Senior doc­tors fire part­ing shot at Hodg­son – Senior doc­tors have fired a part­ing shot at out­go­ing health min­is­ter Peter Hodg­son, accus­ing him of “mind-boggling” behav­iour in reac­tion to sec­tor con­cerns.
Asso­ci­a­tion of Salaried Med­ical Spe­cial­ists (ASMS) Pres­i­dent Jeff Brown… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Senior Doc­tor flip the prover­bial bird at Hodgson.

Wow, you can’t get much more crit­i­cal than that except to use expletives. 

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TV3 > Home > Video

It has taken me a cou­ple of days to get to this but while watch­ing TV3 news the other day I saw some­thing that was hilar­i­ous. Then I got an email from a loyal reader who reminded me of it. Look at the image beside lovely Hilary and check out the dates that Tuhoe are ban­ning access to Te Ure­w­era National Park.

Yes you read cor­rectly, Tuhoe have banned access until Feb­ru­ary 30, 2008. I won­der if that actu­ally means they have banned access inde­fi­nately as from my research there has never been a Feb­ru­ary 30, ever. Per­haps this is also gives us an insight at the dam­age the Elec­tric Puha has been doing in the region.

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Court action over Elec­toral Finance Bill – New­stalk ZB

A court chal­lenge is being made against the Elec­toral Finance Bill.

Papers have been filed at the High Court in Welling­ton today, against Attor­ney Gen­eral Michael Cullen seek­ing a judi­cial review of the legislation.

The action is being taken by Auck­land man and ACT Party mem­ber John Boscawen. He is joined by Grey­power, the Sen­si­ble Sen­tenc­ing Trust and ACT Party leader Rod­ney Hide. Mr Boscawen says they believe the Attor­ney Gen­eral was wrong in not indi­cat­ing to Par­lia­ment that the leg­is­la­tion was incon­sis­tent with the Bill of Rights Act.

The Gov­ern­ment has relied on a Crown Law opin­ion which says the leg­is­la­tion is con­sis­tent, but this has been chal­lenged by the Human Rights Com­mis­sion and Law Society.

The Free Speech Coali­tion formed by David, Bernard and myself has donated $10,000.00 to this legal action. Thank you for your con­tri­bu­tions, this is the first of many steps your kind dona­tions have enabled us to bring to fruition.

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Offen­sive Fly Buys card scares woman – New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

Fly Buys sent this poor woman a card with a name on it. Unfor­tu­nately the name printed on the card was U R Fuck­ing Whore.

Clearly the per­pe­tra­tor of this was an Asian or at the very least East European.

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Mal­lard to face pri­vate pro­s­ec­tion – Welling­ton accoun­tant Gra­ham McCready has launched a pri­vate pros­e­cu­tion of Cab­i­net Min­is­ter Trevor Mal­lard over the par­lia­men­tary dust up in which he punched National MP Tau Henare.
Mr Mal­lard apol­o­gised to Mr Henare after the… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

This could well be a first, a Labour min­is­ter before the beak. Gra­ham McCready has just added his name to the list of peo­ple who will be defamed and attacked in par­lia­ment with no right of recourse and for show­ing the police what they should have done.

McCready him­self is defend­ing tax related charges but that hasn’t stopped him demand­ing a higher stan­dard from our law-makers.

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John Arm­strong: Boo! PM’s Hal­loween shuf­fle scares nei­ther friend nor foe – Trick or treat? Helen Clark’s Hal­loween reshuf­fle hardly puts the fright­en­ers on the National Party.
And the absence of sur­prise pro­mo­tions or demo­tions makes it more dif­fi­cult for her to con­vince vot­ers that Labour is hav­ing major… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

John Arm­strong opines that the re-shuffle was a big yawn and that no one includ­ing the oppo­si­tion will be spend­ing any­time fret­ting about it.

Of course there is the slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket for Mal­lard, the re-shuffle was meant to be a cir­cuit breaker ahead of the con­fer­ence, instead it turns out to be a short circuit. 

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Good­bye Judith – I don’t need you, says Banks – 01 Nov 2007 – Polit­i­cal News – New Zealand Herald

Banksie has stuck it to Judith Tizard after she caused the dis-establishment of the Auck­land Issues Min­is­ter through her dis­tinct lack of inter­est in any­thing resem­bling work.

