The Key interview
June 21st, 2012 at 9:00 am by David FarrarA lengthy and fascinating interview with John Key by Guyon Espiner in the Listener. Definitely go read the whole thing. Some extracts:
He changed the law for Warner Bros to keep making the Hobbit movies in New Zealand and says it “created 3000 jobs”. Now he’s at it again. “This will really wind people up,” he says leaning forward, his shirtsleeves ending in bulbous cufflinks that almost conceal an expensive watch. “They now want me to go to LA and see Fox and Disney and a whole lot of other major studios,” he says with the enthusiasm of a boy who’s been invited to, well, Disneyland. “The word in Hollywood is that we are really supportive of the film industry to the point where the Prime Minister of the country would actually engage himself in negotiations to make sure those movies are made.”
Your reaction to the Prime Minister going to Hollywood to woo the movie moguls is probably a good measure of your view of him. Good on him for getting off his chuff and trying to help New Zealand make some money. Or, “Johnnie goes to Hollywood” to pimp the film industry while (create your own deprivation index here) continues unabated at home. Key knows his opponents will hate him for it. “But I would say it’s a really positive thing to do. You can make a difference. And it’s like the convention centre. People want to chase their tails in conspiracies. There is no conspiracy. The conspiracy is we haven’t had a convention centre for decades. We will get 160,000 visitor-nights. They will spend roughly twice as much as everybody else. The Government has got no money to pour into it.”
Key is right that opinion on this will be highly polarised. Personally I’m glad Key puts the interests of getting NZers into jobs ahead of placating an Australian union that was sabotaging our entire film industry.
His stories often have a touch of the Boy’s Own adventure about them. Key loved hanging out with the SAS in Afghanistan. He enjoys the Diplomatic Protection Service security detail. It’s not hard to see he grew up without a dad.
An interesting insight.
He’s just been to a ceremony for bootcamp graduates. A tough Maori kid repeatedly thanked him for the opportunity to do the course. As the boy left, his school principal whispered into Key’s ear that this was the son of the local Mongrel Mob boss. Key is fascinated by New Zealand’s dark underbelly and incurably optimistic about fixing it, even with no money …
Unfortunately, the statistics have remained unmoved by the rhetoric and there are still more than 200,000 kids living in poverty. “We’ve done a lot more than probably we have been given credit for,” he claims, listing the insulation of nearly 200,000 homes and the lifting of early childhood education participation rates. And, of course, his beloved boot camps. He says 60% of participants go on to get jobs and he is now going to use his prime ministerial powers of persuasion to shame companies into employing everyone who finishes the course.
“I am going to put the hard word on them that I think it is the right corporate responsibility to do that. There are enough big companies around New Zealand. We are talking about 1500, maybe 2000, kids a year, for them to collectively stand up and say, ‘I’ll take one and I’ll take two.’”
Cool. And on optimism:
The Government may still have significant reserves of political capital but Key accepts it will never have any real money to spend. “In terms of money I don’t think that position is going to change dramatically, because whatever you think [of the situation] in Europe, the really good case scenario is that they muddle through and any scenario other than that is a lot worse.” And it’s official: Bill English was right and Key was wrong. “When Bill first used to say that this will go on for 10 years, I thought he was wrong. Now I think he is right,” Key says. Even though he knew it was the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, he thought “the fluidity of the modern economy” would allow those issues to be resolved. “But what is different is the destruction of capital and huge structural change that has to happen, so this is about real, fundamental, core change.”
If Key accepts he was wrong, he believes he was wrong for the right reasons. “That optimism is not only well-placed, it is important to the national psyche,” he says. “Finance Ministers are paid to say no and Prime Ministers are paid to say yes. That’s the way it works. Who the hell wants a Prime Minister who is down in the mouth? “If you don’t think the country you are leading is a great country, why are you leading it?”
And he comments on the smile and wave nickname:
Key has never been lacking in confidence and still believes his opponents underestimate him. “I always remember when people used to go on about ‘smile and wave’ and all this sort of stuff – what a load of nonsense. I mean the New Zealand public never believed it and it just used to make me laugh. “The more they did it the more I was happy they did it, because it just deluded the Labour Party that somehow I didn’t have a view of where I wanted to take the country,” he says. “It has always been about lifting economic performance.”
