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Categories under spin

National’s Overseas Gambling Levy policy figures are not rock solid

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, March 15th, 2024 - 4 comments

The IRD has estimated that National’s proposed Overseas Gambling Levy Policy will bring in $500 million less than it promised during the election campaign.

Rock Solid Financial Geniuses

Written By: - Date published: 2:55 pm, March 13th, 2024 - 45 comments

The right has this belief that they are economic geniuses. Occasionally this belief is shown to be faulty. Like this week when National’s costings for tax cuts to Landlords was $800 million more than previously estimated.

About the promoters electoral returns

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, February 25th, 2024 - 8 comments

The Electoral Commission has released the major promoters’ electoral returns. These show significant amounts of money being spent on getting Labour unelected but give no detail about how the campaigns were funded.

A sad lament from the serial left

Written By: - Date published: 10:39 pm, February 13th, 2024 - 103 comments

Attacking leftists attempts to expose the Atlas Network of right-wing think tanks, Chris Trotter offers this gem “Morally speaking, is taking money from oil companies really all that distinguishable from giving money to oil companies every time we fill up our petrol tank?”

Who are the four lobbyists with Parliamentary swipe cards?

Written By: - Date published: 12:23 pm, February 12th, 2024 - 23 comments

National has trashed its comment last terms that lobbyists should not have special access rights by handing out four swipe cards to lobbyists and refusing to say who they are.

The apparatus behind the curtain – Part 2: The mainline

Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, February 11th, 2024 - 60 comments

In a guest post Seddonville Miner explores links between the Atlas Network and the Taxpayer’s Union.

It has been a long week for Casey Costello

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, February 2nd, 2024 - 46 comments

Recent disclosure of the actions of associate Minister of Health Casey Costello raises the extraordinary possibility that British American Tobacco may be having an undue influence on the setting of the Government’s smoking policies.

Atlas smirked

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, January 7th, 2024 - 115 comments

A George Monbiot article in the Guardian made me wonder what effect the Atlas Network is having on New Zealand politics through the Taxpayer’s Union. Publicly available information suggests considerable funding is being made available and that the current Government’s priorities are precisely those that the Atlas Network would approve of.

National’s complete indifference to climate change

Written By: - Date published: 9:05 pm, December 18th, 2023 - 18 comments

This is the only possible explanation.  As well as celebrating all things car National has a pathological hatred of cycleways and walkways and public transport.

Shame Jones

Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, December 13th, 2023 - 24 comments

In one speech Shane Jones has talked about the “hysteria surrounding climate change”, promised to disregard targets agreed to under the Paris Agreement, ordered the halting of work at the Ministry for the Environment, promised the lifting the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration at pace, and said that Mining on Department of Conservation (DoC) and Stewardship land is also in the pipeline.

Willis’s budget analysis is either deeply cynical or evidence she does not know what she is talking about

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, December 5th, 2023 - 75 comments

Recent claims by Nicola Willis that the Governments Finances are full of fiscal cliffs is evidence either that National will cynically make baseless claims to attack Labour or that Nicola Willis has no idea about what she is talking about and has not been doing her most basic job of reading and comprehending previous budget documents.

Chris Bishop can’t count

Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, December 3rd, 2023 - 48 comments

This morning on Q&A and despite being pulled up on it Chris Bishop repeated National’s claim that under the Smokefree reforms there would only be allowed one tobacco retail shop in Northland when there would actually be at least 34.

Negotiation of chaos

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, November 15th, 2023 - 132 comments

So the coalition negotiations are going as well as I thought they would.

Nu phone who dis?

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, November 6th, 2023 - 37 comments

It is very early days and already, in what appears to be a finely calibrated insult to make David Seymour appear weak, Winston Peters has responded to the first overture from the Act leader for talks by ignoring him.

Let’s do the time warp again

Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, October 26th, 2023 - 39 comments

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary Winston Peters has accused Jacinda Ardern of hiding the fact that her office received the Christchurch Massacre shooter’s manifesto shortly before the massacre occurred.

National’s credibility problem

Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, October 6th, 2023 - 31 comments

National has suffered further damage to its credibility with its promise of a $250 tax cut per fortnight for an average family only being realised if that family spent at least $300 per week on childcare and was a two income family with each adult earning between $53,500 and $66,000.

