Politics

elections

Voters Dunne over in Ohariu

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 31 comments

Peter Dunne has been thrown the lifeline he has been begging for – National voters have been given the nod by Key to keep him on. One has to ask why would they bother – I can’t see him going back as a Minister after so many stuff ups and a resignation that leaves too many questions unanswered. Ohariu has  a much better option in Labour’s Ginny Andersen – if she’d been there a truly independent Parliament would have delivered mothers 26 weeks parental leave for example. Dunne supported it initially but backed down when it came to the crunch.

Polity: Bye bye, Colin

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 18 comments

National has all-but confirmed today that there no deal for Colin Craig in East Coast Bays, or for any other Conservative. This was the right thing for them to do, for one simple reason. This decision came down to simple maths. If Key thought the Conservatives could muster double the votes that a decision to back the Conservatives would cost National in the centre-ground, then he should do the deal. If not, he should not. All the stuff about Winston running was a bit of a late sideshow, as the decision had likely already been made.

Positive Labour policy for meat industry

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 4 comments

In the late 1980’s I worked on the establishment of the Meat Industry Tradesmens Agreement, bringing eight  awards into one. My lasting memory is how the meat companies hated each other more than they hated the unions, and they were no union-lovers. 25 years later, the companies still can’t get their act together, and it is the country as well as the farmers who are hurting. It may surprise some, but it’s the Labour party who is putting forward policy to bring in the necessary change to the $8billion industry. Good work from Damien O’Connor and the Labour leadership.

NZ First conference – the kingmakers?

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 50 comments

It looks like I’ll be able to head to the NZ First conference at Alexandra Park racecourse on the weekend as media. This election the position of NZ First party members is probably going to be crucial for any coalition that forms. In this rather long post I explain my (and other peoples) thinking on possible coalition results for National after the election. They aren’t good because they really depend on a political group that National has been denigrating for quite a while.

Polity: Armstrong on Labour, turnout, MMP

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 28 comments

Over the weekend John Armstrong had a column about youth voter turnout in the upcoming election. Much of the material was familiar – young people don’t vote so much – nobody talks their language, yo! – parties are Trying Very Hard, but they are also old fuddy-duddies – and so on. He then blamed much of it on a perceived trend toward centrist politics under MPP. But runs directly-if-casually contrary to at least two large research programmes in political science.

Polity: The ENV debate: Some more data

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 14 comments

Rob Salmond presents the David Farrar / Steven Joyce / John Key argument that 2011 non voters are a National-leaning bunch. Then he shows that a better look at their own data undermines their claim. This matters because it helps us understand which bloc has more to gain from voter mobilization efforts in 2014.  This means the left has a lot more to gain than the right from mobilization in 2014.

Polity: A clear choice on education

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 144 comments

One of the most prominent battlegrounds in this election campaign will be education. Both large parties know our kids deserve better than the two-tier education system we currently have. Both have clear, costed plans they think can help. And now the public can choose. Actions, of course, speak louder than words. Both John Key and Bill English have chosen to send their own kids to private schools. Asked why John Key said  “Their schools have smaller class sizes and are better resourced than most state schools.”.

NRT: The police are still ignoring electoral crime

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 17 comments

The Electoral Commission is saying nothing about apparent police inaction on breaches of the electoral law. Information provided by the Commission reveals that since the beginning of 2011 there have been 113 breaches of the Electoral Act that it’s referred to police for investigation. Not one has resulted in a prosecution. In November, then the prosecution time-limit will kick in, and people will escape justice.

Rachel who?

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 69 comments

A guest post from Rachel Jones, who is number 25 of Labour’s list as well as the Labour candidate for the Tauranga seat.

Time to do the authorisation notice

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 8 comments

This site frequently has opinions from authors and comments promoting promoting political positions and telling people who they should vote for or not vote for, and why.  I’ve been making the site conformant to the rules about 3rd party promoters. You have a few days to comment on that before I start treating nuisance complaints as being a reason to get banned from commenting. Speak now or hold your peace until after the election.

