One Winner...One Bludger on the tax-paper...



Palmerston North MP Iain Lees-Galloway, he tried to win and did.



This guy was gifted 400 thousand dollars by the tax payer for not winning...its a Ponzi deal...in the best tradition of Merrill Lynch

Palmerston North made a great choice and returned Iain Lees-Galloway [pictured] instead of the John Key look-a-like candidate Leonie Hapeta and Iain increased his margin of victory by almost three hundred percent…so much for the Manawatu Standards editors prediction, he must be feeling awful after all his tales of doom and gloom.

We must never forget that key can only form a government because he had a cup of tea in Epsom with poodle boy John Banks and bribed every ready Peter Dunne…

and the oldies gave NZ First a huge boost with eight MP’s including Winston Peters, the other party to lift its support were of course the Greens, so we now have a good balance.

Thank God we’ve got MMP under the old system the Nats would have got 70% of the seats with 47.05% of the vote.

 The media states correctly that this was Labours worst result and that’s true but what they don’t tell you is that National did much, much worse in 2002 when Bill English only got 22.5% of the vote. Still

we now have a second term celebrity film star style leader who I liken to a Sarah Palin of the south pacific, a wealthy film star look-a-like ex-money mover dressed as a politician who gives the word flim-flam new meaning.

 Our question to the PM must be, “Where are the jobs John”…show us the jobs. We know you don’t like MMP…but hell John at least it’s democratic unless you order people like Paul Goldsmith to throw an election by promising him a free ride…

you’ve given him around 400 thousand tax payers dollars…to buy his backing…its almost like a Ponzi deal…or Merrill Lynch all over again. 

The smilling assassin strikes again...

An Interesting three years ahead...

The election is over [thank God says some] and I’m inclined to agree in some respects. The citizens have made up their minds, well at least most of them have. Baby kissing by John Key can be put away for another three years, patting dogs and other hairy beings can be forgotten as a thing of the past. Hidden things can once again be discussed like prior to becoming PM key was a director for Deutsche Pacific formerly Bankers Trust based in the Cook Islands for tax purposes…this mob aided and abetted those wishing to avoid paying NZ and other taxes paid by you and I… Recently the Treasury appointed Deutsche Bank as the Crown's Financial Advisor for preparatory work it is doing to extend the mixed ownership model [selling off State Assets] to four State Owned Enterprises. Treasury's General Manager John Crawford said:

"We are pleased to be working with Deutsche Bank and Craig’s Investment Partners who were selected after a rigorous assessment process from a strong line up of credible candidates."

 A strong line of credible candidates, yeah right…some would call it “INSIDE TRADING”.

Elections are full of misconceptions and even darn-right lies and thousands of half-truths. Like asking for the party vote, except in Epsom or Ohariu, and the Maori seats as John Key did…but hell it’s only an election…its not about policy, its about spin and double standards where Steve Joyce rules the air waves, its about the National Party bloggers employed by the Herald, its about branding, kissing babies. Still it is over now. No doubt the shock return to the house of Winston Peters with eight of his mates and the growth of the Greens will certainly change the balance and make life difficult for John Key and his crew…

it looks as if the voter turnout was only around 70%, the lowest in eighty years…but MMP remains

. The National Cabinet [pictured] will have its work cutout…its going to be an interesting three years.

What’s left of the Maori Party will have to decide where it will head, its party vote in the Maori seats and across the board fell, its supporters gave their party vote to the Mana Party or Labour so they are between, both co-leaders are departing after this term.

“Granddad

“Yes son

“Why couldn’t I vote yesterday?

“You’ve got to be eighteen.

“So I’ve got six years to go.

“That’s true.

“Six years that’s a long time”

“Absolutely, I agree and the younger you are the longer it seems”

“Son could you pass me my battery box off the side board”

“Thanks but I don’t want to miss a word of our chat, you see the word I miss might be the most important…he popped a tiny battery into each of his Sally Whites…right now what was that last question?

“I was saying that Mom said she always votes but it’s just a waste of time”

“Well son as you know your mom and I don’t always agree and I sure don’t agree that voting is a waste of time”

“Mom says that that they don’t keep their promises and she said something that I don’t really understand”

“What’s that son?

