NZ Herald on Mathers funding
February 18th, 2012 at 11:10 am by David FarrarThe NZ Herald editorial:
Parliament and the Greens ought to have made necessary arrangements long before she came to deliver her maiden speech this week. Neither side can escape blame for the unseemly public argument it became.
Parliamentary Service had provided her with technical equipment to receive an electronic transcript of what was said in the House, but had not provided a person to write the transcript.
Speaker Lockwood Smith thought the Greens would assign someone from their support staff, the Greens thought Parliament would provide. When the Greens discovered otherwise this week they made the most of it.
It should have been sorted out earlier, and I agree neither side escapes blame.
They succeeded in embarrassing Dr Smith, who sounded heartless until he explained that additional staffing for a member was beyond his statutory power to provide. But the Greens should be embarrassed too. Having put a deaf person high on their list, they ought to have foreseen all her needs in Parliament and taken more responsibility for her assistance.
It was not unreasonable to think the party would provide her assistant. Ideally, the person would not only transcribe speeches but be alert to comments, interjections and nuances of particular interest to the MP and her party. A public servant might not be ideal. Doubtless the party does want its member to be assisted by one of their own but it wants additional funding for it.
The Greens get 56,000 hours of funding, and only 1,000 hours are needed for transcription. What would be interesting is to find out whether the Greens are using all their hours currently and really can’t manage to cover the transcriber themselves, or whether they could – but just wanted to make the Speaker look bad?
Tags: editorials, Mojo Mathers, NZ Herald
February 18th, 2012 at 11:24 am
It is good to see that the Greens poor management of the requirement and process is finally getting some daylight shone upon it in the media.
The Greens sitting back and just expecting these things to happen without applying any management (a simple check on the status of the request, next steps and timing would have been useful) does not project an image of a party fit to share the treasury benches.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 11:28 am
The Greens get 56,000 hours of funding, and only 1,000 hours are needed for transcription. What would be interesting is to find out whether the Greens are using all their hours currently and really can’t manage to cover the transcriber themselves, or whether they could – but just wanted to make the Speaker look bad?
That’s right. Perhaps someone could do us a favour and publish a table showing the disposal of all the hours allocated, by MP. Lockwood said the night it broke he donates almost all his allocation to other MPs, Peters said he’d donated some to Mojo, who else has. It seems the more senior you are, the less you need them.
Perhaps the senior Gween MPs are just so useless by comparison to the seniors in all the other parties they need all of theirs simply in order to make the pathetic contributions they make. Perhaps all the Gweens are handicapped by comparison to other parties, merely because they’re Gween.
This seems a reasonable theory to me, after all, if one really thinks any of the Gween policies or parliamentary contributions on anything at all are worthwhile in any way whatsoever, then one really is quite a way behind the eight ball by definition, isn’t one.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Last time I checked, the correct spelling for Green was G-R-E-E-N. Just saying.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 11:57 am
Politicians and political Parties…..
All the same.
The are so used to all the ‘free stuff’* that when they have to pay for something that hasn’t previously been classified as ‘free stuff’* they assume it will be added to the list of ‘free stuff’*.
Underpants, wine, trips for the missus on top of the ‘free’ accomodation, travel, meals etc. etc.
* ‘Free stuff’ is defined as stuff paid for by the plebs, the common people, the populace or the idiots that still work for their living (Generally known as the tax-payer).
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 11:59 am
Yeah mikenmild, but on left wing blogs you see National spelled as Nats, NACT, NAct, and even on this site, Labour-lite. But what ya gonna do.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
My understanding is that Ms Mathers has worked around Parliament previously for the Greens, how has she managed to date?
My suspicion is that this was a planned beat up by the Greens to make the government look heartless. In this they were ably assisted by the MSM, especially people like Claire Trevett with her Herald article. Turei, Norman and Hughes deliberately sought to portray the Speaker in a bad light and to a large extent succeeded, aided by the media being unable to look into the matter properly and thus failing to establsih that Mathers was being provided, at taxpayer expense, with additional technology and that the stoush was over staffing support. Dr Smith rightly said that he did not have the authority to authorise additional expenditure, but the Greens effectively called him a liar and said he could use funds from elsewhere. Imagine the outcry down the track if say Lazarus had discovered an illicit use of Parliamentary funds in this manner, or the Audior General reported on this.