The weird and wacky 2023 election campaign

Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, October 4th, 2023 - 30 comments

In a week of weird events National’s decision not to debate Labour in the Press’s leader’s debate has been a massive own goal because the country will be able to see how toxic David Seymour’s and Winston Peters’ relationship is.

National really, really needs New Zealand to be in a recession

Written By: - Date published: 7:59 am, September 24th, 2023 - 22 comments

After Stats NZ shot down National’s claim that the country is in recession National pirouetted by claiming that New Zealand WILL be in recession in the near future and that the Reserve Bank has predicted this. But according to the Reserve Bank this may not be true …

TVNZ concludes that Luxon’s pants may have been on fire

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 21st, 2023 - 39 comments

Fact checking by TVNZ has determined that much of what Christopher Luxon said in the recent leader’s debate was not true.

National does a big sook

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, September 5th, 2023 - 51 comments

National, which perfected the art of dirty politics, and which has spent the past couple of years being relentlessly negative and which has had its sock puppets attack individual Labour MPs mercilessly is deeply, deeply, deeply upset that the CTU has pointed out to the public what a Christopher Luxon led Government would actually mean.

Semour is more like Rimmer than Mandela

Written By: - Date published: 8:54 pm, August 26th, 2023 - 17 comments

David Seymour reached more absurd levels of idiocy this week with a suggestion that if he was alive Nelson Mandela would be an Act supporter.

David Seymour should be ashamed

Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, August 18th, 2023 - 103 comments

David Seymour yesterday hit a new low in race baiting when he said that “in my fantasy we’d send a guy called Guy Fawkes in [to the ministry of Pacific Peoples] and it’d be all over”.

Nanny state National wants to ban cell phones at schools

Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, August 10th, 2023 - 62 comments

luxon sheep

National has this propensity of announcing policies that scratch conservative itches, cost nothing and hog media attention. Yesterday we had a classic example of this as they announced that cell phones would be banned at schools.

You can never, ever, have too many Teslas

Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, June 21st, 2023 - 55 comments

Fresh from news that Christopher Luxon ordered a State supplied Tesla when his household already owns one comes news that the household Tesla was upgraded, and that the clean car discount was obtained.

DIA Is Not Short For Diablo

Written By: - Date published: 3:29 pm, June 4th, 2023 - 96 comments

A fine example of when a free speech advocate is spouting garbage that serves nothing and nobody well except his own biased views.

National keeps making shit up

Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, May 1st, 2023 - 33 comments

National has been caught out misrepresenting official data by claiming that 19,000 nurses had left public health when they knew that the figure includes transfers between health boards and the number of employed nurses actually increased by 4,108.

National’s weird tenancy policy announcement

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, April 30th, 2023 - 73 comments

This week Chris Bishop announced National’s landlord policy and made the extraordinary claim that making evictions of tenants easier was a progressive pro tenant policy.

Making s%*t up

Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, March 15th, 2023 - 41 comments

Is it just me or is Mike Hosking becoming more unbalanced?  The recent misrepresentation of a speech from Deborah Russell would suggest that he is getting worse.

Where is the Free Speech Union when you need it?

Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, February 28th, 2023 - 97 comments

Rob Campbell is under some pressure from National and Act for calling out publicly the right’s dog whistle attacks on co governance.  But so far self appointed protector of the right to freedom of speech, the Free Speech Union, has been very quiet.  Why is this?

Sturgeon, like Ardern, a casualty of online abuse

Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, February 21st, 2023 - 65 comments

Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation as Scotland’s First Minister was something of a replay of Jacinda Ardern’s resignation. While subject to widespread abuse, both were reluctant to cite this as their main reason for quitting. But the abuse undoubtedly played a major role. But the misogynist trend is endemic and needs to be quelled.

Why is everything always Jacinda’s fault?

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, January 10th, 2023 - 57 comments

Son of former National MP and former Political reporter and currently self branded travel reporter Brook Sabin has produced potentially the most ridiculous article of the year by blaming the Government for not sorting out Auckland Airport’s baggage handling problems.  And we are only 10 days in.

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