Robert Muldoon

Chris Finalyson is perhaps the best Arts Minister one could find in the world. He loathes pretentious art.

The Parliamentary Art Collection, value $12 million, includes an artwork in shagpile that can only be described as a piece of its time.

That time is 1981 – the year of the underarm bowling scandal, the Springbok Tour, and the first hints of the trend that shoulder pads and big hair will become. The piece, Variation in Apricot, is considered ‘textile art’. It reportedly feels like touching a dirty dog.

Arts Minister Chris Finlayson’s immediate reaction is sotto voce: “S***, that’s awful.”

Then he gets closer and sees the plaque that says it was donated by the National Party caucus wives in 1981 – when Robert Muldoon was the Prime Minister.

“Oh my God,” he says, shamefaced at slighting the taste of such a group of women. He slams into reverse and hunts for a more diplomatic adjective than ‘awful.’

“It certainly is a unique contribution to the art collection in Parliament.

I couldn’t think of better lighting for it. It has been very carefully thought through.”

It is in a dark corridor of Parliament, in an area where no members of the public and few MPs would go.

There are other insults:  Read more »

What a shambles.  What a disgrace.

Labour’s circular firing squad reveals many things about the state of that party.  Firstly it reveals a lack of character on the part of its leader, a man incapable of leading by example, by stature, or by design.  Secondly it reveals a lack of cohesion between the caucus and its wider constituent bodies.  Thirdly it reveals the jealousies that exist at all levels of the party.

Shearer’s ritual dismissal of Cunliffe is not a new strategy.  Shearer and his lieutenants Trevor Mallard and David Parker have taken a leaf out of Julia Gillard’s book.  When faced with destabilisation from Kevin Rudd, Gillard wheeled out her caucus surrogates to denounce Rudd as a demagogue unfit to lead his party or his country.  Whereas Gillard had Wayne Swan, Simon Crean and Nicola Roxon, Shearer had Hipkins and Faafoi front the media to denounce Cunliffe as a destabilising force within the caucus.

Next Shearer demanded endorsement at the point of a gun, no debate, no dissent.  Having achieved ‘unanimous’ endorsement from his colleague, Shearer then dismissed Cunliffe to the back bench.  In effect Cunliffe is now the excuse for low opinion polls, a man who is to serve as toilet paper for Shearer’s failed leadership, languishing at the bottom of the Labour Party’s political long-drop.

The problem with this scenario however is Cunliffe alone is not to blame.  Labour has yet to move to a level of political support it realised when it lost office in 2008.  This is extraordinary.  Students of history will know Bill Rowling lost the 1975 election, but outpolled Robert Muldoon in 1978.  Mike Moore led Labour to a landslide defeat in 1990, but he came within one seat of winning in 1993.

Shearer leads a party approaching its fifth year in opposition and he shows no sign of leading a recovery.  Relying of a coalition of friends based on Russel Norman and Hone Harawira is a declaration of defeat, the conclusion of a failure of leadership that he Shearer’s responsibility and Shearer’s alone.

The leader of the Labour Party is incompetent, mangles his words, struggles with basic policy concepts, and has little or no feel for human behaviour.  How does he expect his diminishing band of party members to raise money and knock on doors when he has just thrown their preferred candidate for leader under the wheel of a bus?

And Shearer need not think his so-called KiwiBuild policy will make a blind bit of difference.  Communism-meets-lotto housing based on cheap homes situated on cheap land around train stations is hardly going to motivated 200,000 mortgage-paying voters to switch their party vote from National to Labour.

Cunliffe is no better off today than he was last week.  Yes he has been demoted off the front bench, but in a caucus of 34 led by David Shearer, it was never likely that Cunliffe was going to feature in a government any time soon.  Once Shearer accommodates Norman, Turei, Harawira, Sue Bradford, and a mandatory quota of feminist unionists and others from the Rainbow sector, what role would a white heterosexual male possibly have in a future Labour-led government?

However Cunliffe alone deserves the odium that he is coping.  A weak-kneed to Shearer’s ultimatum is a disappointing end.  Yes, Cunliffe should not have hedged at the weekend conference; the smart thing would have been to publicly endorse Shearer there and then.  But having been called on to front up, Cunliffe should have done just that and tested the resolve of the Labour caucus.  Having lost, he could have then resigned and moved to the back bench rather than being dumped by a political featherweight.

Cunliffe has been unwise to rely upon the likes of Charles Chauvel, Moana Mackey and Louisa Wall.  None of his core supporters represent the aspirations of mortgageville New Zealand, and none of them were likely to have the fortitude to go through the fire on behalf of their candidate.

