Todd Barklay's a Slater/Lusk man

"There was widespread speculation that, prior to this election, many National Party MPs in safe seats had been told that it was time to step down. There are rumours of large cash payouts being made to sweeten the deal for some of them. Whatever the reasons and however it was managed, there has been a major clearing out of MPs – something that Slater has been crowing about and has taken delight in contrasting National’s rejuvenation’ with the retrenchment of Labour’s old guard in safe electorate seats.

Andrea Vance quoted Lusk’s prediction that the holders of several safe seats will retire including “John Key, Murray McCully, Gerry Brownlee and Bill English” and says that Lusk “confirms he is acting for potential successors.” Lusk claimed in an email to Slater that he has “at least half a dozen people in their twenties who will be in caucus one day”.

Predicting that politicians will retire is hardly proof of great political insight, but it’s interesting that one of the senior MPs who Lusk named, resigned his seat to go onto the Party List. Bill English was succeeded in Clutha-Southland by Todd Barclay who, by the age of 23, had got a degree, worked as a lobbyist for a tobacco company and as an intern for Hekia Parata and Gerry Brownlee, and gained sufficient political knowledge and nous to justify his selection for a National citadel formerly occupied by one of the Party’s most senior and respected people."

From The Standard

From The Porcupine Farm

(Click for larger view - visit the farm)

Tobacco stain on would-be MP

From the Dom Post.

OPINION: The job of being a tobacco lobbyist is not a respectable one. Big Tobacco kills 5000 New Zealanders a year.

Half its customers die as a result of using the product. Tobacco is an addictive substance that causes untold misery and death throughout the world. Those promoting the interests of Big Tobacco know all this, and yet choose to work for a genuinely evil force.

Astonishingly, the National Party has chosen a 23-year-old tobacco lobbyist as its candidate for the super- safe National seat of Southland. Todd Barclay seems rather conflicted about his eight months as corporate affairs PR for Philip Morris. On the one hand, he says, it was "just a job" and it "doesn't define him".

On the other, he doesn't "condone" smoking and even seems to think he should acknowledge some of its ill- effects. "Everyone has been affected by someone with a long-term illness, so my greatest sympathies go out to them," says the young politician.

This is not just a job, but a job that aids and abets an industry that kills. And this job does define him, because he presumably took it up voluntarily.

At the same time he doesn't "condone" smoking and doesn't smoke himself. Worst of all is his attempt to acknowledge the harm. Long-term illness is one thing, but death is another, and he didn't mention it.

Above all, he says his "greatest sympathies go out" to the victims of the industry he worked for. There is no way that he can square these contradictions or give a moral justification for his activity.

He can't say smokers made the choice to smoke and therefore must take the consequences. Most smokers take up the habit when they are irrational adolescents, typically at age 14 or 15. And even if they took it up after they had reached the age of adulthood and rationality, they soon become addicts. Adult choice might have started the habit, but no adult choice sustains it.

Barclay will of course soon become an MP. A drover's dog would win Southland if it stood for National.

However, there must be questions about Barclay as a future MP.

The people's representatives must have some bare minimum of concern for the health of their community. By working for Big Tobacco, Barclay forfeited the right to be considered that way.

The same goes for another would-be National MP, Chris Bishop, who seeks the nomination for Hutt South. He used to be a tobacco lobbyist too, and apparently thinks he can justify this career choice on libertarian grounds. He can't.

If National has any sense or decency, it will not select Bishop as its candidate for this seat.

One tobacco lobbyist in the National caucus might be an accident. Two begins to make National look like aparty whose anti-tobacco stance is hollow and hypocritical.

National will no doubt argue that Big Tobacco is a legal industry, and so it is. Morally, however, Big Tobacco is indefensible - and so are those who are paid advocates for it.

Ludemann - gutter-talk exposed

Annette Gunther's as Blue as they come. She served the National Party as electorate chairman back in the day and has been outspoken in the media in response to several letters that I've written over time, so her political preferences have never been a mystery. Today, that changed, thanks to the snarky public comment by Ele Ludemann, published in The Southland Times recently.
Here's the letter from Annette, published in today's paper:

"Comment unwarranted

As a former electorate chairman for the old Awarua electorate my voting preferences in the past didn't take a rocket scientist to work out.
 However, the report in Monday's edition of your paper has truly altered that preference.
 The National Party regional chairman Ele Ludemann's comment on the benefit of Labour having an "unwanted candidate" for the Invercargill electorate has sadly cost Invercargill and Ms Dowie my vote.
  This comment is totally unwarranted and I hope the Invercargill campaign does not continue this trend toward the gutter."

ANNETTE GUNTHER
Wallacetown.