I think Labour stole it off Cactus Kate. On the under-estimation Chris Trotter adds:
The reason members of the Labour Party underestimated John Key from the beginning is all to do with intellectual snobbery, says left-wing political commentator Chris Trotter. “No matter how much people crow when they add Labour and the Greens’ latest polling together, Key’s is an extraordinary result to be looking at three-and-a-half years into his time in office and in the midst of economic circumstances that could hardly be described as benign. “For a political leader to be in charge at a time such as this, and for people to say, ‘Oh, look, he’s only got 45.8% of the vote’, really is an extraordinary testimony to his political skills.”
Trotter contends that the left-wing of New Zealand politics always “grossly underestimated” Key’s skills – to its cost. “There is a tremendous amount of intellectual snobbery in the Labour Party particularly, if not across the left in general, which regards someone who’s done very well in business as a lesser being than someone, perhaps, who’s won the Booker Prize. There’s just this attitude that ‘he can’t be that good if he hasn’t lectured at a university or if he isn’t called Dr’. And this approach is very, very self-defeating on the part of the left, because you just have to be guided by the facts.”
The facts, says Trotter “are that this guy took over the National Party, its numbers recovered almost immediately and they soared to unprecedented levels in the polls”. What’s more, that polling occurred under a proportional representation system “when it is extraordinary to see any single party win 44-45% of the vote. “So, unless you’re putting National’s success down to sunspots, you have to sheet home responsibility for those results to the political leadership of the party.
The under-estimation is still there. Senior Labour MPs like Trevor Mallard (who delivered the worst result for Labour in 100 years, yet still drives their strategy) boasted today that Labour will win in 2014, 2017 and 2020. To claim victory 30 months before an election is arrogance enough, let alone the two after that. They have convinced themselves that all they have to do is wait.
Key’s skill was demonstrated by dropping the class-size issue, Trotter says. “That ability to simply say, ‘This isn’t worth it, get rid of it, go hard to starboard’, is rare in politicians. Most will die in a ditch rather than admit they were wrong. “Key has this facility, which we saw over mining in national parks and now over class sizes, where he just cuts his losses, and I think that’s attributable in a strange way to his experience in the currency trade, where you do not throw good money after bad. If you’ve made a bad choice, take the loss and make it up somewhere else in the next few hours or next few days. That’s a marvellous ability to bring to politics, because if you’re on a hiding to nothing, then accept nothing and stop taking the hiding.”
Related to this is that Key doesn’t hate doing a compromise. In business, the way you get an agreement is you compromise. In politics compromise is seen as weak by many leaders, but Key sees it as a strength. And in an MMP environment, where the Government does not have a majority, it is a necessary skill.
Related posts:
- Trotter endorses Key for second term
- Cullen interview in SST
- Hos interview with John Key
- Radio interview with the new National Front leader
June 21st, 2012 at 9:05 am
I can hear the shrill cries of “John Key John Key John Key” coming from the neighbours on the left already.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:11 am
Some on the left also grossly overestimate the chance of Key dropping an issue they want to squash just because he has been pragmatic on some – he has also been strong on many stances, even to the point of obstinance on Super.
The underestimating is probably more a fervour to put down rather than see things and people (like Key) for what they actually are. It’s more of an obsessional negativity blindness. I see that often at “other blogs”.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:22 am
Instead of giving interviews, can the guy start governing? Our deficit is going to be 8.3% at the end of 2013. What’s the plan?
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:27 am
The left are so up themselves with that smug arrogance that you just know they have never got their hands dirty in the real world. If all the answers were as simple as they suggest, every country would doing them.
Vote:The problem for Labour and the Greens is that the voters know politics is a career choice for them and they are bringing nothing into Parliament except limited book knowledge and their own overweening ambition.
John Key, like many of our great PMs, has worked in a tough world, succeeded in a global environment and brought his vast experience to his role.
NZ is at the mercy of global forces and we are lucky to have a leader who understands those forces and how to take advantage of them.
June 21st, 2012 at 9:39 am
@BeaB – you missed the bit where Key also walks on water.
Maybe you would like to give examples of Key taking ‘advantage’ of ‘global forces’ to our ‘advantage’ because as much the Left might underestimate Key as simply being ‘smile and wave’ the Rights insistence that Key has some great ability or insight due to his previous experience as a foreign exchange trader has zero supporting evidence.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:42 am
I present to you Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Blair,……..
But I don’t see it going away anytime soon and that’s a very good thing. As annoying as it might be to see leftist geniuses like the above rise to power, it’s also good to see the dreams die as the actual policies turn to crap and the leaders themselves get revealed as incompetent executives. Of those four only Blair has managed to retain the “smart” label among the general populace, and even then it’s recognised that smart does not equal wise.
