Welcome to the first edition of our irregular and sometimes irreverent Friday newsletter. I hope you find it refreshing and entertaining. If you do not wish to receive this communication from us, please scroll to the bottom and unsubscrib

GREEN AND CLEAN?

With the recent dropping by Marama Davidson of the “C” bomb and Golriz talking “sh*t”, I think it’s safe to say that the Greens are no longer clean.  These politicians have lowered the bar for women in parliament, right on the marking of 125 years of women’s suffrage. What ever happened to class?

 

THIS WEEK’S GIVEAWAY

Only this government would celebrate a monumental point in history by handing out money!  

“I am pleased to be here today with the Canterbury University’s Feminist Society who received $1,500 from the fund. The future of women organising for change and making our world better is in good hands,” says Ms Sage.

Was it just me that saw ‘red’ when they read that? Does it make you ‘green’ with envy? I can’t wait to hear what they are giving away to celebrate men being given the vote. Oh, wait.

 

LATE TO THE PARTY

While it’s great to see the surge in support for Partnership Schools Kura Hourua, is anyone else feeling just a little bit sick that National is so late to the party? They had six years to get in behind ACT’s innovative education policy, but failed to do so to any degree and in fact were obstructive. Now they’re jumping on board to save them. If they’d been more supportive as a coalition partner, a larger number of schools would be open by now and achieving results similar to the ones that have. A critical mass would have formed that would have been far harder to shut down.

National’s July annual conference demonstrated that they are flat out of ideas. There were two announcements that were made by Leader Simon Bridges.

 

  • Smaller class sizes. You know, that Labour party policy that they ran on when the National-led Government was increasing class sizes. No detail on how that will be achieved other than being smaller
  • Re-instating charter schools. That’s the Act policy they reluctantly agreed to in the 2011 confidence and supply agreement. They washed their hands of Act’s ‘experiment,’ dragged their feet right up until they were demonstrated to not only be effective but also popular at which point National happily took the credit for them. Re-instating the original charter schools isn’t enough. We need to give existing public schools the opportunity to convert to charter schools and expand the application process for more sponsors to create new charter schools.

 

IF YOU TOLERATE THIS, SOON YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE NEXT

Following on from the crackdown on Air BnB hosts, Auckland Council has made no secret of the fact that they intend to progress to hunting down people working from home in small businesses for a rate grab in the form of business rates applied to that portion of the property used for business purposes. This will hit home hairdressers, cake decorators, sewers, massage therapists, draughtsmen, small business accountants, language tutors, toymakers, counsellors, etc. – many of them parents wanting to be there for the kids when they get home from school to supervise homework, prepare home-cooked meals, drop what they’re doing to get the kids to extracurricular activities, maybe even let them earn a bit of pocket money helping in the business to learn a few life skills, and of course supplement the family income. The alternative for these aspiring people is to ditch the idea of a home business and drive to a job, contributing to congestion on the roads, and putting the kids into day care or after school programmes, or claim benefits. Talk about perverse incentives.  ACT believes in encouraging enterprise and self-determination without adding punitive taxes.

Don’t live in Auckland? Don’t worry, where Auckland goes, the rest of the country follows. Auckland’s left-leaning local government leads the way hand in hand with central government on these types of policy.

 

KIA KAHA PENNY

You can say what you like about either of these two, but both of them have been fighters on the New Zealand political landscape for decades. Penny fought for transparency and accountability, who could be against that? Stephen Berry has written a tribute for the 125th anniversay of Woman’s Suffrage to Penny Bright on his facebook page.

 

83/100 FOR TE REO, HOW AM I DOING?

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s Maori language week. I’ve never had a single lesson in Te Reo so I’m pretty proud of my score.  If you’re a child of the 70s or earlier, you will agree that the language has had quite a resurgence. It wasn’t taught at all when I went to school. Despite this, I knew 83% of the words in this Newshub quiz, proving compulsion is completely unnecessary. Parents already have the choice of sending their kids to a Maori immersion school. We didn’t “learn” English by compulsory lessons in school, we learnt it at home before we went there. Literacy and numeracy in any language are the foundation for a lifetime of comprehension, so take your pick.

 

WINSTON HAS A MEMORY LAPSE, ARE WE SURPRISED?

I remember saying on Breakfast Club on TV One on 17 August [sorry clip no longer available], that I didn’t believe NZ First MPs would sign a contract that obliged them to pay $300,000 in penalty if they waka-jumped. What sane MP would?  Turns out Winston has had a “memory lapse”. A memory lapse that they signed, or a memory lapse that this clause was ever in their candidate agreement? My prediction is that this will spell the end of Winston’s parliamentary term.  We will all remember that!

That’s all for this first edition of Beth’s Best!