Hard News: Deja Vu
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Judith Collins is another who we are paying to rent her Welli apartment to a fellow National MP - whose name she refuses to reveal. And why is that?
"I'm not going to breach other people's privacy"
Seriously. Said with a straight face - see the accompanying clip.
Well, Sacha, if you want to be fair about it Phil Goff has also declined to out his tacpayer-subsidised tenant.
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No free passes here. Rorting is wrong, no matter who is doing it. Some senior Nats have short memories on that score, but no doubt the behaviour has also applied in varying degrees to others when in power.
Perhaps it was even inspired by the creative way the Greens coordinated accommodation entitlements some years back as a revenue generator for their cash-strapped party? You can just imagine other pollies thinking they could try something similar.
However we are all aware of a certain colleague of Collins in the news recently, wilfully breaching privacy for political purposes - and it wasn't Goff now, was it.
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Phil Goff has also declined to out his tacpayer-subsidised tenant.
It'd be priceless if it was a Nat - or better still, an Actoid. Heatley & Collins might be keeping schtum about their arrangements for fear of revealing similar cross-party rental arrangements.
Craig's right to staunchly push the goose sauce principle on this. Petty party pointscoring is what the worst offenders are counting on to make the issue go away.
What's the bet Farrar does a comparative analysis of the Minister's with kids in National and tells us these subsidies are just part of the price you pay to have real NZers running the show.
Doubt it. While DPF can come across as the chortling toadie to Whaleoil's adolescent arsehole, he's been pretty straight on politicians' personal lives.
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Whoops. After spending most of yesterday on the Herald home page with a blog post declaring it is "of course not true" that the rules have changed, Audrey Young has written a story that appears today under the headline Rule change lets English claim more:
The Wellington family home of Finance Minister Bill English has been deemed an official ministerial residence by Internal Affairs and the Crown is leasing the house back from the English family trust that owns it.
The new designation after the election in November has enabled Mr English to maximise the taxpayers' ministerial housing subsidy, and get more than the $24,000 he would otherwise have been limited to - likely to be over $47,000 this year.
The previous practice of Internal Affairs was to limit out-of-town ministers living in their own Wellington properties to the $24,000 maximum of an ordinary MP.
A day after the May 28 Budget, a new rule on ministerial housing was gazetted stipulating that an out-of-town minister who did not take up an official residence was effectively limited to $24,000.
Mr English's spokesman said yesterday that because the house had already been designated an official residence, the new rule did not apply to him.
This gets more weird. As she notes, "the treatment given to Mr English is special."
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109 words Rich, for what?
To tell you not to play the race card when someone disagrees with you. Which you have done repreatedly.
Did you not get that the first time round?
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The previous practice of Internal Affairs was to limit out-of-town ministers living in their own Wellington properties to the $24,000 maximum of an ordinary MP.
Oh wow... that's OK then. /sarcasm. Seriously, Labour might like to STFU with the 'everyone does it, but they're worse' line, front up with a list of their own double dipping landlords and make sure they're fully supportive of a meaningful and credible reform package.
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Oh wow... that's OK then. /sarcasm. Seriously, Labour might like to STFU with the 'everyone does it, but they're worse' line, front up with a list of their own double dipping landlords and make sure they're fully supportive of a meaningful and credible reform package.
They've said they welcome a review, and it now does appear they were correct, and that English is receiving twice as much as would have been the case in the last government, having had his house designated as an official residence. Last year's figures have been released. I'm not sure what else they're supposed to do.
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It can't be that easy to find accomodation suitable for a cabinet minister/family of eight in Wallytown.
Here's one.
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No no no you lot! The Herald editorial -
"...__Or, more charitably, might we suppose that new ministers were simply too busy to notice they were not exactly practising the economies they preached?__..." -
today informs us that Bill & co were just to busy setting the country to right to notice the tens of thousands of extra dollars flowing into their accounts!
See children? We are sooo lucky to have such virtuous, toiling bunch of prudent people running our country after so many years of that big, mean Labour Party!
