Nick Smith

Bob Parker is an idiot. Only he would not be able to see the problem with troughing it up on an overseas trip while his city is in turmoil, firstly from ongoing earthquakes but also from his own vainglorious ineptitude and the foolishness of his CEO. Things aren’t helped either when the Mayoress posts the article on her Facebook page as a sort of in your face “nyah,nyah,nyah, I’m going on a trip” attitude.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker will take part in a two-week tour of Asia less than a fortnight after a Crown observer was appointed to monitor the city council.

Parker said he was comfortable that his absence would not have a significant impact on the council, despite saying last week that the organisation was “standing on the edge of a precipice”.

Local Government Minister Nick Smith said last week that he had appointed former Nelson mayor Kerry Marshall as a Crown observer to monitor the council and report back to the Government.

The move followed criticism of the council’s performance and calls for Government intervention.

Parker and wife Jo Nicholls-Parker will leave next Tuesday for a tour of several Asian countries, including China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

The trip has been organised by Christchurch International Airport to encourage more airlines to visit the city.

Airport chief executive Jim Boult said the airport had invited Parker and his wife to take part in the 15-day tour last year, after planning started in mid-2011.

Boult said the couple’s presence had helped the airport to “get in some doors we would otherwise find difficult to get through”.

How about Bob just stays away and doesn’t come back.

There were loads of nominations. This may well be the largest poll I have conducted.

According to my commenters here are who we should be considering for the Whaleoil Award for Best Electorate MP.

Sam Lotu Iiga – Nominated by a Maungakiekie resident who says:

…as a Maungakiekie resident of 34 years who has seen this electorate transform from the Labour stronghold of Onehunga held in succession by Hugh Watt, Fred Gerbich, the tosspot trougher Richard Northey & the likeable Mark Gosche. Sam took the seat out in fine style as a rank outsider in 2008 by 1900 votes and increased his margin to almost 3000 in 2011. As a bonus he helped his good mate Alfred Ngaro into the house & enabled us to rid ourselves of detested unionist Carol Beaumont.

Sam is often criticised for not performing to his utmost in order to secure promotion to ministerial ranks but the fact is that he spends far too much of his time doing what great constituency MPs do. His office door is invariably open and he lends his support regardless of race, colour or creed.

Chris Hipkins - did pretty extraordinarily well to retain Rimutaka by such a large margin despite Labour being whipped in the party vote. He worked his arse off for that electorate in the last three years. Like him or not, good on him. While supposedly experienced campaigners and high fliers like Burns, Cosgrove, Ardern, Speuloni and Little all lost winnable marginal seats, Hipkins has made Rimutaka his seat for life by being an active and appreciated local MP.

Damien O’Connor - for sticking up for himself, dropping off the list and going for it in the electorate alone. That took some balls. Most of all for calling it like it is:
“I wouldn’t trust them. Between a gaggle of gays and some self-serving unionists, I’m not sure that a straight shooter such as myself would be  given a fair deal.”

Kate Wilkinson – for exiting Clayton Cosgrove in Waimakiriri despite the constant sledging of the usual Labour nasties, notably Trevor Mallard. To unseat Cosgrove takes some doing and Kate must have convinced a great many constituents that she would represent them better than Clayton Cosgrove.

Nicky Wagner – for see ing off Lord Burns of Marlborough and working terribly hardlocally to secure the support fo the locals after a lifetime of Labour representation.

Nikki Kaye – took the seat off Labour and Judy T, then held it against Jacinda Ardern. Reportedly knocked on over 10,000 doors. Stuck up for locals on Great Barrier over mining and went against the party bosses.

Nick Smith – for making Nelson a fortress for Nick Smith.

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Cactus Kate has reviewed some of the younger and lower profile candidates this election.

David Seymour: “…David built his own car. Not many candidates standing for Parliament in 2011 can claim they would have the first clue how to do that. That makes him slightly cooler than the other kids.

