Can someone explain why McCully (Minister of RWC) can toss $2m towards the tuppawaka which is built on public land but support a ban on TVNZ filming the opening event.
Then there are questions of value for money, priorities etc.
Red Alert
Posts Tagged ‘Murray McCully’
‘A side order of complete and utter shambles’
Posted by Grant Robertson on September 14th, 2011If you are struggling to work out quite what has happened today in terms of the government’s handling of the Party Central/Rail Fail events in Auckland, then you will not be alone. Its been a confusing day with the government’s attempts ranging from bluster and denial to what sounded like outright takeover.
The best attempt at making sense of it all to my mind came from John Campbell on tonight’s Campbell Live. It is well worth a watch, which you can do by clicking here.
Several highlights for me
- John’s description of the opening night of the World Cup as ” A great start with a side order of complete and utter shambles”
- The extraordinary revelation that neither Murray McCully nor John Key spoke to Len Brown about their decision to invoke some powers before they told the media.
- John asking the question that was also asked several times in Parliament today by Phil Goff- ” What has the Minister for the Rugby World Cup actually been doing for the last three years.”
- Len Brown’s gritted teeth state of calm. I think he comes off well. Accepting his share of the blame and making very clear that the whole process has been a collaboration with the government and that they have “equal responsibility”.
Everyone, including me, wants New Zealand to host a successful Rugby World Cup. We have made a great start around the country and the rugby hasn’t been half bad either. Now is the time for us to sort out what is happening in Auckland, and for the government to work with the Council and take its share of the responsibility for what’s gone wrong, and what we hope will go right.
Politicians as Commentators: Am I bothered?
Posted by Grant Robertson on September 12th, 2011The great thing about being in government is that you can take action to do things, or stop things or change things that you think are important. It’s the privilege that goes with the responsibility. But the current government seems to approach a number of issues as if they were commentators at a rugby game, saying something about an issue but in actual fact not doing anything at all.
Two examples from this weekend. The first and most transparent being the transport debacle that David has already posted on. On Friday Murray McCully was full of confidence about the state of Auckland transport, and seemed to be taking some ownership of what he saw as a success waiting to happen. It of course did not turn out that way.
Now of course this is not all the Government’s problem. The successful running of infrastructure for RWC was always going to be a matter for both local and central government to manage. Len Brown fronted on Saturday morning and apologised. All we have seen from Murray McCully, the Minister for the Rugby World Cup is comment on how bad things were and that they should be better. Why have a Minister for the Rugby World Cup if you are not going to play your part in making things work, and in taking some responsibility when they don’t?
The more subtle version of this tactic came from John Key in response to the reluctance of insurance companies to pay out for Christchurch homeowners to rebuild. Mr Key is quoted in the Press as saying he was “bothered” by the stance that the companies were taking. Is he auditioning for Catherine Tate or something? If you are bothered you are the one in a position to do something about it. For god’s sake man you are the Prime Minister not some talkback radio caller. Do something.
There are other examples, like the PM saying National could do better in terms of the number of women on on the National Party list. I know, why doesn’t he talk to someone who could show some leadership on this, like the Leader of the National Party?
The Prime Minister and his Ministers are not interested spectators in how our country runs, they are the people who have their hands on the levers of power. They should be held to account for what they do, not just that they have had something to say on the matters of the day.
Garrett, Boag feature at Hide fundraiser
Posted by Trevor Mallard on February 7th, 2011Don’t often link to Whaleoil. He can write some pretty nasty stuff. Doing it two posts in a row certainly won’t be viewed positively by some colleagues.
But this is too good not to be shared with more reasonable readers.
Whale attended the Hide’s Act fundraiser at the Alan Gibbs farm. Two important political features.
The disgraced former MP Garrett who stole the identity of a dead child has been rehabilitated and is involved in the Act Party again. Maybe fair enough from his perspective because Hide and his friends knew about his previous life before he was selected. And certified him as an appropriate candidate for Act. But they ran away from their mate when his troubles became public.
I wonder whether this will just count as one strike and he will be back on the list again. I suppose it depends on the size of the Sensible Sentencing Trust donation.
But even more interesting is the involvement of Michelle Boag in Act. She has been involved in the National Party since the late 1960s or early 1970s. Involved, generally on the losing side in just about every plot going. McCully and her were (are?) a team straight from Machiavelli. Obviously debate about her role. Maybe they have taken her on to run their campaign in the hope she can do as well for Hide as she did when she ran English’s campaign in 2002 – 22% ?
