23 Comments

1. Thank god he’s gone,what an embarrassment ,a total fake.

2. This vintage of National Party MP are rotten to the core, all as bad as each other, shallow, dishonest and above all desperate to cling to power no matter what.

   Bennett especially epitomises all that is wrong with them. A near lifetime recipient of tax payer money in one way ir another, she has ironically made a past time of denigrating those who dare challenge her ways and most especially those far less fortunate than herself.

   Were any of us to behave in the workplace the personalised shitty way she does to others they would be justifiably sacked. A leader she will never be.

   As for Kaye, you have far, far too much faith in that Nat!

   1. Perhaps I’m just a naive optimist, Xray… 😉

      1. And as an after-thought, National produced Marilyn Waring – a woman with a strong social conscience who stood up to Muldoon. (Not that it did her political career much good, I guess.)

         1. It is amazing but the National Party of that era are unrecognisable, largely ordinary people, no massive wealth, no daily polling, no dirty politics wing, no massive donation machine and ironically a lot more honest and transparent. I think many of their MP’s had social consciences back then.

            And despite all the criticism of Muldoon, as imperfect as he was, he too had a social conscience and I can say that first hand from a Labour voting house.

            The only constant now is the name.

3. To be fair, something I’m loathed to do in Keys case, but seriously, Prime Ministers shake hands and do photo ops. Its like a thing. And having a PM who avoided shaking the hand of the Australian PM and recoiled in horror at babies and such, would be, well, pretty cool, but majorly awkward….

4. So Bennett says it’s “robust” debate rather than personal. Does that mean that both her and Gerry Brownlee like to eat robust dinners. Or does Bennett dress in over-sized robust clothes, nothing personal. As the saying goes, Ardern is all class, Bennett is all as..

   1. “Robust” is just a euphemism for behaving like a toxic shrew, something in which Paula Bennett could take a master class… along with hypocrisy. If Duncan Garner had either a spine, or some testicles, he’d have hauled Bennett over the coals for what was a blatant attempt to goad Ardern into retaliation. (It would have so much easier to then resort to that hoary old cliche, “But, but… Labour does it too!”)

      Furthermore, I don’t think Bennett is actually aware of what the word ‘condescending’ means, because in this instance, it’s not really applicable. All Ardern said was that she’s familiar with how Nikki Kaye generally conducts herself politically, and the personal attack seemed very much out of character. How remarking on this is “displaying an attitude of patronising superiority” is anyone’s guess. There was most definitely condescension going on there, but it wasn’t from Jacinda Ardern.

5. Overkill, Frank, overkill, with the photos. But anyway, Nikki Kaye and many others in the Nat’s caucus and cabinet are only there, because they could only get by, survive, or in some cases “thrive” under the protective Teflon wings of former PM John Key.

   He did all the photo ops, he shone and shook hands, he chatted with the MSM and public, he got away with almost anything, and the attention was almost exclusively on him. The others only “shone” in his presence, they all tried to get a bit of that “glory” when being around him, now that he is gone, the true look, the true character, the true lack of lustre is evident.

   English is dry and dull, serious and struggling for proper words at times, he is a rather un-charismatic “leader”.

   Hence the not that hot and competent MPs and Ministers, including Kaye, now come out with their not so pretty faces and words and gestures, and they are only exposing their deficits, their unprofessionalism and so forth.

   Wait how the shine will go, wait how they will all look less impressive, like Nikki, she is becoming more miserable, I have seen her in the House, not looking relaxed and happy anymore, if she ever was.

   I do not envy her for her struggle that she had with cancer, and hence I will treat her carefully, she is still a human being, that has been through a bit, she is also having human weakness, I suspect she was encouraged by her “leaders” to conduct that attack in Parliament, perhaps rather instructed to lead the attack.

   She is just one of a troupe of losers, losers to be, once September has come, we will see them all hurry away into the background, as their time will surely be over.

   1. Overkill, Frank, overkill, with the photos

      You should see the ones I couldn’t fit in, Mike…!

      I suspect she was encouraged by her “leaders” to conduct that attack in Parliament, perhaps rather instructed to lead the attack.

      I concur, Mike. “Encouraged”, or “pressured”. Her behaviour certainly came as a shock to Ardern – hence why the attack seemed so out-of-character.