Cunliffe is a vain and flawed man, and someone who is deserves to be disliked by his colleagues.  But Shearer is ten times worse, a leader who seeks strategic direction from Trevor Mallard.

Well might Labour members throw up their hands in horror.  As John Key rightly points out, how can they run the country if they can’t even run a conference?

The correct response now is for Labour’s rank and file to force all MPs to face selection contests.  A contest of ideas is the only way to force its caucus to align with the party that carries it.

A Guest Post by The Owl.

I certainly don’t agree with everything he says, but since he went to the bother of submitting it then far be it from me to judge.

DPB versus Assets Sales – Economic Game Changers

I can’t start to understand how my grandparents grew up through two World Wars, the Great Depression and a period of social change in the world during the 50’s 60’s and 70’s but what I do know is that my understanding of politics and the economy started when I left school and at the age of 23 and survived through the share market crash of the 80’s.

There has been two major periods of economic downturns in NZ and the world during my short but exciting life and both come after two dictatorial leadership reigns. Harsh comments I know but Robert Muldoon and Helen Clark were clearly strong leaders who fought hard for their economic beliefs.

In a weird but unusual way the country celebrated the change of Rogernomics (Labour) and Ruth Richardson (National) period of economic change – both cold, hard but ground breaking.

These periods of economic change did put the country in great stead and while Labour pushed through assets sales in a major way – their decisions were right. Ruth Richardson followed up by then adjusting the economy with fewer assets.

We celebrated as a country as the government was effectively debt free.

Then we had the nine years of the “nanny state” which effectively took all the cash we had and gave it to the “perceived poor”.  Chuck in a housing boom, a sad few days in the nation’s history with the Christchurch earthquake and we are now all struggling to see the light. They have called it the “credit crunch” or the “the great recession”.

The country needs a way forward. Don’t listen to the Greens who want to plant trees to pay for economic policies and hope that the spiders of this world will spin gold in their webs or the Union laden Labour Party who have a hung up on anyone who earns more than them or are deprived of same sex marriages, listen to your heart and head.

The Maoris’ claim to the water is right and just. Fortunately I think I know enough of the details to side with the tribunal however timing is everything and in this case the timing is poor.

The NZ economy is in the poo! It will be in the poo for years to come and we need game changing policies as with the Rogernomics and the Ruth Richardson periods.

Assets sales are a mixed model sale – one that everyone can live with – for the sake of future generations the country NEEDS a big cash injection and URGENTLY.

The cash injection is to pay for the social welfare policies thrust upon us by Labour, Unions and Helen Clark. This is the same attitude we need now that the Lange government needed to do to pay for the Muldoon Think Big projects.

My calculations are that we need a quick $5 Billion. We have two very simple choices – partial assets sales (as the Government has always said it was partial – so I don’t know where the perception of full assets sales has come from) or the policy I would prefer:

From 2014 there is no new Domestic Purpose Benefit (DPB). I would spend 1% of that existing budget on sex education and free contraception.

The stopping of DPB would generate $20 Billion in 4 years – we can keep the assets.

Here is the Owl’s game changing economic and social policies for 2014.

1. Halt all assets sales
2. From 2014 there will be no DPB – focus towards education and social responsibility of the young
3. Cancel 7 day a week trading – impact and betterment on family units and social activities (e.g. sports clubs which do a great and unrecognized social welfare service would increase dramatically). Tourism will not die and the industry would move towards promoting our outdoor lifestyle – why travel 10,000 miles to get drunk and buy the same label clothes you can get at home – this logic has never been understood by me.
4. Just absolutely crash down on crime and gangs – build 10 more prisons – remember 99% of NZ’ers doesn’t do crime yet we spend so much money on protecting ourselves. Prisons create jobs – so should have a huge economic and social benefit.
5. If you are unemployed then you must be available for work – Work brokers at WINZ do a fantastic job finding work for the unemployed.
6. Student Loans – pay them back – end of subject

Let’s start living again – there is a new generation of children growing up now who don’t know how to socially interact – it is called the “Me” generation – we need the “us” generation to rear its head.

The “Us” generation needs $5 Billion urgently

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

Sir Brian Talboys has died aged 91. I think I actually met Sir Brian at one time in the 80s.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Brian Talboys has died at the age of 91.

Sir Brian, who represented the Southland electorate of Wallace for eight elections from 1957, served as a Minister in the National Governments of Sir Keith Holyoake and Sir Robert Muldoon. He was Deputy Prime Minister under Muldoon from 1975 to 1981.

Born in Whanganui in 1921, Sir Brian served in the air force during World War II. After the war, he settled in Southland as a farmer and entered politics, winning the Wallace seat in 1957.

