Tim Groser may not speak like the stable boys’ scrubber but I don;t think it was necessarily helpful for Sue Moroney to prove yet again that she is a nasty piece of work.
Tim Groser in his ridiculous “plum in mouth” voice just said “rinky dinky” and “turbo charged” in the same speech.#nzqt
— Sue Moroney (@suemoroney) May 15, 2013
Matthew Hooton, not one to turn down a glass of wine, nails Aaron Gilmore, the Clown of Christchurch East:
I am the last person to criticise someone for getting rolling drunk.
By some measures, the volume of wine per person reported to have been drunk at National List MP Aaron Gilmore’s infamous Hanmer Springs dinner was positively temperate. (Although, despite many years of trying, I have never had a wine waiter at a flash restaurant deny me service, so perhaps there is more to this part of the story.)
In a country where, rightly or wrongly, binge drinking remains acceptable and commonplace, what really does in Mr Gilmore is not his drunkenness but the horrible way he is reported to have treated the waiting staff, including clicking his fingers and abusing them, and – perhaps even worse – his idiotic threat to have the prime minister fire one of them.
On this point, I yesterday found myself in complete political agreement with the Service and Food Workers Union, something no doubt damaging to both me and the union.
The shame of Hooton writing that last line must be immense, which makes it all the more powerful.
When previous MPs have run into trouble for drinking they have survived because their uncouth behaviour has not crossed the line into personal abuse.
When Mr Gilmore’s fellow Christchurch MP, Labour’s Ruth Dyson, was picked up one night for drink-driving, there was no suggestion she had been rude to the police and she had the integrity to resign as a minister before the sun came up.
Similarly, when Mr Gilmore’s fellow National Party MP, trade minister Tim Groser, got himself well-and-truly inebriated at the bar of an Emirates A380 flying home after a disastrous Middle Eastern trade mission to bury his mother, there was no suggestion he abused anyone (except, I was told by my spies on the flight, me – after he found out what I, after a few wines, had written about the trade-mission fiasco for that Friday’s NBR).
In any event, both Ms Dyson and Mr Groser were valuable to their prime ministers and governments. Mr Gilmore has no such advantage.
He has no redeeming political features at all, and I doubt he will even make the list come the next election, despite his impressive CV.
To say Mr Gilmore’s political career is going nowhere is an understatement.
Reportedly never popular even within the National Party in his home district of Canterbury, he was National’s 2008 sacrificial lamb in the safe Labour seat of Christchurch East, losing to Labour’s Lianne Dalziel by over 5000 votes.
Nevertheless, he snuck into parliament on the list, but received no promotion in his first term as an MP, indicating the low regard in which he is held by John Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce, and much of the rest of the National cabinet and caucus.
Meanwhile, his 2008 contemporaries Nikki Kaye, Simon Bridges, Hekia Parata, Amy Adams and Michael Woodhouse have become ministers, and the next in line for ministerial jobs, Todd McClay and Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, already chair the powerful Finance and Expenditure and Social Services select committees respectively. There will never be any such promotions for Mr Gilmore.
Undeterred at having achieved nothing in his first term except attract publicity over a false CV, he sought re-election but was awarded the lowest place on National’s 2011 list among incumbents except for newbie Jami-Lee Ross, only elected as MP for Botany earlier that year, and the unloved Paul Quinn. He was also put up again for Christchurch East.
In the 2011 election, it turned out that is not just National Party officials and MPs that seem to have a particular dislike of Mr Gilmore but also the good voters of Christchurch East.
His career, such as it is is over. He may as well just piss off. He won’t though such is his hubris.
As of this morning, the Prime Minister and his office appear almost to be begging for a formal complaint from the Heritage Hotel which they could hand over to Ms Upston as a first step towards getting rid of Mr Gilmore.
Any of the next few names on National’s list – Claudette Hauiti, Jo Hayes or Leonie Hapeta – would offer the party more in terms of electoral appeal than Mr Gilmore.