Possibly she was laundering some of the money from the Waitemata Trust – donated to National but being used to prop up Epsom these days.
Or maybe she is recruiting talent for National and was just there as a spy.
But whatever the reason she was there she certainly demanded and got 5 star treatment.
Update – very reliable source tells me that Boag stayed on for private dinner with the Act inner circle after the fundraiser. Very curious.
Chopper McCully’s shocker
Posted by Trevor Mallard on February 2nd, 2011
McCully is apparently Rugby World Cup Minister, when TVNZ calls him former they might be premature.
He choppered into Tui territory to kick off a Super Rugby preseason match, his pathetic place kick went nowhere.
But he obviously lives so far in the past that he doesn’t know that we do drop kicks to start rugby games now.
Bit of a worry.
Keep him away from the All Blacks just in case he tries to pass his wisdom on to them.
Meddling Murray McCully
Posted by Phil Twyford on December 17th, 2010Mismanagement and meddling by Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully has disrupted the humanitarian work of dozens of New Zealand NGOs.
Marie McNicholas of Newsroom:
Aid agencies waiting on the first tranche from a new $21 million Sustainable Development Fund have learnt nearly 60 percent of the applications have been rejected.
Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully abruptly announced in April that the fund would replace existing community development funding, but a promised September decision on the new allocations has run nearly three months late.
Projects to have missed out are in some the world’s poorest countries from Africa through Asia and the Pacific.
The decision has dealt a blow to charities which have struggled all year to understand what was required under the new funding criteria, and several report bewilderment and shock at the outcome.
Caritas chief executive Mike Smith has described it as fiasco, with the agency now forced to lay off staff and cut funding to aid projects in the week before Christmas.
New Zealand, like most aid donors, channels some of its aid budget through NGOs. Because they rely on volunteers NGOs are extremely cost effective. And by matching funds raised from New Zealand donations this funding encourages Kiwis to give out of their own pockets. The former scheme had been running for a couple of decades, had stringent accountability standards, had been praised by successive evaluations and cited by the Auditor General as a model for funding NGOs.
Nevertheless Murray knows best, and he wanted a new scheme that was open to the private sector, and focused on his new mantra of private sector economic development. It has been a chapter of errors in the following months with successive delays.
We are almost halfway through the financial year and until a week ago, none of the budgeted $21 million had been disbursed. Last year at this point $18 million had been spent. This means aid projects relying on commitments of New Zealand funding have been left hanging.
McNicholas reports the NGOs saying Mr McCully’s ministry keeps changing the goal posts, that the process has been marred by delays, poor communication and breaches of the spirit of partnership through which such aid programmes have been delivered successfully for years.
Last month I am told the Minister threw a fit when the first batch of projects was sent up to his office. He threw them back at officials and threatened to have the running of the scheme contracted out.
It is a fiasco. And it is a direct result of the Minister’s meddling and micro-management of the half-billion dollar overseas aid programme.
This is the Minister who personally intervened to slash the funding to the aid NGOs’ umbrella organisation Council for International Development causing 10 staff to be laid off, and to the excellent Wellington-based Global Focus development education centre which is facing closure.
Read on for Marie McNicholas’ full story:
What are you doing in this picture?
Posted by Phil Twyford on December 8th, 2010
MPs from Labour, the Greens and National gathered on the forecourt today to stand in solidarity with women in the Pacific who face violence. The action was organised by the NGO coalition Women’s Rights and Advocacy in the Pacific (WRAP). It is an important issue, and very valuable to have some cross-party consensus behind it. But my question for National MPs who were there today, very keen to get in the press photos, is this: What are you doing about Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully’s cuts to the funding of human rights organisations and centres in Tonga and Vanuatu that work on violence against women?
What is that choking sound?
Posted by Phil Twyford on November 16th, 2010Under National, New Zealand’s international development aid has lurched to the right. Our Government’s overseas aid agency NZAID was dissolved back into the foreign ministry, and Foreign Minister Murray McCully has made economic development the goal rather than it being a means to achieve poverty reduction. He is re-focusing the aid programme around economic development and can hardly conceal his contempt for the UN Millenium Development Goals.
So it was mildly amusing to see Mr McCully and Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd speak at a joint press conference today after their meeting in Canberra. Mr McCully said they spent “a lot of time talking about our joint and shared responsibilities within this region”. And “…because we’re the dominant providers of development assistance within the region, that means we have to set the pace and set the example.”