My original impression of David is that was is need of a good trip to Vegas, whereby he would ideally meet some hookers Hangover style in a hot tub and spend three days in a coke-induced stuper before returning to real life whereby he would take himself a little less seriously. I still have that impression. He is a young face, but more representative of the uptight sort of youth you would find still living at home with their parents. You could imagine David in a bar talking the varnish off the bar stool at 2am about Hayek and Von Mises than actually enjoying his free time chasing tail.”

Stephen Whittington: “…like all these kiddie candidates, academically extremely bright but at age 25 I cannot find being debated to about employment law, welfare, foreign policy actually all that credible. His main achievement outside of being at the embryonic stage of this tax law path to doom, is as a debating champion. Fine. But it is wearing thin top advertise yourself as in 2009 “the 15th best speaker in the world”. Not one journalist has asked if this includes or excludes Obama least of all worked out how the claim is measured. His performances on television have been good but listening to him he needs to remember he is speaking to people and not constantly in a debating contest. It is all too intense.”

Simon O’Connor: “O’Connor looks like the sort of person who has trained his whole life and never actually practised anything. He is alleged to have four degrees which in itself shows the lack of confidence and over-compensation to actually achieve anything outside the safe confines of the University moss for fear of being under-qualified when dealing with adults. I mean who on earth needs four degrees when their aim always has been to be an MP or otherwise snot grovel their way through the National Party and its connections? O’Connor even trained as a Priest and then never went through with that either.”

Paul Two-Fathers:  “Foster-Bell has gained somewhat of a cult following in Wellington Central with his doppleganger Grant Robertson. A difficult looking, esoteric man who cannot decide which parent he wishes to represent in his surname, he holds a Degree in Archaeology and a Diploma of Business. Such a background will really only make him perfect for removing the Labour Party front bench from the rubble on Sunday and studying their dinosaur-like bones before selling them to offshore museums to the highest bidders through his diplomatic connections.

The funniest thing about Paul is that he claims to be of “English, Scots and Maori descent”. I don’t quite know where the Maori comes in. Perhaps his mother talked to one in 1972 while bringing the washing in? The least funny thing is he spent seven years working for MFAT. And he is a “Blue Green” which means he believes in the lunatic carbon trading scheme and hugs Nick Smith at random.”

The Nelson Mail on Saturday reported Maryan Street saying:

“She admits that her primary focus is on securing party votes for Labour, and that the party’s dream of knocking Dr Smith out of the electorate is “much longer term”.

So while she says “I’m serious about wanting to be the MP for Nelson”, she admits in the next breath ”I don’t know what my chances are”.

I’ll tell you what her chances are…they’re hopeless…Nick Smith will slay her, again.

Apparently Labour are going to “wipe the smug grin” off Nick Smith’s face in Nelson. Labour’s inept campaign takes another inept step toward oblivion.

Someone needs to tell them they are dreaming.

Nick Smith is one of the most popular electorate MPs in the country because he has done a bloody good job for two decades representing his voters. He is not known as Nick For Nelson for nothing, and his stats are better than just about any other National MP whatever way you measure them for winning more votes than National.

This is not just opinion. The election results bear out this:

National Party     15,378         SMITH, Nick    NAT    20,471
Labour Party     13,689         STREET, Maryan    LAB    12,000

So National have a majority of
1,689 over Labour and Nick has a majority of 8471 over Maryan.

I may disagree with Nick on a range of issues but he is the most frequent winner of the Politician of the Week Award because he gets so much right. He an example of a brilliant electorate MP, and Nelson is his seat for life even though it should be a swing seat, because he as never forgotten who sends him to parliament every three years.

When Labour do a campaign review they need to look closely at their candidates who don’t even win the all the Labour voters. As the numbers show, Maryan Street lost at least 1689 Labour voters, indicating she is a bloody terrible MP at serving her constituents.  If Labour are serious about winning Nelson they need to replace Maryan. Preferably with someone who isn’t as sour as a grapefruit and doesn’t represent the failed identity politics that is so last decade.

Hot on the heels of Phil Goff telling the truth about the the ETS, John Key has got into the game.