“Mom said that they were selling off what we already own and that’s stupid, why is that Granddad?

“Your mom is right about that son…just imagining that you owned your bike and you wanted to go to the school camp. So you sold your bike, went on the school camp and when you came back you rented your bike back”…are you following me son.

“Yeah I can follow that…

“Well in the end it would cost you heaps”

“What would you do Granddad?

“I’d borrow from the money to go on the school camp, and pay that back, it would be a lot less that renting a bike”.

So mom is right about selling my bike just for a week at a school camp would be stupid”

Spot on son…



Sarah Palin



The election is over and we now have a celebrity leader, a Sarah Palin of the south pacific, a wealthy film star dressed as a politician who gives the word flim-flam new meaning  

Lets Blame the Victim...says NZ Herald

Carmen Thomas a victim not according to Herald spin.

 The Herald sunk to a new low on Saturday suggesting that Carmen Thomas who was dismembered by her ex-partner Brad Callaghan who had been in an abusive relationship with him.

The sick Herald invents a slant that blames the victim and attempts to blame her for Brad Callaghan sick and murderous behaviour. A guy who was not only having a baby with another woman that he wouldn't admit to, but was quite happy to chop her up and put her in concrete buckets and spend a couple of weeks hiding her body. And the paper called him intelligent, intelligent in a murdering psychopathic criminal way. Come on nanny Herald did you reach this stupid conclusion because Carman was a prostitute, so what can’t you understand…prostitution is a legal business these days, an ex Act Party MP owns a brothel for Gods sake.

There is nothing like victimizing the victim. Why not do a item on the so-called intelligent workings of a guy who can cut his murdered victim into bits, set those bits in concrete, bury them, attempt to mislead the police and when caught confess and say what a good boy I am.

His lawyer claimed that if provocation was still on the books that would have been Brad Callaghan’s defence. What was the provocation for cutting up his victim…what next…Will his lawyer tell us next that he was simply using his engineering skills.

I wore a white ribbon on Friday as I’m sure thousands of people did to show we are opposed to violence I can only presume the Herald has never heard of ‘white ribbon day…

The herald item was crap of the highest order

The Choice is yours...Poverty or greed...children or BMW's

Wheeler’s Corner Ó

Connecting Citizens Who Care

49 24^th November 2011

This Week: Election 2011 Edition two. 1. Poverty: 2. The Key saga myths.

After watching TV3’s Inside NZ Doco on child poverty I can only hope that this Wheeler’s Corner touches a nerve, because we should be ashamed of ourselves and our greed that has led to this state of affairs…

This from the Dominion Post:

“Charities say they have watched with concern as the gap between rich and poor grew over the past few years with no solution in sight.

Wellington City Missioner Susan Blaikie said she had previously worked in the corporate world, where beneficiaries were seen as bludgers.

"But I don't know anyone that actually wants to be on a benefit. The bigger the gap is between the richest and the poorest, the more likely there will be social problems and crime." The Reverend Blaikie had spent the last decade working with the church and said the issue was worse today than ever before. She was concerned that no major party had produced a serious policy this close to the election.

The Salvation Army's social services spokesman, Major Campbell Roberts, said he had seen the gap grow over his 40 years there and in recent times more people were worse off.

"Even over the last two years there has been a significant increase in people coming for welfare services. At the same time you've got salaries at a level which have increased significantly. "This is most probably a reasonably recent thing over the past 15 to 20 years."

People who had a long history of working and contributing to society were losing their jobs and more families were struggling for the basics.

At the Catholic charity St Vincent de Paul, national council chief executive Anne-Marie McCarten said more government agencies were referring people to charities.

"It's been bad in the last two or three years and is getting progressively worse. We are feeding more children in schools and feeding people who don't make it to the next pay day.

"It's a bit to do with everything and if there was an easy solution, I guess everyone would know it."