Ms Ludemann was ill-advised, and advised I'm sure she was, to make the un-called-for comment. Her doing so was however, no surprise to me, having heard on many occasions at public meetings, Bill English employ the same "gutter" methods in order to cast aspersions on his opponents and where the slagging was too nasty even for him, use proxies in the audience to do the sledging. All part of the National Party (un) fair-play-book.
Ms Ludemann should be ashamed, but I suspect she'll brash it out, just as Collins, Parata, Bennett, Tolley et al do on a regular basis. It's nasty behaviour, in my opinion, from a party that embraces such behaviour and even seems to revel in it.

Clutha/Southland says NO

Poor Bill. Despite being a National stronghold, his electorate voted decisively against asset sales - 61.2% of voters said, wrong, Bill, we didn't want you to flog our assets off.
That's gotta sting.
Bill'll have some line or other denying the obvious, but he and Key and the rest of the Nats have been told loud and clear. What that means for the coming election is the interesting thing. Bill, having read the writing on the wall, has abandoned the seat and will stand for the list only. Curious. Mind you, he's a Wellingtonian now, has been for years and he knows we Southlanders prefer our representatives to live locally.

Bouquets and briquettes

What's happening with the $25 000 000 briquette factory at Mataura?
Driving past, I see no signs of industry at all.
I have to give credit though, where it's due. The native tree roadside plantings Solid Energy did in order to screen the proposed open cast lignite mines from the travelling public, are doing really well and look great!

The latest and most blatant disgrace

From Stuff:
 "Fresh from its court victory on asset sales, the Government is considering selling all three state-owned electricity companies next year.

Finance Minister Bill English linked the possibility of three sales to buoyant financial markets and the plan would also mean the most controversial sales were over before election year."

Are we all sleeping? Where's the reaction to this appalling ploy from English and the National Party ?

Rushing the sales, so they're 'over before election year'?

Hello?

Anyone out there?

Asset sales to pay down debt

Well, no, they won't despite the Governments insistence. Not a dollar from the sale of our assets will go where National has been promising it will - they simply aren't telling the truth. Tim Watkin @ Pundit explains - and it's not a difficult thing to do, why Key, English and especially Ryall, as seen on Q&A this morning, are bullshitting us (please excuse the farming language).

"At the heart of its argument is debt. As Steven Joyce said again in parliament this week, mixed ownership is "about controlling the nation's debt".
But now Ryall admits that the profits from Mighty River Power won't be used to pay down a single cent of debt. Nope, no debt will be paid off thanks to this sale (and presumably the others). The only way these sales tackle our public debt is that they save us from borrowing more money for schools, hospitals and KiwiRail."

" So the debt argument just doesn't stack up.
But it's worse than that. Not only do the sales not pay down any debt, the loss of dividends from these companies must ultimately mean more debt somewhere down the track.
Bernard Hickey pointed out to me this week that over the past ten years the companies primed for sale have delivered a return on capital of 16%. Government borrowing is currently near an all-time low, at around 3.5%. So we're sacrificing 16% to save us 3.5%? How does that make economic sense?"

The asset sales trade-off - a lose-lose.

The Backdown Budget

"Errrmmmmm..."

That's what it's being called now, and rightly so. Flipping on the 'bigger classes is better for you' education portion of the budget meal (and they made a real meal of that) has had Hekia Parata dragged through the mud, but where's Bill English? It was his budget and his responsibility, but where's he hiding while bits of it fly off spectacularly? There've been no shots of Bill's weathered mug on our screens, no questions put to him by keen journalists, no appearances on TV's political half-hour shows, no sign of the wee mousy at all! Was it not his budget after all? Where does the buck stop, for a budget that's been named, 'Backdown'?

*Update - seems I've fallen for McCully's spin - I'm letting Key slither away from his poor performance as Prime Minister responsible for what his Government does. Better include his mug as well.

The good Oil

I would ordinarily be struggling to support anything Whaleoil says on any topic at all, but today, he's singing from my song-sheet. He doesn't like Hekia Parata, nor does he shrink from sheeting the blame for the Budget stuff-up the person responsible for the Budget, Bill English. I've cut-and-pasted his whole post here, as it's comprehensive and I'd hate to lose any of it's grunt by pruning it. No doubt the irascible Whale will let me know if he's unhappy to be quoted in full.

" Speaking to many constituency MPs in the past week they have shared with me their frustration of having to explain and apologise to their constituents that latest cluster-fu*ck by a List MP.

Hekia Parata appeared ill-advised, arrogant and poorly researched as she rammed home her education reforms. She could afford to do that, when she went home each night and at the start of the current parliamentary recess she had only Wira Gardiner to answer to.

Not so for the poor constituency MPs who return to their electorates to face hordes of bewildered parents who don’t know whether or not to believe the over the top, hyped outrage of the teacher unions and their patsy friends in the media or a over-blown minister making excuses.

