ACT Block’s Donnelly’s Questions On Northland Unemployment

Whangarei New Zealand First MP, Hon Brian Donnelly, is angry that a question to the Government about alarming unemployment statistics in Northland was blocked by the ACT Party today during question time.

Mr Donnelly wanted to ask the Minister of Enterprise and Commerce, Max Bradford, to explain why unemployment rates in Northland had risen from 10.4% to 13.1% in the last 9 months.

ACT MP, Patricia Schnauer, cynically stopped debate and blocked the question.

“On the one hand ACT is berating beneficiaries, but when hard questions about the effect of government policies are asked, they don’t want to acknowledge there is even a problem,” said Hon Brian Donnelly.

“The Government must be called to account for the horrific unemployment statistics of Northland. These people are not going away. The Government cannot sweep them under the carpet until the election.

“Northland has already borne the brunt of this Government’s policies since 1990 and now they don’t even want to talk about it in our country’s Parliament,” concluded Mr Donnelly.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>