In answer to a question from an Australian journalist Mr Rudd explained Australia’s policy on aid which to be fair is mainstream among most OECD countries. It’s just quite a long way from the current New Zealand policy:
Remember our organising principle here is reducing poverty. That is the organising principle of the Millennium Development Goals, reducing poverty by effective investment in primary healthcare, effective investment in universal primary education and effective investment in the basic levels of governance and infrastructure necessary for growth to occur.
I think the choking sound in the background must have been Mr McCully.
Flights of fancy
Posted by Phil Twyford on November 12th, 2010Michael Field reports the Samoan PM Tuilaepa Sailele saying Air New Zealand’s decision to end its Los Angeles-Apia service is stupid. The flight brings much-needed American tourists to Samoa and Tonga but Air New Zealand says the run is not economic. New Zealand has been subsidising the route with aid funds for the last few years. Tonga has said it no longer wants its aid money from New Zealand to subsidise the flight so the deal is off.
It raises some interesting questions about our development aid. The last Labour Government initiated the subsidy as a stop-gap measure to protect the tourism industries in Samoa and Tonga, with the intention of carrying out cost-benefit and economic impact analysis. But the National Government has rolled the subsidy over for another two years, spending several million dollars and I’d be very interested to know whether they have done the cost-benefit sums.
Development blogger Terence Wood has this to say in an interesting post on Murray McCully’s changes to the aid programme:
… the Minister has selected some rather questionable new aid projects for funding. A good example being the decision to subsidise Air New Zealand flights from Samoa and Cook Islands to Los Angeles (discussed here). The subsidy might have development benefits – linking relatively isolated island states to markets – or it might not. And, even if it does have development benefits the money devoted to it might be more effective elsewhere. The decision to subsidise was of the type that requires careful analysis before being acted on. And yet there’s no evidence that such analysis fed into the Minister’s decision. More worryingly still, the subsidy was awarded directly to Air New Zealand instead of through the best-practice approach: to put the services out to tender and see which of the various airlines servicing the region could deliver best value for money. Which makes the whole affair seem remarkably like corporate welfare.
Murry McCully is very keen on spending aid dollars to promote economic development but I am yet to see much rigour when it comes to careful economic or social impact analysis. Without it, you are left with trickle down economics. Which is not fair on the taxpayer or the people our development aid is supposed to be helping.
Lying tory caught
Posted by Trevor Mallard on October 8th, 2010Posted earlier on how Key said one thing to Maori radio and our High Commissioner to India said something else.
Tell Waatea it is government’s fault but don’t tell Indians…..
After polling during the day Key has decided it would not do him any good with Kiwis to apologise and told Radio New Zealand 5pm that he didn’t need to because the High Commission had done so “at the instruction of the government.”
Pity he didn’t check with his Minister McCully who told the Dompost – reported on the front page “he had not ordered Mr Holbrow to apologise.”
One of them is not telling the truth – which one this time.
McCully to select All Blacks for World Cup
Posted by Trevor Mallard on October 4th, 2010As a long time Minister of Sport and before that opposition spokesperson. Went to KL and every Comgames since. I’ve got to know lots of sportspeople well. Some of them talk to me a lot. Those that have been around for a while are getting very concerned about McCully interfering in decisions that should be made by sports.
A disclaimer. I know Ian Ferguson pretty well. He taught me how to kayak and we trained to do Cook Straight in a double as part of a Mizone challenge a few years back. Didn’t happen because of weather and we did this big thing within Wellington Harbour instead. Tough bastard pushed me hard. Both my hands were bleeding at the end.
An aside – he brought down a flash racing double for us to use. Setting it up the day before when I had to get in to measure leg length etc. My arse was too big to get into kayak. Very embarrassing – used another.
I had heard through other canoeing people about their problems with McCully but have not discussed the issue with Ferg. So wasn’t surprised with the four page article in the Herald on Sunday.
Canoeing came uncomfortably into the spotlight this year when former Olympic silver medallist Fouhy claimed the breakdown of his relationship with Ferguson led to his decision to quit the sport.
The controversy highlighted what appeared to be fractious relationships and cast Fouhy as a victim. He did return – but only after doing a deal with Sparc and CRNZ that he could train separately from the team.
