Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
IT’S DIFFICULT TO AVOID THE IMPRESSION that the neoliberal establishment is very pissed-off with Bill English. His handling of the NZ Superannuation issue has been an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end. The media wasn’t briefed. National’s surrogates in academia and the business community weren’t primed. The public was not prepared.
Earlier this week, several minorly amazing things happened. National decided to breach its nine-year commitment to leave the retirement age untampered with; Labour found itself with an MP in a leadership position whom the public actually seem to like; and I caught myself red-handed agreeing with David Seymour.
Dave Macpherson is The Daily Blog’s mental health blogger. He ran for and won a seat on the Waikato DHB after losing his son to mental health incompetence.
AM I GUILTY of wishful thinking, or are the times really a-changing? If I still took any notice of opinion polls, the answers, respectively, would be “Yes” and “No”. There is, as yet no empirical evidence of a major shift in electoral allegiances. Unfortunately, in these times, that sort of data only seems to become available after the electoral picture has been radically defaced.
The CYF workers did absolutely nothing right, I blame them the most for the death of my son. They refused to engage with me on any level and I was, not only his mother, but a guardian. They ignored all that. I have pages and pages of their incompetence and uselessness.
On Monday night, clad in a traditional Palestinian dress, which was presented to her by a Palestinian woman, Green MP Marama Davidson addressed a packed audience at Workers’ Educational Association in Christchurch.
Even National’s $25 per week benefit increase last year pales into insignificance with the news that reductions in the real value of Working for Families payments since National took office have taken a cumulative $2 billion from the homes of families on low incomes.
Big business just wants to cut any government expenditure that isn’t going to directly subsidise their profit making activities. This has led to a slashing of the number of people receiving a benefit as a percentage of the working age population from 13% to 8 % when unemployment only fell on average from 8 to 6%.
In one of the more curious admissions by the Ministry of Health’s Mental Health mogul John Crawshaw, when discussing the ‘consultation’, he stated “Ninety-nine per cent of the time they get it right, but occasionally there will be outcomes” in reference to the 167,000 annual mental health ‘treatments’ by Govt-funded services.
By my calculator’s reckoning, that means they are admitting to about 1,700 mistakes annually.
How many of the 570 deaths from suicide annually in New Zealand are amongst those ‘mistakes’?
Bill English was recently caught on-the-spot when challenged why National was permitting high immigration at a time when unemployment was still high, and rising.
Make no mistake, National has opened the floodgates of immigration because it is an easy way to artificially stimulate the economy. This was pointed out in May 2011, by then-Immigration Minister, Jonathan Coleman, who trumpeted the contribution made by immigration to economic growth;
