times, saying that when economic growth returns, as it has in New Zealand, countries must reduce their debt-to-GDP ratios rather than increase spending or cut tax.

The left has been strangely silent about that.

He also thinks legislators should consider giving central banks additional monetary tools, a debate which is not new. Even Don Brash has floated ideas such as the Reserve Bank being able to impose a mortgage rate levy, or vary GST or petrol taxes at the margins.

Professor Blanchard is particularly keen to debate how monetary and regulatory policy could be better combined. In leading that debate, he acknowledges the risk that too many tools and too many interventions could be distortionary and harmful.

He worries that, if central banks started being in charge of too many instruments, they would then be responsible for picking favourites among different sectors of the economy (say, Mr Pallett [sic] and Mr Walley over savers and consumers).

That, in turn, would raise questions of whether or not they could or should continue to be independent from politicians.

Labour politicians are even signalling that they want control over even private companies like Fisher & Paykel and a say over their own affairs when seeking capital or even to sell.

The Backbenchers pub in Wellington is counting its casualties from the fire in June

Among the casualties are United Future leader Peter Dunne, Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples and former ACT leaders Rodney Hide and Don Brash.

“They are gone, finished, washed up – whatever,” Mr Boyce said.

Perhaps Dunne should take this as a sign? Sharples has indicated he is going and Hide and Brash are long gone.

Tau Henare has opened up a large can of worms that National would have preferred not to have to deal with. His realpolitik approach hasn’t been seen in National since Bill English was rolled by Don Brash, and there are three intakes of MPs who have never experienced a good old fashioned dust up like this.

This demonstrates something have overlooked. John Key and Steven Joyce have been indifferent to many on the backbenches, capable people who should have been offered a job inside or outside of parliament, rather than being treated like lepers. Joyce has made no effort to build a rapport or any good will with members of caucus he doesn’t rate, relying on Key’s popularity to keep them all in line. He has not been aided by a staff who make it clear backbenchers are the lowest form of life imaginable and should not be even talking to the obviously morally superior staff.

The problem with this approach is that there are many disgruntled MPs who wonder why they would hang around just to protect John Key and Steven Joyce’s power. For a strategist Joyce has been silly in overlooking that there are MPs who could cause trouble if not shown that there is reward for good behaviour.

Joyce has created an environment where MPs are actively talking about options like Tau has taken, grabbing whatever they can, knowing that under MMP Joyce can’t afford MPs crossing the floor. With no prospect of a promotion or a big job to look forward to, MPs become embittered and start wondering how they can cause problems.

My sources are telling me that more problems are going to pop up.

John Armstrong talks about Mark Mitchell being asked to take a dive to let Colin Craig win Rodney to give National a life line. The precedent is when Don Brash endorsed Rodney Hide in Epsom, at the expense of Richard Worth, and Paul Goldsmith was told not to campaign in Epsom in exchange for a safe list position.

The difference between Worth, Goldsmith and Mitchell is Mitchell has a safe blue seat, he has a 20 year career ahead of him, and like most National back benchers it is in his best interests to see National go into opposition so he can get a promotion when all the senior people leave.

Richard Worth was dependent on Don Brash for a job after 2005 so he toed the line. Paul Goldsmith does what he is told and knew what he was getting into when he ran for Epsom. Paul has admirable ideological perspectives but this does not necessarily translate to vote winning. Mark Mitchell, on the other hand, has huge vote winning potential, a strong electorate infrastructure who are now all behind him, and a bright future that becomes only brighter if National loses in 2014.

It is hard to see Mark Mitchell take a dive. A guy who has a track record like Mark likes a scrap, and won’t shy away from one no matter who it is with. Peter Goodfellow is scarcely going to have him quivering in his boots. Mark is used to facing really scary people like armed offenders as a police officer and a whole lot of seriously bad, heavily armed arabs in the middle east, hell bent on killing him.

Really stern words from Peter Goodfellow or Greg Hamilton will likely be met with a polite “Get Fucked”. Far better that National looks to throw McCully under the bus if they really want Colin Craig holding them to ransom.