Ferguson says the view seems to have been held in the Beehive that Ferguson was disadvantaging Fouhy in favour of his son. McCully’s involvement was also underlined by Ferguson and MacDonald who both said Kearns told them and the rest of the canoeing team that McCully would cut the team’s funding if anyone objected to Fouhy’s inclusion.
I’ve spent a bit of time around the team (in their van for a while at Athens) and talked to others who have spent more. The idea that Ferg favours his boy is nonsense. General opinion is that Steven has to perform better to hold his place. Most important point is that that is a decision for canoeing to make not McCully.
But an even bigger worry is that McCully has resumed his old habit of bypassing normal selection systems for his favourites. Fouhy made a team after a discussion with McCully.
There is at least one other case in a different sport which will eventually get publicity.
That is wrong at so many levels. Imagine the uproar if I tried to tell Ted Henry who should be in his team for the northern tour – and threatened a funding cut if an AB made any public comment.
Murray McCully loves the MDGS. Not.
Posted by Phil Twyford on September 22nd, 2010God does have a sense of humour. Murray McCully rocking up to the United Nations in New York to give a speech on the Millenium Development Goals is proof.
He is the John Bolton of New Zealand foreign policy. Remember Bolton? He was George W. Bush’s Ambassador to the United Nations, chosen because of his visceral dislike of the UN.
The MDGs are everything Mr McCully hates: it’s the UN, multilateralism, ending poverty, gender, HIV/AIDs, the environment and all that stuff.
But to his credit our Foreign Minister turned up. Only once did a little of the real Murray slip out when he said:
I share the optimism of those who believe we can make better, faster progress. But it will not be because we have established new committees, or new procedures, developed new slogans or new acronyms.
That’s McCully-speak for ‘I’m not like you UN types. I spend my aid money on roads and bridges and airlines and tourism.’
In the last eighteen months Mr McCully has switched the focus of New Zealand’s aid programme from lifting people out of poverty to promoting economic development. It is odd because you’d think that economic development would simply be the means to reducing poverty. But not in Murray’s world. It has become an end itself.
And the odd thing is, that while the Minister’s desire to spend Kiwi aid dollars on airlines, infrastructure and tourism might stimulate private sector-led economic growth, he doesn’t seem to have given much thought to who will benefit, or whether it is the highest priority. Will the benefits of growth trickle down to the 85% of Pacific Islanders who live from subsistence farming or will they just line the pockets of the elites?
The Pacific is one of only two parts of the world falling behind in progress towards the Millenium Development Goals. The other is Sub-Saharan Africa. In Papua New Guinea mothers are dying in childbirth at a rate similar to Afghanistan. That is 80 times more than New Zealand. The Minister had nothing to say about how his economic development focus would reduce these needless deaths.
Without investing in health and education, the poor won’t be able to take advantage of any opportunities from economic growth. Mr McCully is so ideologically blinkered that he thinks training midwives or getting kids into school is supporting ‘bloated bureaucracy’.
He is particularly hostile to the idea of aid promoting good governance. But then, a Minister who hands out lucrative contracts to his political cronies without putting them to tender, wouldn’t really be in a position to talk to Pacific governments about good governance, would he?
Morale suffers while McCully makes the cuts
Posted by Phil Twyford on September 2nd, 2010A telling excerpt from a document released under the Official Information Act quotes Foreign Affairs CEO John Allen telling staff:
I understand the impact on morale of the challenges that staff have faced in the past year. I understand that the decisions that have been made are tough and they impact on people, on organisational identity, and on staff morale. It is legitimate for people to have strong feelings and views on these issues. Given that these decisions are unpopular and impact on morale then why have they been made? Cabinet mandated a change from a stand alone agency to closer integration with the Ministry….Allen goes on to explain the changes.
Morale is low at the aid programme formerly known as NZAID. In what was once an energetic and innovative organisation staff now spend their time trying to stay out of the Minister’s way and repackaging work so it fits within the Minister’s narrow prescription for economic development.
They are embarrassed by his continuing campaign against the NGOs. By all but ending the $900,000 a year funding to the NGO umbrella group Council for International Development. By changes to the funding arrangements for NGO projects made without consultation. And by the recent cut to the excellent Wellington-based Global Focus which provides information resources on development issues.
The latest casualty of the Minister’s red pen is a Pacific regional programme doing village-based disaster risk-reduction work in four countries. It helps communities reduce the impact of cyclones, floods and tsunamis through preparedness training and working with local government. It is run by the Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific out of Suva.