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Just by the by, isn't that second editorial in as many weeks to basically intervene to try and shut down an anti-National story, storming in as they did last week to fearlessly defend the right of Paula Bennett to use of the might of the state to crush dissenting solo mum's?
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No no no you lot! The Herald editorial -
"...__Or, more charitably, might we suppose that new ministers were simply too busy to notice they were not exactly practising the economies they preached?__..." -
Tom: You think there might just have been a mega-dose of snark you missed?
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Just by the by, isn't that second editorial in as many weeks to basically intervene to try and shut down an anti-National story, storming in as they did last week to fearlessly defend the right of Paula Bennett to use of the might of the state to crush dissenting solo mum's?
And a certain adorable cluelessness about how papers actually work...
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Tom: You think there might just have been a mega-dose of snark you missed?
No.
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And a certain adorable cluelessness about how papers actually work...
Come on genius, share with the group.
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And when you pour on the charm, how could I resist? That's right -- easily.
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109 words Rich, for what?
To tell you not to play the race card when someone disagrees with you. Which you have done repreatedly.
Did you not get that the first time round?
What race card Rich?
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What race card Rich?
Perhaps an obscure way of putting it ...
But, Mark, Rick, I'm not sure this is in any way a productive argument. Let's move on.
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Let's move on.
Bill English agrees. From that Herald story Russell linked to:
Mr English showed signs of frustration yesterday.
"After four days of discussing this issue there are bigger things going on in the country like a recession, like thousands of people joining the dole and I think it is time that ministers like myself were focused on those issues."
Nothing to see here.
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Mr English showed signs of frustration yesterday.
Perhaps if you weren't quite so obviously rogering the taxpayer for every cent Bill, and then got called on it, we'd take a bit more interest in your calls for the country to tighten their belt.
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Mr English showed signs of frustration yesterday.
Poor dear.
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Poor dear.
Not too poor,he's giving some back.
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A Late Post:
One thing that seems to be forgotten in NZ is that we are relatively - that means practically - graft and corruption free. I have never had to pay someone personally to get my passport, drivers license etc under the counter. That is the way it should be.
There is a cost to ensure this stays the way it is. What we pay Judges, Police and Politicians should address (more than) their needs and for the politicians probably a wee bit more for the hassle of shifting and splitting their families to Wellington for the parliamentary term.
Our judges and Policeare - well, not above the law - but certainly beyond tainting as far as I can ascertain and we pay above average rates to ensure it.
Yes, they have sorted their superannuation in the small hours and in 5 minutes or something ridiculous but they are all able to be chucked out by our vote - or the vote of their party.
TP Field is our first underhander identified, tried and found wanting. Not bad for 100 and mumble years frankly. So we have a conundrum of what to do with his air fares. Well, so what. No doubt it will come up in some form or another in the midnight hours of a parliamentary session and be scrapped for naughty boys and girls.
That may be good. But we must be careful that we do not drive these carefully selected people to DO put their hands from under the table.Your vote is worthy. Use it usefully and deselect them if you don't like them. But going too far may have dire consequences.
I'm happy to pay such a small price to keep the behaviour of the likes of Indonesia well away from these fair shores.
PS. Smacking Bill: Make sure your vote is still counted if you do not want to say YES or NO. Tick both boxes and water down the percentages. Informal votes at least get counted!
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That may be good. But we must be careful that we do not drive these carefully selected people to DO put their hands from under the table.
Rather: What I mean is we have make sure they keep their hands above the table!!!!
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I have never had to pay someone personally to get my passport, drivers license etc under the counter
What, you mean all those Auckland motorists have actually passed a driving test?
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Not too poor,he's giving some back.
To his (small) credit, English will at least front up to the media. Just heard, on Morning Report, the bizarre situation where Chris Carter declined an interview to discuss his ministerial travel -- which he is perfectly entitled to do, BTW -- citing a "caucus decision" that he would not comment. So, Geoff ends up reading this blog post instead.
I'll post a link to the audio when its on-line, but do you think this could be an interesting precedent... :)
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