…the barman looks up and says, ‘What is this, a political joke?’.
A week is a long time, the supposed end of David Cunliffe was being foretold and then all of a sudden, three Ministers all seemed to combust at the same time.
Rachel Stewart’s brutal evisceration of Amy Adams asking harsh questions of the National Party Minister’s own conflict of interests…
I’m not saying for one minute that she shouldn’t own dairy farms.
However, her role as minister for the environment while doing so is nothing short of a farce. I say this with the emphasis squarely on the word “environment”.
Further than that is the financial benefit she will gain from her holdings in Mid Canterbury being in the area covered by the contentious Central Plains Water (CPW) scheme. Irrigation, in other words.
Canterbury water issues are legion. Environment Canterbury’s elected councillors were undemocratically sacked by the National Government in 2010 and replaced with commissioners.
According to the Government, they were “dysfunctional” and too slow making decisions on water issues.
Documents obtained under the Official Information Act later proved otherwise. Indeed, it was more about the vested dairy-farming interests lobbying on access to more water.
In her role as Environment Minister, Amy Adams had the power to dismantle the Water Conservation Order (akin to a national park on water) that had been placed on the Rakaia River back in 1988.
Adams duly achieved this last year and the Rakaia can now feed the CPW scheme to irrigate an area of the Canterbury Plains between it and the Hororata Rivers.
Without the removal of the Water Conservation Order, the whole project would have been unable to proceed.
…and then Hekia Parata’s extraordinary claim that because Taxpayer money was paid to a third party, that money is unaccountable for as her defence for the Maori Language whitewash. Tracy Watkins is scathingly incredulous…
Like the water to wine miracle, it requires a huge leap of faith to believe Hekia Parata’s line that the simple device of passing money through a subsidiary has the transformative power of turning public funds into private funds that are above government scrutiny.
Hekia Parata and Kohanga Reo National Trust spokesman Derek Fox may be at war with each other over other things but the apparently immutable fact on which they both agree is the Government’s powerlessness to scrutinise money paid to the trust once any of it turns up in its wholly-owned offshoot Te Pataka Ohanga.
Fox might be excused his view as spokesman for the under-siege trust as it tries to explain how such public money – in this case Ministry of Education funds – can allegedly be used by TPO staff on wedding dresses or a $1000 koha payment for an event that was never attended.
But for Parata to hold such a view should disturb her colleagues as much as it disturbs the public, given her seniority in a government for which devolving hundreds of millions, ultimately perhaps even billions, of dollars to third-party providers is central to its ideology.
…that final point is worthy of restating. This Government is all about subcontracting social welfare out to the private sector. Under Hekia’s law, those third parties would be totally closed to public accountability.
Finally of course, Judith. Oh the terrible plight of Judith. National are swimming in an ocean of corrupt milk as the scale and power and influence of Oravida comes to light, Judith’s story gets less credible…
Collins gets lesson in geography of Shanghai after saying, ‘I had no idea where I was’.
Justice Minister Judith Collins’ “cup of tea on the way to the airport” at her friend Stone Shi’s company in Shanghai involved a 30km detour in the opposite direction, it was revealed yesterday.Ms Collins remains under pressure over claims of a conflict of interest over her visit to Oravida’s Shanghai offices and a dinner with Mr Shi and a senior Chinese border control official while on a taxpayer-funded visit to China last year in her capacity as Justice Minister.
When first asked about the visit to the offices of the company on whose board her husband David Wong-Tung serves, Ms Collins said it was to “have a cup of tea on the way to the airport”.
But her claim the visit was for a casual cup of tea rang false after a formal invitation from the company two weeks before was released under the Official Information Act.
…all three deserve to be sacked or demoted and with so much blood in the water, Key’s triumphant landslide victory as predicted by the landline polls look a lot more questionable in the wake of last weeks Roy Morgan Poll putting National at 45% and Green/Labour at 45%.
well the PM said he would be expecting higher standards from his ministers and MPs and he has certainly got them. Higher standards than imagined of duplicity, corruption, awfulness and scandal.
Worth, Wong, Heatly, Bennett (private settlement over violating the privacy of two women beneficiaries) Lee, and now the three above.
IMO Parata needs to go, yesterday, can’t believe Key is still with her, probably has a bit to do with the funding she brings in, or her husband, no talent, has never impressed or excelled at any thing. Collins has dropped the ball recently but imo as competent as anyone in her portfolio which will always be controversial, examples, Bain, Pora, Mundy et al, (I am not making a legal or personal judgement just a comment on her job). As for Adams at least there will be some financial reward and tax revenue generated from the decision ( all arguments about enviromental impacts conceded). We all have to eat, somebody has to pay for dinner by doing something profitable.
But overall I agree that many that the nats are feathering their nests a bit much, probably more a perception than reality but still, it rankles. Best thing is everyone that can get off the couch for the election does so.
I’m shocked! Who photo-shopped Collins’s trademark scowl and pugnacious lower lip?!