Key and Nick Smith have always said their ETS will be fiscally neutral.  It was even part of their election manifesto:

[The ETS] should be fiscally neutral rather than providing billions of dollars in windfall gains to the government accounts at the expense of businesses and consumers.  National does not think it’s responsible for government to use green initiatives to pad the Crown coffers while thinning out Kiwis’ wallets.

Since the election, John Key and Nick Smith have kept up this lie, saying their ETS would be fiscally neutral.

But yesterday, John Key finally told the truth.  He said that bringing agriculture into the ETS would raise money for the Government:

They are bring farming into the ETS two years earlier, so they gain revenue of $355m.

What’s in the water in Wellington?  After years of lying and saying the ETS is an environmental policy rather than a taxation-by-stealth policy, now both the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister are both telling the truth about it!

Labour has said it will use the Emissions Trading Scheme to fund its R&D policy.  At least they are finally being honest that the ETS is not an environmental policy and nothing more than a tax.

Back when David Parker was Climate Change Minister, he advised the Chairman of the ETS Select Committee, Charles Chauvel, in a secret paper that the ETS would raise $21 billion in extra tax by 2030.  That’s why Michael Cullen and the Treasury always supported the ETS even though they knew it would hurt the economy – it was a dishonest way of raising taxes.

The paper was kept secret and Labour always denied the ETS would raise tax – but Whaleoil has been given a copy by a deepthroat in the Treasury.

Nick Smith and Bill English are also lying when he says the ETS is fiscally neutral.   Smith supports the ETS because he is a mad greenie and his mate English supports it because he wants the $21 billion.

So, congrats to Labour’s Phil Goff for finally telling the truth – the ETS is all about taking money out of our pockets and handing it over to the Treasury to spend.

Letter From Minister Re Revenue and CPR 30 May 2008

I was down at Turangi this morning and the dogs flushed this cat up a tree.

Federal Pheasant #5 and my Beretta AL391 Urika from Hamills sorted it out. It didn’t have a collar.

For the sooks and bleeding hearts out there Feral cats are evil. Ask Nick Smith or your local smelly greenie.

David Farrar is obviously traveling around New Zealand promoting his pinko world view in a warm up for this years blog mobile, and stopped off in Napier.

Had a breakfast coffee this morning in Napier with local MP Chris Tremain.Was amused that around two out of three people walking past stopped to greet him – one seat where the MP has no problems with recognition. Also noted that he seemed to know most of them by name also – one of the nice things about provincial seats.

In the current parliament there are three guys who have earned a reputation for holding their seats because of a personal connection with everyone in the seat. John Carter, Nick Smith and Clayton Cosgrove. When times are tough for their side they still win. They all have a huge personal premium that is only attained my massive hard work of a long period of time.

National Party     15,378         SMITH, Nick    NAT    20,471
National Party     17,703         CARTER, John    NAT    19,889
Labour Party     12,702         COSGROVE, Clayton    LAB    16,360

These guys are all veterans who have proved their worth to their electorates. Cosgrove routinely gets mocked by this blog for his performance in Wellington, but as MP for Waimakariri he has built the kind of personal connections that is very hard to beat unless you have a really good opponent.

National Party     16,772         TREMAIN, Chris    NAT    20,898

Chris Tremain hasn’t been in parliament as long as the others, but he has built a massive majority over the party vote that only comes from knowing people in the electorate. Like Nick, John and Clayton, Napier is Chris’ seat for as long as he wants it because of the hard work he has put in as MP, and because he is known by so many voters.

For that reason Stuart Nash really would be better advised to pop over to Tukituki with his Fire Engine where a red fire engine beats a gay ute any time and where a campaign slogan like “Rooting for the Bay” will really get some momentum.

Much and all that it grates, it needs to be done, through gritted teeth. Nick Smith is Politician of the Week

“Cantabrians have been through enough trauma without charlatans preying on people’s natural fears.”

Lets start calling people by their proper names. Ken Ring is a Charlatan. Nick Smith tells Ken Ring what he really is.

Charlatan:–noun
a person who pretends or claims to have more knowledge or skill than he or she possesses; quack.