I begin my remarks today by paying tribute to the 40,000 New Zealanders who, through no fault of their own, found themselves joining the unemployment benefit ranks last year—40,000 extra New Zealanders. They are real people who previously had real jobs. They have real families, real homes, and real mortgages.

Too often in this House when we talk about unemployment, we talk about numbers. We saw that with John Key last year, when he said that he was happy with the increase in unemployment rates last year given the economic conditions. I do not think that anybody should ever be happy with an increase in unemployment rates. Read the rest of this entry »

There we have it! Max Bradford is back, and he looks a bit like Gerry Brownlee. Max Bradford would be very, very proud of the National Government today. It has picked up his failed tertiary education reforms, dusted them off, and passed them through the Committee stage of Parliament this afternoon. Now it has picked up his failed reforms to the electricity industry and it is to give them another whirl, as well. Read the rest of this entry »