Kiwiblog

TVNZ reported last night that the Prime Minister’s motorcade was speeding to get her to the airport on time.

Now I don’t actually have a problem with the PM’s motorcade speeding (as long as still safe – 140 km/hr in a 50 km/hr zone is rathert excessive) and in fact the law specifically allows for this.

But the use of police lights and siren is unprecedented in my memory, and I have actually been in quite a few Prime Ministerial motorcades. In NZ lights and sirens are for emergency services, not Ministers. I am amazed Clark would not have queried why the motorcade was using sirens and lights – it is absolutely unheard of unless one has foreign VIPs with you.

Interestingly the press reports on Stuff do not mention the lights and siren at all, only covering the speeding – which to me is not so much the issue.

I do pity the people who actually rely on just one media source for their news. Anyone reading the mainstream media in NZ would have no idea about Joe Wilson being so discredited in the US now.

I just did a Google news search for any reporting of Murray McCully’s speech which was critical of the media. Not a single story anywhere at all. And one can presume that as he delivered it to the National Press Club they did hear it.

Not many MPs would be willing to say out loud that they think the media can dish out criticism, but can’t take it.

Nor would many risk offence by saying that the only reason they get elected every time, is because their constituents do not listen to National Radio.

And further call a particular newspaper decision “malicious, unprofessional, offensive, unethical, inaccurate, unbalanced and unfair”.

And finally summing up by saying that Press Council has no credibility and Parliament should move to legislate professional standards for print media, as they do for broadcast media.

Indeed few MPs would say all that. And only Murray McCully would say it in an address to the entire National Press Club!

Assuming few media will report his speech verbatim, I am happy to include it below.
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NZ Pundit got me subscribed to the great satire of Scrappleface. Today’s post on the invasion of Florida by John Kerry lawyers is a must read!

Dave Letterman has had some great top tens lately. Here’s three of the best (in my opinion).

Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About “Fahrenheit 9/11″

10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing

9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election

8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words

7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported

6. Didn’t have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger

5. Of all Michael Moore’s accusations, only 97% are true

4. Not sure – - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe

3. Where the hell was Spider-man?

2. Couldn’t hear most of the movie over Cheney’s foul mouth

1. I thought this was supposed to be about Dodgeball

Top Ten Things Overheard In Line At The Clinton Book Signing

10. I’ve never been to a book signing at hooters before

9. Hey Gore, bring up some more books from the basement

8. Mr. President, do you know that woman under the table?

7. Could you make it out to Gennifer with a ‘G’?

6. Look, Ken Starr…nah, I’m just messin’ with you

5. This long line is the result of a vast right-wing conspiracy

4. Those aren’t secret service agents – - those are Hillary’s people keeping an eye on him

3. He’s a lot more bubbaish in person

2. How come they’re moving all the good-looking women to the front of the line?

1. I just pray he signs it with a pen

Top Ten Signs Bush Might Be Getting Ready To Dump Cheney

10. Cheney’s official white house parking space is now in West Virginia

9. Latest bumper stickers read: “vote for Bush and (to be determined)”

8. CIA says it has indisputable evidence that Cheney will remain on the ticket

7. Cheney’s been asking crooked oil companies if they have any job openings

6. All the white house defibrillator stations have been removed

5. Cheney’s new I.D. card reads “valid through next Tuesday”

4. G.O.P. has spent 20 million dollars on campaign commercials giving exact location of Cheney’s undisclosed location

3. Rumsfeld keeps jumping out at him from behind doors yelling, “boo!”

2. As with all major decisions, he’s asked Cheney to figure out the best way to terminate the Vice President

1. Bush asked his dad if he still has Quayle’s number

I hoep no-one takes this the wrong way, and think this is blaming the victim, because that isn’t the intention. But I read on Stuff about the attempted rape of a hitch hiker and I did react when I saw she was hitchhiking by herself at 4.00 am.

I think rapists are scum and have total sympathy for any victim, so this is not trying to be undermining what happened. It would be great to have an ideal world where lowlives do not prey on women, so they can feel as confident about travel as guys do.

But am I being harsh in thinking that as we are not in that ideal world, is hitchhiking by yourself at 4.00 am rather dangerous and inadvisable? I wouldn’t even advise guys to do that.

As luggage still not here, been out shopping and buying clothes which my insurance company is obliged to pay for, up to NZ$500.

So I am now the proud owner of two extra pairs of socks, a pair of jeans, a formal and informal shirt, some underwear and also malaysian silk pyjamas!

