The Breaking Views blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at NZCPR.com. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
The Court’s decision was released on the 21st of February 2023. Justice Mellon took a dismissive view of the declarations being sought, saying “They are expressed in general and abstract terms that deprive them of usefulness”, and that was the extent of the consideration given to them.
Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on the power-base in Parliament!
In 1847, French economist Frédéric Bastiat, this society’s namesake, published a facetious petition to the king now known as “The Right Hand and the Left”. In it he laid bare the fallacy of some of his contemporaries that if you simply create more work, regardless of whether it’s productive work, everyone will be wealthier. The proposition he makes to the king is to require everyone to work with their left hand and not their right. He proposes:
If Trevor Mallard was hoping that appearing before the select committee today was going to make things better for himself, he misjudged that horribly.
He has just made things a whole lot worse.
It turns out $330,000 is not the end of the Mallard clean-up bill us taxpayers are paying. We are in the gun for more.
Trevor Mallard should resign from The Speaker's job before he faces a vote of no confidence when Parliament resumes sitting in February.
National's lost confidence in him and Labour, the party that preaches well-being and kindness, surely will have no choice but to vote against his continuing in the role.
It's been confirmed that the almost $334,000 in legal costs have been paid out by the taxpayer. Why? Well Mallard had the rules changed after he made his outrageous comment to protect him from having the pay the bill for something he clearly knew would go against him.
The problem with Sir John Key speaking at the National Party AGM is that he looks, sounds, and acts like a leader.
And all that does is shine a light on the lack of leadership - or any real cut through going on within the party currently.
Under Key the party was tight. It didn’t leak. It was a cohesive unit that held its ground.
These days it’s a shambles. And that was reflected in the vote.
The upside for Labour is they’ve got the place to themselves.
Which is good for the markets. Markets don’t like the Greens, they don’t like the uncertainty of the Greens, and although the Greens will be there, it will be in a non-confrontational ‘don’t break the china’ kind of way.
This is FPP in all but name, and whether that’s Covid or whether that’s us deciding MMP doesn’t work who would know
But the last government was pure MMP. Three parties that muddled along with handbrakes, standoffs and the lack of progression you’d expect from a lot of behind the scenes compromise.
So the up side is you can do what you want. Down side is, do they know what they want to do really?