On 22 December 2012, when people were calling for Hekia Parata’s head on a plate over the classroom-size fiasco; proposed teacher cuts; school closures, charter schools, etc, I made a case for her to retain her ministerial portfolio (http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/national-and-the-cult-of-buck-passing/);
To put it mildly, Parata has surpassed my expectations.
On ya Frank. 😉
And the No(va)pay debacle continues….
I get the feeling that Collins and Parata cannot be sacked for some reason to do with internal National Party politics.
Not sure what the story with Parata is, but Collins’ is one of those people who is so ambitious that her ambition has tipped over into outright lunacy, and has a pretty substantial power base in the party and in caucus. Collins doesn’t take being thwarted well, and presumably she wouldn’t hesitate to call out her dogs on her own party were she sacked.
That’s all the more reason to get rid of Collins. Such people should not be allowed within a parsec of political power.
There’s an old Maori saying , so I’m told .
” The fish rots from the head down . ”
Therefore , cut the head off the fish before the rot gets too far into the carcass .
Jerry Mateparae is the Queens representative here in NZ Co Ltd . Why do we not see him leaping up and down as jonky’s dragged from parliament buildings in hand cuffs ?
How far up is the rot emanating from ?
The point I guess I’m trying to make is that Rot runs through every single cell of every political system on earth . It’s only when the people say Enough ! That they pull their rotting heads in .
The problem in NZ is that the Rotting Heads are , by virtue of their tinkering , creating rotting , stinking little minions out of us all . In this ‘ society ‘ we seem doomed to become that which we hate he most . Otherwise , there’d be rioting , mass sackings of corrupt governmental officials , including ministers being investigated and imprisoned . But all we get is white washings , laundering’s , babble and bullshit .
That’s the Rot from the head of the fish .
Sink or swim . Adapt or die . Survival of the fittest . The bell curve .
After all this evolutionary time , the creatures who lord over us are just well dressed , well paid animals soullessly functioning on instinct .
That’s not Human . That’s something else .
CB,
Your milder than usual rant, with no cuntry expletives, reminded me of the doco I watched recently that sums up our leaders quite nicely…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSDIT55KeKc
Agree. But what to do, what to do?
It sure looks like a whakataukī, but I can’t find it in Māori: apparently it’s worldwide:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fish-rot-from-the-head-down.html
If you want it in Māori, it would be “Ka piro te ika na te upoko (ki muri)”.
The problem today is the leaders rule without the sword of Damocles dangling above their heads. What better instrument to remove said rotting head, just requires some effort to wield it.
All it takes is a disease to infect the head initiating the rot which then festers in down through the body sapping it of its life force.
I watched a David Attenborough documentary about primates a couple of years ago that left an impression with me regarding the current social order.
It begun by showing baboons and a dominant male with his harem, later two troops of baboons battle over collecting more females, in the chaos some see an opportunity to make an escape only to be brutally attacked when caught by the dominant male.
Later it showed a chimpanzee using a stone tool to crack open nuts. Another chimpanzee is seen around which the first then lends his tool to. Attenborough with his trademark voice then narrates “with this intelligence they demonstrate extraordinary acts of compassion”.
While watching this programme I couldn’t help but think the mentality of our leaders has more in common with the baboons than the chimps. An obsession with control and self-aggrandisement and little regard for others, their level of intelligence is also in doubt given the message in this doco regarding the chimps.
@ Andrea … I agree re the photo ! ?
Someone’s silk pursed the old sows ear ?
The next time you see either the Australian Prime Minister , our Prime Minister or the British Prime Minister speak from behind their shimmering mind-cloaks , notice those who flank them ? Just look at them ?
Dead eyes , waxy , leathery skin , fat and looking arrogant . No class with expensive tastes . They’re either all alcoholics or are Lizards with drinking problems .
Ever gazed into paula bennetts eyes ? And ‘that’ is supposed to be in charge of taking care of our most vulnerable . ‘Soylent Green’ springs to mind . I hope it doesn’t spring to ‘ its ‘ .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
The trouble is how can Key get rid of these rotten apples when the whole National barrel is rotten? It’s a lifestyle thing, its politics version of Centrepoint under Burt Potter.
And if personal gain isn’t enough, when it comes to Nationals collective influence on democracy and how that can be manipulated, how about the Rotten Borough of Epsom!
While the Liberal party in Australia, the Conservative Party in the UK and the US Republicans probably maintain support of 60% of the over $100,000 demographic in their nations, in NZ the National party has alienated the support of most of the more succesful and better paid in NZ. In NZ the thirty percent who might be regarded as really middle class really have no party who dares to represent them. Given National support post Muldoon largely comes from the embittered white male proletarist in say GI or Mt Wellington and the country and fringe peasant class, the party can only pretend it support’s national standards , as the Nats support is usually from the bottom stream, standards have to be reduced by mark inflation so everyone can pass.
Comments are closed.