"As a young man, I now know what it was like to live in Germany just before and during the war. John Key is running this country like a dictator, with the rich people as his chosen race." – David Nelson

"It seems crazy that the wealthy have had their tax rate cut and now the Government wants to sell NZ-owned assets, which will probably be bought by them. I don't believe for an instant that the wealthy would leave NZ because of a higher and fairer tax rate; after all, you'd be paying more tax in Australia than you do here." – NG

"I don't think NZ is any different from any other capitalist country. And no, NZ is not lauded overseas as an egalitarian society – where do you get that impression from? What is different here is that there is little focus on this [wealthiest] 1 per cent whereas overseas there is much more open exposure. I imagine that most of the 1 per cent here are farmers, and you're not allowed to criticise farmers are you?" – Trevor Woolnough

"Hard work is a red herring. Let's say hypothetically that everyone in NZ worked just as hard and were equally as motivated and as educated as everyone else. Even after all that, someone still has to clean the toilets, empty the septic tanks." – Jim Kirk

"If you are mega-rich you are a wealth deprivator; you are impacting on people's ordinary lives and aspirations more than any everyday criminal probably could. Graham Hart spending $85 million on a yacht made from money milked from the NZ economy ... clearly over the boundaries and a man whose soul has become corrupted by his wealth. What's he giving back?" – John Gower

"I do work hard – sometimes 11 hours a day, I have a degree which cost me huge amounts in student loans and didn't help me get a job, and I have aspirations. To me the problem is not that there are rich and poor; this will always happen as its human nature. The problem is that more and more people in the same boat as me are finding it hard to live due to the rising cost of food, petrol and rates." – Catherine  

We need to look at the History of John Key in relation to his financial abilities so here are some facts and figures regarding him and his last major employer Merrill Lynch and their general performance…and he was a senior player. The following is not simply ‘picking’ on the PM. What’s shown below is fact not fiction. The real question it automatically leads to is, how can one whose behaviour helped the financial melt down, by taking huge profits and bonuses, design a workable and transparent process to stop the rip-off that is going on right now here in NZ and Palmerston North. My view is, he can’t…it’s like putting a fox amongst the chickens or an alcoholic in charge of the pub. So lets calmly review the back ground without any public relations spin or smiling photographs and media hog-wash.

·         Key's first job was in 1982, as an auditor at McCulloch Menzies, and he then moved to be a project manager at Christchurch-based clothing manufacturer Lane Walker Rudkin for two years. [LWR which went belly-up dumping many PN Staff]

·         Key began working as a foreign exchange dealer at Elders Finance in Wellington, and rose to the position of head foreign exchange trader two years later, then moved to Auckland-based Bankers Trust in 1988. [Elders Finance was taken over]

·         In 1995, he joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore. That same year he was promoted to Merrill's global head of foreign exchange, based in London, where he may have earned around US$2.25 million a year including bonuses, which is about NZ$5 million at 2001 exchange rates. Some co-workers called him "the smiling assassin" for maintaining his usual cheerfulness while sacking dozens (some say hundreds) of staff after heavy losses from the 1998 Russian financial crisis. He was a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2001.

·         In 2001, he headed back to New Zealand to fulfill a long held ambition to stand for Parliament for the National Party. [replacing Brash after the Hollow-men scandal]

It was fortunate that he did because Merrill Lynch went into free-fall:

·         In 2002, Merrill Lynch settled for a fine of $100 million for publishing misleading research. As part of the agreement with the New York attorney general and other state securities regulators, Merrill Lynch agreed to increase research disclosure and work to decouple research from investment banking. A well known analyst at Merrill Lynch named Henry Blodget wrote in company e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which conflicted with what was publicly published by Merrill. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He settled without admitting or denying the allegations and was subsequently barred from the securities industry for life. He paid a $2 million fine and $2 million disgorgement. The CEO at that time, David Komansky, said, "I want...to publicly apologize to our clients, our shareholders, and our employees," for the company falling short of its professional standards in research.

·         In 2004 convictions of Merrill executives marked the only instance in the Enron investigation where the government criminally charged any officials from the banks and securities firms that allegedly helped the energy giant execute its accounting fraud. The case revolved around a 1999 transaction involving Merrill, Enron and the sale of some electricity-producing barges off the coast of Nigeria. The charges surrounded the 1999 sale of an interest in Nigerian energy barges by an Enron entity to Merrill Lynch was a sham that allowed Enron to illegally book about $12 million in pretax profit, when in fact there was no real sale and no real profit. Four former Merrill top executives and two former midlevel Enron officials faced conspiracy and fraud charges. Merrill cut its own deal, firing bankers and agreeing to the outside oversight of its structured-finance transactions. It also settled civil fraud charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, without admitting or denying fault.

