Written By: - Date published: 8:14 pm, November 20th, 2010 - 50 comments
With a majority of votes counted it’s clear that Kris Fa’afoi is going to be the next Labour MP for Mana. We’re sure Kris will show his mettle in standing up for the people of Porirua and Mana in Parliament. All the best Kris. Show those Nats what you’re made of.
Written By: - Date published: 6:42 am, November 13th, 2010 - 26 comments
So our kiwifruit industry is in peril. PSA may be here to stay, vines may start being burnt today, and a $1.36 billion industry is in trouble. Last year National sacked 54 front-line biosecurity staff, and slashed the budgets by millions. The PSA (Public Service Association) warned at the time that inevitably disease and pests […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, November 7th, 2010 - 23 comments
It seems that in American elections there is an almost perfect correspondence between some candidates’ opinion polling and their current search volume on Google. Can we do away with political opinion polls? Sounds interesting doesn’t it. A quick check shows that the relative frequency of searches for “National party” and “Labour party” predicted the result of the 2008 election. What other tricks can we try?
Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, November 6th, 2010 - 51 comments
According to some, the very definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In economic terms the world, and NZ, have been doing the same neoliberal economic agenda over and over for the last 30 years. It hasn’t worked. It’s time for a change…
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 12 comments
Last week Speaker Lockwood Smith rolled back transparency on MPs expenses, by making travel spending secret again. John Key came out “against” the move. Yesterday Labour and the Greens called his bluff by releasing their details. Over to you John, once again you’re too late to lead, but you can still follow…
Written By: - Date published: 2:07 pm, October 27th, 2010 - 96 comments
Matt McCarten is chucking his hat into the ring for the Mana by election. This is a typically gutsy move by McCarten, but a third candidate on the left simply isn’t going to find the space for a win. My guess is that he will split the Green vote. But with Key quietly campaigning in Mana, Labour needs to stay on top of their game. Labour activists — with greetings and thanks to you all — get out there and give it all you have!…
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 27th, 2010 - 17 comments
At the last election we chose tax cuts and unemployment instead of stimulus and stability – which was the more ambitious, high wage way to go?
National are not fulfilling their government’s core reason for existence: closing the wage gap with Australia. No, we’re fast going backwards on that score, and it’s predictable: high unemployment causes low wages.
Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, October 25th, 2010 - 10 comments
There was an excellent piece in the Saturday Herald by John Armstrong. A large 2-page spread, fairly prominent in the paper, and not critical of Labour. Not fulsome praise; just great, unbiased reporting.
Now admittedly I shouldn’t get excited by such things, but the steadily slipping standards of New Zealand’s papers, combined with a media love-in with National at the last election, leaves good quality newspaper journalism a sight to behold.
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, October 23rd, 2010 - 33 comments
Labour’s new economic agenda is a welcome shift to the centre.
It’s the first time in more than 25 years that a major party has turned its back on the neo-liberal policies that have failed New Zealand so badly.
Bloody good stuff!
Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, October 23rd, 2010 - 20 comments
In a press release last week Tariana Turia claimed that Labour’s new policy directions are all Maori Party policies. That puts the Maori Party in an interesting position after the next election. Will the major party that they support be dictated by their policies, Labour’s policies, as Turia claims? Or will their support be dictated by other, non-policy factors?
Written By: - Date published: 11:57 am, October 21st, 2010 - 41 comments
The trend is quite clear now. The Right’s support peaked and the Left’s support reached is nadir last year. The gap has been gradually closing ever since. From a 24.5% gap between National and ACT a year ago, the gap in the latest Roy Morgan has fallen to 5.5%. About quarter of a million Kiwis have switched their support to the Left in a single year.
Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, October 21st, 2010 - 25 comments
In three short years John Key and National have gone from economic bravado, to failure, to lies, excuses and whining. As the economy languishes they will have nothing to offer except more lies and excuses.
This is a time for fresh thinking, both globally and locally. But we won’t get it from National.
Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, October 20th, 2010 - 8 comments
In contrast to National’s policy vacuum on the economy, Labour has been focusing its policy work on a major change in direction. It’s obvious that the hands-off approach introduced in the 1980s has failed, leading to mal-investment in housing with an economy stripped of its manufacturing capability and geared for import-dependent consumerism.
Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, October 18th, 2010 - 43 comments
Phil Goff made an excellent speech yesterday. One that showed far more direction, and a lot of promise for going forward. Hopefully Labour can capitalise on this much better than they did on the excellent “The Many, Not The Few” speech. They should be able to – yesterday’s “Kiwi Dream” speech contained much more meat […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, October 18th, 2010 - 32 comments
Labour’s conference in the weekend seems to have gone well, and been well received by the media. Here’s a roundup of headlines and comment.
Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, October 18th, 2010 - 139 comments
It’s great to hear Phil Goff announce that a Labour government won’t let overseas interests to own more than 25% of monopolistic companies, like ports and airports, and farmland. In the new world economy we’re moving into, a global scramble for vital natural resources like farmland, we need to keep the foundations of our economy in Kiwi hands.
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, October 17th, 2010 - 58 comments
The Labour conference this weekend is expected to release new “policy directions”. One of them is out already — and it’s good. What could make more sense than putting children first?
Written By: - Date published: 4:58 pm, October 16th, 2010 - 12 comments
An article in The Economist looks at the failing basis of polling techniques in the USA. It isn’t that much different to the circumstances here.
“The proportion of those called who end up taking part in a survey has fallen steadily, from 35% or so in the 1990s to 15% or less now, according to Mr Keeter. Reaching young people is especially difficult. Only old ladies answer the phone…”
Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, October 16th, 2010 - 11 comments
John Armstrong is at his insightful best today. He’s hit on the emerging change in the political discourse – the economy is going to crap and that’s what really matters, not the meltdowns of minor MPs and racist TV monkeys. And this do nothing government doesn’t care and has no solutions. This is Labour’s chance to offer a real alternative:
Written By: - Date published: 8:39 am, October 16th, 2010 - 53 comments
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, October 14th, 2010 - 36 comments
What should Labour do? One of our regular commenters steps up and answers the question. What more can we add? And, my challenge to the right wingers, can you come up with a similarly broad, coherent and principled summary of what you think National stands for? What should National do?
Written By: - Date published: 10:06 pm, October 12th, 2010 - 13 comments
RNZ’s Kathryn Ryan talks to Mike Williams and Chris Trotter about Chris Carter’s expulsion.
Written By: - Date published: 7:14 am, October 12th, 2010 - 109 comments
The Labour Party council has decided to expel Chris Carter from the party. While party members should be free to criticise the leadership, Carter went too far. He has repeatedly embarrassed and damaged the party. In doing so, he disrespected every member of the Labour Party – that’s the real crime.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 pm, October 11th, 2010 - 21 comments
Chris Carter faces a disciplinary hearing at labour HQ this evening. Already evicted from caucus, this meeting could result in sanctions from the Party including revoking his membership. But I don’t think it will come to that, and I don’t think it should for both principled and political reasons.
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 pm, October 3rd, 2010 - 89 comments
So, Chris Carter is threatening a ‘tell-all’ book on the Fifth Labour Government published at the next election. But he says he won’t publish it if he gets to stay in Labour. It’s blackmail, a further act of treachery for which he deserves to be evicted from the party. Carter’s rot is the corruption of all MPs who forget who they were elected to serve.
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, September 27th, 2010 - 113 comments
No Right Turn has covered todays announcement about policy changes for GST on fruit and vegetables. Since it is pretty comprehensive we will reproduce the two posts here.
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 pm, September 25th, 2010 - 20 comments
Long serving Dunedin North MP Pete Hodgson is stepping down at the next election. The local Labour party today selected their next candidate, the Rev Dr David Clark.
Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, September 24th, 2010 - 18 comments
A few days ago Charles Chauvel wrote a piece on Red Alert on why Labour voted for CERRA. I have two big problems with it. 1) Labour may have won concessions that improved CERRA but they didn’t get the key one. 2) There’s a dangerous mindset in the position that Labour had to vote for dictatorship or get pilloried in the media and lose votes.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 23rd, 2010 - 10 comments
Great video of Clayton Cosgrove getting right stuck into the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s Garth McVicar over his hypocrisy on David Garrett. Cosgrove’s certainly no bleeding heart liberal so I’d say McVicar’s credibility on law in order is now pretty much shot.
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 pm, September 18th, 2010 - 75 comments
Kris Fa’afoi will be Labour’s candidate for Mana. There were four candidates – all very high quality -all spoke well and the selection panel would not have had an easy choice to make. There was a very large turnout and plenty of support for Kris in the hall; he was impressive and will do well. […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 18th, 2010 - 81 comments
One way or another ACT’s troubles are going to ripple through the entire political discourse.
So what’s likely to happen with Garrett?
And what does it mean for everyone else?
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