But they do have to move carefully.
Unlike, say, NZ First, National is a democratic party and, as Jim Bolger found with Mr Peters, Bill English with Maurice Williamson and Don Brash with Brian Connell, it is extremely hard to get rid of a recalcitrant MP. Even in the recent NZ First case, Mr Peters failed to drum the disgraced Brendan Horan out of parliament altogether.
Mr Key just announcing Mr Gilmore is fired achieves nothing. He needs to be encouraged to resign.
Of course, he probably won’t. Mr Gilmore will never get a job as well paid as this one, especially now we know he doesn’t have the high-level finance-sector qualifications that were once claimed.
Right now, for doing pretty much nothing, he earns $142,000 a year, plus free air travel and subsidised Bellamy’s booze.
Sadly, he’s probably not going anywhere.
Unless of course all the other scandals associated with Aaron Gilmore surface in short order. They will.
Tim Groser is out of the running for his bid to head the WTO.
Looks like he will have to find a plan B to exit parliament…but the Nats will be quietly relieved he got the arse card because if he left then Claudette Hauiti would be next in to parliament.
Trade Minister Tim Groser’s bid to head the World Trade Organisation has failed.
A spokeswoman for the minister has confirmed to APNZ this morning that Mr Groser had withdrawn his bid. Read more »
Murray McCully and Tim Groser think they have it sweet…but they aren’t explaining hookers and private jets:
Sen. Robert Menendez, the powerful New Jersey Democrat who this week was named chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is facing a Senate ethics probe into whether he accepted inappropriate gifts from a wealthy Florida eye surgeon who is under FBI investigation.
The Senate Ethics Committee is conducting a preliminary investigation of two trips Menendez took to a luxury beach resort in the Dominican Republic in August and September 2010 as a guest of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a longtime friend and political donor.
The review comes on the heels of an FBI raid on Melgen’s medical offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night and Wednesday as part of an investigation into what sources called possible Medicaid fraud.
But wait it get’s better: Read more »
The blog started Saturday by having a look at a number of Christchurch people taking pictures up women’s skirts at malls. And wouldn’t you know it? A teacher was arrested as well. Iain Lees-Galloway shows he is a slimy git by opening a Burger King and then refusing to take a bite, preferring to preach sensible food choices. Cam then called for nominations for Worst Political Journalist, and Barry Soper and John Campbell appeared hot favourites. Next we had a vote on Best Political Journalist, which Larry Williams took out with a massive 47% of the vote. Graham McCready withdrew litigation against John Banks because it made no sense to anyone – as in – they couldn’t understand what it said. Whale then claims a win on his Hekia Parata predictions and wonders why Key has let this train wreck happen. We raise our eyebrows about Nelson looking for a scooter riding bottom pincher and then watch a video of what happens to a pig at the bottom of the sea over 7 days. Next a post where Greens are fighting Greens over the Google solar plant. On the one side: solar energy. On the other? Turtles. Charles Krauthammer explains why gun control alone isn’t the solution to mass shootings. A MENSA spokesperson calls people with low IQs carrots and the BBC feels they have to apologise. There is a property for sale next to Kim Dotcom‘s place. Cam suggests the GCSB or the US should have bought it to set up spying operations. WOBH is calling for The Whale Army to send in their holiday snaps, in a new feature called Snapped! Cam takes a brief look at who will enter parliament if Tim Groser leaves for the WTO. To close the day, a WhaleTech post looks at a the cull-de-sac that’s the QII roll-up keyboard. Read more »
Yesterday David Farrar blogged about Tim Groser and added a presumption on the end of the post that David Carter would be the next Speaker.
Farrar assumes, like John Key, that David Carter’s ascension to the Speaker’s role in order to accomodate the rehabilitation of their mate Nick Smith is going to go smoothly and is a fait accompli. They presume too much, and they assume too much. If Farrar is the one doing the numbers then perhaps he should reflect on 2005 and the last time he counted the numbers for someone.
