0 Darien Fenton retires; is Clare Curran next?

Labour list MP Darien Fenton will leave Parliament at the General Election. Whether she has retired or whether she is being retired is a moot point. But Ms Fenton joins fellow unranked (Labour's caucus is ranked down to #25 of 34) MP Rajen Prasad in heading for greener pastures.

Interestingly, we blogged a prediction of this in September last year, courtesy of Patrick Gower from 3News; check this out:

Paddy Gower also tipped the imminent demise of Clare Curran. Neither she nor Ms Fenton were Cunliffe loyalists, as evidenced by their low rankings within Labour's caucus. Will Clare Curran be next to be pensioned off?

And as a final irony, Darien Fenton came to Parliament after many years as the general secretary of the Service and Food Workers' Union. Isn't it ironic that Labour's 2012 rule change gave the unions the determining vote in Labour leadership contests, and Ms Fenton's political career has been ended by the bloke who the unions wanted to lead the Labour Party.

0 We can't help but wonder...

Rajan Prasad, one of Labour's hidden talents got himself noticed yesterday. Questioning the decision to give a special work visa to Nigella Lawson, despite her admited drug use, he expressed thoughts on drug use that might be better kept to himself; check this out:

Mr Prasad said as a general rule he did not believe people who abused drugs should be allowed in to New Zealand but there should be discretion to allow it in special circumstances.

So we can't help but wonder; given that Green Party co-leader Russel Norman admitted (very freely) on The Nation the other week that he had used cannabis at some past time, is Dr Prasad saying that the man David Cunliffe might need in order to form a government ought never have been allowed to immigrate to New Zealand?

We're not big on people who use illegal drugs either. But we would suggest that Dr Prasad talk to his colleague Darien Fenton, a self-confessed recovered heroin addict about the power of second chances.


Right; see you later. We have a plane to catch!

0 Collins fights back

Judith Collins is not taking the latest allegations against her lying down; Stuff reports:

Justice Minister Judith Collins has hit out against the latest conflict of interest allegations levelled against her by Opposition MPs.
Collins has been under fire over allegations she used her ministerial position to benefit her husband's business interests.
She was also refusing to name the Chinese border official who she, Oravida managing director Julia Xu and chairman Stone Shi, who were close personal friends, shared a private dinner with while on an official trip to China.
The latest allegations levelled by NZ First leader Winston Peters under parliamentary privilege were that Collins went to the rescue of Oravida after it wrote to the Government seeking assistance after the Fonterra botulism scare last year.
The letter said Oravida had been "profoundly negatively" affected by the disaster and urged "ministers and the New Zealand Government to help us to navigate through this difficult time".
Collins has avoided the media, but told RadioLive today the allegations made by Peters were "utterly untrue".
"Worse than that, TV3 and Winston Peters have made utterly false comments and stated as fact things that are not fact," Collins said.
"Pretty much everything" about the allegations was false "and I'm not going to to dignify them with a response", she said.
"I'm not responsible for the company, I'm not responsible for actions that they take and I'm absolutely disgusted at the way in which my family has been dragged through this by some elements of the media."
She denied it was a bad look for her to meet with Oravida after the company wrote to Trade Minister Tim Groser and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy seeking government help.
"It does not look wrong. It looks no more wrong than the fact that 41 companies wrote or received some funding from the Government because of the issue," Collins said. 

David Cunliffe made a rare appearance in Parliament yesterday to lead the attack on Judith Collins. But given that he still refuses to name those who donated anonymously to his leadership campaign, and given those donations were hidden away in a secret trust which Mr Cunliffe hoped would remain secret, he is the last person who should be calling for transparency.

Opposition MP's used three of their eight allocated questions yesterday during Question Time to attack Ms Collins, but made little progress. There's a good reason for that; it's a beat-up, and no amount of hysterical shrieking, mud-slinging and innuendo can change that. 

Winston Peters promised to release damning evidence against Ms Collins to Parliament yesterday, but once again he came up short. His allegations against Judith Collins are as strong as his allegation earlier this year that Huka Lodge had been sold to Chinese buyers.

And the Minister of Justice knows who her real friends are:

Any ties that Sir Peter Leitch may have still had to Labour from the Clark years were severed when Darien Fenton attacked his character in 2011 for daring to say something nice about John Key; the ultimate act of class treason in Ms Fenton's eyes. We applaud him for sticking up for his friend; that's the mark of the man.

We will predict that Judith Collins will survive this because, apart from having fallen foul of the Prime Minister's "no surprises" policy, there is no evidence that she has done anything wrong. 

There is plenty of innuendo, there is no shortage of mud being flung, but there is no evidence of wrong-doing. Sure, she is suffering some reputational damage, but in the absence of any evidence that Ms Collins directly or indirectly intervened on Oravida's behalf, the Opposition has nothing.

0 Labour's transport policy demolished

Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee has driven a truck through Labour's transport policy announced this morning; the Beehive website reports:

More trouble with Labour’s transport policy

Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee says Ministry of Transport analysis of Labour’s new policy for taxing motorhomes shows many motorhome owners would actually be charged higher Road User Charges under a Labour government than they are presently, not lower, as Labour’s leader claimed this morning.
“This is frankly remarkable – I’m not sure if David Cunliffe is being tricky or if Labour is simply a shambles,” Mr Brownlee says.

We think it's possible both Gerry Brownlee's scenarios are true; David Cunliffe seems to be in a perpetually state of trickiness, and we know that the Labour Party is a shambles, with deep division between warring factions.

The rest of Brownlee's presser explains how David Cunliffe and Darien Fenton have got their sums wrong; you can read it here.

In the meantime, we don't think attacking truck drivers is going to be a vote-winner for Labour. They tried that in 2008, and it went spectacularly long as truckies brought their big rigs to the Beehive in protest; remember this?

So much for Labour being the party which represents working New Zealanders, like truck drivers; what a clustertruck this has become!