He was agriculture minister, science minister and then education minister under Holyoake, before becoming deputy leader of the National Party in Opposition in 1974, under Muldoon.

After National’s victory in the 1975 election, he became deputy prime minister and served in that role for the first two terms of the Muldoon Government, retiring in 1981.

There is a great deal of talk about raising the age of eligibility for National Superannuation. Every single person pushing this agenda misses the point. All that is going to do is push the bubble out a few years but the bubble still exists,

Instead of talking about eligibility around age we need to talk about eligibility full stop.

On talk back a couple of days back Leighton Smith talked about the old pension scheme when 1s and 6d was supposed to be put aside for retirement. Muldoon of course changed all that, but you constatly hear about a social contract to provide for all in their retirement going back to that 1 and 6 arrangement.

If you ask those same people moaning about how that was a contract and it was what was promised to them whether or not they believe the promises of any politician they will answer emphatically no…and yet they cling to the belief that this one single promise about reitrement is the one that politicians will somehow honour.

That is why I call the retired, the bewildered.

They say that they paid their taxes…and so they did, but they forget that they also had brand new schools, brand new hospitals, brand new infrastructure, welfare spending along the way, free education, free university tuition…basically a free ride that we are all now paying for…along with their retirement, which they want free as well…plus of course Winston Peters chucked even more money at the greedy oldies with the Gold Card.

They are bewildered and perplexed that the gravy train has to end.

We as a nation need to have a proper discussion about eligibility for superannuation rather than just tinker at the edges. If Labour really was trying to show how they were fiscally responsible with regard to retirement then they would be proposing and having a discussion about means testing, removing universality and scaling back entitlements. they don’t have the courage to do that, instead they grandstand on raising the age, and then bizarrely suggesting that we can afford to lower the age for “manual workers” to 60 at a cost of half a billion dollars we don’t have.

So while everyone castigates National for doing nothing, the one squawking the loudest are really only tinkering.

Where is the party with the mettle to grasp the nettle and sort out superannuation so that it is sustainable and only for those in need. Universality must go, means testing must be re-introduced and some serious honest discussions need to be had.

Earlier this week I promised a new series of clips from Winston’s long, long political career.

After his naked opportunism over the tea-pot tapes (which turned out to be a complete fizzer) I thought it might be worthwhile to remind Kiwis that Winston Peters is the king of sideshows.

I dug this out from my ’08 archives.  It seems the media are only the enemy, when it’s Winston being asked the questions.

Muldoon once said Peters had an ‘acute political mind’.  But one thing that Winston has never learned to say is sorry – because it’s never, ever his fault.

Paul Holmes outlines Phil Goff’s tragedy:

You can talk about policy until you’re blue in the face, but in the end I wonder if people vote on policy. I don’t think they do. Most people don’t give a rats about policy. If we like the leader we vote for him.

Except of course Phil Goff hasn’t talked policy at all, he has only shown us the nasty.

When Holyoake was National leader, we voted for Holyoake. When Kirk came along we voted for Kirk. When Muldoon came along, we voted for Muldoon.

Rowling had a silly voice, so people continued to vote for Muldoon.

The tragedy for Phil Goff was that when his time came, he’d been around too long and he’d been too many different things, projected too many hues depending on the vogue.

It’s not his fault. It’s the price of longevity. He does have a tendency to sound like the talking-book version of the documents he has to read, and there is a preachiness about him that the country has no time for.

Yep, no time at all. See ya Phil. The people will vote for a John Key led government.

Pedro Gower has been a bit of a dick lately. For someone who lives inside the beltway he does show and alarming lack of skill in the art of politics.

Don Brash has had enough of his antics….and told Pedro he is a “deceitful bastard”.

Cactus Kate is very happy with Don Brash’s show of some steel.In typical Cactus style Pedro is pwnd:

And just to top himself off today in pathetic repeating glory high-fiving all is junior colleagues on twitter, Patrick Gower cannot even spell the word deceitful, let alone claim that Dr Brash was telling porkies.

Old school reporters used to this sort of abuse from Sir Robert Muldoon should school the younger polytech grads in the media that Patrick is not a hero, he’s been punk’d for crying about it. And should be spanked by those around him for being the self-styled pride of the campaign and not managing to even spell the insult correctly. That is he fucked up the punchline.

From New Zealand this time. The famous Dancing Cossacks advert from the 1975 election:

The National Party’s 1975 ‘dancing Cossacks’ advertisement is probably the most famous – or infamous – piece of election advertising in New Zealand’s political history. In the first campaign held after the introduction of colour TV, National’s advertising agency, Colenso, engaged the famous American cartoon studio Hanna-Barbera to produce a colourful, animated advert.