      Let’s hope the next time her colleagues “encourage” her to repeat the performance, she declines. As I said, it does her no favours to be a Bennett Mini-Me.

      1. I don’t know if any of these are from the Nelson Mandela funeral trip. I hope there are so we know got our moneys worth.

         I remember hearing at the time that Key’s official party included a photographer.

         So my tax money paid for someone to take photos of Key and catch him with the Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada and wherever to add to his gravitas. At the time I wrote to ask how much we’d spent on that little extravagance.

   2. i cant wait see there faces when they the born to rule have to sit in the opposition benches

6. “Nikki Kaye has shown that she is not above cheap politicking” ?

   She showed more than five years ago that she should never be near the Education portfolio when she said that 20% of kids were leaving school unable to read and write. Using a critical, to some sacred, part of our present and future for that sort of cheap politicking showed she is unworthy. Perpetuating that lie, unsustainable crap for her political ends was a sign of the woman.

   “It was an orchestrated, pre-planned, personalised attack.” (the Ardern business.)

   So the new Minister of Education who will front all the stuff about kids bullying orchestrates “pre-planned, personalised attacks”? So the new Minister of Education in the van about the evils of cyber-bullying,
   orchestrates “pre-planned, personalised attacks”?

   Frank, your plea to Kaye is to, “Be the person you really are.”

   There you have the person she is.

7. Hmm..

   I certainly agree with you there Frank, (and I especially love your photo essay!) but I tend to see opportunity rather than horror at bad behaviour.

   The opportunity is simply just how little belief National have that they can win in September.

   The more they sharpen their knives and buzz-saws, the more panicked they appear.

   The more panicked they appear, the less they look like a government to be.

   Hoo-bloomin’-ray!

8. Frank
   I thought Dear Leader had left these pages. I thought my tender tummy was safe from rising bile.

   Please. Pretty please – this little petal would appreciate a Warning: trigger alert before that person is paraded. 🙂

   “The simple reality that being in Opposition renders an MP with very little legislative power.”

   Which same also applies to Winston who has been lambasted for ‘not doing more for Northland; and what about the bridges, eh?’

   It must be hard for any member of the Opposition to get traction and collaboration with the Treasury bench mob in an election year, when the sewers are running fast and deep.

   1. Please. Pretty please – this little petal would appreciate a Warning: trigger alert before that person is paraded.

      Point noted,. Andrea. 🙂 (Especially, I am guessing, after mealtimes, when people have eaten…?) 😉

      Which same also applies to Winston who has been lambasted for ‘not doing more for Northland; and what about the bridges, eh?’

      To be fair, Winston Peters never made the “ten bridges” promise. That came from desperate Nats.

      Hopefully Peters will make good use of the failure to meet that promises, come 23 September. He has every right to hold the Nats to account and make it an election issue.

   2. Winston could say “apple trees” and if there weren’t suddenly 4 million more apple trees in Northland the upset Nat people would be grizzling about him not delivering on promises.

      That’s how stupid the situation is and how stupid they are.

9. Kaye is a scary – even vice chair of the junior IDU! Like Key she is no moderate!

   Auckland council has become much worse since Kaye has been involved.

   from Wiki

   Kaye joined the National Party in 1998, becoming women’s vice-chair of the southern region of the New Zealand Young Nationals. She is presently an International Vice-Chairman of the International Young Democrat Union.

   She holds up former National MP Katherine Rich as one of her role models.[4] Kaye’s own policies, placing her in the socially liberal wing of the National Party,[5] have been criticised by some people in her own party, where some have called her a “high maintenance backbencher”. Others have called her “obsessive”, or, in a more positive vein, “driven”.[5] However, commentators have argued that her stance is unlikely to hurt her in her marginal electorate, which has traditionally voted Labour.[5]

   Kaye was elected the deputy chair of the Government Administration Select Committee in February 2011. In her first parliamentary term, she also sat on the Local Government and Environment Select Committee and the Auckland Governance Legislation Select Committee. Through her time in Parliament on these committees she has been heavily involved in the review of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill and legislation creating the Auckland Council.[10]

10. Nikki Kaye did herself no favours with that attack on Ardern. It just showed her as petty and vindictive as other tory politician like Collins and Brownlee.

    Shame on you, Ms Kaye, shame!

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