Strange how so many in politics and in the MSM who are usually so keen to highlight mis-use of funds were so keen to encourage Dr Smith to this to the tune of $30,000 a year.
Ms Mathers then made matters worse by baggibg the Speaker in her maiden speech on this issue.
To my mind this was an orchestrated beat up which the MSM and many others fell for hook, line and sinker.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
That might be, um, by not being on the floor of the House responding to people whose faces you can’t see and multiple interjections at once.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Agreed Adam. The Greens do stunts well, to their credit, and this is a classic. They are seen as nobly standing up for the downtrodden (deaf) and bravely standing up to The Man while getting sympathetic TV coverage and glowing with virtue. The taxpayer will still be picking up the tab, they would have anyway, but the Greens will be seen as getting a win.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Extend the OIA!
That said, if the Greens aren’t using all their hours of staff time at the moment, then they’re saving us money. If the money to pay for those hours comes from the unused portion of the Greens allocation, or from some new funding, the overall cost will be the same: the number of hours of staff time paid for by the taxpayer will increase by 1,000 per year.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
The greens are only in it for themselves to enrich themselves and thier mates.
The use taxpayers funds to make themselves rich.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
@ Adam; the timing of this row blowing up on the eve of Mojo Mathers’ maiden speech was no coincidence IMHO. And after a promising start to his parliamentary career, Gareth Hughes is turning into a self-serving media whore.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
The escapades of new Green MPs Mathers and Logie, together with the involvement of the little idiot Hughes starts giving me a warm feeling for the idea that List MPs should be chosen in the order of their votes in electorates. All three would have missed out!
Vote:On the other hand so would Kevin Hague who would, IMHO, be a loss to the house.
Mathers, as judged by the people in the electorate where she stood, and who would have been best able to judge her, was VERY lowly rated. She was, if my calculations are correct, the 54th ranked in the electorate vote out of 59 Green candidates. If we look at the ratio of the candidate vote to the Green party vote in an electorate she was the 56th ranked. There were only 3 Green candidates who ranked lower than she did.
Obviously the people who saw her were very unimpressed.
February 18th, 2012 at 1:31 pm
I thought the Hansard recorders recorded everything? Surely a transcription device could be attached to provide immediately available info to Ms Mather?
Instant e-book?
I agree, an opportunistic beat-up.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
A sucessful Greenpeace media beatup – they are good at it, and it worked.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
How about something like this?
Vote:
February 18th, 2012 at 1:48 pm
# Keeping Stock (7,240) Says:
February 18th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
@ Adam; the timing of this row blowing up on the eve of Mojo Mathers’ maiden speech was no coincidence IMHO. And after a promising start to his parliamentary career, Gareth Hughes is turning into a self-serving media whore.
How could you say the boy Hughes had a promising start. He is a chippy little prat who runs off at the mouth at each and every opportunity, look at his silliness over the Rena for example
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Unless Mathers is completely naive (which is very unlikely considering the amount of time she’s spent at parliament and the party she’s in) she must be complicit to this beat up. I don’t care if she’s deaf or whatever, she a manipulating spin merchant. And I don’t like that.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
alwyn,
Although I am no supporter of the Green Party, I think it is fair to say that their electorate vote results in November don’t necessarily fully reflect their personal popularity within their electorates. They would all have been actively campaigning for the electorate vote to go to the Labour candidate (and party vote to Greens.)
While I doubt they would win many, if any, electorate seats, I think their individual vote tallies would look a bit more respectable if the system mandated that they had to win electorate votes to get a high list spot.
[Edit: Such a system could certainly get the nerves jangling in a few Labour candidates]
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Lockwood could consider this device. Less than 30 grand.
“Call for Mojo, call for Mojo”.
Vote:
February 18th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
How unbelievably generous of Ms Mathers to allow the Gweens to score cheap political points off her disability. She has a lot to offer as an MP but how long before she transcends this cheap political stunt?
On a related note, are the Gweens still interested in the environment?
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
@WF The Hansard reporters no longer shorthand the speeches, they now sit there and note who the speaker is, who interjects, and what the interjections is if it is responded to. They transcribe the speeches after they leave the house.
