Kelvin Davis has gone rogue. Again.
He refused to take Labour HQs hint that he shouldn’t run so hard in Te Tai Tokerau so that Hone and MANA could add more votes to the Left block, and helped kill off the representation of real Left politics in Parliament. Now he has slapped Andrew Little in the face by publicly going to a Charter School fund raiser.
Despite the fact Labour are opposed to Charter Schools, here’s Davis rocking up to a fund raiser for one that is already getting more money than public ones.
So Kelvin is saying private prisons are bad but private schools aren’t?
The cognitive disconnect between his stand against Serco and his support of a Charter School is as extraordinary as his audacity to make Andrew Little look weak in public.
Since Little’s election the Labour Party have wanted to be congratulated for no backstabbing and malicious rumours being leaked to media hacks, yet here we have a senior MP who has been attacking privatisation in one area while supporting it in another and making the Leader look weak.
Labour have privately been telling their MPs that internal polling is good, but that hasn’t been reflected in the public ones yet. Has this impatience started seeding aspirations amongst pretenders again?
I think Kelvin went along with an open mind, which the guy has got.
To actually see what is going on with ACT’s Charter Schools.
He will be asking the question “Is this the way forward in education or is it a lemon?”
The jury is still out on Charter Schools?
He said he went because he has relations enrolled there. We shouldn’t be surprised though, as a proper state education system has been steadily eroded since Lange was Minister of Education.
At least 1 in 5 school students attend private or religious/sectarian schools in NZ, what can we expect.
Charter Schools started off in the US with good intentions – a way too try innovative idea in education.
Mostly they have innovated into a 19th century model of education – shut up and memorise. Those kids that don’t behave or perform get turfed out as soon as the funding for the year is finalised. Tax dollars meant to be spent on students are siphoned off to a management company who in turn uses it to “support” the re-election of politicians who will open more charter schools for that management company.
Luckily I think most of the NZers involved in charter schools in NZ have good intentions (although buying farmland/rewarding kids with junk food every week does raise some doubts) rather than doing it as a way to profit off the kids – hopefully these schools will be state integrated or privatised and the charter school model junked before (and if?) the TTPA is signed – otherwise all is lost.
Here is the scale of it (from the Mother Jones website) …
~~~~~~~~~~
Under John Kasich, Ohio’s Charter Schools Became a “National Joke”
…
“The two central figures in Ohio’s corporate charter movement, David Brennan and Bill Lager, have donated a combined $6.4 million to state legislators and committees, more than 90 percent of which went to Republicans, who have dominated the state House and Senate. Their donations have paid off. Since 1998, the state has given $1.76 billion to schools run by Brennan’s White Hat Management and Lager’s Electronic Classrooms of Tomorrow, accounting for one-quarter of all state charter funds.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/ohio-charter-schools-john-kasich-imagine
He’s a rogue and a shyster and anyone worthy of being a lefty would not support the dickhead. Little really needs to grow some cojones and lead.
Sorry, Jack, but I think that Kelvin swallowed a big gulp of Shane Jones’s ego when he yawned during the Sealord’s valedictory statement. Or perhaps he fell into a cauldron of the Sealord’s psyche swill when he was a baby? Either way, Kelvin has always struck me as a political mercenary, fighting under a red banner now but with a high likelihood of thrusting and parrying with equal energy under blue sometime.
Spot on, IMO
Yep a neoliberal all right. Labour can’t seem to exorcise them and they keep turning up like the Maori bloke in the Ghost Chips ad and going “Boo!”. ACT got rid of all its neoliberals when Don Brash and Rodney Hide went. Now ACT is more centrist and commonsense, like Peter Dunne’s Party, but without a dead Pekingese on its head,
Labour have already had a National wolf in sheep’s clothing when Shane Jones Leadership bid was funded by Wira Gardiner (Mr Hekia Parata).
There’s something fishy about all this, and it isn’t the fish.
“The jury is still out on Charter Schools?”
The jury is only still out to the neoliberal ideologues, but only because they refuse to look at evidence.
Kelvin Davis – another hard arsed New Zealand politician. Just happens to be in Labour instead of National.
Kelvin Davis is definitely towards the right wing of the Labour Party, which means pretty much “National-lite”. So it is not much surprise that he would say things like this. At least he doesn’t try to hide it, I suppose.
Supporting the school or supporting fundraising efforts of students? I guess kids are collateral damage in the war against charter schools.
When a Labour politician has different views than his/her leader the MSM immediately thinks of a political division, an impotent leader and a party which cannot work out its policies. When it is a National politician (Maurice Williamson is a good example) that does the same, the MSM starts chortling about how this shows democracy in action, the right to free speech and how it shows a strong party in action. A bit inconsistent maybe?