National was trying to turn voters against the Labour government by suggesting that the latter’s recently introduced compulsory superannuation scheme might lead to Soviet-style Communism (conveniently ignoring the fact that the Cossack peoples had traditionally been opponents of the Bolsheviks). It did the trick too, helping sweep Robert Muldoon’s National Party into power in a landslide victory.

Trevor Mallard is Labour’s campaign manager, so it is with little surprise that the campaign is going to be dirty with plenty of muck flung. Mostly it will be flung by him or his assistants.

Readers need to be aware of Mallard’s history though. His history of telling lies, and his history of defaming people under parliamentary privilege.

So I will start a series looking back at Labour’s campaign manager and his history of muck-raking so we can all be under no illusions that whenever he opens his gob it is likely to be pouring forth lies, innuendo, defamatory comments and muck.

Mostly his slurs and attacks are simply fanciful, given credence only in his twisted mind. But in his long parliamentary career he has never stopped doing it. He continues to this day. Let’s look at the 80s in today’s post.

Tuesday, October 13, 1987

PERSONAL EXPLANATION—APOLOGY

TREVOR MALLARD (Hamilton West): With the leave of the House, I want to make a personal explanation under Standing Order 171 in relation to a supplementary question I asked during question time, in which I alleged that the member for Tamaki was a patron of the Mongrel Mob. It has been pointed out to me that he is not the patron of that gang, and I want to apologise.

So he flung dirt at Muldoon and was wrong. He had to apologise.

Tuesday, March 22, 1988

TREVOR MALLARD (Hamilton West): I request the leave of the House to make a personal explanation under Standing Order 171, about compliance orders.

John Banks: Apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no discussion on this matter. It is a question of the House granting leave. Is there any objection to leave being granted? There appears to be none.

TREVOR MALLARD: When I spoke in the debate I made an error about the method of review of the appointments of chief executives. A review can be done by the High Court, but not by the Labour Court. Therefore the Governor-General cannot be affected. I do not retract the comments I made about the effect of compliance orders on Ministers of the Crown under other clauses in the Bill.

Labour at the time was trying to stop public sector workers who refused to join the PSA access to the the provision of the Labour Relations Act. Not only that Labour’s Bill would have given the Public Service Association the statutory right, for the first time, to insist on compulsory unionism. But Mallard ruined his arguments by lying and then having to apologise tot eh house.

Tuesday, November 21, 1989

PERSONAL EXPLANATION—QUESTION OF THE DAY No. 5

TREVOR MALLARD (Hamilton West): I seek the leave of the House to make a personal explanation relating to a supplementary question I asked during question of the day No. 5.

Hon. W. F. Birch: What’s it about?

TREVOR MALLARD: The Opposition Whips have been briefed.

Mr SPEAKER: The member has given a brief explanation. Is there any objection to leave being granted? There appears to be none.

TREVOR MALLARD: During question of the day No. 5 I asked a supplementary question relating to payments for public relations contracts. I stated that the National Government had produced a green booklet with a photo of its current leader that promised 410 000 jobs, and that that booklet had gone to every household. I also implied that a company involving the member for East Coast Bays was involved. The member has indicated to me that I was wrongly briefed. I make it clear that I accept his word, and I apologise for any embarrassment that I have caused him.

Another day where Mallard has had to make a personal explanation in parliament about more lies he has told. This example is particularly interesting in that Mallard was spreading muck leaked to him from someone, and he got it wrong. It is exactly the same type of thing he doing to this day. Again involving himself in the affairs of another political party, receiving emails and txts from affiliated protagonists including sitting MPs and even Ministers and then repeating those on his blog and in parliament as statements of fact.

Those examples are from the 80s….step forward just a few more years and Mallard was at it again.

Thursday, April 18, 1996

TREVOR MALLARD (Pencarrow): It became clear to me late yesterday that the information that I had that suggested that the Minister had said that President Mandela was “a fat, balding, Maori” was in fact incorrect. The information that the Minister had twice indicated that a photograph of President Mandela was a photograph of a Maori resembling President Mandela was in fact correct. I took some advice as to whether it was appropriate to apologise at that stage. The advice I got was that bringing it up again might in fact further embarrass our relations with South Africa, so I did not. But I do apologise to the Minister for the partial inaccuracy.

Another day  a few later and he was smearing John Banks this time. Another apology. Getting the picture. Mallard lies, then he gets caught, then he has to apologise.

I will cover the 90s in another post. This could take a while there is so much material to work with. Mallard was a muck-raker then and he is a muck-raker now. He was wrong so many times then, he is still wrong today. When I call him an apologist you can see why, he spends a great deal of time apologising for his lies and smears.