National Party

The Young Nats have a great remit at the regional conference in Auckland calling for the repeal of the draconian and unprecedented Section 97 of the Employment Relations Act 200.

Good on the Young Nats for manning up to the enemy.

Unions are the enemy, there is no such thing as good faith with unions, but National don’t get it.

Unions fund Labour. They buy seats in the house for union hacks. They buy legislation like Section 97. They have 20% of the votes in the choice for Labour Leader. They are the funding wing of the Labour Party, and they are the enemy.  Read more »

The Young Nats’ Mitchell Baker has a great remit at the National Party Northern Region Conference this weekend, calling for the repeal of Section 97 of the Employment Relations Act 2000. Section 97 was bought by the union funders of the Labour Party, to give them disproportionate power in contract negotiations.

Section 97 was unprecedented. It did the following:

1.    Removed the right for employers to use others, including volunteers, management and workers from other divisions during strikes.

2.    Allowed Unions to hold primary production operations to ransom, knowing that no labour in a milk factory meant millions of dollars a day of wasted milk.

3.    Removed the right for employers to test the market to determine if union demands are fair.

Unions bought this legislation to skew the playing field in their favour and put business at a disadvantage. New Zealand has had labour related legislation for over 100 years, prior legislation including that passed by previous Labour governments has never had anything like Section 97. There was no prohibition on use of replacement labour in The Employment Contracts Act 1991, or its predecessors, the Labour Relations Act 1987, the Industrial Relations Act 1973, the Industrial Relations Act 1949, the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1925 or 1908.

Unions are good at buying legislation mainly because no one on the right is ever willing to call it for what it is.

This is very different from the way Labour squeals like a little girl over things like Sky City’s convention center.

National should follow Mitchell Baker’s lead and man up to the enemy rather than running away from them the moment they squawk.

Further to my earlier post about the Young Nat remit, a reader emails:

Hi Cam,

Picking up on your blog on this.  Your readers may be interested to know how successful remits are at National Party conferences.

Last year, a remit from the Young Nats (if I recall correctly) asked that the requirement for employers to collect and pass on union fees be removed from the law.  The remit passed at the Northern Regional Conference and then passed UNANIMOUSLY on the plenary floor of the annual conference here in Auckland.

Where has that got to?  Is Simon Bridges doing anything about that?  Read more »

The National Party’s Northern Region is being held at Waipuna in Auckland this weekend. In what could be a pretty dull weekend the Young Nats have decided to twist the party by the tail and put forward a remit calling for action on industrial relations.

Section 97 of the Employment Relations Act is a terrible piece of legislation that has been responsible for most of the industrial action in New Zealand in the last five years. Good on the Young Nats for recognising how damaging this is to the economy.

7. Young Nats Mitchell Baker

That Section 97 of the Employment Relations Act 2000 be repealed to allow temporary staff to be hired during a strike or lockout.  Read more »

Again from my posts about National pushing to subsidise a dam:

Bludging farmers would contribute more if they didn’t bludge off the taxpayer. Why should taxpayers pay to support them? If they need an irrigation project then get a business case together, get some investors in and build the thing. If it makes economic sense then there is no reason to force people to pay for it; if it doesn’t make economic sense then there is no point in doing it.  Read more »

I don’t know why politicians even bother sometimes.

Social media is supposed to be about engagement sometimes it is about stupidity.

I’d love to see the instruction sent out to back benchers about the housing changes…I just bet it says “Hey you, insignificant back bencher…write something.”

And so they did…exactly that:  Read more »

It looks like the back-room boys have done their work after the call went out mid-week that the board wasn’t getting anywhere.

Some calls have been made, some stern words been had, and Aaron Gilmore is gone. Job done.

Disgraced National List MP Aaron Gilmore has announced he will resign from Parliament.

“It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that I announce my intention to resign from Parliament,” Mr Gilmore said in a statement.

“After taking counsel from colleagues and family in recent days, I have decided that to stay on in Parliament would only serve to cause my loved ones more upset, and cause me undeserved further stress.”

Mr Gilmore said media scrutiny in recent days since reports of his night out in Hanmer Springs where he was abusive to a waiter had “put me and those who are important to me under immense pressure with an attempt to discredit me”.

“I have made mistakes. I am human. But the attacks on my integrity have started taking a toll on those around me and this is unfair on them.”

Mr Gilmore said he’d advised the National Party’s whips of his decision.

“I also want to make clear my support for the National Party and Prime Minister John Key remains unwavering.”

Questions now need to be asked about some key members of the board and their performance over the past few weeks, notably Peter Goodfellow and Roger Bridge.

A couple of phone calls and the knifing was done…that is how it should be done not endless conference calls with yelling and finger-pointing.

More damaging and threatening Aaron Gilmore emails have been released. Once again we see that Aaron Gilmore is extremely economical with the truth.

Embattled National list MP Aaron Gilmore was warned by a Government department over inappropriate emails.

The emails were not sexually explicit but had an “inappropriate tenor”, the Ministry Of Business Innovation and Employment said.

Gilmore was employed as a contractor for the the-then Department of Building  and Housing from May to November last year. He was a senior policy analyst.

Read the emails here.

Gilmore’s contract was due to be extended to Christmas but Crisp said this did not happen “as a result of this behaviour”.

He rang the analyst to personally apologise.

Prime Minister John Key’s chief of staff Wayne Eagleson was told Gilmore’s contract would not be renewed because “there had been an issue” – but did not detail the complaint.

Those emails make this statement on TV last night a bit of a problem.  Read more »

Peter Goodfellow’s fundraising prowess has disappeared, with National only raising a bit over $750,000 last year, after raising more than $2.6m the year before. Anyone in the business community will not be surprised, as Peter has been lazy when it comes to maintaining relationships with donors.

Sources inside National HQ are saying that the poor fundraising performance means that the Board is seriously thinking about increasing the Victory Fund contribution from electorates.  Read more »

Ele Ludemann is a blogger and a long time servant of the National party. She is also a decent hard working person, one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet.

She writes on her blog a letter to Aaron Gilmore. I suggest he reads it. I suggest he thinks long and hard about what it says and I suggest he quietly resigns before anymore damage is done to his already poor reputation, and especially his family. For her to write this letter shows how deeply angry and disappointed she is. Normally Ele would work quietly behind the scenes.

Dear Aaron,

If you were at the Mainland Conference in Hanmer to the end you’d have heard West Coast Tasman MP Chris Auckinvole’s final words.

You might remember him talking about the importance of the two wings of the party, the MPs and the volunteers,  and the good that can be achieved when they’re working in unison.

That was before we knew you hadn’t been at the conference dinner as any MP who took his responsibility to the party seriously, and respected the volunteers, would have been.  Read more »