Bob Edlin: Tax claims and electioneering bullsh*t.......

.....The Post spotlights some campaign nonsense

National’s Catherine Wedd is among the many National MPs who are parroting a moot message about the taxes that will be imposed if voters elect a Labour-led government at the general election.

In Parliament last week, she insisted:

Phillip Crump: Sinead Boucher Buys an Event

Matthew Hooton’s appointment is not a conventional hire. That is precisely the point.

When news leaked last year that Matthew Hooton was being considered for a seat on the RNZ board, my first reaction was: of course he is. The fit wasn’t quite right but the impulse behind it was entirely him.

So the announcement earlier this week that Matthew would be the next Editor-in-Chief of The Post and the Sunday Star-Times didn’t surprise me. In fact, it was exactly the type of provocation that has been Matthew’s trademark ever since I've known him.

Bob Edlin: Hooton shows his editing skills on Page 2 of The Post...

Hooton shows his editing skills on Page 2 of The Post – and the words “NZ Herald” are among the excisions

PoO is wondering about the fate that might befall the Stuff website staffer who posted news of two editorial appointments at The Post. Whoever it was might have provided readers with more information than presumably was intended by newly appointed editor-in-chief Matthew Hooton.

Both The Post print version (on Page 2) and website (here) have recorded the appointments of Henry Cooke as The Post’s political editor and Amelia Wade as Auckland editor.

Peter Williams: Hooton of The Post

A new way for the newspaper industry

Has New Zealand just appointed its first “celebrity” editor?

The quite remarkable announcement today of columnist, speech writer, PR agent and strategist Matthew Hooton to be the editor of Wellington’s Post newspaper has some overtures of former British cabinet minister Michael Gove becoming editor of The Spectator and one time Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne leading London’s Evening Standard.

David Farrar: The Hooton-in-chief

The Post announced:

In a bombshell move, former National Party strategist-turned consultant Matthew Hooton has been chosen as the new editor of The Post, replacing outgoing Editor in Chief Tracy Watkins. He hopes NZ’s powerful institutions are ‘a little unsettled’ by his appointment, and has big plans to accelerate the brand to become Kiwis’ primary news source.

It is fair to call this a bombshell move.

I think it is a very smart, albeit somewhat risky, move.

David Farrar: O’Sullivan on Luxon

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

It’s been interesting to read all the repetitive columns predicting Luxon’s demise – either imminently as my friend Matthew Hooton reckons or at the endpoint of a long, slow march to oblivion as my colleague Simon Wilson avers.

To paraphrase an old joke about economists and recessions, Matthew has predicted the demise of nine of the last five Prime Ministers!

Centrist: Is the Treaty debate bigger than statistics suggest?

Right facts, wrong conclusions

Matthew Hooton’s recent article for The NZ Herald, “Treaty Principles Bill submissions received, but there are issues leaving race debate in dust,” delivers accurate polling data but we disagree with his conclusion.

He suggests that the Treaty debate is only a distant concern for voters, but his interpretation may be ignoring the broader relevance of these issues to the political and social landscape.

Ewen McQueen: Kāwanatanga katoa was the fundamental question at Waitangi

A guest post on Kiwiblog by Ewen McQueen, that the Herald refused to run:

Matthew Hooton wrote in the NZ Herald last week that “There’s no doubt that both Māori and Pākehā in 1840 understood tino rangatiratanga to be a bigger deal than kāwanatanga”.1 However whilst this is undoubtedly the modernist position on how we should interpret the Treaty, the historical evidence suggests something very different.

Cam Slater: Good Point You Raise There, Matthew

Last week Chris Bishop said out loud what no politician ever wants to be heard, by anyone, but especially home owners. He said he wanted house prices to drop significantly. Matthew Hooton writes about that in his weekly column at the NZ Herald:

JC: A Chalk and Cheese Parliament

It is becoming increasingly apparent that we are witnessing the performance of a ‘chalk and cheese’ parliament. What is on show is probably the biggest chasm in ability between a government and an opposition in our lifetime. The reason for this is we have a government of people with real-world experience up against a bunch of mainly career politicians, academics and community workers. No doubt there’s the odd one who could claim otherwise but largely they are the types who lack the ability and skills you acquire working in the business world.