It has been very amusing as I

Labour

I was surprised that the Court of Appeal decided in favour of Awatere-Huata. The High Court ruling was that the decision of what constituted unproportional behaviour was one for a Leader and Caucus, and not for the Court to second guess unless it was clearly unreasonable. The Appeal Judges disagreed by 4 to 1.

Will ACT take the case to the Supreme Court? The law expires in a year anyway and it is also possible Awatere-Huata may be convicted on fraud charges (which would expel her from Parliament) by then anyway.

NZ Herald story is here.

I wondered how a blog about the Mossad spies could be used to attack Don Brash, but Russell Brown has managed it, saying

The Alliance appears to be disintegrating again with President Jill Owens resigning after her national executive muzzled her. Can

I thought this trip was going to go well as I actually found my passport the day before I left, instead of the normal frantic search an hour before I am due at the airport. But I was wrong.

Left home at 5.30 a.m. to catch 6.30 a.m. flight to Auckland and then on to Singapore and Malaysia. We almost got to Auckland, then JAFA weather meant we circled for 30 minutes and then were taken back to Wellington as Auckland Airport had closed.

Spent a couple of hours on phone between Air NZ, Singapore Air and travel agent and managed to get on standyby to a 10.30 a.m. flight to Auckland. Mt flight to Singapore was however scheduled to leave at 9.00 a.m. and have just a one hour transit in Singapore before hitting Malaysia at 5 p.m Friday.

Arrived in Auckland to find my luggage had been lost. By the time of boarding to Singapore at 2.45 p.m. it still had not turned up. Also had argument with koro club lounge staff over my points status – my mood gets worse.

Flight to Singapore arrives at 9.30 p.m. and I find out the next flight to Malaysia is at 6.30 a.m. Never mind I have not slept for two days (I can not sleep on flights). I arrive at hotel (paid for by SAL) just after midnight and cheerily informed I will have to be up at 4.30 a.m. to leave for airport by 5.00 a.m.

Luggage has been found but will not arrive in Singapore until Saturday night and hence Malaysia until maybe Sunday morning. Never mind I am doing a presentation on IPv6 and .nz on Saturday afternoon!

Things can only get better from here!

Four more years of Jenna and Barbara works for me.

Fans may want to check out The First Twins website from where I got the image below.

Also Wizbang has a poll on who is hotter – the Bush Twins or the Kerry Girls. Vote early and vote often.

Aaron Bhatnagar has blogged his denial of the NZ Herald story naming him as seeking the Tamaki nomination.

On the issue of candidates, I am having lunch tomorrow with the future National MP for Kapiti. She just doesn’t know it yet!

I had very mixed feelings when told yesterday that Roger Sowry would be announcing that he would retire from Parliament at the next election.

For Roger’s sake, I was delighted because it means new opportunities and more time with the family. For National it will mean a loss of someone with great experience, and political instinct.

“Minister Woger” is the nickname his Ministerial staff gave him in the last Government, and it still gets some use today. Roger always had a very loyal and dedicated staff who gave him as much abuse as he gave back in turn. His office was always a fun place, and all of us who worked in the Beehive can recall some great late night sessions.

In my early years in Parliament Roger was very much a mentor to me (and many other staff) and in later years a damn good mate. His wife, Shirley, is one of the nicest people you can meet, and his kids are quite cool also (when they are not all yelling at the same time!).

Roger had a rapid rise, despite coming in at the worst possible time – just as one entered Government – in 1990. To become Chief Government Whip in five years showed his political abilities, later honed as Leader of the House. As Social Services Minister he oversaw some excellent effective programmes like Family Start which are still going today.

In Opposition Roger, both as Deputy Leader, and before, was the MP whom most staff turned to with problems. His incredible popularity with the staff (helped by a constantly regenerating drinks cabinet) was only matched by the bruised egos of some of his colleagues as Roger had the unfortunate tendency to say an idea was really really stupid, just because it was. I’ll keep more details for my long awaited book, but suffice to say Roger was having to say no on a regular basis to some MPs!

The best summary of Roger is probably on the award he got at the farewell dinner for the English/Sowry Leader’s Office team. Roger got the Napolean Award for “being loved by your troops, feared by your enemies, and hated by your officers”.

Grants like the $500,000 on a toilet that brays like a donkey are why Labour are likely to lose the next election. I know from when National was in office how corrosive these are. Do you remember the outcry on WINZ spending $250,000 on the Tapuo start training jaunt? Well this is double that.

Add on $26,000 hip hop tours, $15 million on a computer CD and many many more and you get a lot of discontent.

This is the problem of just increasing government spending to keep up with GDP. Inevitably the quality of the spending decreases. It is pure human nature. I waste far more money on my current income, than I did as a student. Why should Government be different?