It is those MPs who have to explain to their constituents that it appears there may have been a mistake. And as the old saying goes, if you are explaining a position you are losing.

Hekia Parata as a List MP faces none of that. The only outrage she will face is that which she is paid to face. From the teacher unions as expected but now within the caucus room…from electorate MPs who have explain her screw up.

Many in the caucus room will be wondering why they should bother standing up for someone who can’t win a seat and someone who appears totally aloof to the intricacies of her portfolio.

Anne Tolley isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, but she does have a low rat cunning that saw her deal to the teacher unions and push thorough National Standards without any cluster-f*cks of the proportions that Hekia Parata has delivered. Anne Tolley saw off four Labour education spokes people including the rabid old dog Trevor Mallard. It must gall Trevor Mallard that he was bested by Anne Tolley. Parata, however, fell over at the first hurdle.

The only other person who should be smarting is Bill English, as it was his idea to push through these reforms..to save what is really pennies in the big scheme of things. It is of no surprise that he got his acolyte Hekia Parata to try to deliver it and if she had been successful then Bill English’s succession, vicariously through Hekia Parata, would have been assured. Those dreams and plans are now in tatters.

This was the last throw of the dice for Bill English, papers will reveal eventually the real culpability for the education budget screw up. That he has managed to take out Hekia Parata on the way through is a blessing really for the long term viability of the National party.

I wrote a letter to the editor

Bill

Bill English's budget has caused a lot of upset in the education world. Intermediate schools; their teachers and the parents of the students who go to them, were dismayed to find that huge cuts were to be made to teaching staff and to the practical subjects offered. What reason could there be for such severe cuts to Intermediate schools? National has for a long time now, pushed the idea that bigger classes are better, that crowding children into a classroom will help their learning. Children at State schools that is. Not those going to private schools, where many of the politicians own children go. At the private schools, parents are promised small class sizes and the benefits that come from the extra attention their child will receive as a result. What I find difficult to understand, is how the Government can say two different things and expect us to believe them. Small is good for their children, but big is good for ours. I don't believe them.

 Robert Guyton

The Southland Times people kindly accompanied my letter with a photo of Budget Bill, at the point of delivery, and captioned it,
"Double standard Bill English's Budget says bigger classes are better."

In which Trotter pins English and lauds the Green man

Chris Trotter casts Budget author, Bill English as a leech, most graphically:

" Mr English must be cast as an Eighteenth Century quack, whose only answer to his patient’s declining health is to “bleed him, bleed him, bleed him and then bleed him some more”. The same leech-craft that is killing Europe, is being touted by Mr English and the Prime Minister as our own unfortunate country’s sovereign cure."

He then turns on a limelight beneath Russel Norman's feet, to illuminate the figure who may be the only one on the stage with any idea of whose line it is anyway:

" Only the Green’s Russel Norman shows the slightest sign of possessing the Nietzsche/Douglas spirit. He, unlike Mr Parker, will not bow down to the deficit idol. The Greens co-leader simply refuses to go on heaping sacrificial victims (beneficiaries, public servants, the sick, students) upon the corpse-strewn altar of “Returning the Government’s Books to Surplus by 2014/15”.

Given the chance, I believe Dr Norman would cast back the curtains and throw open the windows of New Zealand’s economic sick-room. With the highest expectations of his fellow New Zealanders’ recuperative powers, he shows them a vista of blue skies and green fields, and invites them to get out of bed."

A few paddocks short

Fonterra chief executive Theo Spierings should talk with Bill English and John Key about their plans to sell our energy assets, as soon as possible.
He has some great ideas.
He said recently,
"Our farmers know it does not make sense to reduce their financial exposure by selling off a few paddocks from their farm."

Private school privilege

Why is it, people might be wondering, that New Zealand's private schools received a $35 million 'boost' from the National Government, soon after they took office? Why is it, they might continue to wonder, that private schools were not included in National's national standards reforms and don't have to test and report the way state schools do?
Why is it, do you think, that private schools are able to continue to advertise the educational advantages of lower class sizes, while State schools are told that class size makes no difference and that they will have to have larger classes now, thanks to the latest Budget?
It's very odd.
Someone has pointed out that the children of National Party MPs generally attend private schools, recipients of National's largess, schools that are exempt from the austerity measures of the Budget and exempt from the authoritarian national standards regime.
Those making the suggestions that the National Party MPs putting these measures in place might be doing so because they and their children will not be affected by the cuts and extra pressures, are being accused by the commentators of the Right, of being 'envious'.
I suppose they might be a little. Watching one section of society being treated in a privileged way can be irritating, to say the least.
Hekia Parata's Budget stuff-up, where she's gutted the Intermediate schools in one arrogant stroke of her blue pen, shows how haughtily out of touch National ministers have become and how damaging to New Zealand society their self-serving decisions are.
Back to school, all of them. A State school, that is.