Not that this has any effect on the carbon-ceramic armoured snobbery of course. As things turn pear-shaped, we hear the same people who once bloviated about their genius representatives, wandering around wringing their hands and asking themselves how this could possibly have happened. But the result is almost always a conclusion that the leader concerned has “sold-out” or that nefarious forces have twisted the minds of the sheeple or that the whole thing is “ungovernable”. The idea that they were nowhere near as smart as was thought – and are possibly quite stupid in the things that matter – is never considered.
It’s so deeply ingrained that we even see idiots like John Kerry elevated as at least being smarter than his opponent. He has to be of course, for if he were not, then what would that say about the policies supported – and most importantly – about the intellects of the supporters themselves.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:47 am
The idea that bootcamps can in any way reduce child poverty is just ludicrous. Child poverty is systematic and the National government has no plans to try and make everyone better off.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:51 am
“..If all the answers were as simple as they suggest, every country would doing them…”
well..hollande is off to a good start…
..a 75% tax on those earning over a million…eh..?
(what was that..?..that sound..?..was that a mass tightening of sphincters..?..)
(and..)
“..John Key, like many of our great PMs, has worked in a tough world,..”
get a grip..!..he was a money-trader…manipulating currencies up and down..including the new zealand one..
..and then betting on those engineered outcomes…
(and..)
“..we are lucky to have a leader who understands those forces and how to take advantage of them…”
he is indeed doing that..taking ‘advantage’ of them..anyone would think new zealand was located next to greece..he plays that card so often..
..and we just have to come back to that basic question..
..if things are to dire…how can we ‘afford’ to borrow billions for tax cuts for the richest/elites..?
..mmm..?
phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:54 am
Child poverty is systematic…
I agree – with no quick or easy solutions.
…and the National government has no plans to try and make everyone better off.
That’s an often repeated mistruth. National has different plans that are disagreed with, but the disagreers seem to think “our way is the only way so anything else is nothing”. It’s a sign of that same arrogance – unless it’s just a deliberate smear campaign.
Alex, I’ve often heard National promoting plans, includuing a plan to reduce debt, and another plan to make it easier for business to drive a recovery.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 9:59 am
@ Tom
I’ve sometimes wondered what will happen when eventually the Baby-Boomer population (and perhaps some of Gen-X) passes away, and the Gen-Y folk are a majority voting force (obviously this is still a while away).
Will Gen-Y still pay homage to the academic/media priesthood that is a big part of the political arena. They’re probably more cynical than other generations, more widely educated (though perhaps not deeply) by the internet, and also less religious and therefore less accepting of absolutes. Will this cynicism un-root the power that the boomer generation currently gives to left of centre politicians?
Your thoughts on this?
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:01 am
@ philu
“get a grip..!..he was a money-trader…manipulating currencies up and down..including the new zealand one…and then betting on those engineered outcomes…”
Hey Phil, if it’s so easy, then why don’t you go and do it?
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:10 am
Am I the only Leftie who doesn’t have a problem with John Key?
He just seems like a sensible, straight up, practical business guy to me.
All of the “you can’t trust John Key” stuff seems to be based around some unknown, unspecific, presumed act of treachery that he will surely commit sometime in the near future…
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:15 am
EWS Gen-Y are also unconcerned (by and large) about politics and are also easily persuaded about Green issues. This leaves them as easy targets for semi-science bullshit and dreams about Utopian social re-distribution of other people’s wealth. I’m not holding my breath for an outbreak of commonsense – but then what do I know, I’m a boomer and I’m describing the very well educated, business savvy, career successful parents of my Grandkids
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:15 am
come off it rrm..you are as much a fucken ‘leftie’…as that other sometimes-leftie pretender..p.g….the benchmark of/for the form/genre..
..you are..at best..a vacillating-centreist/defender of the status quo….
..meh..!
..of course you ‘like’ key…
..where is the surprise..?
phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:38 am
berend:”Instead of giving interviews, can the guy start governing? Our deficit is going to be 8.3% at the end of 2013. What’s the plan?”
And you can join the list of idiots who swing between “he never gives interviews, we cant trust him” and your end of the dumb as a box of hammers spectrum that think thats all he does.
Thankfully morons like you are numbered in the minority. We have a cheer leader who gets shit done, who is calling on and supporting industry to help this tiny little country ride the huge fucker waves of an ongoing global crisis. And thinking NZ’ers understand that, which is why we are saving like mad, not spending like idiots, and why those same thinkers in large part support what he is doing.
