+1

(Though I think I may’ve heard the same rumour being discussed about Rankin at a dinner party in UPPER HUTT.)

So it wasn’t my imagination.

The ‘designated doctors’ were a bit of a giveaway. The switch from hard yet fair, to people with a malicious delight in insisting that a chronic and worsening condition ‘just needed a bit of work. You’re not your illness you know.’

Thanks, Peter.

Saw a vomit-making appearance on tv last week. They should get her back on to question her about claims made on here. She is definitely interested in talking about that period. She is probably brazen enough to appear and defend the profligacy of her regime and the appalling attitude to the humanitarian aspects of what she should have been about.

To be fair to Rankin, she wasn’t appointed until 1998, whereas Turei herself has said the following:

“Turei says she was on the domestic purposes benefit – set up for single mums – at various times from 1993 to 1998.”

By the time Rankin was appointed, it looks as if Turei was winding down her time on the dpb.

Please don’t read this as support for Rankin as CEO of WINZ; that’s certainly not the case! Those were terrible times for beneficiaries on Rankin’s watch.

I fully support advocacy for beneficiaries and others in poverty – I vividly remember what it was like being on a benefit during the 1990s – and advocacy includes hoisting up wages out of poverty territory, and raising benefits to live-on-able levels. It is to the great shame of the Clark administration that it failed to raise benefits when it had the opportunity. That was pusillanimous on its part.

However, I consider Turei to have done the wrong thing, both by lying to WINZ about her living arrangements in the 90s, and her electoral fraud. That other people have done such things in no way justifies Turei’s own actions.

In my view, she ought to step down as co-leader of the Greens. Two MPs from her own party have shown her what acting honourably and with principle looks like. I’d think better of her, had she done what they’ve done.

I’m well aware of pollies in the current government – not least the PM – who should also resign over their behaviour. But it by no means follows that, because they haven’t done so, it’s ok for Turei to dig her heels in and refuse to go. It isn’t.

I want an inquiry into WINZ itself not following proper procedures and trying to use that to push anyone off the benefit they can, no matter how sick they were. It actually went on for 2 years atleast as I found out later.

I want an inquiry into WINZ itself not following proper procedures and trying to use that to push anyone off the benefit they can, no matter how sick they were. It actually went on for 2 years atleast as I found out later.

It’s bloody hard keeping quiet at times though eh @Frank. Rspecially when faced with rankin hypocrisy preaching a moral code! Kudos to you for keeping it in check in one or two other posts.
There’d be one or two johnalists in the know of rankin ilk too preaching the moral high ground.

my reply is to Observer Tokoroa …

Harmed more kids with her ergonomic pens than any human.

Glad she got fired.

We have to get out of thinking that Labour is necessary. Forget Labour. Make alliances between Green, Māori, Mana, Top. We have to use MMP not a 2-party mentality. Labour are centrist. They are not left. Is there a Left, left anyway? Is the argument now more about policies that will fight Poverty which is where I agree with you totally. I am anti personality politics where a lame party will get in. I think Metiria is the charisma we ought to follow because she is not selfish ambitious. What I have tried to point out is the lameness of voting for ‘fresh blood’ when the party record is rotten for Māori (Labour is not post-colonial) and now we can quite clearly say rotten also for ‘the poor’.