No Right Turn has highlighted, and agreed with, a suggestion by John Darkin that there should be a poor list to match the NBR rich list.

I think this is an excellent idea.

We should highlight the awful case of a family on the DPB with one child, whom don’t even do a single hours paid work. The nasty taxpapyer will starve them on a net income of only $24,810. This equivalent to a gross income of $31,200.

And if they have another child, their net income increases to $31,154. That is ewuivalent to a gross income of $39,552 which is more than the average wage. So if a family doesn’t undertake even an hour of paid work, but has two children, they will earn more than the average wage.

Yep this is the sort of poverty we need to expose.

The Australian has an article by Leanne Piggott on how the recent ICJ ruling on the Israeli wall has radically rewritten the UN Charter on the right of self defence.

Well worth a read.

Just got back from five days in Auckland preparing for and helping run the National Party Conference. Exhausted as usual – as much due to the social functions as the work!

The band for once was superb. It was Mermaids, an all girl vocals band. They definitely rocked. One of the singers was ex-truebliss singer Joe Cotton whom I’m just watching on Celebrity Treasure Island – I should have asked her who won!

There was a fairly nasty item on TV3 last night showing a delegate looking semi-asleep. The person concerned in fact has a sleep disorder and if away from home gets almost no sleep at night, so to have TV3 ridiculing him for something he has no control over was pitiful.

Somehow I have ended up on the Party’s List Ranking Committee. This is a huge responsibility as the LRC will effectively select 20 or more of the 25 – 30 new MPs National looks to gain at the next election. I’ll be travelling to a lot of selection meetings around the region to get to know the candidates as much as possible.

TVNZ’s monthly poll shows little change. Current standings are:

National 43% 54 seats
Labour 39% 48 seats
Green 5% 6 seats
NZ First 5% 6 seats
United 2% 3 seats
Maori 2% 3 seats
Progressive 0% 1 seat

So Labour/Green/Prog/Maori would be 58 seats. National/United 57 seats and Winston get to decide with his six seats!

Have to say I can’t see a Labour/Green/Progressive/Maori/NZ First Government!

National’s annual conference in Auckland started at 2 p.m. today. I’ve been up since Wednesday helping set things up (I sort of act as stage manager for them).

Superb speech by Roger Sowry on Labour’s proposed employment law changes. A nice quote:

“There are no scarier words for a businessperson to hear than ‘I’m from the Government – I’m here to help – and I’ve bought the CTU with me.”

And some examples of how the law change will affect business:

“Your business uses a cleaning firm to clean the building, and they do a lousy job. You re-tender the contract and award it to a new company. Under this law, the new company is required to hire all the staff who were previously doing a lousy job of your cleaning under the same terms and conditions.”

“An electrical contractor employs six electricians and decides to sell his business. According to the new law he will have to notify all his staff when he is thinking of selling the business, thereby giving them the opportunity to leave and establish their own business in competition before any sale can take place.”

Madness!

I am very amused by the fact that the US criticising NZ being nuclear free is a bad thing, yet the US making Iraq nuclear free is also a bad thing according to NRT.

The Dominion Post reports that milllions of dollars on “Closing the Gaps” has been squandered.

Hands up those surprised.

The report is absolutely damning. But what amazes me is that this is an internal report. Internal reports, as defined by Yes Minister, are meant to be white washes. It is only when you have the Auditor-General or a QC investigate that you sometimes get the full truth.

A summary of the report is:

* minimal achievement of the desired skill development, employment and enterprise development outcomes”.

* Guidelines restricting funding to established organisations were often ignored.

* A prohibition banning the payment of salaries to grant recipients was routinely “subverted”.

* CEG’s national office altered applications so they would meet criteria

UPDATE: The NZ Herald reports that the Government refused for six months to release the damning reports, until forced to by the Ombudsman. What else are they sitting on?

One can read the full reports for yourself on the DOL site. As you read them, ask why is there no accountability for what happened? How much money has to be wasted until a Minister is accountable. $15 million on a CD for community education isn’t enough either.

No Right Turn is trying to do a Sunday Star Times smear job, but instead of comparing Don Brash to Pauline Hanson, he is comparing National to Destiny NZ. I actually laughed at the thought he is serious.

He doesn’t even quote actual National policies. He just makes things up like “National thinks all beneficiaries are dope-smoking layabouts”.

I actually find such reactions incredibly heartening. The more hysterical the reaction, the more mainstream NZ will back National.

Instead of sleeping tonight I was going to spend a few hours writing rebuttals of the howls from the left at Don Brash’s Orewa II speech.

However NZ Pundit has done it for me. It is an excellent injection of facts into the debate.