Posts by Julie Fairey
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Well I think it's a little unfair on the hippos and giraffes. But then that's Act for you ;-)
I think at most zoos the otters and seals would be big winners. Perhaps we could encourage them to take over less well-performing animals and see if they can help them lift their game?
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My partner is running an electorate campaign for a very safe incumbent (Mr Goff, seeing as how you asked, well ok I'm sure you were going to ;-) ) and they have been door knocking for months.
I understand this has been going on for Labour activists in most of Auckland, for electorate campaigns, but I suspect the ability to cover the whole electorate is highly limited for all candidates these days, due to the sheer number of doors and the sheer lack of activists willing to do the knocking.
I'm not sure what the general thinking is about how to identify the areas to knock. Certainly in Mt Roskill the main push I've perceived from the Labour campaign has been in heartland areas - at first focused on enrolment (huge section of the Labour core voters in the electorate have shifted house since 2005) and more recently on getting out the vote. They're not door-knocking the strong National areas, although they are doing other things electorate-wide that would cover those spots.
So what I'm getting at is that I'm not surprised many people haven't seen anyone door knocking, or think it isn't happening. It is. You're just not the target audience.
And on Farrar fronting up here about his video post - it's all very well for him to come over here and mea culpa, but I don't see him doing it at his own blog, where no one will pat him on the head for it like he's getting here.
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I'd take Farrar's regrets a bit more seriously if the video post wasn't still up on his blog, as of me writing this.
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In terms of Auckland Central, Kaye has been doing a lot of hard work and my impression is that she is very strictly following the party line of avoiding whenever possible saying something the listener might not want to hear.
At the Suffrage Eve debate she started off being very canny but when she realised that the audience was pretty left she completely lost interest and sat there flipping through her policy folder. The only exceptions were when she talked about Herceptin, and used the standard National scare-tactic lines about it. Very worrying, because she's been door knocking, targeting women, and telling them stuff about Herceptin as a miracle drug that simply isn't true. Quite apart from politicising a drug buying process that has been quite deliberately de-politicised for good reason.
I have no sense of how Tizard is doing at all. But I am worried.
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I too was appalled at Farrar's post on the fall video, the kind of thing that a year ago Whaleoil would have done and Farrar would have linked to, but he wouldn't have done it directly himself. As in 2005 he seems to have been infected by the campaign again. I wonder what will happen with Kiwiblog next year, whether National wins or not.
And in a shameless plug, I've written about an Act blogger being a total dick at the TVNZ7 Epsom debate with links to a couple of other incidents from the campaign trail which Anjum has covered, including the bizarre (and creepy) incident of someone writing a letter to her parents to complain about her.
Forgive my feminist heart for telling me that many times these are attacks male candidates would not face.
As for leftie Christians, the Labour list has quite a few actually, including my partner who attends what must be one of the most right-on Anglican churches in the Auckland area. They even run a fair trade stall once a month. Something about Michael Joseph Savage and "applied christianity" comes to mind :-)
I've been having some interesting conversations with people about abortion on the campaign trail, and I've come to the conclusion that most NZers don't actually know what the law is, or how it works. If there's going to be any change to the law in the next Parliament there's going to need to be some major education campaigning around that first imho. (And the survey responses we've been getting at The Hand Mirror from candidates shows they aren't any better informed)
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So Ben, if I may be so bold, how do you decide who to vote for if you have no expectations about policy whatsoever?
I don't think National has a secret, un-published, agenda. Not as a party. But I do think that there are National MPs, and lobby groups such as the BRT, who will be more than ready to leap into the policy vacuum should they have sufficient power after Nov 8th. And of course Act, as I've already mentioned. John Key and the National Party may not have more than 4 areas of employment law (to use but one eg) that they intend to change, but I suspect Wayne Mapp and the EMA have a longer wish list. And without policy to the contrary, and with an Act-minded coalition partner who wants to repeal all minimum employment rights and let common law prevail (that's what their policy says), they may get just such an opportunity.
I'm also wondering about how ordinary National party members feel about their internal policy process, and where those remits are going. I realise there is a difference between caucus and party policy, having seen the dissonance between parliamentary and membership wings of Labour (not to mention the Alliance), but surely National's membership must be expecting more detailed policy than what they are getting, based at least in part on the stuff they vote on and debate at their internal conferences?
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Oh hang on, that's our cricket team.
Ah yes, the ol' difference between bad = evil versus bad = just really crap. I can see how you might be confused Ben ;-)
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It's frustrating that there is so much focus on this when there is so much other stuff, like y'know policy, that could be on the front page this morning. I've been quite startled, reading National's policies, at how brief they are, and how much is left unsaid. I know it's already been said, earlier in the campaign, but really we have now less than 2 weeks before they could be the Government and there are still huge gaps in their plans for the next three years. Take just the employment policy - it covers only four areas (90 day bill, trade away 4th week of annual leave, review Holidays Act, break union monopoly on collective bargaining) and is pretty much silent on everything else. And there's a lot of everything else. If they aren't intending to change anything else how about they explicitly say that?
It particularly concerns me when there is so little attention being paid to the policies of National's first-cab-off-the-rank for coalition talks, Act. I was quite startled by their welfare policy, when I looked at it for a post on the parties' positions on the DPB. Act devote around half of their welfare policy to the one benefit, which covers quite a small number of people really, and their ideas are quite odd to my mind. Given Act's extreme policies and National's silence, I worry.
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I assumed Angus was making a funny? But perhaps not?
Excuse me, baby trying to disconnect me from interweb by chewing through cable
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Thanks David, it was a good rally, I was a little intimidated by all those cyclists in the one place!