Karl du Fresne: Those coalition talks: so far, so bad

The coalition talks are playing out just as might have been predicted. Or to put it another way: so far, so bad.

At the outset, the omens didn’t look good when it was revealed that Winston Peters hadn’t responded to David Seymour’s attempts to make contact. Did anyone really believe that Peters refused to answer a text from the ACT leader because he thought it might be a scam?

Bryce Edwards: Did Louisa Wall get a fair deal from Labour and Jacinda Ardern?

Scores are being settled at the moment, with Labour MP Louisa Wall going out in a blaze of media interviews to air the dirty laundry of her party. These surprising red-on-red attacks are going to be damaging for all sides.

Wall’s media blitz over the weekend paves the way for her valedictory speech on Thursday in Parliament. She’s been putting her side of the story about why she was de-selected from her safe seat of Manurewa, and why she was never given a Cabinet role when other less experienced and often inept politicians kept being promoted ahead of her.

Why did Labour and Wall fall out?

Wall has confirmed that her lack of political elevation to Cabinet was no oversight, but a deliberate policy of Ardern’s. She claims that Ardern told her that she would “never” be a cabinet minister while Ardern was prime minister. And Wall says that Ardern also wanted her out of Parliament, saying “She was obviously very clear that she didn’t want me in her caucus”.

Matthew Hooton: John Key’s cunning super plan?

Superannuation wouldn’t be John Key’s first broken promise. In 2008, the then opposition leader made solemn promises of three rounds of personal tax cuts, in 2009, 2010 and 2011.  He made no mention of increasing GST and said a worker on the average wage would be $47 a week better off.  The cost would be $1.3 billion in 2009/10, $1.8 billion in 2010/11 and $2.3 billion in 2011/12.

Upon election, Mr Key kept his promise, legislating for all three tax cuts, with the first effective from April 1, 2009.  By then, however, the fiscal truth was clear.  On usually government-aligned blogs, criticism emerged about the fiscally responsibility of two further rounds.

Matthew Hooton: Labour still paying for Clark government’s corruption

The worst part of Shane Jones’ fall over the Bill Liu affair is that it has taken so long. All the important facts were published as far back as 2008 by investigative reporter Ian Wishart and across the blogosphere.

That probably served to protect Mr Jones and his sidekick Dover Samuels, given mainstream media scepticism of Mr Wishart and blogs in general. Even luckier for Mr Jones and Mr Samuels, the story was largely forgotten just weeks later amid the euphoria that followed the defeat of Helen Clark’s corrupt regime.

Matthew Hooton: Greens eagerly eye finance portfolio

Next week is a job interview for Russel Norman. The Green Party co-leader has his eye on being minister of finance in two and a half years and he wouldn’t be the first Australian or ex-communist to achieve high political office in New Zealand.

Dr Norman is very conscious that achieving his goal requires the Green s to stay well above 10% in the polls and for David Shearer, David Cunliffe and David Parker, Shane Jones and Andrew Little or Grant Robertson to have confidence that making him finance minister would not cause an immediate crash in business and economic confidence.

Matthew Hooton: Conservatives should share the love around

He’s turning out to be a bit of a slut himself. Since losing his political virginity in 2009 organising a pro-smacking march, Colin Craig has been all around town.

In 2010, he promised undying love to Aucklanders if they made him mayor. In 2011, he spent much of his Conservative Party’s $1.9 million war-chest wooing the people of Rodney. By election day, 8031 were seduced. Now, with Epsom MP John Banks on palliative care, Mr Craig is strutting his stuff around the streets of Remuera and Newmarket. Like a wannabe third wife, he’s not waiting for the funeral.

Matthew Hooton: Key forced to protect Banks, for now

The prime minister had little choice but to handle the John Banks donation affair the way he did. The government budget is due on May 24 and any serious question over its safe passage would risk an immediate credit downgrade, threats to the government’s debt-raising programme, a political crisis unknown since the winter of 1984, and probably a snap election.

John Key and his strategist Steven Joyce won the 2011 general election by the narrowest of margins.  Had Gerry Brownlee’s work in Christchurch not increased National’s vote in that strong Labour city, the government would have been out.  As it happened, it limped back, dependent on both Mr Banks and UnitedFuture MP Peter Dunne on every vote.