·         In 2002 Merrill Lynch settled for 10 million civil penalties as a result of improper activities that took place out of the firm's Fort Lee New Jersey office. Three financial advisors, and a fourth who was involved to a lesser degree, placed 12,457 trades for a client Millennium Partners in at least 521 mutual funds and 63 mutual fund sub-accounts of at least 40 variable annuities. Millennium made profits in over half of the funds and fund sub-accounts. In those funds where Millennium made profits, its gains totaled about $60 million. Merrill Lynch failed to reasonably supervise these financial advisers, whose market timing siphoned short-term profits out of mutual funds and harmed long-term investors,  

More recent Controversies with Key as PM were:

Mafrost has left a post on: "John Key smiling assassin or hero? You decide...":  Key's lack of credibility is renowned! In the last six years he has lied/changed his mind about e.g. the following:

·         On Kyoto and climate change: 10 May 2005 Hansard - the record of government - "The impact of the Kyoto Protocol, even if one believes in global warming - and I am somewhat suspicious of it - is that we will see billions and billions of dollars poured into fixing something that we are not even sure is a problem.” He concluded that “The public are sick and tired of paying additional taxes for all sorts of crazy ideas.” So he now supports the ETS... During the same debate Nick Smith stated: “New Zealand's emissions amount to less than 0. 5 percent internationally, and per head of population our emissions are about half that of Australia's and the United States' emissions. So why are we going to impose costs, and impose controls, and impose red tape on New Zealanders..." John and Nick the forked tongue of National?

·         On asset sales: In October 2008: "I am not interested in selling assets – I'm all about building assets". Perhaps it was just his own assets he was talking about? Speaking of which - on his personal assets in so-called blind trusts: In May 2010 on TV1 Key said: “he had never heard of Whitechapel, the company that owns his shares as a holding vehicle for his ‘blind’ trust, Aldgate”. There are online official records of him giving those shares to Whitechapel. He's not even a competent liar!

·         On GST increases: 10 Feb 2010 “National is not going to be lifting GST. National wants to cut taxes, not raise taxes … what I am saying is if we do a half-decent job as a government at growing our economy I am confident that won't be happening”. Obviously National didn't do even a half-decent job! I really can't understand why when an overwhelming majority don't want assets to be sold, a majority of people still think his 'ability' on economic matters is worth supporting? Given his track record of lying/changing his mind, do they really trust that he won't find an excuse for an eventual complete sell-off of the country's key infrastructure assets? I sure as heck don't! above Posted by mafrost to wheeler's Corner NZ at 20 November 2011 13:49

·         During the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, Key was a proponent of Hosni Mubarak's government, citing his support of Israel and refusing to call for his resignation. When asked if Mubarak should step down, he said "no".

·         In 2011, Key was caught up in a controversy over the purchase of government limousines which he denied knowledge of initially but later reports surfaced his office was aware. He was accused of being dishonest and eventually apologised, calling the deal sloppy.

·         In October 2011, Key made a statement where he claimed Standard and Poor's had said at a meeting in the prior month that "if there was a change of Government, that downgrade would be much more likely", this claim was contradicted by S&P after Key's credibility had been called into question.

·         In November 2011, Key rushed to the police to shut down just what said about Don Brash during a PR stunt to help the Act Party and he walked out of a press conference to avoid answering questions on the subject.

Now after reading about the massive gap between the have and the have-nots you have to decide if you think John Key is the right person to stop the massive blow-out in corporate greed and correct the problems that presently exist.

I wish you well in your choice…and don’t forget to vote on Saturday…and don’t forget to vote for the children… because they can’t vote for themselves…cheers 

Peter J Wheeler

John Key smiling assassin or hero? You decide...



John Key The smiling Assassin

Looking at the History of John Key in relation to his financial abilities here are some facts and figures regarding his major employer Merrill Lynch and their general performance…

·         Key's first job was in 1982, as an auditor at McCulloch Menzies, and he then moved to be a project manager at Christchurch-based clothing manufacturer Lane Walker Rudkin for two years.