I’m in favour of a PSC funded notetaker. A public service notetaker could provide instant subtitles to the TV broadcast of parliament as a service to the hearing impaired and deaf. And the notetaker could provide a text service to all MPs as it can be very rowdy at times during question time.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Previous occupations/work experience Parliamentary advisor (water issues) 2005; Joint owner small business offering forestry management services (2001-2006)
– http://www.greens.org.nz/candidates/mojo-mathers
If she hasn’t witnessed herself the conditions in the Debating Chamber since 2005, are we to believe she accepted Party List placement, prior of course to the Election campaign, without considering any solution to her needs?
Vote:Either the Greens are utterly incompetent or rather insincere.
February 18th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
The most important message every employer in the country will have taken from this is that deaf people cannot perform without expensive support.
Employing a deaf person is now a risky proposition.
Thanks to the Greens wanting a stupid grandstanding opportunity. Rather than a moment of celebration, every other deaf person in the country is performing a faceslap of thanks for making their lives harder and their employment opportunities more difficult.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 4:40 pm
So few lines of hate,but filled with spelling mistakes so must have been taught in a national govenment 45+ schoolclass?
Mark (349) Says:
February 18th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
The greens are only in it for themselves to enrich themselves and thier mates.
The use taxpayers funds to make themselves rich
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
“Either the Greens are utterly incompetent or rather insincere.”
Or perhaps, as most of us suspect, both.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Or perhaps, as most of us suspect, both.
That and a hell of a lot more Johnboy. You’re very polite Yvette. I admire such self-restraint.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 4:54 pm
the deity formerly known as nigel6888 –
Thank you for your comment
I knew there was fundamentally something very wrong with this and that basically is it – the consequence of their knowing perfectly well what would need to be done about Ms Mathers disability from the moment she was considered for their Party List, but instead of quietly pursuing it in logical manner, just made a fucking song and dance of it.
It’s a little like the anti-smacking fiasco to supposedly stop parents hitting their children. Now that is circumvented by parents getting their older children to hit the younger ones on their behalf – another Green inspired fuck-up.
[sorry, Reid]
Screw around with a situation trying to achieve some nefarious purpose on the way seems to naturally bugger up the basic task.
Hopefully people considering hiring people with disabilities will see the other agenda that was operating here.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
Yvette has always been a wonderful lady reid.
I have great regard for her!
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
This was a stunt to give her maiden speech maximum publicity. Why else leave it until now when they have had since November to get this sorted. She has worked in Parliament for years so knows the ropes.
And, as always, the media swallow everything they are told.
So yet another cynical self-serving MP. Our first deaf one!
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Don’t be so harsh BeaB.
We have had to put up with a lot of legless ones over the years!
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 5:39 pm
This was a stunt to give her maiden speech maximum publicity.
If it was Bea it was a remarkably unethical one. Who the hell do the Gweens think they are to drag the Speaker through the mud as they have, let alone if their motivation was cheap, transient publicity.
Given it was Gaweth Hughes directing this charade, I suspect it was ideological fanaticism at the heart of this. The stupid little prick really swallows the watermelon oppression angle hook, line and sinker. Everywhere the idiot looks he sees nothing but heartless oppwession of one kind or another and I suspect as he walked out Lockwood’s door his childish pout at being told he wasn’t getting it right away was transformed into a sly if not sleazy grin as it occurred to the idiot that maybe he should just teach nasty Mr Speaker a lesson, which he whole-heartedly deserved since he is clearly biased, not like Margaret used to be, she was fair, all the time. She wouldn’t have done this. I suspect thoughts similar to these were festering in that poisonous victim-filled rats-nest Gareth calls his brain, as he walked out of Lockwood’s office that day.
She has worked in Parliament for years so knows the ropes.
Which makes it doubly-disgraceful doesn’t it. Who, the fuck, do the Gweens, think they are?
And, as always, the media swallow everything they are told.
It’s disgusting isn’t it. Disgusting in that its unethical not to bring out angles such as on this thread into the media but they won’t, for they’re populated with lefties in the editorial positions. This is why it happens. Conservatives need to make editorial staff their profession. Simple as that.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 5:41 pm
It seems that Mojo Mathers was about 14 on the Green List making a huge jump from about 40. Don’t know if that is quite correct but there was a big jump.