With the pushing of Carter for speaker and the rehabilitation of Nick Smith John Key is now risking a back bench revolt as more talented people see themselves being passed over in favour of old white South Island men. The demographics of New Zealand have moved on but it appears that the leadership of the National party is still stuck in the rural rump of the 1950s.
Long gone is the perception that National is a meritocracy, and is now nothing more than old white boys club. Bringing Nick Smith back prevents rejuvenation of the ministry. Promoting Carter to speaker just risks scandal, and promotes the view that National is the party for old white men and ignores Auckland. Moving presumptive leader Amy Adams into Agriculture will go down like a cup of cold sick amongst North Islander farmers. And all that does is leave capable but ignored back benchers like Todd McClay, Sam Lotu Iiga and Nikki Kaye hoping for an election loss so the old fools can be cleaned out. All the while John Key is protecting another English loyalist in Hekia Parata instead of axing her. That would allow Nick Smith back in without promoting Carter, who frankly has all the gravitas of Lance Corporal Jack Jones, and many of the same demeanours.
When your back benchers start thinking that losing an election is a better option for their careers then you have trouble. When those same back benchers start thinking that the ministers in the way of their career are inept fools and can’t rationalise why John Key keeps on proven drop kicks like Hekia Parata then you have the makings of serious trouble. Add in the arrogant and ham-fisted manner with which the diminutive chief whip deals with people and I’ll put money on a bust up coming down the pipes.
John Key’s one seat majority is starting to look a bit shaky as his mismanagement of personnel comes back to bite him on the arse.
Reasonably well known left wing blogger David Farrar talks up Tim Groser in his attempt to leave Parliament for another job. This has been a poorly kept secret as everyone knows that Tim hasn’t enjoyed parliament that much, but some of his nocturnal activities may not find favour with the United States, nor the fact that Groser is a Muslim.
What Farrar doesn’t mention is that if Groser goes the next man on the list is Paul Quinn. Paul apparently has little love for the party leadership, after being shafted at list ranking last time around, and can be expected to come back stroppy. Add Quinn to Gilmore and there is a recipe for a fractious backbench that the diminutive Chief Whip will struggle to contain.
John Key’s one seat majority is starting to look a bit shaky as his mismanagement of personnel comes back to bite him on the arse.
All this talk about troughers got me thinking about what they’re really wanting. Wet nursing and milk banking is all fun and games, but the one that has serious implications on New Zealand is their idea of plain packaging of infant formula.
Problem is that some of these Brestapo groups in their push to have all mums breastfeed their babies, ignore (or are paid to discourage mums that struggle to breastfeed.
This harassment of mums is now threatening to reach a whole new level as the Brestapo take on the manufacturers of the product they so loathe.
They’ve clearly taken on the lessons of those troughers in the anti-tobacco industry and jumped ahead of the game.
The Brestapo don’t seem to care about how limiting (destroying) the branding of, for example, New Zealand’s largest company and other New Zealand companies infant formula brands will impact on this country’s global competitiveness.
The Brestapo certainly don’t care about the Government’s efforts to have Tim Groser’s head up the WTO or how Tim’s trying to explain though the laugher of our trading partners why NZ is limiting the IP rights on one of our country’s key exports.
The Brestapo don’t care.
It’s bordering on time Ryall storms into his health ministry and informs his officials that the National Government stands for Competitive Enterprise, Individual Freedom and Choice and Personal Responsibility.
On the one hand we have the Prime Minister blithely suggesting that we should continue to freeze out Fiji and on the other hand our Trade Minister talking up a storm about free trade agreements with less than democratic nations, showing once again our strange foreign policy hypocrisy to the world:
Trade Minister Tim Groser yesterday announced that New Zealand was joining an initiative to create a huge free trade region.
If the agreement succeeds it would cover an area with more than three billion people, 43 per cent of the world’s population.
Mr Groser has been in Cambodia this week for trade meetings hosted by Asean, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The countries which have agreed to the initiative are the 10 Asean countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and the Philippines – and six countries with which Asean has existing free trade agreements: China, India, Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Let’s look at those countries shall we…since we insist on forcing Fiji to have a system of government like ours, and highlighting civil rights and free press and independent judiciary:
Indonesia: hardly the stand up country when it comes to human and civil rights. They occupied East Timor for more than 25 years, including massive civil rights abuses of the East Timorese population. They continue to fight seperatists in Aceh and have only had one direct presidential election since Suharto’s resignation, which was held in 2004.
Malaysia: Ostensibly a democracy but with ongoing persecution of opposition politicians in partiucular the persecution on trumped up charges of sodomy against Anwar Ibrahim, and a less than free media.Islamic fundamentalism is growing in Malaysia.
Singapore: Is barely a democracy:
The People’s Action Party has won every election since self-government in 1959, and governs on the basis of a strong state and prioritising collective welfare over individual rights such as freedom of speech, an approach that has attracted criticism from organisations such as Freedom House.
That is an amazing string of electoral good luck. Tight government controls exist particularly with regards to freedom of speech and freedom of association:
In 2011, in the World Justice Project‘s Rule of Law Index Singapore was ranked in the top countries surveyed in “Order and Security”, “Absence of Corruption”, and “Effective Criminal Justice”. However, it scored very low for both “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Assembly”. All public gatherings of five or more people require police permits, and protests may only be legally held at Speakers’ Corner.
Brunei: The personal fiefdom of teh Sultan of Brunei, with few if any democratic processes in place. The country has been under martial law since 1962. Despite a lack of democracy the government regularly fetes the Sultan of Brunei and allows him to maintain an extensive property portfolio in Auckland, and travel with freedom in his own jet which is often parked up at Auckland. Media are tightly controled:
The country has been given “Not Free” status by Freedom House; press criticism of the government and monarchy is rare.[
Myanmar (Burma): A military dictatorship, where the NZ Government is more than happy for SOEs like Kordia to make millions from a government that is rife with human rights abuses and of course actively and violently suppresses the opposition.
The United Nations and several other organizations have reported consistent and systematic human rights violations in the country, including genocide,child labour, human trafficking and a lack of freedom of speech. In recent years the country and its military leadership have made huge concessions to democratic activists and are slowly improving relations with the major powers and the UN.
Thailand: Any government in Thailand serves at the pleasure of the King. They have had more coups since the formation of the country than any other in the region. Yet New Zealand already has a Free Trade Agreement with them. Since the country was founded in modern times in 1932, ironically by a coup, they have had coups and/or insurrections in 1932, 1933, 1938, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1957, and 1973.
The history of Thailand from 1932 to 1973 was dominated by military dictatorships which were in power for much of the period.
The most recent coup was in 2006 when Thaksin Shinwatra was overthrown, and a in 2010 there was a “judicial coup”:
Immediately following what many media described as a “judicial coup”, a senior member of the Armed Forces met with factions of the governing coalition to get their members to join the opposition and the Democrat Party was able to form a government, a first for the party since 2001. The leader of the Democrat party, and former leader of the opposition, Abhisit Vejjajiva was appointed and sworn-in as the 27th Prime Minister, together with the new cabinet on 17 December 2008.
In of April 2010, a set of new protests by the Red Shirt opposition movement resulted in 87 deaths (mostly civilian and some military) and 1,378 injured. When the army tried to disperse the protesters on 10 April 2010, the army was met with automatic gunfire, grenades, and fire bombs from the opposition faction in the army, known as the “watermelon”. This resulted in the army returning fire with rubber bullets and some live ammunition. During the time of the “red shirt” protests against the government, there have been numerous grenade and bomb attacks against government offices and the homes of government officials. Grenades were fired at protesters, that were protesting against the “red shirts” and for the government, by unknown gunmen killing one pro-government protester, the government stated that the Red Shirts were firing the weapons at civilians.
