The Mayor of Auckland, Len Brown announced sweeping changes to the unitary plan for Auckland, made in response to widespread opposition to the plan to build high density high-rise apartments in many areas of Auckland. “We have taken on board the reasonable objections of those who say that the proposed high density housing will be [...]

It comes as no real surprise that the National government’s review of the council-based business case for a CBD rail loop has found that the council review vastly overstated the benefits. Rail enthusiasts will now all cast aspertions on this report, saying how the review has been loaded with anti-rail bias. More-or-less the opposite of [...]

Congratulations to Helen Kelly, Actor’s Equity and MEAA for managing to seriously damage the NZ film industry and scare away the financiers of the Hobbit with their ham-fisted, bully-boy union tactics. Nicely done. I particularly like the way you ignored the “collective” part of collective bargaining by failing to consult your members and the “bargaining” [...]

Any comment by Len Brown on the use of taxpayer money has to be treated with a great deal of reserve. However, you would have thought that the man could perform some elementary arithmetic when it came to rates. Instead, Mr. Brown accuses John Banks of keeping rates down by supplementing Auckland City’s income with [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. After having been too tired to spot that yesterday’s “Black Easter” post was yet another example of spam journalism, I thought I had better redeem myself. There is nothing like a quick flick to the health articles to find sensationalist spam. [...]

I see Len Brown wants to limit the spend on each candidate for the Auckland Mayoralty to $150,000. This is quite amusing, considering he has spend around that amount already. The man certainly has chutzpah… The actual amount spent by candidates on an election is not relevant. Despite Labour’s longtime gripe over election spending limits [...]

May as well print this up now guys. Len Brown tells us that he would relish the opportunity to work alongside Sue Bradford on the Auckland Super City Council. Seeing as Ms. Bradford appears to think that 87% of the country are morons, I would say supporting her for the city council would be the [...]

Tuku Morgan voices his opinion that: The Government’s denial of Maori representation on the Auckland Super City Council is a stark sign of the lowly status accorded to Maori in New Zealand. It strike me that one could view this the other way round as well – that National and Act think well enough of [...]

I have been silent on the whole Auckland “Supercity” debate up until now. Frankly, I am somewhat puzzled as to what the fuss is all about. Having six councils for a city of 1.4 million people seems completely insane to me and always has done. To my mind, this structure is almost the entire reason [...]

Good on Tariana Turia for walking out on Labour’s childish filibuster. She also strongly opposes the bill, but clearly knows that there is a strong line between making a protest and wasting government time. Labour thoroughly crossed this line yesterday. Their are only two rational reasons to filibuster. The first is to protest a bill [...]