Can Labour ever be trusted with the Treasury benches again?

Err right?

There is no analog with HIH. Rodney Adler was a crook, who was a shithouse investor. He ran it into the ground trying to prove something to his father. A Jimmy Packer redux.

Now to issues of pragmatic governance. ACC is a systemically important, too big to fail, insurer. If it did an AIG and blew its capital on CDO’s and CDS’s the NZ taxpayer would have to bail it out, whether privatised or not. It is clear that it’s mandate has spread too far and should be trimmed. But it also clear that a capital injection of NZGB’s would allow it to become fully funded by 2019, and the only cost is interest. Moreover its long run investment returns are above the long run NZGB rate, so the gov’t may make money from the capital injection. Hooten has no clue what he is talking about.

Since you and others are absolutely correct, Liarbore did breach it and there has been no penalty, there probably needs to be something entrenched in the constitution to take prosecution out of the hands of the politicians otherwise what’s the point in having such a piece of worthless crap on the books?

Unfortunately lacking someone in power like a Geoffrey Palmer and Finlayson is a long way from him, for such a thing to arise we’re all totally reliant on the utterly ignorant reef-fish and the utterly ignorant MSM to rise up against the utterly resistant politicians.

Come to think of it it’s quite telling isn’t it that the current crop have absolutely no-one that even looks a vaguely likely candidate to perform such a public service. I hope some incumbent politicians read this and hang their fucking useless heads in shame you pricks.

Public Finance Act.

burt, sorry, PFA?

Manolo, I understand why you might think that but he needs to be a realist.

redqueen, an outstanding idea.

Not at all. Key is much closer to a mix of Chamberlain and Quisling.

The PFA only came into existence to ensure that this sort of thing didn’t happen again and then what happened when Labour did it again – NOTHING other than Cullen got rewarded with a plum job to give him a more comfortable retirement.

It’s a bit late for hoping that Labour don’t repeat that MO – they already have !

Key is an odd mix of Socrates and Machiavelli

That’s brilliant! Yes – that’s excatly what he’s like.

Audacity is the nicest word for it. I still think it is a pity the Government did not demand prosecutions for the breach of the Public Finance Act!

Yeah well I agree but the real question is why is Key not interested in that and in other obviously popular and hot issues like repealing anti-smacking?

The close observer is really left wondering if some above aren’t right when they say it’s because he doesn’t want to set a precedent because then what would happen to him if he encouraged prosecution of his former political opponents.

Key is an odd mix of Socrates and Machiavelli – remarkably astute, apparently benevolent and scheming all the time. I really hope he is mindful of the reason he was elected. It’s not about the politicians and their interests, it’s about the people and our interests. One of which is to ensure that Liarbore, as one said above, don’t repeat this same modus operandi yet again, next time they’re in power.

I agree, the problem with ACC levies is that most people (people who don’t handle the payments of payroll etc) have no idea how much they are actually paying in ACC levies. I think if most people knew exactly where all the tentacles of collection were and how much they were clawing from their back pockets they might actually understand why some people don’t share their love of the one size fits all monopoly.

Way to go really if you want to protect those that work for a li. Those that don’t earn don’t get the privileges.ving

DPF

This is a prima facie case of breaching the public finance act. If there is no prosecution then please encourage National to repeal all penalty clauses in all acts that we expected to control and limit the powers of or behaviour of MP’s. It’s just a waste of public energy and emotion even worrying if they are or are not complying with any laws. Lets confirm that they are as blameless as they appear to be during election campaigns.

So it would be illegal for a private insurer to run a multi-billion dollar pyramid scheme. But it isn’t illegal for the government to run a multi-billion dollar pyramid scheme. So why not go for it so the inevitable collapse will be huge?

This post by DPF ACC shortfall should have been disclosed sems to be at odds with the link to scoop you provided.

The Government has published the report by Michael Mills into the non disclosure of the $1.5 billion ACC funding shortfall in the statutory Pre-Election Fiscal Update.

The report finds that the shortfall should have been disclosed, so in effect the requirements of the Public Finance Act were not met by the then Government.

Guess Treasure might have been trying to give National an excuse for being soft on crime.