There is far more of a coup culture in Thailand but we are yet to see travel bans for members of the government, travel warnings or sanctions, instead New Zealand gave them a FTA.
Cambodia: is recovering from the legacy of the Khmer Rouge regime and subsequent Vietnamese occupation.
Hun Sen and his government have seen much controversy. Hun Sen was a former Khmer Rouge commander who was originally installed by the Vietnamese and, after the Vietnamese left the country, maintains his strong man position by violence and oppression when deemed necessary. In 1997, fearing the growing power of his co-Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Hun launched a coup, using the army to purge Ranariddh and his supporters. Ranariddh was ousted and fled to Paris while other opponents of Hun Sen were arrested, tortured and some summarily executed.
In addition to political oppression, the Cambodian government has been accused of corruption in the sale of vast areas of land to foreign investors resulting in the eviction of thousands of villagers as well as taking bribes in exchange for grants to exploit Cambodia’s oil wealth and mineral resources. Cambodia is consistently listed as one of the most corrupt governments in the world.
Laos: A single party communist dictatorship. Their human rights record is appalling. no democracy here, no press freedoms, no indepedent judiciary…but welcome into a Free Trade Agreement while we shun Fiji.
Vietnam: A Single party communist dictatorship controlled by the military. Media freedoms are non existant:
Vietnam’s media sector is regulated by the government in accordance with the 2004 Law on Publication. It is generally perceived that Vietnam’s media sector is controlled by the government to follow the official communist party line, though some newspapers are relatively outspoken. The Voice of Vietnam is the official state-run national radio broadcasting service, broadcasting internationally via shortwave using rented transmitters in other countries, and providing broadcasts from its website. Vietnam Television is the national television broadcasting company.
Since 1997, Vietnam has extensively regulated public Internet access, using both legal and technical means. The resulting lockdown is widely referred to as the “Bamboo Firewall.” The collaborative project OpenNet Initiative classifies Vietnam’s level of online political censorship to be “pervasive”, while Reporters without Borders considers Vietnam to be one of 15 global “internet enemies”.
Philippines: The only real democracy in the countries listed above. Still not without a history of military control at some points and some coup culture.
When you see it all listed there you really wonder why we continue to freeze out Fiji when it appears we are quite prepared to deal with Military Dictatorships, Communist states and corrupt demagogues. It must be interesting to try and justify all that inside MFaT while at the same time running the silly policies we have against Fiji.
Well done to Simon Bridges, who in the past two weeks has had a blinder. He has celebrated the birth of his heir and now he has been promoted to the ministry of the John Key led government. Good to see he is Associate Climate Change minister, his suggestion to Tim Groser should be to wind up that ministry altogether:
National’s MP for Tauranga Simon Bridges is to be appointed a minister outside Cabinet after the departure of shamed former minister Nick Smith forced a minor reshuffle.
Napier MP Chris Tremain, who is currently outside Cabinet, will move into Cabinet at number 20, Prime Minister John Key said.
Smith resigned his ministerial warrants two weeks ago after admitting he wrote letters for friend and ACC whistleblower Bronwyn Pullar while he was the minister of ACC.
He also admitted failing to declare a conflict of interest when he signed off a letter to Pullar on behalf of the Corporation.
Smith, who is also the MP for Nelson, held the local government, environment and climate change portfolios.
Primary Industries Minister David Carter will also take on the local government portfolio.
Local government reforms were an important part of the Government’s agenda, Key said.
“Mr Carter is an experienced Minister and I’m confident he will drive these reforms along.”
Internal Affairs Minister Amy Adams will become Environment Minister and hand over the Internal Affairs portfolio to Tremain.
Trade Minister Tim Groser will also become the new Minister for Climate Change Issues.
Bridges will take over consumer affairs and associate transport from Tremain.
He will also be Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues.