😈

Polity: Nats’ sanctimony on tactical voting

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 34 comments

Poor David Farrar, he can’t write a post without getting accused of hypocrisy these days. It must have to do with that rancid stench he emanates whenever he gets on his high horse to lecture others. There’s only one political leader out there saying: “Tactical voting is a good idea for my supporters, and long may it continue, but it is a dreadful crime by others.” That leader is John Key.

Polity: Internet Party: “Ban coat-tailing.”

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 26 comments

New Zealand’s democracy would better if we had a lower threshold and no coat-tailing shenanigans. Even without coat-tailing there remains the potential for blocs to make tiny gains by way of electorate deals, but it would ensure the end of manifest unfairnesses like the relative ACT / NZ First results in 2008. The reality is that National had the opportunity to do the right thing, and  chose not to for venal self-interested reasons, and are now crying like spoiled brats because their opponents are using it too.

Polity: Even non-coattail electorate deals can create unfair advantage

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 21 comments

What of the deals with true minnow parties, like United Future or ACT? If a party is only polling enough to get one seat anyway, does it matter to Parliament overall whether the small party wins an electorate or its client big party wins it instead? The answer is “possibly, yes,” because we can never be sure which party ultimately loses a seat to accommodate the new minnow party in a 120 seat parliament. Say a Epsom deal as a test case

No Right Turn: Electoral donations, corruption, and transparency

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 37 comments

Writing in the Herald, Fran O’Sullivan tells us what we all knew: that political donors have expectations, and want favours in exchange for their cash. She’s too polite (and Establishment) to call it corruption, but that’s what it is. Its time we forced parties to do so as well. Transparent public funding if required. If the choice is spending public money or permitting corruption, the choice is pretty clear.

Through the looking glass

Written By: karol
Date published: - 93 comments

Banks look very likely to be gone by Monday. But, some journalists are going to bat for John Banks, claiming he hasn’t really done anything wrong with respect to the verdict of guilty for filing a false election funding return.  They are ignoring the facts of the case, and trying to rewrite history. [Update: Banks to resign]

Polity: Morgan’s poll, and Morgan’s commentary

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 47 comments

Earlier this week the latest Roy Morgan poll came out. It was not good news for the left, with National up well over 50% and the Labour/Greens combination languishing below 40%. It is after the Budget and ended before the Banks stuff. Most is probably the post-budget spike. But the government parties are in a lot worse position than they were before the 2011 election.

David Farrar badly needs night school

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 45 comments

In Kiwiblog this morning, David Farrar appeared to be running a 9th floor pre-pump for John Banks to resign. But I was rather incredulous when I read this “I don’t think the Judge has actually helped the Government by delaying the decision on entering a conviction. Now that it is the Judge’s role to care about the impact on the Government.”. Huh? DPF badly needs to go back to do some adult education. Perhaps to night school?

Imperator Fish: How to win an election

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 144 comments

Scott Yorke at Imperator Fish opines on electorate seats and inter-party relations. On the way through he identifies some strikingly bad net behaviour. Labour MPs past and present who badly need to learn to control themselves on the net just as much as Bomber does.

Pagani should read up on Labour policy

Written By: redfed
Date published: - 101 comments

On Q&A this morning Josie Pagani criticised Labour for not trying to get the MMP coat tail rule removed. The only  problem is that Labour already has a bill ready to do just this. Before criticising the Party for inaction she should learn what the party is actually doing.

Polity: Dotcom’s $3 million donation

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 132 comments

Kim Dotcom has shaken up the election with a claim his new Internet Party will have a $3 million war chest. The big questions are: is this kind of donation good for democracy, and are left-leaning campaigners hypocrites for accepting it? The answers are respectively yes and no. A politician’s job is to campaign within the rules as they currently stand. They owe no duty to provide their opponents with advantage by pre-emptively limiting their own campaigns.

Labour’s Mana Internet Party dilemma

Written By: mickysavage
Date published: - 234 comments

So what does Labour do? Gift Te Tai Tokerau and be open to allegations of manipulating the system (even though National has made an art form of this particular type of activity) or campaign hard and risk the loss of 3 – 4 % points of party vote if Hone loses his seat?