It isn’t so much a case of Andrew Little “losing his mana”, it’s more a case of a right wing Labour MP firing one of the first shots to destabilise their own leader, in my opinion.
Not at all tidy and the same with Peeni Henare. If they think heading off in the other direction against the party is going to help defeat National then leave Labour now, there is no point either being there.
Its certainly not to say the current public education system is very good, it inst but charter schools are not the answer unless as Stephen Joyce loves to say, its a user pays system! Then who cares?
i have davis in the same bag as that rightwing sleeper-agent stuart nash…
(let’s call them ‘the grand coalition’ go-to-guys in labour..eh..?..for want of a better name/label..)
..and like with nash..i would trust him as far as i could throw him..
Well, well. It didn’t take long for the knuckle draggers to take on Little.
So is he going to show proper leadership and take Davis off corrections or his he going to “negotiate” some piss-weak answer and leave him there.
In reality Davis has now lost all credibility in his position. You can expect to defeat National with this bullshit.
Thanks to the “edit” function no longer being available to newly submitted posts I couldn’t change the above.
Obviously a question mark should be at the end of the 2nd sentence.
The last sentence should read “You cannot expect to defeat…”
And now I see it is working again. You might need some stronger defences for this blog.
A fundraiser for a school that was funded to the tune of $40,333 per student in it’s first year. The average school gets around $7,000 per student.
Whats the big deal about Davis going to a Charter School, what a lot of BS, I expect him to find out what is going on in his electorate and to know what is happening with public spending in his electorate. Especially these highly sophisticated and advanced Charter Schools.
Labour could’ve had Hone Harawira + Laila Harre, but Kelvin Davis and Labour attacked them by repeating WhaleOil etc’s scaremongering about Kim Dotcom.
Where was the strategy? Meanwhile National gift Epsom to ACT to get charter schools through at no political cost.
I look at what MANA & the Internet Party were offering and they seem like real Labour values / policies to me.
And they say Labour represents me? Get some guts Little.
He was elected based on Labour policy, and now he`s gone about face, presumedly because he “knows better” than his party and most of his electorate. You can`t have it both ways Kelvin duh duh Davis.
Labour should have expected this when National endorsed Kelvin David last year in the election.
Like National endorsed Shane Jones’ leadership challenge through Wira Gardiner.
When you get neo liberals such as Kelvin Davis ….attaching themselves to what was once traditionally a social democratic party….this is the end result.
For make no mistake , – a neo liberal he is through and through.
And the thing is with trying to mix social democratic ideals and neo liberal ideals is that they can never – will never – be compatible.
What it does however , is give an individual so inclined much room in which to exercise his neo liberal stance – while on the one hand proclaiming his/her loyalty to the party yet at the same time acting in a manner quite contrary from what that party is supposed to be all about.
This then becomes a powerful weapon or tool that can be drawn out at will whenever that individual perceives his /her leader to be moving in a direction away from the neo liberal framework.
I can see no big harm attending a charter school opening if there were genuine family reasons to do so…however , – it runs the risk of being seen as an endorsement for that system…particularly in the public’s eye.
What is far more serious is the mans inherent neo liberal beliefs. If that is how he wishes to operate then he should do the honorable thing and leave Labour and join either Act or National.
To persist as many others have done in their neo liberal stance while remaining in Labour is to knowingly undermine that party and continue in being the useful stooges of the far right elements of both Act and National.
It is hardly believable that these people do not understand this : they would know full well what they are doing by their mere presence in Labour. Which is to totally divide and render impotent any significant move towards social democracy – which they in fact oppose.
Hence the division within Labour.
Therefore this is why a ruthless purging needs to be conducted by Labor to eject all those who believe more in neo liberalism than what Labour originally stood for : Social democracy.
And Kelvin Davis should be one of the first in line for that ejection.
Charter schools are an ACT policy designed to create a better future for New Zealand education, by the private sector running state schools and being funded by the tax payer.
Serco prisons are an ACT policy designed to create a better future for New Zealand corrections, by the private sector running state prisons and being funded by the tax payer.
Nothing to see here, move on.
Let’s talk about somethings that are far more important like the Flag debate and Refugees. Did I mention that ACT is a really good political party that is rebuilding after having some leadership issues in the past?
It is not at all surprising that Maori are interested in charter schools – I can see the appeal, as way to have tino rangatiratanga in the education of the people. But maybe if iwi want charter schools, iwi pay for them. Not all New Zealand.
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