Clearly Judith has either solved all the issues or she was so com­pletely inept that Labour has decided qui­etly to aban­don Auck­land after the com­plete thrash­ing that was dished out in the Local Body Elec­tions. In fact you could almost say the dis-establishment of the posi­tion is step one in the revenge of labour against the city that refused to buckle under social­ist dogma. If Judith’s threats are to be believed step two will be to give the World Cup final to Christchurch.

I think the Prime Min­is­ter used the wrong word when she described Judith as “tire­less”, per­haps she meant tiresome?

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Falun Gong takes on Welling­ton City Coun­cil – 31 Oct 2007 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand National news

Chi­nese spir­i­tual group Falun Gong is tak­ing Welling­ton City Coun­cil to court after being refused per­mis­sion to be involved in cul­tural events in the capital.

Falun Gong says the organ­is­ers of Wellington’s Cuba Street Car­ni­val and Chi­nese New Year Parade allowed its brass band and dancers to take part.

How­ever, the coun­cil over­turned those deci­sions, labelling Falun Gong a polit­i­cal group and say­ing it could not join in the fes­tiv­i­ties. WTF, can’t par­tic­i­pate in parades because you are a polit­i­cal group!!! I hope no Unions took part in the march.

What next? Not being able to speak on the street because you don’t agree with the government…oh wait…they are try­ing that one on right now.

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Helen-ween pro­vided a good haul for Mas­ter and Miss Wha­le­oil. The Helen Clark mask got great laughs except from some old biddy down the road who is obvi­ously a Green because she had all of her fun trans­planted at birth and can’t see why any­one else should have fun.

Our neigh­bour­hood really has fun with this. Pretty much all the kids traipse around and the par­ents fol­low with winde glasses and beers in hand hav­ing a good ole chat while the kids have fun.

I did a straw poll, no Labour votes in our street, true blue here, apart from old mis­ery guts down the road.

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Blog: Wow fac­tor miss­ing in Cab­i­net reshuf­fle – It is hardly Helen Clark’s big, fat bold reshuf­fle.
There is no Wow! fac­tor is this reshuf­fle. But she has been bolder than usual in a cou­ple of respects.
She has finally done what she has never done before and demoted a min­is­ter… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Aunty Aud at the Her­ald is deci­diedly underwhelmed.

Colin Espiner is derisive;

Ver­non Small is a lit­tle more conciliatory;

Still the upshot from the “experts” is that the reshuf­fle was wide of the mark and more than a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, not the kind of cov­er­age Clark was hop­ing for going into their last con­fer­ence before the elec­tion next year.

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Full Cab­i­net list – New Zealand, world, sport, busi­ness & enter­tain­ment news on Stuff.co.nz

Accord­ing to the full cab­i­net list Labour has qui­etly dis­es­tab­lished the Min­is­ter for Auck­land Issues. Judith has though man­aged to keep her other portfolio’s but then again she is the Prime Min­is­ters consort.

So one of the major parts of Clark re-shuffle apart from con­don­ing Mallard’s vio­lent behav­iour is the aban­don­ment of Auck­land and the dis­es­tab­lish­ment of that portfolio.

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Clark has sig­nalled to New Zealand that IT IS OK for vio­lence if you are a Labour Minister.

Mal­lard has been dropped to the sec­ond row, but so what, he is still a min­is­ter, he still has the full salary, and for a bonus for thump­ing a par­lia­men­tary col­league he gets a lighter work load.

This is an out­rage and makes a mock­ery of the gov­ern­ments anti-violence message.

Clark has effec­tively said the it IS OK. 

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Helen Clark has released her new cab­i­net line up and prob­a­bly due to the shal­low pool of tal­ent is incred­i­bly timid con­sid­er­ing they face increas­ing elec­toral pressure.The new Cab­i­net min­is­ters are:

o Steve Chad­wick, MP for Rotorua
o Shane Jones, MP
o Maryan Street, MP

Helen Clark said that the three vacan­cies arise from the impend­ing retire­ment of Steve Maharey, the deci­sion by Mark Bur­ton to return to the back­bench, and the place vacated by David Benson-Pope in July. Bur­ton has seri­ously been demoted, he was after all the poster boy for the Elec­toral Finance Bill but has per­formed so woe­fully under sus­tained pres­sure about that dra­con­ian bill he had to go.

Sig­nif­i­cant real­lo­ca­tions of port­fo­lios are:

• Michael Cullen takes on the Treaty Nego­ti­a­tions port­fo­lio in addi­tion to finance
• Phil Goff adds the Cor­rec­tions port­fo­lio to his respon­si­bil­i­ties, show­ing the inep­ti­tude of Damien O’Connor
• Annette King takes on the Jus­tice port­fo­lio, and retains Trans­port and Police, strong per­former with an increased load. This also sig­nals Labour’s insis­tance that the EFB be rammed through. I pre­dict it being rammed through under urgency, now that Bur­ton has been replaced.
• Pete Hodg­son becomes Min­is­ter for Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment, Ter­tiary Edu­ca­tion, and Research Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy, Loses Health as pre­dicted, he must seri­ously be out of favour.
• Chris Carter becomes Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion and retains Eth­nic Affairs, effec­tively a slap in the face for his inep­ti­tude and med­dling in Conservation.
• David Cun­liffe becomes Min­is­ter of Health, and con­tin­ues his respon­si­bil­i­ties in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Infor­ma­tion Technology
• Trevor Mal­lard becomes Min­is­ter of Broad­cast­ing, the Envi­ron­ment, and Labour, and retains SOEs and Asso­ciate Finance
• Ruth Dyson becomes Min­is­ter of Social Devel­op­ment and Employ­ment, Min­is­ter for the Com­mu­nity and Vol­un­tary Sec­tor and retains Senior Cit­i­zens and Dis­abil­ity Issues responsibilities
• Lianne Dalziel takes on Food Safety and Asso­ciate Jus­tice in addi­tion to Commerce
• David Parker adds States Ser­vices to his responsibilities
• Nanaia Mahuta takes on the full Local Gov­ern­ment port­fo­lio and Asso­ciate Tourism in addi­tion to her other responsibilities
• Clay­ton Cos­grove takes on the full Immi­gra­tion port­fo­lio, Sport and Recre­ation, Small Busi­ness, and respon­si­bil­ity for the Rugby World Cup. He retains Asso­ciate Jus­tice and Finance respon­si­bil­i­ties. Cos­grove is rewarded for good per­for­mances and takes Mal­lards prized Rugby World Cup responsibilities

The new min­is­ters duties are as follows:

• Steve Chad­wick becomes Min­is­ter of Con­ser­va­tion, Women’s Affairs, and Asso­ciate Health
• Maryan Street becomes Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, Min­is­ter for ACC, along with Asso­ciate Min­is­ter for Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment and Asso­ciate Ter­tiary Education
• Shane Jones becomes Min­is­ter for Build­ing and Con­struc­tion, Asso­ciate Min­is­ter of Treaty Nego­ti­a­tions, Asso­ciate Immi­gra­tion and Asso­ciate Min­is­ter of Trade

The ginga Dar­ren Hughes becomes a Min­is­ter out­side Cab­i­net with respon­si­bil­i­ties as Min­is­ter of Sta­tis­tics, Asso­ciate Min­is­ter of Social Devel­op­ment and Employ­ment, and Deputy Leader of the House.

Over­all a timid response to their increas­ingly fail­ing min­istry. The fact that Mal­lard has not seri­ously been affected, cer­tainly not mon­e­trar­ily shows how out of touch Clark is with the rest of New Zealand of his bully-boy actions. Cullen the scrooge retains Finance leav­ing Clark with only a last minute replace­ment option to stave off elec­toral ret­ri­bu­tion over his exces­sive tax­a­tion. Labour will go into the elec­tion next year with essen­tially the same old tired faces.

*YAWN*

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Hodg­son faces axe as Health Min­is­ter – 31 Oct 2007 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand National news

Helen may well be over her Chief State­gist. Pete “Gol­lum” Hodgson’s sycho­phancy has done him well over the years he has acted as Labour’s strate­gist, but this year the strate­gies just don’t seem to be work as Labour con­sis­tently trails National in the polls. Add to that his woe­ful per­for­mance in health and we may well be see­ing the end of Gollum.

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Lind­say Mitchell: My immi­nent arrest

Well per­haps not. Some nut­case is send­ing her let­ters about her immi­nent arrest for crimes any sane per­son is unable to ascer­tain from the doc­u­ments pro­vided by said nutters.

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