Compulsory voting and an explicit “none of the above”

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 171 comments

I was listening to Wallace Chapman interviewing Professor David Farrell, from University College, Dublin this morning on Radio New Zealand on compulsory voting which he was strongly in favour of. At one point the discussion veered on to the issue of “none of the above”. I think that this is the key to compulsory voting. Add “none of the above” and “I don’t know”

Polity: Boundary changes

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 20 comments

Rob Salmond’s take on the boundary changes announced last week. In a MMP election system the actual electoral boundaries usually only really matter to a few MPs. It isn’t likely to make much of a difference unless National manages to have a cup of tea with a party with enough electoral muscle to get more than a single MP into the house and an electorate’s voters think this matters. After the John Banks/Act debacle who’d be moronic enough to think that electorate seats in a list do matter? Apart from our silly first-past-the-post stand-in-man for David Farrar of course…

NRT: Unsurprising

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 17 comments

But on any realistic numbers, its unthinkable for a future Labour government not to include the Greens, and as Gordon Campbell points out, by refusing to define their relationship themselves, Labour has given National a free hand to do it for them – and in undoubtedly negative terms. That won’t do the Greens any harm. But its unlikely to be good for Labour.

Polity: The Greens’ proposed pre-election deal

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 58 comments

Last night, via One News, the public became aware that the Greens had proposed a pre-election coalition with Labour, but Labour had rejected it. While the Greens’ offer is nothing unusual internationally, New Zealand’s comparatively fair electoral system doesn’t provide Labour much incentive to accept it. Which, I think, makes Labour’s rejection of the proposal much less noteworthy.

Tim Watkin is wrong

Written By: Ben Clark
Date published: - 21 comments

Tim Watkin recently had a post over at Pundit, saying about why a 15% gap between Labour and National matters. His crux point is that in no MMP election has a party led by 15% and not formed the government. Unfortunately for Tim, this is demonstrably wrong.

NRT: No justice for electoral fraud

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 28 comments

Daljit Singh got an inappropriately short sentence for committing electoral fraud. It is hardly a deterrent to prospective politicians from trying to fiddle the electoral system. What was interesting was the way that the fraud was picked up – using back end systems. Far better than the type of populist stupidity to intimidate voters that National MP’s are currently supporting.

Easy Vote or Voter Intimidation?

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 123 comments

Good to see Labour has stood up against National’s “harder-to-vote” revisions to the Electoral Amendment Bill, especially making voters now have to state their name to get a voting paper. The reason for this is to allow scrutineers to more easily challenge a voter’s credentials, and is similar to voter intimidation practices in conservative States in the US. Expect  National Party scrutineers questioning more voter credentials in the 2014 election.

Positive Things

Written By: Bill
Date published: - 21 comments

Change becomes embedded when it emanates from and across many quarters and traditions.

Polity: Data on moral mandates in Europe

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 3 comments

Rob Salmond continues looking at the absolute silliness of the argument about the largest party having a “moral mandate” to form a government. It appears to be a self-serving wet dream made up by fossils who still haven’t grasped that we are nearly in our second decade of MMP.  All our governments have been coalitions where the largest parties have usually received a mandate of less that a third of those on the roll. But look at the long-standing proportional governments of Europe for examples…

Key’s transparent gerrymander

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 101 comments

For John Key, MMP stands for “Manipulate Members of Parliament”. Senior journalists are beginning to call him on the games he’s playing, and good on them; gerrymander entered the New Zealand political lexicon at Key’s press conference this week. Key wants to push the issues away till closer to the election, when he’ll know what his polling is telling him – I hope the gallery don’t let him.

Here’s an idea: electoral funding

Written By: karol
Date published: - 25 comments

“Want to get some transparency back into politics funding in New Zealand? Tired of electoral funding skullduggery?” Standardista freedom suggests “NZ creates the Electoral Donation Register of New Zealand.”