I wonder if anyone has analysed how Aotearoa would be positioned to ride out the current fossil fuel supply crisis, if the two-headed Chris hadn't gutted government policy for a rapid renewable energy transition?
First Hipkins throwing a bunch of it on his policy bonfire. FYI he's a former training manager for NZ's biggest privately-owned fossil fuel company, Todd Energy.
Then CLuxon tanking most of what was left of it in 2023/24, as leader of a fossil-friendly NatACT First govt.
What intrigues me though is that The Halfmen of O was published in 1982. Which means that Maurice Gee was writing it during Muldoonism, which Jones is the contemporary echo of. It may not be intended as allegory, but fantasy is always as least partly about the times it's written in, whether the author intends it or not.
That was kind of the point of my little satire there, even though I only notice it myself on reflection ...
Also, is it just me, or has Shame Jones started looking like one of the skeksis from The Dark Crystal?
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/minister/hon-shane-jones
I wonder where his gentle mystic half is hiding out, maybe Golden Bay or Coromandel? Maybe there's a Motherstone we could find and return the missing half of, so we can save old Otis Claw from this half-man state of being?
๐๏ธ Government Bill 2024/94: Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill
This New Zealand Government Bill, sponsored by ACT Party leader Hon David Seymour, codifies three specific 'principles of the Treaty of Waitangi' into statute for the first time, replacing theโฆ
*But* ... the one thing Hipkins ought *not* to lose his leadership role over is stories about his personal life. His private business.
None of us are saints, especially in the eyes of puritan ultra-conservatives and crypto-conservative identi-Moonies. Every one of us has skeletons in the closet that scurrilous muckrakers could dig up as a basis to exclude us from political office.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=358d4088-5010-4c4c-91ba-ecd7538a2ebd
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#podcasts #RNZ #MediaWatch #privacy #MuckRaking #NZPolitics #ChrisHipkins
"We won't be talking about [coalition options] until after the election, but the reality is, you know, Winston has shown in the past he can form a coalition with anyone..."
#WillieJackson, 2026
So there you have it folks, from the horse's mouth. Labour have learned nothing from 2017. They'd form a coalition with the ghost of Hitler's cock if it got them back on the govt benches. They deserve to lose in Nov.
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Normally I end a #NZPolitics rant like this with a policy suggestion. But I honestly cant see the point. Not when government policy is creating the problem (I believe strategically), and Labour's idea of a solution is probably to give each visibly homeless person 3 free sandwiches a week, and wait for our applause.
When electoral politics is failing us so completely, to continue to play that game is to be complicit in what politicians are doing. It's clearly time to try something else.
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Whenever 1 perceived coalition-in-waiting gets a nose ahead of the other in a political poll, over-excited talking heads start making a fuss about what that might mean. But the significance of polling is not about any 1 snapshot and the theoretical seats in Parliament it translates to, but what the polling data tell us over months or years.
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Here's a brief history of NZ governments from the 1980s to today, as a series of vignettes about life in a big flat (kiwi slang for a rental house shared by a group of independent adults), which we'll call Little NZ.
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McAnulty doesn't deliver the script with much conviction. What interesting though is that he sounded much less like a talking-point-chanting zombie when he said this, just before the bit I quoted;
"If we had to have a coalition partner I'd pick the Greens."
As with Tama Potaka, I suspect we're hearing a loyal party man, who is nevertheless deeply unsatisfied with the current direction of his party, and thus it's current leadership.
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A former Labour Leader, a NZ Herald columnist, the leader of a Political Party, the Shadow Leader of the House and a Marxist all walk into a bar.
Strypey
LegisPlain
