Revealing Themselves

They do reveal themselves in the end, don't they! Former New Zealand Prime Ministers, John Key and Helen Clark are in Beijing at the moment, partying with all the other bad-boy leaders. Now we know who these two were really working for.

Study the photograph, John Key is on the left, while Helen Clark is on the right, both I've marked with an arrow.

Christopher Luxon - Nah

I see that National has chosen former Air New Zealand CEO, Christopher Luxon as its candidate in the electorate of Botany for the general election next year. He sounds just like John Key, call him John Key 2.0.

Problem with Luxon though, he follows some strange evangelical christian faith, which means he has a brain the size of a pea. His views seem similar to that of Norman Jones (National, Invercargill '75-87), without the charm of Norm Jones. Does New Zealand really want to go back and deal with this again? There are a raft of issues; abortion law reform, gay rights, marriage, welfare, the list is endless and Luxon would be right there putting his stick in the spokes. They're talking about him as the future leader of the National party. C'mon National, pull your act together, you're making yourselves unelectable.

John Key and Pike River

Now we know why John Key suddenly resigned. The Pike River mine disaster victims families have 30 hours of video footage from inside the access tunnel to the mine. This footage was kept from the inquiry and the New Zealand public until now. The National Party government have been lying to the NZ public all this time. The mine is safe to enter, so what has the government got to hide?

Alleged New Zealand War Crime

Journalist and writer Nicky Hager has written an explosive new book launched today. Titled, Hit & Run, it describes a NZ SAS revenge raid in Afghanistan which was supposedly approved in advance by the Prime Minister at the time, John Key.  Was the expected launch of this book the reason for John Key's surprise resignation?

An audio from Radio NZ of the lauch can be found here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201837462

John Key

John Key has set his retirement date from the New Zealand Parliament now he's stepped down from being Prime Minister. He's going on April 14th.

He had good political instincts but I've just received a notice announcing his retirement and in it he makes a statement which illustrates why I don't like him:

"We got New Zealand back on its feet, got people into jobs, got back into surplus, and tackled natural disasters"

This is an insult to all hard working Kiwis. For starters, NZ was not off its feet when he came into office. Maybe overseas that was the case but NZ was relatively unscathed by the GFC. Then NZ had been in surplus and was on track to get back in the black without National at the helm.Unemployment was also falling by the time National came to power, so that had nothing to do with Key there either. And lastly, natural disasters happen, you don't tackle them, don't be silly, you react and deal with the aftermath and those who did that were the people living in the affected areas.

So go and live in your holiday home in Hawaii John Key, take up whatever chairmanship has been offered to you, or whatever the reason was for your leaving, and don't let the door hit you on the way out. All in all, you left NZ worse off than when you took office.

[Edit to add: Now we know why John Key resigned. The Pike River mine disaster families have many hours of video footage taken from inside the mine, taken after the explosion, which shows John Key had been lying for years. The video footage will be bled into the media during the election year, and Key simply didn't want to have to campaign while explaining why he lied. Key handed a hospital pass to his hapless and weak deputy Simon "Bill" English]

John Key Success or Failure?

I believe history will not be that kind to John Key, New Zealand's now retired Prime Minister. When he came into office he had a lot of potential, the previous nine years had been competently led by Helen Clark but her Labour party reign had been typified by Nanny state trying to control Kiwis everyday lives.

John Key promised to reverse that and give Kiwis their lives back. He failed to do it. About the only thing I can recall him doing to stop this creeping intrusiveness was his National party let us have our incandescent light bulbs back. That's about it.

National promised a lot but delivered very little. They were going to get all school children into sport, this was a top priority they said. What happened to that idea? It sank.

Soon after taking office, Key made speeches up and down the country about unleashing NZ's mining potential. They surveyed the country for rare earth elements, it was all go. Then the Pike River mine disaster happened and Key became jumpy, he was like a possum caught in the headlights. So mining was now off the agenda.

Then we had the GFC. He's credited with doing something for NZ there but the reality is the GFC did not impact Kiwiland all that much. So on that score, Key gets a free pass.

Then the earthquakes happened, starting in September 2010. All of a sudden real leadership was needed and Key did not seem to warm to the task. The mayor of Christchurch stood up, as did Gerry Brownlee Minister for earthquake recovery and Roger Sutton, most importantly Roger Sutton who headed CERA, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. When it suited the government, they unceremoniously dumped Sutton in what can only be described as an appalling act of betrayal.

Don't forget Key has blood on his hands over Allan Hubbard, the highly reputable, honest businessman, and tireless benefactor who was put into statutory administration by Key's toady, Bill English. Hubbard was an old man forced to defend himself and he died in a car crash while returning to Timaru after seeing his lawyer in Dunedin. The only way to describe this shameful matter is he was treated shabbily. Scales Corp was one of his companies and it is now listed on the NZX in some nightmare scenario.

Then just to confirm how selfish John Key is he's doing a runner before the hard work on rebuilding Kaikoura and the main trunk rail line and State Highway 1 begins. Key is all about window dressing, he can't face Kaikoura as he must be running out of mugs to do his work for him.

Under John Key, New Zealand continued to drift and it's worse off now than when he took over. He's running away, and that has to be considered failure.

John Key Resigns

No-one saw that one coming. John Key, New Zealand Prime Minister, is stepping down and won't seek re-election next year.

He's been an average PM. He muddled along in his jocular style, but there was no substance behind the man. I'd describe his approach as re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

But now we're going to see true incompetence. Those lining up in the wings are genuine duds, just watch. New Zealand investors have a reason to be very nervous.

It was generally accepted that Key was going after King Dick Seddon's record. Now he won't even surpass Helen Clark. Key must have been offered the job of Chairman of Westpac or something. It's been known he fancied that kind of appointment, just not this soon.