·         Key began working as a foreign exchange dealer at Elders Finance in Wellington, and rose to the position of head foreign exchange trader two years later, then moved to Auckland-based Bankers Trust in 1988.

·         In 1995, he joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore. That same year he was promoted to Merrill's global head of foreign exchange, based in London, where he may have earned around US$2.25 million a year including bonuses, which is about NZ$5 million at 2001 exchange rates. Some co-workers called him "the smiling assassin" for maintaining his usual cheerfulness while sacking dozens (some say hundreds) of staff after heavy losses from the 1998 Russian financial crisis. He was a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2001.

·         In 2001, he headed back to New Zealand to fulfill a long held ambition to stand for Parliament for the National Party.

It was fortunate that he did because Merrill Lynch went into free-fall:

·         In 2002, Merrill Lynch settled for a fine of $100 million for publishing misleading research. As part of the agreement with the New York attorney general and other state securities regulators, Merrill Lynch agreed to increase research disclosure and work to decouple research from investment banking. A well known analyst at Merrill Lynch named Henry Blodget wrote in company e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which conflicted with what was publicly published by Merrill. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He settled without admitting or denying the allegations and was subsequently barred from the securities industry for life. He paid a $2 million fine and $2 million disgorgement. The CEO at that time, David Komansky, said, "I want...to publicly apologize to our clients, our shareholders, and our employees," for the company falling short of its professional standards in research.

·         In 2004 convictions of Merrill executives marked the only instance in the Enron investigation where the government criminally charged any officials from the banks and securities firms that allegedly helped the energy giant execute its accounting fraud. The case revolved around a 1999 transaction involving Merrill, Enron and the sale of some electricity-producing barges off the coast of Nigeria. The charges surrounded the 1999 sale of an interest in Nigerian energy barges by an Enron entity to Merrill Lynch was a sham that allowed Enron to illegally book about $12 million in pretax profit, when in fact there was no real sale and no real profit. Four former Merrill top executives and two former midlevel Enron officials faced conspiracy and fraud charges. Merrill cut its own deal, firing bankers and agreeing to the outside oversight of its structured-finance transactions. It also settled civil fraud charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, without admitting or denying fault.

·         In 2002 Merrill Lynch settled for 10 million civil penalties as a result of improper activities that took place out of the firm's Fort Lee New Jersey office. Three financial advisors, and a fourth who was involved to a lesser degree, placed 12,457 trades for a client Millennium Partners in at least 521 mutual funds and 63 mutual fund sub-accounts of at least 40 variable annuities. Millennium made profits in over half of the funds and fund sub-accounts. In those funds where Millennium made profits, its gains totaled about $60 million. Merrill Lynch failed to reasonably supervise these financial advisers, whose market timing siphoned short-term profits out of mutual funds and harmed long-term investors.

More recent Controversies with Key as PM were:

·         During the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, Key was a proponent of Hosni Mubarak's government, citing his support of Israel and refusing to call for his resignation. When asked if Mubarak should step down, he said "no".

·         In 2011, Key was caught up in a controversy over the purchase of government limousines which he denied knowledge of initially but later reports surfaced his office was aware. He was accused of being dishonest and eventually apologised, calling the deal sloppy.

·         In October 2011, Key made a statement where he claimed Standard and Poor's had said at a meeting in the prior month that "if there was a change of Government, that downgrade would be much more likely", this claim was contradicted by S&P after Key's credibility had been called into question.  

Palmerston North, Rangitikei Election Special.

