Helen Clark

The left wing here likes to bag New Zealand, but how do the Aussies see us…well, a little differently than you would imagine.

Larry Pickering makes some astute observations as Australia heads into election season.

New Zealand was on the brink of recession prior to the Conservative government of John Key taking the reins in 2008. This small economy of 4.4 million people is now preparing for a series of record surpluses… and without the help of a mining industry.

Helen Clarke’s [sic] Labour Government left the country facing severe recession with a bloated Public Service sector and disastrous losses due to her takeover of the NZ rail system.

Abbott could do worse than take a look across the Tasman when attempting to repair the damage left by the union government of Julia Gillard and the incompetency of Kevin Rudd.

Are unions really the problem? They seem to be in Australia, having never really really dealt with them like we did in the 90s.  Read more »

Fran O’Sullivan outlines her thoughts on the Green/Labour power sabotage:

It’s blatantly obvious that Labour and the Greens have been attempting to short the returns the National-led Government expects to receive through next week’s Mighty River Power float.

Yup, and the gloating of the likes of Gareth Hughes in his now infamous Hey Clint moment was brutally apparent.

[T]ilting at the style of the political intervention and asking the two parties to withdraw their interventionist plan is a waste of space. Not because of their own rationale in doing so (this was soundly based). But because Labour leader David Shearer and Greens leader Russel Norman don’t give a damn about such requests at the midway point of the electoral cycle.

The 10 leading business lobbyists – including major leaders such as BusinessNZ’s Phil O’Reilly and the Chamber of Commerce’s Michael Barnett – who sent a public letter to Labour and the Greens this week – know this in their bones.

They know that the two parties are “not for turning” (at least in the short term). It makes political sense for the politicians to damn the power companies as rapacious commercial beasts, led by overpaid directors and chief executives who will suck all the spare cash out at consumers’ expense.

This tactic works well for Labour and the Greens with their own political power base. Their supporters hate fat cats. Demonising the power company bosses could rile them enough to ensure more of Labour’s and the Greens’ voting base actually turn up to cast a vote in 2014. Or so the hope goes.  Read more »

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 »

Helen Clark’s government forecast a decade of deficits…National arrested that. In Australia Julia Gillard is similarly facing a decade of deficits despite promising many times to balance the books. Predictably the Liberals have attacked.

Australia faces a decade of budget deficits with the annual total set to pass $60 billion in 2023 unless governments take tough action to “share the pain”, an expert panel has warned.

The Grattan Institute’s assessment comes as Treasurer Wayne Swan confirms the budget has taken a $7.5 billion hit since the midyear update in October.

He told the ABC from Washington: “We have seen the terms of trade come down but the dollar didn’t move. That’s caused a hit, if you like a sledgehammer, to revenues in the budget since the midyear update of something like $7.5 billion. And of course the impact won’t just be in this financial year. It will also be across the forward estimates.”

The institute says that while notionally on track to surplus now, the combined state and federal budget deficits should reach 4 per cent of gross domestic product by 2023, which is about $60 billion in today’s dollars and would be about $100 billion in 10 years’ time.

Read more »

The NZ Herald has confirmed all suspicions that they are just a conduit for the Labour party by publishing this article by Rebecca Quilliam today.

I’ll be that plenty of other political parties issued press releases paying tribute to the service of the armed forces. Prime Minister John Key paid a personal tribute in Wellington while attending the dawn parade, while David Shearer was hiding behind the shirt tails of Helen Clark in New York.

It disgusts me that they run a partisan and one-sided, almost word for word Labour’s press release on behalf of the Labour party on Anzac day. it is only one paragraph different, the first one. I can’t believe Rebecca Quilliam put her by-line on it since three quarters of the words aren’t even her own.

How shameful, how embarrassing.

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.

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Labour is making much of crony appointments at the moment. From the sounds of it they will be implementing the Hipkins Standard quite forcefully when they get back in power.

Truth has helpfully published a list of crony appointments made during their term as a point of reference:

Most are former staffers, advisers, union flunkies, spouses of senior regime members, former MPs and some who were to become MPs.
All were appointed under Clark’s watch.
- Ross Armstrong,
- Lesley Soper,
- Simon Mitchell,
- Louisa Wall,
- Shane Jones,
- Graham Hill,
- Rosslyn Noonan,
- Warren Lindberg, Read more »

My good friend Brian Edwards, fresh from saying he wouldn’t be blogging, has…well…blogged. He has written about the media beat-up about the GCSB and John Key. First he talks about accessibility:

Most of the politicians I’ve worked with have found it difficult to call a halt to a stand-up session. They didn’t want to appear rude or look as though they were running away. But, just like the suspect in the police interview room, the more questions you answer, the more you explain, the more likely you are to get into trouble. This is John Key’s problem. He’s become far too accessible.

So Key’s options are to take a leaf out of Judith Collins’ book and part the journalistic waters without stopping or  limit his exchanges with journalists to formal press-conferences or pre-arranged set-piece interviews.

I’m for Option Two because I don’t think he can carry off Option One. Stopping and chatting is part of his genetic make-up and has held him in good stead for four years.  Read more »

Thankfully Helen Clark has been re-appointed to her role at the UNDP.

A friend of mine commented on Facebook, “That’ll keep her off the streets. Good fit Klark and the UN – go together like Trotsky and Lenin.”

Former prime minister Helen Clark has been appointed to a second term to one of the top United Nations jobs.

Clark, who has headed the United Nations Development Programme in New York for the last four years, has just been confirmed by the UN for another four year term.

In a statement, Clark said her priority during her second term remained sustainable human development and poverty eradication.  Read more »