0 Quote of the Day - 13 June 2014

Fran O'Sullivan's Herald column today is about political donations, and the expectations thereafter. Headed Cash donors have expectations it concludes thus:

Justice Wylie's judgment is also notable for the light it sheds on SkyCity's relationship with Brown. SkyCity had not previously donated to an Auckland mayoral campaign. But in 2010, Brown's campaign team approached the casino company for a donation.
SkyCity's board and CEO Nigel Morrison agreed to make the donation and one of a similar size to Banks. SkyCity did not want either of the two $15,000 donations to be made anonymously.
The Banks saga is still to finally play out. But what is notable is that Brown - who was publicly perceived to be concerned about the social cost of casinos - was quite prepared to have his campaign team pursue SkyCity for a donation.
As the EY inquiry disclosed, Brown benefited from free nights at the casino operator's hotel. Brown also gave his support to the Government's "pokies for convention centre" deal with SkyCity.
It's not easy to hold back a tsunami of disbelief that donor cash doesn't buy influence when looking at the sequence of events.
I've questioned before why Brown wanted to take power off the Council Controlled Organisations and centralise it in the mayor's office. There are some good commercial brains on the boards of the CCOs. But they have been subject to too much dictate from the centre.
At a national level, Labour's Andrew Little was right on the button with his call for an independent inquiry into the police decision not to prosecute Banks. But Little shouldn't stop there. The bigger question - which far outweighs Banks' transgressions - is why the police didn't file a legal prosecution against Labour Party identities after Labour raided parliamentary funds to back its 2005 campaign for re-election.
That question still remains.
Banks has paid a price for a crime which is substantially less than that committed by the country's then ruling party.

Fran O'Sullivan's comments about Len Brown and his relationship with SkyCity reawaken the events surrounding the outing of his affair with Bevan Chuang, and the investigation which followed. They will do nothing to dispel the lingering suspicion that Brown is unfit for the office of Mayor of Auckland on several levels.

But it is her comments on Labour and the 2005 Pledge card scandal that are the most telling. We warned Andrew Little last week to be careful what he wished for. Now the Pledge card rort is back in the news, and Labour will have to go into damage control all over again. 

This time though, they are doing the damage control from the Opposition benches, so any time spent putting out nine-year-old fires is time that Labour ISN'T telling New Zealand what it would do for the next nine years.

0 Quote of the Day - 17 May 2014

We won't copy vast tracts of Fran O'Sullivan's excellent column in this morning's Herald. We simply suggest that you go here and have a read for yourself.

But this portion stuck out, and is our Quote of the Day (with our emphasis added):

These post-Budget lunches are a marquee event on the business calendar. They are where Key not only explains the Budget but also charts the future in a compelling way designed to engender confidence so business people keep on investing, venturing out into the world to tackle tough markets - and employing staff.
The protesters outside the Sky City Convention Centre didn't get this.
The people who slagged off the guests (for instance - the business organisation leader accused of being a "bloated capitalist") don't seem to get it that business success ultimately underwrites jobs.
The protesters disregard the fact that many New Zealand businesses were put through the wringer by the Global Financial Crisis. People have worked hard to get their firms on to a sufficiently sound footing that they are now confident enough to take a few risks and grow their businesses.
It's a good space for New Zealand to be in.
The protesters were so dumb that they hadn't worked out that the business guests who openly walked past them to take another route into the centre were doing so for a purpose.
Instead they charged a door that was never going to be opened to them or anyone else.
This misjudgment is not confined to protesters.

Fran O'Sullivan is spot on. The protestors yesterday seem to have forgotten that the Budget invests $500m into families via  a range of measure. There wasn't much in it for the "bloated capitalists" who do most of the employing in New Zealand. As one wag put it yesterday, that's what happens when you organise the post-Budget protest pre-Budget!

And Labour has misjudged John Key ever since he entered Parliament almost twelve years ago. The underestimated him as he became National's Finance spokesman where he frequently got the better of Michael Cullen, and when he became Leader of the Opposition. 

Helen Clark thought that the Leaders' Debates against Key in 2008 would be a doddle. Instead it was she who lost the plot, famously accusing the PM-in-waiting of having to shout down his family at home. Key saw of Ms Clark, followed in quick succession by Phil Goff and David Shearer, whilst David Cunliffe shows no signs of having learned anything.

Long may the Labour Party continue to misjudge and underestimate John Key.

0 Soper on Cunliffe and fudge

Barry Soper's Soapbix editorial piece on Newstalk ZB is a nice mix of fact and satire. And he's certainly seen through David Cunliffe's fudging yesterday. Under the heading Cunliffe fudged his budget reaction Soper opines:

Politics in this country is a funny old business. If you're on one side of the fence you'll always complain about those on the other side, regardless of what they're doing or saying.
'The Dipton Drawler' Bill English could have delivered election year winners like free healthcare for all, free education - including university, free rest home care for the elderly, an increase in the minimum living wage to $20 an hour and the immediate settling of all Treaty claims and still his opponents would complain and probably claim he was being irresponsible.
As it is, he wandered into Labour's patch by spending half of the $1 billion he'd earmarked for splashing out for his sixth Budget on families. Paid parental leave is being increased by four weeks, kids under 13 will be able to go to the doctor for nothing and even registering your car's going to become more than $100 cheaper. They're just a few of the election sweeteners on offer.
Labour's bitterly complaining though. The complaint that The Tories are looking after their rich mates is a little difficult to fathom and so is their chant that it's a 'Cabinet Club annual report'. 
It's doubtful the donors to the Tories will be popping the champagne corks over this one considering the top 12 percent of wage earners are paying more than half the tax.

We agree with Soper about the "Cabinet Club" Budget. As we blogged earlier this morning, the speech that Russel Norman delivered yesterday bore little relativity to the Budget delivered by the Dipton Drawler, Bill English. There certainly wasn't much in the Budget for John Key's Rich Prick mates. It hasn't stopped a sell-out crowd from paying to hear the PM at Sky City this afternoon, even if they had to get past rent-a-mob first.

But it is David Cunliffe for whom Soper has saved his best:

'Martin Luther' Cunliffe was thumping the tub and came up with what sounded like a good line describing the offering as a 'Fudge-It Budget'. The trouble is that it's the same line used back in 2002 by Rodney 'Thick' Hide to describe 'Savage Mickey' Cullen's Budget, although Hide was a little more inventive when he said it was sickly sweet with no substance.
Clearly Cunliffe thought he could get away with it but hadn't counted on the man sitting beside the fulminating John Kiwi. Bill English was the Tory leader back then and Cullen's 'Fudge It Budget' didn't seem to do Labour any harm. They trashed National to it's biggest ever defeat.
So if that's the success of 'Fudge-It Budgets', then The Drawler will be laughing all the way to the ballot box! 

Quite so. David Cunliffe's speech yesterday was big on the theatricals, but lacking in substance. Nor was it a Phil Goff vein-popping special, or a clinical Helen Clark performance.

Instead David Cunliffe, as Soper notes, fudged his opportunity, recycling his description of the Budget in the same way that Labour is recycling the policies that were strongly rejected in 2011. Perhaps Mr Cunliffe needs to give up on the recycled fudge, and go and get some honey from his Herne Bay beehive, because on the basis of yesterday's performance, that's the only beehive in his immediate future.