And when youre done ranting, figure out the difference between ‘governing’ and ‘leading’. Twazzock.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:42 am
“..We have a cheer leader who gets shit done,..”
as in building our external govt debt from $16 billion when he took over..
..to over $70 billion..
..and all on the coat-tails of unaffordable large tax cuts for the richest…
..is that what you call ‘getting shit done’..?
phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:47 am
“..Child poverty is systematic…”
(p.g.said:..)..’I agree – with no quick or easy solutions…”
..now..we used to have a serious/well-documented problem with elder-poverty…
..that is a fact/given..
..how did we fix that..?..remind me/us again..?
..and quite ‘quickly’ too..from memory…
..once we actually decided to fix it..
..phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:49 am
True phil. And he pays you to do fuck all other than vanish up your own arse, what was I thinking.
Sack the fucker.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 10:56 am
Sorry phil, while you have the right to say it, your opinion on how someone dragged themselves out of poverty and became a success, and the best PM the country has had in my lifetime, is completely irrelevant.
Notice how he didn’t get successful by taking taxpayer money for free and smoking dope all day?
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 11:02 am
“..your opinion on how someone dragged themselves out of poverty..”
can we just bury this myth..
..keys’ grandfather purchased the bedroom suite of either goering or goebbels at an auction at the ritz in london just after the second world war..
..hardly the actions of a working class battler mired in poverty..eh..bah..gum..?
..phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 11:06 am
We’re talking about John Key, not his grandfather. John Key lived in a State house with a single Mum. Accept it phil, he is a success and came from an under-privileged background. It must burn seeing that other people can do it.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 11:07 am
..keys’ grandfather purchased the bedroom suite of either goering or goebbels at an auction at the ritz in london just after the second world war..
And that makes it a myth how exactly?
His great grandfather could have owned all of Scotland, that still doesn’t mean he didn’t grow up in poverty.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 11:11 am
Am I the only Leftie who doesn’t have a problem with John Key?
I’m sometimes classified left, but I don’t have a problem with Key generally (but disagree on some things like Super and monarchy). I think he’ll prove to be one of our best leaders if he doesn’t make too many bad mistakes, he has changed the face of our politics.
But poll and election resuklts suggest that the wider population is relaxed about him too, the noise in the blogosphere is not representative of the wider population, som eof the loudest noise comes from the exremes who would never be happy with anyone but themselves in control (and they’re always frustrated because they never get close).
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 11:13 am
Philu you are seriously fucking deluded. If National had not done anything we would have had deficits for ever and NZ would be right royally fucked. You don’t mention that though do you? No wonder no one takes you seriously. The left go on and on about tax cuts for the rich (who by the way pay a fucking truckload of tax) like it will make this country broke. It’s a crock of shit and you shoud try mentioning the WFF and int free loans bribe because they are why it is taking so fucking long to pay down the deficit.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 11:41 am
This will no doubt seem like crazy talk to you phool in your drug-fucked stupor, but actually sensible business guys in suits do a HELL of a lot of the things that ensure NZ is a safe place in which people live under the rule of law, with a high level of personal freedom, where your bene cheque arrives on cue every fortnight so you can spend your days filling up the internet with invective.
I believe the government / the state should have a role well beyond providing laws and enforcement, to most minds that makes me left of centre. But go ahead, tell me what I do and do not think. Smoke a bit of the ganja if it helps you see it more clearly. While you’re at it, WHY can’t we trust John Key? One good compelling reason would do.
Plenty of people far to the left of me think it is outrageous that they work their arses off and others can choose not to with apparent impunity…
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 11:48 am
Typical ad hom reportage from Espiner… Who the fuck cares if JK is wearing bulbous cuff links over an expensive watch…
Someone should remind Guyon that he’s writing for the Listener, not the Women’s Weekly
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 12:00 pm
@EWS
Tough question. On the one hand I note occasional surveys of the Millennials that indicate that – having grown up in a world bathed in electronic advances that give them what they want, when they want – they have little inclination for the sort of self-sacrifice for the collective good idea that is one of the lynchpins of the Left in history. Moreover, the area where the Left has made the most progress in the last few decades (some might say the only progress) – the elimination of rules, regulations and other controls around matters of sexuality, drugs, and general social mores – has unleashed the same attitudes towards economic areas of life. The world of Micky Savage and Muldoon unwinds at an ever faster pace – and Millennials are fine with that because it’s simply a reflection of how they’ve lived their lives from the iPod Classic to the iPhone 4S.
