I forgot about the recent $100 million spent on an Australian dinancial advisory comapny, Lazard, to advise on the sale of state assests. To ‘advise’ on state assest sales… before he has even been elected. Wow. Ironically it is the same amount needed to clean up the mess from the Rena.

Why are we even bothering to hold elections if this man is unaccountable to the New Zealand public?

Umm, yes they have.  It’s right there in the title of this blog post: 
“New Zealand Prime Minister sends police to raid major news outlets over covert recording of negotiations with far-right party”

This is one of the reasons it is patently wrong for an international media outlet like BoingBoing to refer to ACT as a far right party – they’re not nationalists, they’re not xenophobic, and they’re not authoritarian. Certainly not compared to anything you see in Europe or North America, that’s for sure.

I can’t stand that creep John Banks and his ideologies, for the very reasons outlined in the video you posted above. 

I don’t trust the Labour party to do a good job of moving the country forward.  They had nine years in office, so the social and economic make up of the country we live in today will have been largely shaped by their policy direction.  I certainly don’t see how increasing our overseas national debt to fund spending programmes (as they propose) will better us in the long term.

Having said that I don’t aggree with everything the National Party puts forward as policy either.  My comment about John Key Being a “generally good bloke” was a flippant and simplistic attempt to encapsulate my perception of him and what I think he represents. 

I have to say I have more faith in John Key’s ability to lead the nation than I do Phil Goff and David Cunliffe, based on what I have heard from them over the course of the last 6-9 months.

I have always been a Green Party supporter, partly on the basis of their environmental policy and partly because I have known Jeanette Fitzsimons personally from a young age and I belive she is a genuinely good person.  A person of integrity and honesty.  She is now no longer leading the party and I will have to revisit their policy statements, as well as those of the other major parties and local candidates.

As some of my friends and I have generally concluded, there is no one party or candidate we actively WANT to vote for.  So we are reduced to voting for the party we perceive will do the least harm.

I would appreciate other’s thoughts on the matter.

Seb, what is your definition of a ‘good bloke’? One who has rail roaded the democratic process throughout there entire term as prime minister? Used the Christchurch earthquake to pass through bills on internet censorship and  police surveillance without any need for public scrutiny?

And what did Helen Clarke do that was so awful? Nothing compare to Key. Then again I guess Clarke could never fit into the ‘good bloke’ category.

I have continually asked people who say they are going to vote for Key why and I have never once been given any reason apart from something limp and meaningless like ‘he’s a good bloke’.

The next four years under Key we are really going to see this man’s true colours fly and we can see that slipping with this whole tea cup sillyness.

Fascists don’t always wear jack boots and shave their head. They usually wear a tie and smirk blankly whenever a camera is pointed at them. Oh yeah, and always refuse to answer questions.

John Banks MP for the (“non-right wing”) ACT party:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFGoyAHhm9I&feature=share

He was also until recently the Mayor of Auckland… twice. Non-european New Zealanders, mainly Maori and Polynesian people, make up 35% of the cities population of 1.5 million.

Also, Key has said (paraphrasing) “if you’re innocent, there is nothing to fear” in regards to the security & surveillance and copyright legislation changes. Surely he should forget about the whole tape and illegal recording thing if he’s so innocent.

I think it’s important that whether or not Key is “a generally good bloke” (he’s a snake oil salesman), he’s definitely a guy who’s gone straight to the police alleging that his privacy has been invaded by this recording and urging them to press charges only half a year after pushing through an urgent law change to let the police continue to warrentlessly invade everyone else’s privacy through previously-illegal recording.

This whole fiasco is a silly storm in a teacup.  Key is generally a good bloke, but his insistence on reporting this to the police has blown the whole thing out of proportion.

The media haven’t been intimated at all, they love this.  They’ve talked about the story almost non-stop for 3 or 4 days which is boring, but hey that’s up to them.  

The cameraman in the middle of it all has requested an urgent High Court judgement as to whether or not the conversation was private and therefore, illegal to record. He is also considering bringing a defamation suit.

Or is it just more of the usual, sub-mammalian ass-covering of the atypical politician – But now, thanks to public media, writ large for the world to see ?

Is stuff like this the dying gasps of the wanna-be totalitarians, or the first real wave ?

One wonders if we can even have one without the other…

Yet for some reason most New Zealanders continue to think of him as a nice man. He’s not, he’s a vile little adder.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10766325