This Week: 1. Election Special Edition…

Rangitikei…



Ian Mckelvie



Madalene Frost, of Taihape left a comment on my post "The Biggest Question you face...she wrote:
”The question was asked "Who should you vote for in Rangitikei?" Well its a foregone conclusion according to MSL's Stacey Kirk in the Central Districts Times (Page 1, 15 November 2011): "...many people have already picked Manawatu District Mayor Ian McKelvie to trot comfortably to the finish line in Rangitikei on election day>" Six years of Social Credit tenure by Bruce Beetham is brushed of by Ms Kirk as just "a blip on the [National Party stronghold] timeline." And Josie Pagani is trivialised: "She might seem fresh faced down these parts..."
When did it become the news media's role to create the news rather than simply report it?
Please tell us Stacey, what polling/canvassing you did to come to the conclusion that McKelvie [pictured] will trot comfortably into the seat of Rangitikei? What proportions of the population believe this; how was your assessment conducted; what was the size of the sample; what is the margin of error?
Nor, Stacey has your newspaper seen fit to publish a local reader's letter sent in time for the same edition, on alternatives to National's policy of ignoring the plight of 200,000 children living in poverty under their watch; young people dying from Bronchiectasis - a third world disease seven times more prevalent than in Finland, the only other developed country with this disease; John Key and Bill English making the top deciles of New Zealanders 25% richer in their first term of office.
So hey, if you don't like McKelvie, don't bother to vote folks - according to Stacey you can't win! Let him and his ilk carry on polluting our mighty rivers and spreading their racist clap trap. After all that is all we plebs deserves.



Dr. Peter Cleave.



On second thoughts perhaps I will vote…For Peter Cleave [pictured] of the MANA movement perhaps? He seems interested in the plight of the plebs in the rural hinterland of Rangitikei. Yes I WILL vote for Dr Cleave and I'll give my party vote to MANA. They couldn't stuff up Aotearoa any more than McKelvie’s lot have over their many tenures in Rangitikei since 1938; nor than Labour did when it sold off the assets in the 80s and when they stood by and let their cops lock four young children in a hot tin shed at Ruatoki in 2008 for four hours with no food, water or toilet facilities”.

Palmerston North:

What has the present Government done for Palmerston North? The short answer is nothing…Its cut health funding forcing the local health board to introduce parking fees and reducing frontline services, thereby reducing the salary of all hospital staff…its raised GST thereby increasing the cost of food for all citizens both young and old…its failed to maintain our roads while reducing the rail services…its allowed massive pollution of our river to continue…its forced National Standards on our schools and threatened those who question the value of those standards in relation to actual learning…the list seems endless but there is more…they expect our military to hand over prisoners to be tortured, beaten and murdered and break international law while at the same time sacking three hundred of them or reducing their wages and closing camp libraries, now that takes some beating for double standards.



Leonie Hapeta



Iain Lees-Galloway



There isn’t room to mention all the various public servants who have lost their jobs, or Massey support and teaching staff that have lost their jobs. I’ve listened carefully to the Nats candidate Leonie Hapeta [pictured] and all she has done is mouth John Keys bill board promises verbatim…she is not the candidate she pretends to be, she is a cardboard copy of John Key in drag. I’ve checked her press releases and they are simply copies sent out by the Nats/Act HQ…I’ve no doubt Leonie is a nice person but think about it do you simply want yet another John Key clone to represent you…My feeling is that PN should keep the electorate Labour by giving your electorate vote to Labour and your party vote to Mana or the Greens, both those parties appear to have the urgent needs of our electorate of lifting life for those on low wages and those who care about our river and environment. The present PN electorate MP Iain Lees-Galloway has served the city well especially our defence force citizens and those on lower and fixed incomes.

The picture below makes a powerful point and little is needed to understand its meaning other than to make the point that the picture also represents the 1% Vs the 99%, I’ll leave you to decide which one is which…One week to go and the fat lady will sing next Saturday and I make a plea for all vote and make sure your friends do too, why not offer them a ride to the polling booth…

Wealth Gap widens leaders React...



God Zone gone wrong.



The Dominion Post reported: The richest 1 per cent of the population owns three times more than the combined cash and assets of the poorest 50 per cent. Though NZ is often lauded overseas as an egalitarian society, New Zealand's income inequality statistics are much worse than those of most other developed nations. More than 200,000 Kiwi children live below the poverty line. The income gap between rich and poor has been highlighted by the global

Occupy Wall Street

movement, which is rallying for a more just society and an end to corporate greed.

A Statistics New Zealand report says the richest inhabitants' net wealth runs into tens of millions of dollars, but is "likely to be underestimated". The report's 2004 data – the latest available – reveals the richest 10 per cent collectively possess $128 billion in wealth, with median individual wealth of $255,000. In contrast, the poorest 10 per cent collectively possess $17.2b, with median individual wealth of $3200. While the richest 1 per cent held 16.4 per cent of the country's net wealth, the poorest 50 per cent owned just 5.2 per cent.

Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows New Zealand's income inequality climbed dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s after sweeping economic reforms and deregulation of labour markets. Disparities have plateaued since 2000, largely thanks to Working for Families tax credits, bigger pay packets for middle and low-income earners and declining investment returns for the rich. But the gap between rich and poor still ranked ninth worst in the developed world in 2008.

Child Poverty Action Group chairman Mike O'Brien said there was enormous disparity. Parents were turning to food banks and poverty-stricken children were more likely to miss out on doctors' visits because of the cost and to suffer income-related health conditions. "The experience of children in those bottom deciles is, quite frankly, pretty bloody bleak."

Thrift permits modest pleasures and personal pride

Cecilia Vilimanu works full-time as a caregiver, earning about $25,000 a year.

Careful with money, the 53-year-old does not have a credit card, and the thought of using an instant finance company horrifies her. "I don't have any debts. I never buy anything I can't afford. I save up and then I buy it."

Her clean Housing New Zealand flat speaks of her personal pride, but her pleasures are modest.

She drives an old Toyota Corolla worth about $200.

A keen walker, she recently saved up for a pair of $89 shoes. "They were on special."

Education has always been the key for her family, and she supported her son through a science degree course at Victoria University. "I made sure he had a roof over his head and food in his tummy, so all he had to worry about was studying."

Well that sets the scene…here is what some party leaders had to say on this issue:

NATIONAL

John Key says he has always been aspirational for New Zealanders. "New Zealanders should have opportunities to succeed, no matter what their background ... We're focused on growing the economy and creating better jobs with higher wages, so New Zealand families are better placed to get ahead."

Note: John Key never actually spoke to the actual question, there are no policy or pro-active remarks in his non-answer, key word aspirational a dream word that means nothing in real terms.

LABOUR

Phil Goff says he is not surprised by the figures. "I think most New Zealanders know that New Zealand has become a much more unequal place." Labour would address inequality through its proposed changes to the tax system, which include a new top tax bracket for people earning over $150,000 and a $5000 tax-free threshold.

Note: Phil actually makes some policy statements matched by some practical suggestions to assist reducing the gap.

GREENS

Co-leader Metiria Turei is unsurprised but dismayed by the figures. "It's families living on the very bare bones, not having enough to feed their kids, and all the social issues that tend to follow." The Greens planned to lift 100,000 children out of poverty by raising the minimum wage, improving Working for Families, insulating houses and increasing access to training.

Note: Likewise Metiria offers policy and actual actions to assist in reducing the gap.

ACT

Don Brash says he is not surprised by the figures but how wealthy someone was did not have a practical effect on what was important day to day. "What's important is having opportunity to make tomorrow better than today through our own efforts. Children should be able to take their share of state education funding to any school of their choice, public or private, thus reducing the inequality between students ..."

Note: Don Brash like John Key fails to answer the question and talks around the issue, its sort of aspirational in an bias kind of way but offers nothing of a practical nature.

Epsom Cafe Tea Cup reading revealed






Banks & Key and magic black bag.

 

NEWS FLASH; CONTENT OF TAPE RELEASED VIA EAVESDROPPER.

An Eavesdropper friend at the Herald on Sunday sent me this transcript of John Key’s and John Bank’s conversation at a local café in Epsom;

JK “Tea’s nice”.

JB “Yes I agree”

JK “It’s good to kiss baddies, sorry I mean babies”

JB “I agree”

JK “It’s good to see so many of the media here”

JB “I agree”

JK “Is there anything you don’t agree with”

JB “Only if you say it’s OK to disagree”

JK “Brash is a bit of a twit”

JB “I agree”

JK “I doubt I’ll need the Act Party next term”

JB “I agree”

JK “You agree! Are you sure?

JB “Well, you have not told me not to, and orders must be obeyed”

JK “So if you are elected and you bring Don Brash as baggage and since he is your leader you’ll have to obey his orders, is that correct?

JB “I don’t know how to answer that, but I’d sooner obey your orders”.

JK “That’s nice to know”

JB “I agree”.

The rest of the tape is un-publishable because it contains swear words and language of an adult nature, such as the buying of Italian and Greek shares etc from the sale of our assets…and Banks becoming Minister of Nothingness assisting Steven Joyce…etc etc