But as far as the intellectual snobbery of the Left is concerned, I don’t think it can be removed now. The same world changes that the younger generations are growing up in, are delivering ever higher rewards to higher skilled people, resulting in a reinforcement of the disconnect between them and what used to be called “the working class”. Look at California: what real human connection is there between the wealthy members of the San Jose-Silicon Valley-SF biotech hub, and the agricultural workers of the state? About the only other CA group the Silicons have anything in common with are the folks in Hollywood, and perhaps the Masters of the Universe in some of the enclaves of the East Coast of the USA.
To be a member of those groups is to feel a huge superiority to most other members of society, in terms of morality, intellect, and lifestyle. Why would one want to vote for, let alone join and publicly support, any political group or party that requires one to mix with one’s inferiors? In the USA there has been almost 6 decades of intellectual contempt (going all the way back to Lionel Trilling) for any right-wing ideas at all, and the after-glow of those New Deal intellectuals still lingers today in the all important emotions of elites supporting the Left. It seems to me that only in the last few years have the Left awoken to the horrifying prospect that they’re being out-gunned (and out-argued) in policy areas by right-wing groups. Look at the dumbfounded reaction of so many on the Left when it appeared that arguments against Obamacare’s “mandate” that they had dismissed, were suddenly seen to have solidity in front of the Supreme Court – and that the responses did not.
Here in NZ it’s not the same of course; there really has been no intellectual tradition on either the left or the right, and the evidence of rewards for high skill are not on the same plain, so it’s hard to see the same type of reinforcement going on, especially with high-skilled young people departing overseas to gain their rewards. Paradoxically of course, that may just reinforce the snobbery we do have as the “intellectuals” fail to leave (What? Me get a job as a trader on Wall Street? Sniff, the very thought of it…..).
I think NZ society will increasingly be a mix of people who won’t go (can you really see the John Campbell class leaving for a decade or two, or permanently?), people who can’t go, and people who leave for long enough to pile up the loot, before returning to effectively retire young with sufficient money to get their kids educated before they, in turn, depart. There’s not much incentive there to fight against the next greatest “Green” or Left idea. With a couple of million in the bank, a house in Wanaka and another in Wellington or Auckland, living off “loans” applied against that wealth, and thus lacking exposure to income taxes or even CGT (why sell?), I could even see people like that voting Left – because showing how much you care is what’s important once you’re insulated from the unforeseen effects of “caring”. So no, I don’t think the worship of the academic/media priesthood, as you put it, will change in this country.
And I think I just described John Key.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 12:01 pm
What Joe Bloggs said.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 12:49 pm
David#
“…EWS Gen-Y are also unconcerned (by and large) about politics and are also easily persuaded about Green issues. This leaves them as easy targets for semi-science bullshit and dreams about Utopian social re-distribution of other people’s wealth. I’m not holding my breath for an outbreak of commonsense – but then what do I know, I’m a boomer and I’m describing the very well educated, business savvy, career successful parents of my Grandkids…”
Yep.
The hippies in the 70′s fought against conservative government and society on the motto “Live free or die baby” and now their very own children and grand children vote for the totalitarian left with all their rules and regulations.
Free marketeers like Key, and those with conservative yet sensable veiws are now the ‘counter culture’.
The Greens and Labour will be well beaten at the next election with the ‘economy’ starting to show signs of growth where it truely and only matters -in the private sector- and social matters now being handled in a responsable manner.
Kids only ever get excited where the new action is – and that’s not listening to pessimistic leftys from a bygone era.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 1:01 pm
rrm..
q.e.d..
..eh..?
and all in yr own words…
..stop smearing ‘lefties’..by pretending to be one…
phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Cunningham: If National had not done anything we would have had deficits for ever and NZ would be right royally fucked.
I’m so glad a deficit of 8.3% is nothing to worry about!! Borrowing $250 million a week? It’s nothing. If Key hadn’t done that, we would be far worse off.
How many Cunninghams did Greece have up to recently?
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 1:15 pm
How many times NZ’s level of public debt does Greece have, again?
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 2:04 pm
Perhaps we should do the excercise of left vs. right policies over the last Parliament.
At a quick guess, we’d be borrowing twice as much as we are now to pay for the giveaways propounded by the left, less 8 weeks worth to reflect the differences in high-rate income tax, plus the cost of about another hundred thousand unemployed due to the “haves” taking their persons, family, businesses and capital to a more wealth-creation friendly environment.