Vote:What was the reason? The public did not have a say on the Greens List.
Could it be the Greens wanted Mathers in Parliment before the next Election so as to drum up the sympathy vote?
I could be talking shit, you tell me, but I may be right
February 18th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Yes, Johnboy, I knew a current-affairs television producer, back when they had such a proper programme, who was berated by Muldoon for some matter of possible bias, but the producer responded [daringly for then] “If I was actually biased, I would order cameras pulled back to full wide shot to show the whole set and your chair and that your little feet don’t even touch the floor.”
Vote:Legless?
February 18th, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Never ever thought you ever talked shit on KB Steve.
That job is reserved for me.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Ah mon amour que vous aviez évité pendant longtemps.
Mon amour de la femme de l’eau était juste une fantaisie de dépassement et dû à une transitoire dans des prix de barbelé.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 6:21 pm
It seems that Mojo Mathers was about 14 on the Green List making a huge jump from about 40. Don’t know if that is quite correct but there was a big jump.
That’s interesting Steve thanks for that intel. I think the sensible thing to look at is: who was her sponsor? Was it Turei or Norman? Gaweth has obviously been appointed as her Parlimentary “buddy” so does anyone know which camp from those two Gaweth is the favouwite in?
BTW, has anyone else noticed that whenever the Gweens do something, like this, and say the campaign stickers on the National posters and the re-hiring of the guilty secretary after the election, it’s always really really unethical in every way? With stinking festering sewer-like ratholes that always seem to stretch to the top whenever shit like this happens. And yet these people, these massive hypocrites, claim to be the absolutely purist of the pure, whiter than white, ethical-city Arizona and yet they keep doing evil acts like these.
Aren’t they disgusting.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 6:29 pm
Never forget that JK was “relaxed” about dealing with the Greenies reid.
Thank G-d he only had to be really relaxed about dealing with the hairdo, the ex-Mayor and the racist party.
We’d have been fucked if the Greenies had got a leg in the door!
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 6:48 pm
Hélas Johnboy, il est très imprudent de faire confiance à quelqu’un qui porte la route tuent sur leur tête.
Vote:Oublie – elle est un socio-sycophante et vous n’avez pas besoin d’un tel tête-vous faire mal.
Désolé au sujet de vos besoins insatisfaits – pour fil bardé.
Mais, comme une diversion, regardez cette -
– http://votemov.com/content/friendsheep
February 18th, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Never forget that JK was “relaxed” about dealing with the Greenies reid.
Tactical move against Liarbore at the time, Johnboy, That’s why he did it, then. I suspect this time, the Gween Caucus being expanded will have an increased mentalness factor proportional to the expansion therefore their “demands” to National will be replete with said mentalness expansion from start to finish end of story full stop period stamp et al.
When Key announces he doesn’t want to sign up to such monstrous mentalness the wailing and howling about how heartless it all is shall ring throughout the land, if the media have anything to do with it.
This is what the desperate idiots are planning I fear, Johnboy. Power at all costs. Power regardless of their mentalness. The fact none of us want them, is of no import. They’re mental. This is what counts.
This is today’s Parliament Johnboy.
C-R-I-K-E-Y.
Nah. It’s still there.
What are we going to do Johnboy?
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Yvette (1,623) Says:
February 18th, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Previous occupations/work experience Parliamentary advisor (water issues) 2005;
Are you sure its not water penny in drag?
Joint owner small business offering forestry management services (2001-2006)
– http://www.greens.org.nz/candidates/mojo-mathers
If she hasn’t witnessed herself the conditions in the Debating Chamber since 2005, are we to believe she accepted Party List placement, prior of course to the Election campaign, without considering any solution to her needs?
Either the Greens are utterly incompetent or rather insincere.
Surely Yvete you mean utterly incontinent?
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 7:17 pm
Vous devez avoir passé une certaine heure trouvant ce un Yvette ? Je suis touché.
Je devrai simplement m’en tenir au poulet même si il est mauvais pour ma santé.
Vote:February 18th, 2012 at 7:44 pm
Vous devriez peut-être renoncer à l’aide française, Johnboy
or some kiwibloggers may need a $ 30,000 electronic translator and someone to operate it.
Viking2 – yes, your word may be more appropriate to both Water Woman and the Greens.
Vote: