Well the big announcement has been made and charter schools are to close (sort of). The latest of National’s ideological experiments is to be consigned to the dustbin of history, where it belongs. In a previous blog I went through the performance shortcomings of the New Zealand experiment. For some, though, the performance issues do not matter. It is the ‘freedom to choose’ that is important.
As the Finance Minister considers how he might build 2000 state houses per year no doubt the true impact of the Labour-Greens Budget Responsibility Rules will become apparent. These rules include bringing core Crown debt down to 20% of GDP and maintaining recent historic ratios of Government expenditure to GDP. Both great neo-liberal ideas.
If we had a functioning news service staffed with people who understood the basic power dynamics of NZ and had a tiny amount of intellectual curiosity, this would lead the 6pm News bulletins tonight…
I wanted to address an issue that I think is important in terms of the ongoing campaign around human rights for the people of Palestine, justice for the people of Palestine, and that is what is our attitude to the Jewish people in that state of Israel.
I’ve heard from numerous sources within the new Government over concerns that Ministers have been swamped by their Ministries and the vested interests of the Ministry Officials are what are being promoted and real change stymied everywhere.
National just doesn’t get it. Bill English’s persistence with the accusation that Labour had an $11.7 billion fiscal hole in its figures was, by far, his biggest mistake as Simon Wilson in the NZ Herald says. But did they learn? Even in the face of clear political damage they kept digging.
WHAT ROUGH BEAST SLOUCHES towards Wellington to be born? What sort of National Party are the people who brought down Bill English trying to establish? And will there be enough reasonable men and women in National’s caucus on Tuesday, 27 February to stop them?
The Right are rising within National and expect them to usher in a level of dirty politics never seen before. They will ignite white rage and fan it with Chinese business money.
All his life, from gay rights, abortion rights, marriage equality, climate change and cannabis reform, this man has been on the wrong side of history. In the end his religious fervour and his value system generated huge social welfare ideas that were more punishing and less compassionate than he ever intended, that’s because Bill’s sense of love never extended to his fellow human being, it was always set by a distant and angry God.
let’s be quite clear here, in my opinion, Judith Collins represents the greatest danger to NZ politics in its truest sense than anyone since Muldoon.