It’s called the House of Representatives and indeed it is. It represents the best and worst in us and our irrational MMP style of governance has exacerbated that.
Recent events have emphasised the point.
Maurice Williamson kicked it all off. Once the darling of the liberals after a homo-erotic speech supporting same-sex marriage he let his new-found friends down by interfering with the justice system in a phone call to the police attempting to get a substantial National Party donor, who had been charged with alleged domestic violence, off the hook.
Winston Peters then promised to have the beleaguered Judith Collins sacked by her boss for not fully disclosing that the Chinese government had paid for some segments of her recent trip to the People’s Republic. “Gone by the end of the week,” he boasted. Sweating profusely, shaking like a leaf and slurring his words, his so-called “smoking gun” failed to fire.
Brendon Horan, once a favoured member of the NZ First stable, weighed in next claiming Mr Peters couldn’t talk – or even slur presumably – as he had failed to disclose that he part-owned a racehorse. Given the nags record on the track Winston was probably ashamed to admit even a part-ownership.
Horan was no doubt still licking his wounds after a sibling accused him of dipping into their mother’s estate causing Winston to dismiss him from the party with an even greater velocity than he had hoped John Key would do to Ms Collins.
An enquiry eventually cleared Mr Horan of any wrongdoing, but he still languishes almost unnoticed in one of parliament’s darkest recesses as an independent MP and is probably going to have to seek employment elsewhere come September.
However the first prize for the most disturbing behaviour of the week has to go to Jan Logie. If you’ve never heard of Jan Logie, then join the club. Jan is a Green list MP - all Green MP’s are list - and last week she totally ignored item 6 on the Green’s so-called “List of values” which states “Engage respectfully without personal attacks” when she tweeted: “John Key says Bill English has produced as many budgets as children….Begs the question who has he F&%d to produce it.”
Charming.
And so that’s a small sampling of our House of Representatives. The nutty Greens, the race-based Maori party, Labour with its gaggle of gays, United-Future and its bow-tied beau’s, the grey-underpowered NZ First, the conspirational Conservatives, the philosophically-inept Act, mana-less Mana, the rapacious Nationalists and potentially, heaven forbid, Herr Dotcom’s National Socialist leaning, Mein Kampf loving, Internet party.
The Ukraine is looking more stable by the day.
************************************
The Budget failed to address one of the major problems facing New Zealand and that is the widening gap between rich and poor. Last week two chief executives, one from the BNZ and the other from the Warehouse, admitted their multi-million-dollar remuneration packages were obscene and claimed they were embarrassed to receive such recompense.
I noticed neither offered to take a pay cut, but both conceded that those down at the coal face deserve a bigger slice of the pie.
This is not just a New Zealand phenomenon and is causing concern worldwide.
Last weeks’ Time magazine blamed globalisation which it said had created an international labour market that had heightened competition for jobs and had shifted power to employers. Add to this the fact that incestuous corporate governance tends to lavish largesse on managers over workers and there is an urgent need to reverse this alarming trend.
Those whose politics align to the right-of-centre are committed to the idea that wealth created at the top trickles down to everybody, even though a growing mountain of evidence tells us that this simply doesn’t work in the real world.
On the other side of the spectrum too many people believe that the capitalist coupling of free-trade agreements and deregulation works against the wage earner. Imported goods like clothing, footwear and appliances have never been cheaper, but internal costs like property taxes and electricity rise exponentially. The answer to the problem lies somewhere in the middle. Ideally governments need to promote business-friendly policies that allow growth while at the same time taking steps to ensure the benefits of that growth are spread more widely and equitably.
Higher wages would negate the need for the complicated working-for-families tax package that Labour introduced and National has maintained.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for a solution. There are more important things to attend to - like scoring points in the House of Representatives.
Some people use their brains to think,
Recent events have emphasised the point.
Maurice Williamson kicked it all off. Once the darling of the liberals after a homo-erotic speech supporting same-sex marriage he let his new-found friends down by interfering with the justice system in a phone call to the police attempting to get a substantial National Party donor, who had been charged with alleged domestic violence, off the hook.
Winston Peters then promised to have the beleaguered Judith Collins sacked by her boss for not fully disclosing that the Chinese government had paid for some segments of her recent trip to the People’s Republic. “Gone by the end of the week,” he boasted. Sweating profusely, shaking like a leaf and slurring his words, his so-called “smoking gun” failed to fire.
Brendon Horan, once a favoured member of the NZ First stable, weighed in next claiming Mr Peters couldn’t talk – or even slur presumably – as he had failed to disclose that he part-owned a racehorse. Given the nags record on the track Winston was probably ashamed to admit even a part-ownership.
Horan was no doubt still licking his wounds after a sibling accused him of dipping into their mother’s estate causing Winston to dismiss him from the party with an even greater velocity than he had hoped John Key would do to Ms Collins.
An enquiry eventually cleared Mr Horan of any wrongdoing, but he still languishes almost unnoticed in one of parliament’s darkest recesses as an independent MP and is probably going to have to seek employment elsewhere come September.
However the first prize for the most disturbing behaviour of the week has to go to Jan Logie. If you’ve never heard of Jan Logie, then join the club. Jan is a Green list MP - all Green MP’s are list - and last week she totally ignored item 6 on the Green’s so-called “List of values” which states “Engage respectfully without personal attacks” when she tweeted: “John Key says Bill English has produced as many budgets as children….Begs the question who has he F&%d to produce it.”
Charming.
And so that’s a small sampling of our House of Representatives. The nutty Greens, the race-based Maori party, Labour with its gaggle of gays, United-Future and its bow-tied beau’s, the grey-underpowered NZ First, the conspirational Conservatives, the philosophically-inept Act, mana-less Mana, the rapacious Nationalists and potentially, heaven forbid, Herr Dotcom’s National Socialist leaning, Mein Kampf loving, Internet party.
The Ukraine is looking more stable by the day.
************************************
The Budget failed to address one of the major problems facing New Zealand and that is the widening gap between rich and poor. Last week two chief executives, one from the BNZ and the other from the Warehouse, admitted their multi-million-dollar remuneration packages were obscene and claimed they were embarrassed to receive such recompense.
I noticed neither offered to take a pay cut, but both conceded that those down at the coal face deserve a bigger slice of the pie.
This is not just a New Zealand phenomenon and is causing concern worldwide.
Last weeks’ Time magazine blamed globalisation which it said had created an international labour market that had heightened competition for jobs and had shifted power to employers. Add to this the fact that incestuous corporate governance tends to lavish largesse on managers over workers and there is an urgent need to reverse this alarming trend.
Those whose politics align to the right-of-centre are committed to the idea that wealth created at the top trickles down to everybody, even though a growing mountain of evidence tells us that this simply doesn’t work in the real world.
On the other side of the spectrum too many people believe that the capitalist coupling of free-trade agreements and deregulation works against the wage earner. Imported goods like clothing, footwear and appliances have never been cheaper, but internal costs like property taxes and electricity rise exponentially. The answer to the problem lies somewhere in the middle. Ideally governments need to promote business-friendly policies that allow growth while at the same time taking steps to ensure the benefits of that growth are spread more widely and equitably.
Higher wages would negate the need for the complicated working-for-families tax package that Labour introduced and National has maintained.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for a solution. There are more important things to attend to - like scoring points in the House of Representatives.
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