While the current demand (for example) of an export led growth strategy that doesn’t include expansion of farm-based industries sounds GREAT, it lacks a simple aspect of reality – buyers! With the rest of the world suffering the problems of the current depression, including places like China and the rest of “the east”, (look at how much you can buy an abandoned factory in China and/or Vietnam for,) there is no-one who might want to spend more money buying from the remoteness, and relatively high labour-costbase of New Zealand.
We need to tighten our belts, cut our cloth according to our purse, and all the other grand concepts of bygone ages. OR We need to accept that the world’s entire economic structure needs to change. For instance a single global currency; the removal of the right of banks to create currency, adoption of a series of authentic regional governance and government structures (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Oceania), limitation of the free-market to real goods and services, illegality of financial trade and derivatives other than interest on deposits and loans, etc..
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 2:22 pm
berend I am not saying I agree with everything National has done. I would like them to have gone further but my point is that National has at least got us back on course albeit the destination should be reached sooner then it is. Mate I am disgusted with what happened in Grece and if there is anything we can learn it is that socialism is the quickest way to fuck a country. PhilU and other leftie wanks like to ignore all the reckless spending policies that their party put in place when they criticise National It really gets on my tits.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 2:45 pm
“They now want me to go to LA and see Fox and Disney and a whole lot of other major studios,” he says with the enthusiasm of a boy who’s been invited to, well, Disneyland.
Vote:If this is true then Hollywood’s laughing behind this guy’s back. They know they’re getting the sweet end of the deal financially if they’re negotiating with a politician’s ego.
June 21st, 2012 at 4:48 pm
“…that still doesn’t mean he didn’t grow up in poverty…”
you mean he and his mother got all that social support he is now ripping away…?
phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 5:08 pm
phil. Shut the Fuck up, you bludging, useless, no-account, lazy, worthless, stupid C**t. A hundred fifty years ago, you would be dead, because you would have starved to death or been musket shot trying to steal someone else’s food. I have to pay for you to live, so just shut the fuck up and get on with being a useless C**t somewhere else okay bludger.
Your opinions don’t matter.
It’s not because you’re on the benefit, it’s because you’re a useless C**t who doesn’t need to be, but is, who F**Ks himself with drugs. You’re a pathetic wanker. Please shut up.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Maybe Hollywood power players deal with politicians all the time, I dunno. But Key is a serious money guy too, and probably negotiates much better deals than a lot of other politicians would have the nous to do. Let them laugh.
(IIRC the deal with Warners that fixed the actors union thing involved getting NZ Tourism crap stuffed into every single Hobbit DVD for free… that’s friggin AWESOME in my humble opinion!)
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 5:57 pm
have you tried st johns wort there..up and cum..?
..it may help dull the edge of yr rage/anger..eh..?
..btw..do you have anything else except ad homs..?..there..?..cum..?
..and no answers/arguments against what i say..?
..hence the frustration..?..the rage..?
phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 6:00 pm
** Obvious untrue statements are obvious.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 7:19 pm
And, of course, his beloved boot camps. He says 60% of participants go on to get jobs and he is now going to use his prime ministerial powers of persuasion to shame companies into employing everyone who finishes the course.
“I am going to put the hard word on them that I think it is the right corporate responsibility to do that. There are enough big companies around New Zealand. We are talking about 1500, maybe 2000, kids a year, for them to collectively stand up and say, ‘I’ll take one and I’ll take two.’”
Well he could fix this immediately without having to ask/pressure anyone.
Mr JOHN KEY. please note that if you reintroduce youth rates the employers of New Zealnd Incorporated will willingly and dilligently employ more young people.
Its not to hard and won’t hurt a bit. Find some principles and just change the stupid fucking law that makes them too expensive. Employ supermarket tactics. Markdown your stock. It bloody works.
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 7:26 pm
that support that you sneer at others for receiving..eh..?
how does that work again..?
you admire him and his mother for receiving state support..
..and you pour contempt on others doing the same..
..how does that work again..?
phillip ure whoar.co.nz
Vote:June 21st, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Yeah I read Espiner’s article, It was good but I was a bit disappointed with some of what felt like cheap shots. Don’t point out his cuff links and watch, come on man, how easy and lame. So the guy’s loaded; so what? He’s a winner and as such resonates with many kiwis. Good comments from Trotter as usual
I reckon if you’re in the shit, get a good lawyer. And we are staring at a mountain of shit
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