Tag Archives: Election

The biggest winner in today’s new Cabinet line-up from Prime Minister John Key is Simon Bridges, who moves from 18th to ninth in the rankings and picks up the politically important transport portfolio from Gerry Brownlee. Returning to the environment portfolio, previously held by Amy Adams, is Nick Smith, signalling a softening in the government’s intended reforms to the Resource …

 Shares of electricity generators and retailers soared, lifting the benchmark NZX 50 Index, after the National Party’s convincing election victory on the weekend wiped out any regulatory fears for the power companies.  The NZX 50 rose 69.288 points, or 1.3 percent, to 5,250.633 at the open today after the Sept. 20 general election delivered the incumbent National Party the ability …

The New Zealand dollar advanced after the incumbent centre-right National Party won an outright election victory at the weekend, reassuring investors that current economic policies would continue.  The kiwi gained to 81.49 US cents at 8am in Wellington, from 81.24 cents at the New York close and 81.36 cents at 5pm on Friday. The trade-weighted index rose to 78.84 from 78.44 …

Comment  The ruling National Party has been very comfortably re-elected at the weekend’s election in New Zealand, delivering Prime Minister John Key a third three year term as the countries leader. Mr Key’s personal popularity with the electorate was a crucial feature during the election, and despite the various late attempts to throw the campaign off track National were actually …

Would-be Kiwi politician Kim Dotcom’s “moment of truth” passed with some concerning (but not unexpected) revelations about government spying activity in New Zealand. Despite the heavy press presence and the rather dramatic way in which the “evidence” was unveiled, there didn’t appear to be much that would have surprised the Prime Minister, or which will hurt him in the last …

Comment  You have to feel sorry for John Key that he’s been subjected to so many off-stage alarums and excursions during this, the dirtiest election campaign of my lifetime. It started with Hager’s Dirty Tricks book, dropped close to the campaign, leaving insufficient time to check the details. Hager calculated on our media being sufficiently full of gullible journalists who …

Comment  Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom presented no evidence to back his claim the Prime Minister was at the centre of a Hollywood plot to have him extradited to the United States to face charges. As I wrote on the New Zealand Herald website last night  “If Kim Dotcom thinks his Moment of Truth will affect the outcome of Saturday’s election, …

Comment  At exactly 7pm, Kim Dotcom and allies – Laila Harre (leader of the Internet-Mana party), Glenn Greenwald (American lawyer and adversarial journalist) and Bob Amsterdam (Dotcom’s lawyer) – took the stage at the Auckland Town Hall, to raucous applause. Adding to the atmosphere was Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden via videolink. They had come for …

Comment  I’ve always been reluctant to believe in media conspiracies, but having watched the way in which Radio New Zealand and TVNZ have been covering this election campaign I have to conclude that those driving the election coverage on those channels are either wildly Left-wing or plain ignorant, and I’m genuinely not sure which explanation is the more plausible. The …