Referendum

The Green/Labour petition opposing asset dales has failed. Despite the thousands of dollars of taxpayers money the Green/Labour parties threw at this petition it has failed, coming up 16,500 signatures short.

The Clerk of the House has released the following press statement:

The Clerk of the House of Representatives Mary Harris has today certified that this petition has lapsed because she cannot be satisfied that the threshold required by the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993 has been met. The Clerk has been assisted in reaching this conclusion by advice from the Government Statistician.  Read more »

Len Brown is being called out by Cameron Brewer who accuses him of failing to deliver on promises to hold a referemdum on road pricing.

Eighteen months ago, Auckland Mayor Len Brown promoted a public referendum over the council’s preferred option to address Auckland’s $12 billion transport funding gap. With the Consensus Building Group set to release a discussion document tomorrow on its proposed additional funding options, the Mayor should recommit to his idea of a referendum following public consultation and the council adopting a position.

On 18 October 2011 when the Mayor was talking up the concept of tolling Auckland’s existing motorway network he stated on National Radio that ‘if we had a referendum, then I think that would really clarify things and give a pretty strong mandate over and above the mandate that I already as leader of the city’.

Len Brown has promised a referendum, talked it up, now where is it?  Read more »

Russel Norman isn’t blessed with an abundance of brains…after all he got his doctorate by studying the Alliance party.

However he has just destroyed any legitimacy his taxpayer funded political party initiated referendum might have had by declaring in a press release:

90 percent of Kiwis not interested in Key’s asset sales

The overwhelming majority of New Zealanders have not registered any interest in buying shares in companies that already belong to them, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today.

The Government is claiming that over 425,000 people have pre-registered for the Mighty River Power float. Even ignoring the fact that many fake registrations have been lodged, that means 90% of Kiwis have not registered.  Read more »

The Green Taliban have produced a taxpayer-funded online video (see the crest?) boasting about the role they played in the jack up referendum they’ve sorted out with Labour and the trade unions – using yet more taxpayer money.

I’ve fixed it for them.  Read more »

The recently presented referendum was bought and paid for by your taxpayers. In a shameless picking of the taxpayers pockets by Labour, the Green Taliban and their fellow travellers, they have rorted the CIR process for their own political benefit.

David Farrar has released leaked documents that show the extent to which they planned to manipulate the process.

A mole has leaked to me a couple of strategy documents from Labour and Greens on the referendum they have just purchased with our money. The documents are embedded below, and they show the extent of taxpayer resources used to purchase this referendum.

CIRs are meant to be about the public being able to send a message to MPs, not MPs using taxpayer funds to relitigate an election result. Some key revelations:

• They aimed for 400,000 signatures as they knew a fair proportion would be found to be invalid.
• At the 300,000 mark the Greens collected 150,000, Labour 105,000 and Unions 40,000. The Greens are the ones who used taxpayer funding to hire petition collectors.
• Labour pledged 30 hours per week staff time from their taxpayer funded budget
• Greens were using their permament taxpayer funded staff to co-ordinate
• The unions had a paid national co-ordinator
• They refer to unions gathering “car loads” of organisers and activists to travel to areas
• For their day of action, Greens said they will committ five full-time staff – presumably all taxpayer funded, if Labour does the same. That’s 10 taxpayer funded organisers.
• A list of unions to pressure to do more, including PPTA, NZEI, Nurses Organisation – minority shares in power companies of course being key education and health issues!  Read more »

The Green Taliban and Labour have looted the public coffers to conduct a political party initiated referendum, but according to Phil Goff, the former Labour leader we already had a referendum on asset sales…in November 2011:

Read more »

via paulineh.com

I think the Asset Sale protestors have been caught napping at their computers.  They have been so busy buying collecting signatures for the power company asset sales referendum, this one has slipped under their radar altogether:

…state-owned Kordia has confirmed its retail ISP business, Orcon, is on the block.

“Kordia has been in discussions regarding the sale of Orcon with several parties over a number of months.  Interest in the business intensified following the announcement of the integration with Kordia in November last year,” a spokesman said.

Read more »

Two sensible left wing commentators in as many days have started to question the validity of Labour’s focus on asset sales as a strategy.

Lew at Kiwipolitico was damning:

If it wasn’t already over on the night of 26 November 2011, the argument about the popular legitimacy of the government’s plan to partially privatise selected state-owned enterprises was finally put to bed when the pre-registration website for the Mighty River Power float fell over shortly after it went live. Whether this was a result of intentional underprovisioning to generate buzz or genuine organic demand doesn’t matter: within 24 hours100,000 people had pre-registered interest in buying shares. That’s about one-third of the signatures opponents of the scheme took seven months to collect to force a citizens initiated referendum. The battle over whether these assets will be sold has been well and truly lost, and expending more political firepower on it is futile. The left needs to start organisaing around how they will be run.

When people like Lew are telling them the game is up, it really is:  Read more »

The Argies are all mouth and no trousers, especially that silly bint that runs the show.

The broken-arsed Argies haven’t got the balls to man up for a decent fight:

Argentina will continue to press its claim to the Falkland Islands despite the “illegal” referendum on the territory’s sovereignty due next week, the country’s ambassador to London said on Monday.

Alicia Castro declared that the “100 per cent predictable” plebiscite would change nothing.

On Monday, the Falkland Islanders will vote on whether to remain a British Overseas Territory in a referendum supported by the Government as a visible expression of the Islanders’ right to self determination.  Read more »

The government’s mixed ownership model is underway and it is looking very popular.

A $1 million advertising campaign will today kick off the Government’s bid to spark a rush for shares in the first sale of state assets in more than a decade.

Investment experts expect hundreds of thousands of people to get in the queue when the Government starts building a list of potential buyers in Mighty River Power shares – attracted by no brokerage fees and a loyalty bonus limited to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents.

Prime Minister John Key yesterday reiterated the Government’s promise that Kiwis would be first in the queue for shares and said he would hold to his election-year promise to aim to keep ownership of at least 85 per cent of Mighty River Power in New Zealand hands. Of that, 51 per cent will be the stake that remains in Government ownership.

A website launched today will be accessible only from within New Zealand as a sign of the Government’s sensitivity. “The Government’s intentions are crystal clear; that is . . . New Zealanders at every turn are favoured,” Mr Key said.

But opponents are accusing the Government of ignoring widespread opposition to asset sales. They have collected nearly 400,000 signatures in a bid to force a referendum.  Read more »