Archive for November 16th, 2008

It’s Official: National Party oust Labour in New Zealand Election

Congratulations to John Key, who has just secured his spot as New Zealand Prime Minister

A new minority government in New Zealand will be sworn in this week after John Key, prime minister-elect and leader of the conservative National Party, signed power-sharing agreements with three other parties.
[..]
Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples was appointed Minister of Maori Affairs and his colleague Tariana Turia Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, a new portfolio designed to give wide-ranging responsibility for the welfare of her people, who are the most disadvantaged sector of the population.

Key admitted the two parties held opposing views in some areas and conceded his new government was moving into “uncharted territory”. But he said he was confident the relationship was built on mutual respect and trust, and would last for the three-year commitment to the next election.
[..]
As a result of the agreements finalised on Sunday, the Nationals are now guaranteed 70 of the 122 seats in the House of Representatives.

The Maori and the free market ACT parties – who each won five seats – and the sole United Future member Peter Dunne, agreed to support the Nationals on all critical votes in exchange for ministerial posts outside the cabinet.

The agreements said that by staying outside cabinet, the ministers would be free to present their parties’ policies where they differed with the government on areas that were not within their portfolios.

The Maori Party leaders were also made associate ministers for health, education, social development and employment – all areas they identified as important for the nation’s 565,000 Maoris, who account for about 15 per cent of the population.

This sounds like a very interesting experiment, especially considering that former National Party leader Don Brash had a policy that would have abolish the seven seats in parliament reserved for Maoris, removed their traditional indigenous rights and scraped the government’s obligation to consult them on new legislation. That was four years ago, so one does have to wonder how many supporters of that policy are left in the party, and what sort of strain that could place on this seemingly fragile coalition.

Samuel

1 comment November 16th, 2008 at 09:25pm

Aircheck Sunday: AIR Sport Half Hourly Updates 7-Sep-2008

Something new for a Sunday on Samuel’s Blog, it’s Aircheck Sunday. Basically the idea is that I put various bits of my recent on-air activities online for your enjoyment/amusement/critique/ignoring. I’m going back to September for this one as I have a bit of audio to upload from the last couple of months and that should keep us busy for the next few weeks. Whether this feature continues on a weekly or irregular basis after that is a decision that I will have to make at the time.

At this, rather early stage, it’s quite possible that I might put it on a fortnightly basis, with a new series of Samuel In Dolgnwot filling the gaps. Just a thought.

Anyway, back to the afternoon of Sunday, the 7th of September, and the half hourly sport updates from 2pm onwards. Although technically the news service ceases at 5pm on weekends, we generally run with a 5:30 update for SA/NT network stations to use during the 5pm news in their timezone and for the other states to run with the 6pm bulletin if they so-desire. As it happened on this particular day, the AFL just took a bit longer to finish than expected, and we went with a 6pm update as well.

Enjoy!

[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/AircheckSunday/AIRSport20080907.mp3]
Download MP3

Copyright notice: Copyright on this audio is jointly held by Samuel Gordon-Stewart and Australian Independent Radio News and is made available for personal use, and “fair use” as defined by copyright legislation only. This audio may not be redistributed without the prior written permission of either copyright holder.

Samuel

2 comments November 16th, 2008 at 09:50am


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