Editor on the Budget

The Southland Times' editor has his say on yesterday's bland Budget:

"Picture a listless diner, pushing unpalatable food around a plate to give the impression some of it's getting eaten."

Indeed.

Asset sales - a game for fools

"The Green Party today released the detailed findings of a new report that shows the Government and the economy will be permanently worse off if asset sales go ahead."

Russel tripped-up and drove Bill English's rugged mug into the paddock with a question in the House earlier this week, around asset sales.


This report commissioned by the Greens shows how unsound National's asset plans are and how right those who oppose the sales, are. BERL chief economist Dr Ganesh Nana says,

"Even Bill English accepts that our high levels of indebtedness to overseas lenders is our number one economic vulnerability.

"His programme of asset sales would make that worse."

Dr Ganesh Nana's report concluded that, "It would be unwise from an economic perspective to embark on a policy that risked increasing external payment obligations."

Russel adds,


"The National Government has dug itself into a hole with poor economic management and poor choices; asset sales would only make it worse."

Zero Budget

Only 37% of New Zealanders believe the economy is on the right track, according to the latest Fairfax survey. No surprise there. Bill's up against it, but will still spin his 'it's all Labours' fault/the earthquake/world economic crisis is responsible' line for all it's worth. I'm attending his post-budget address to the Gore Chamber of Commerce and will be offering Bill a chance to explain the public's lack of confidence in his 'austerity', non-stimulatory budget, and will report back here. I don't expect any of the Chamberites will have a cross word for Bill. They certainly didn't hold Solid Energy's feet anywhere near the fire when their front-men presented their expansive plans there when last I sat down to breakfast with the be-suited ones.

Not Bill English

Ali Timms, Environment Southland chairman, has not addressed her admonishments (in today's Southland Times) to this man, Conor English, Federated Farmers CEO, but to his brother, Bill English, Deputy Prime Minister. English went into bat for the federation following the grumpy walkout by federation members, who couldn't bear to hear the contrary opinion of their chairman, Hugh Gardyne speaking in the ES boardroom last week. English makes claims on behalf of the Federated Farmers, despite not being their CEO, claims that Timms quite rightly disputes. Perhaps English's claims to the Times were in fact, English's and the otherwise attentive Mr Tulett mixed the Christian names inadvertently, who can say? "Could the real Mr English come forward", I can almost here people say, "we're feeling a little bamboozled!"

*  Prior to this appointment Mr English was Commercial Director and second-in-charge of The Property Group, a consultancy with 80 staff. He is the former chief executive officer of the New Zealand Property Institute and has had roles in other lobby groups and in the Beehive.

Bless those briquettes

I arrived a little late to the blessing of the Solid Energy briquette plant at Mataura, which in itself was a blessing because I didn't have to wear one of the stupid hi-vis vests like the ones the other guests, including all of the rangatahi were wearing. Even Bill English had one stretched over his MP suit. Roly had mis-timed our entrance, so we slunk in at the back of the marquee and watched the proceedings in relative anonymity. We thought.
The kapahaka group belted out a mighty haka and the wero was laid down by a fearsome lad wielding a taiaha that seemed to hypnotise Bill so much that someone from the crowd had to yell out 'Pick it up!'.
A karakia was intoned over a white china bowl of briquettes.

A sod was turned (I'm resisting a very strong temptation here!)

There were plenty of media, suitably attired for the dangerous environment of gravel and grass.

My best shot, photographically speaking, was of two 'coats' left lying on a table while the speechifying went on: a Solid Energy vest and a korowai from the Hokonui Runaka. Poignant much?

After the hole was dug, and as I stood in the sunniest, warmest spot out of the keen wind that blew in from the southwest, Bill Luff, Group Manager External Affairs came and introduced himself and we had a very convivial talk about issues of Christchurch and Solid Energy respectively. Don Elder joined us (he has a Hone Hariwira handshake, warm and prolonged, in case that sort of detail interests you) and made a good job of allaying my concerns about some things. Not all by any means, but we only had 20 minutes until the show was closed and I had to leave for Invers.

English primes Iwi for the Big Sale

Bill English in secret talks with Iwi over buying New Zealand's assets?
Haven't read anything about that in the Southland Times but the Member for Eketahuna North has picked up on Bill's manoeuvres and says:

"Why has Bill English been so bloody quiet about counselling the iwi on the economic opportunities open to them if they buy (or partly buy) these state assets?
If he was doing good things for the country, he would want the country to know about it, especially in an election year.
Whenever Ministers don’t want the country to know what they are up to, chances are you will find they have been up to something that will bruise their electoral support"

Read the full post here.