The three-year $2.5 million effort was set up in close collaboration with NZAID, with a commitment of $500,000 a year from New Zealand. McCully has pulled the funding after one year, with no assessment of its impact.
No wonder MFAT aid staff are suffering from low morale. They are the ones who have to deliver this sort of news.
McCully 1 Joyce 0
Posted by Trevor Mallard on July 27th, 2010Last year Steven Joyce described the allowable blood alcohol limit of 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres as ridiculous.
He got together a plan which he took to Cabinet.
Yesterday he found out what Murray McCully can do when he decides to.
The old dog gave the bright new puppy a lesson in politics.
Common sense the winner on the day
Posted by Phil Twyford on July 16th, 2010So we got there in the end. Rugby fans get their fan-zone. Auckland gets a cruise ship terminal. And Mike Lee stood up for Aucklanders who didn’t want to see both sheds bowled to make way for a semi-temporary structure on the Queens Wharf.
Murray McCully’s trantrum (I don’t know what Mike Lee has been smoking, Auckland local government is a train wreck, the sooner we get the super city the better) is exposed for what it was: the wailings of a Minister who hasn’t given his portfolio the attention it deserves, and who wasn’t able to stitch together a deal. The Prime Minister’s threats to explore other venues for the party-zone came to nothing.
In the long run I hope Queens Wharf will be the site of a stunning development for the people of Auckland, as part of a waterfront master plan developed by the Auckland Council.
Key orders inquiry into yet another telco failure
Posted by Trevor Mallard on July 11th, 2010John Key has asked Steven Joyce to set up an inquiry as to why when McCully’s and Haden’s phones were both working McCully was unable to make the connection.
There is a suggestion that a chicken caused the problem.
Murray needs help
Posted by Phil Twyford on July 9th, 2010Maybe he could ask Paul where to put party central?
Could these two possibly be related?
Posted by Phil Twyford on July 9th, 2010
Did anyone see Murray McCully’s brilliant impersonation of a Latin American tinpot general on 3 News last night commenting on the party central debate?
I guess the Prime Minister told Murray McCully to sort this thing out pronto, but I am not sure berating Auckland in this way is going to get us a solution fast.
Goodbye to the slug?
Posted by Phil Twyford on July 7th, 2010The Herald reports Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully is furious at the prospect of the ARC and Auckland City cutting a deal to save one of the Queens Wharf cargo sheds. If the body language at Monday’s opening of the Kingsland rail station upgrade is anything to go by, McCully’s feelings towards Mike Lee are somewhat deathly. One insider at the event told me McCully refused to speak on the same platform as Lee, causing a strange re-jigging of the programme that saw the Minister’s speech separated from the others by a 25 minute tea break. By contrast John Banks’ and Mike Lee’s speeches were a veritable love-fest.
What’s got Muzza so peeved? The latest attempt to salvage John Key’s party central was a deal hammered out between ARC Chairman Mike Lee and McCully to knock over both the cargo sheds on Queens Wharf and spend $9.6 million on a semi-temporary party central venue and cruise ship terminal gloriously dubbed a ‘giant slug’ by heritage adviser and blogger Joshua Arbury. Lee and McCully announced the plan in April.
Local architects have waged a spirited campaign to save the sheds and restore them in the way that has been done successfully on the wharves of Sydney and countless other cities. Events supremo Michael Mizrahi made a compelling case for the sheds on Sunday a couple of weeks back. Personally I reckon Queens Wharf is such prime real estate it should be used for a major long-term development with ample public space that would be a magnet to bring people down to the waterfront. I have felt uneasy about about the prospect of a semi-temporary development cobbled together for the Rugby World Cup.
Now it appears Mike Lee has found a way to save one of the sheds, probably with the help of some additional funding from Auckland City. We should hear the details after today’s ARC meeting.
Update 2.15pm: Slug stays, shed survives, Muzza not happy. Herald
New aid board to advise McCully – a contradiction in terms?
Posted by Phil Twyford on May 20th, 2010Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully has recruited philanthropist Sir Stephen Tindall, economist Gareth Morgan, Barry Coates of Oxfam and company director Trevor Janes as a board to advise him on aid matters. They will be joined by MFAT CEO John Allen and the new head of the international development group(formerly known as NZAID) Amanda Ellis. Given the Minister’s notorious disregard for officials’ advice it will be interesting to see how much he listens to his new advisers.
