Royal Bank of Scotland was among the biggest fallers in the FTSE 100 on Monday, in part because of anxiety among investors about political interference following Stephen Hester’s decision to waive his near-£1m bonus.

The move sparked a debate about whether the government should step back and try to maintain the “arm’s length” management approach set up by Labour through UK Financial Investments (UKFI), or take full control of a bank in which the taxpayer already owns an 82% stake.

In New Zealand the Labour government handled Air NZ at arms length. Provincial route cuts, industrial disputes all resulted in political pressure which Cullen and Clark rejected. But not all finance Ministers are as strong, and Prime Ministers like Key take the line of least resistance trying to please as many people as the polls tell them to.

I’m not sure that these shares are as risk free as Key pretends. He should be able to see the biggest risk in the mirror as he shaves.

In the election campaign we have just had, the paying down of debt and the return to surplus were big issues. The “show me the money” moment was just one where John Key brandished his credentials to lead us to the promised land of surplus by 2014-15. It was a certainty, and it could happen even earlier. Yet, six weeks on, the dampners are on. Key now says its only a “reasonable probability”. Another $1 billion have been knocked off the forecast. Truth is little is different in the challenging global environment now from when the promises were made, except the PM is not campaigning any more, he is in office. Not for the first time he gave the public the message they wanted to hear about economic growth, but now its time to lower expectations.

The so-called State of the Nation speech from the PM yesterday was a dull and miserable affair. Gone is the brighter future we were all promised just a few weeks ago. What plan there is has at is centrepiece more cuts to the public service. Regardless of the wisdom of those, they will be a drop in the bucket of improving the government’s finances.

No one is underestimating the challenge in front of the government. But what’s happened to the sunny optimisim of our PM? Actually there is every reason to be optimistic about New Zealand’s future if the government is prepared to do things differently. The world has changed, will the government? There is opportunity to reset fiscal and economic policy, and make the investments that will support innovative growing companies, grow our skills base and ensure that everyone reaches their potential.

But there was none of that in the speech. Not just a lack of economic vision either. And as Pita Sharples (yes, he is a Minister in the government) points out nothing on dealing with poverty or inequality. Nothing on the issues that need to be dealt with to unlock the potential of thousands of New Zealanders.

It was a defeatist, sad and tired effort. A bit like an old joke.

John Key’s rather wooden performances in the leaders’ debates so far, are consistent with his vision for New Zealand.  A country painted bright grey, where everyone is “ambushus” for — well, nothing much really, except power in Key’s case.

Through the whole election campaign, Labour has stood up for New Zealand and the country we can be:  a place where everyone can work at a decent job on decent wages, where the environment is clean and protected, and where we respect and look after each other, rather than creating false divides between Kiwis.

The policy framework we have rolled out is a plan that will tackle long-standing problems the country faces.  It’ll fix the things that hold us back: unfair taxes, biased investment into speculation, a lack of skilled and trained workers, housing shortages and so on.

But it’s the frank appeal to what it means to be a New Zealander that is exciting about Labour’s campaign.

Stopping asset sales is part of that, but think back to the other bits of recent political history: “gone by lunchtime” on New Zealand’s nuclear free (Brash, who Key is trying to disinter from his political grave); the effort to get mining done on Schedule 4 lands; the attacks on people on benefits; the pegging in of people’s rights at work; the “it’s not a priority” message to diverse communities all around New Zealand.

Their whole effort is to diminish and undermine the things that make us who we are, and to turn us into a privatised, corporatised bunch of Klingons who are only consumers, never citizens, and where to have a different ambition or even a different opinion is to be something other than “mainstream”.

National and John Key are running a grey campaign and their vision of our country is grey to match.  They are avoiding the tough issues, have no plan to change the economy or protect our environment, and just haven’t got what it takes to let every New Zealander get ahead — and to look after the people who can’t.

There is more to us than that. We are a better country than that.  We don’t need a bright grey future. We need one where everyone can fly.

There is a difference between the News of the World hacking into someone’s phone to find out private information and seemingly – whether accidental or on purpose – effectively a journalist investigating some political statement.

I am certainly not condoning covert recording, but I felt uncomfortable when I heard the comparison to NOTW made by John Key. This was an orchestrated media stunt gone wrong, and is not even close to the intrusive, criminal behaviour in the UK.

Then, tonight on TV1 John Key made a comparison to the idea of high profile New Zealanders being recorded talking about a child considering suicide, that being published, and then the child committing suicide.

This just makes me even more uncomfortable. I had given credit to Key for saying he wanted to see coordinated action on youth suicide, but trying to draw that issue ( under which media have operated almost without fail in line with strict reporting guidelines) into what is a political situation seems wrong to me.

These comparisons and claims are all a smokescreen to John Key not wanting to be caught out for what he said to John Banks. He should wind back the rhetoric and just front up to what he said.

Milne says

But the potential disclosure of the contents of that conversation – held only a metre away from the closest reporters – could yet throw a rocket into this election campaign. It is a game-changer.

And therein lies the problem. I am sure as hell not endorsing covert taping of anyone. But this was a major media stunt in a campaign. It was designed to be a public event. As David Farrar has noted if the tape reveals something where Key or Banks is saying one thing publicly and another thing privately, then that gives strong reasons in the public interest to know what was said. Milne uses the langauge “game changer”, which indicates there is something here.

Milne goes on

But it’s the sheer range of comments in Key and Banks’ discussion that is breathtaking – and the pair’s assessment of the prospects of National, Act and NZ First.

Perhaps leadership in ACT discussions? Maybe a discussion about future asset sales? Whatever, this episode has more to play out, and the all guns blazing approach of National against its release indicates there is something of public interest in those tea leaves.

Key, campaigning in Hawke’s Bay, said he wasn’t in the “slightest bit concerned” about what was on the tape. He said the conversation was “bland” – but has refused to make public what was said.

I don’t know all the circumstances of the taping of John Key’s and John Bank’s cuppa tea conversation. But I make these points:

• The event was stage managed by the National Party. It was a hyped up event. Media were invited to film the meeting of Key and Banks, but not the actual conversation. There was an enormous amount of spin around it.
• National’s intention was for Epsom voters to know that John Key thought they should vote for Banks.
• The meeting was recorded without their knowledge. The journalist responsible owned up and fronted the media himself.
• The Herald on Sunday did not publish the contents. They reported they had the tape.
• John Key is now spinning it as News of the World tactics. He asserts that the journalist deliberately set out to covertly record a conversation. That’s a big accusation. I’d like to know if he wants the journalist charged? What about the Herald on Sunday?
• Key says the conversation was bland.  But he won’t provide the nation with the contents.
• There is enormous public interest in this issue. It could result in an Act/National coalition arrangement.
• If National allowed the cameras and the media part way in for their own ends, then they’ve now got to front up and tell the nation what was said.
• I cannot fathom what the privacy argument could possibly be that outweighs the public interest on this. There’s an election in 13 days time. These two men were discussing an arrangement between their respective parties. Surely the public has a right to know what it is.

A private conversation is held privately. Not stage managed in public. Tell us what you promised John Banks, John Key!

A leading injury rehabilitation specialist has lashed out at comments made by Prime Minister John Key, saying he has misled the public over cuts made to the health system. Rehabilitation medicine consultant physician Jurriaan de Groot said he was left outraged at a statement made by Mr Key in a televised leaders debate that only administrative jobs had been cut from the public health service.

This is the mythology that the National Party have tried to create. The fact is that they have no idea whether the jobs that have gone in the core public service or the wider state sector are frontline, back office or any other term. They are just the result of indiscriminate cuts. In this case services delivered for rehabilitation.

Dr de Groot said the slashing of MidCentral District Health Board’s rehabilitative Star Unit from 12 beds to eight, proved Mr Key was “wrong at best, deliberately misleading at worst”. “It certainly wasn’t just administrative services that were cut from there, the hospital lost a valuable resource expertise and they’ll never get it back.”

Throughout the health sector cuts in funding have caused lost services. This was the result of $10 million being taken from a budget. In other places its been mental health or youth health or public health.

I am really glad a medical professional has called out the misleading from the government on the real impact of cuts to services. Many have been scared as to what will happen to them when they speak out. Good on Dr De Groot.

I am sorry? To start with that is a stupid excuse, because the issues being raised in any given debate will be similiar, so preparation can not be used. And it is not as if this is a community radio station in Twizel. This is the most listened to morning news programme in the country. This is disgraceful. John Key said you can’t hide if you are the Prime Minister. Well he seems to be giving it a good go!

The two leaders will now have seperate interviews (obviously Mr Key could squeeze that into his schedule). Phil’s was today, and you can listen here

But today I read two stories in the New Zealand Herald that made me ashamed as a New Zealander. The first is the news that the government has slashed the number of food parcels it hands out by 20% in a year at a time when foodbanks are dealing with more and more individuals and families who need support for the very basics of food. Food parcels are not about anything other than people getting the necessities of life.

Last night in Wellington there was a public meeting on poverty issues where Stephanie McIntyre from Downtown Community Ministry talked about the more than 400 clients they dealt with in the three months to June. They do a great job at DCM, making real and substantive differences in people’s lives, but the current government is making their job much harder by changing policies to make it harder to access food grants.

The government’s approach in my view is privatising dealing with poverty, it is an abdication of responsibility and it is morally wrong.

The second story is an acknowledgement from John Key that the “underclass” he talked so much about in the 2008 election campaign has grown under his watch. He can’t deny the evidence, it is all around from the massive increase in foodbank use, the rise in unemployment to health indicators like the 5,000 extra avoidable hospital admissions among children for respiratory illness and skin infections.

So the PM acknowledges it, great. But he is not a spectator here, he is actually running the government. More can and should be done to directly attack the growth in poverty. It is simply not good enough.

Labour has policies that are directly aimed at addressing this, from the increase in the minimum wage to $15, a fairer tax system including making the first $5000 tax free for everyone, increasing the top tax rate and introducing the CGT. We also will have a comprehensive children’s policy, which as Annette King has already announced will include legislating targets for the elimination of child poverty. And for me that must be the goal. Nothing less is acceptable.

At the forum on poverty last night Brian Easton spoke and he said while it was possible to argue on a technical basis about the best policy response to poverty, the real question to be asked is what are the ethical and moral principles that lie behind the policies. It seems to me to be hard to find an ethical principle that lies behind cutting the number of food parcels or letting inequality and poverty grow.

I think Brian’s question is a legitimate one to ask. So here is my answer. The ethical basis for Labour’s policy at this election is fairness, inter-generational responsibility, inclusion and respect and a belief that if we reduce ineqaulity we will harness all our potential, which common sense tells us will benefit us all. So what’s the ethical basis for National’s policy?