Posts by Tom Semmens
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The outstanding features of the Roy Morgan poll:
1) Greens at 9% and climbing. at a quarter and climbing towards a third of the left vote. Labour relatively static however.
2) NZ First, before the FTA fracas, are now at 4%. If they were pluck another 2% from National then on these figures (I am assuming the Maori Party sweeps all seven seats and there is a three seat overhang and the usual suspects win their seats) the Nat-ACT-UF bloc would only have a one seat edge over the Lab-Green-Prog bloc (56-55) and the Maori Party and NZ First would have seven each. Which makes for very interesting times.
3) It will only take another 2-2.5% swing to the Lab-Green-Prog bloc and that would see them forming the next government. Given how the right and media STILL portray this as National having a "commanding" 13% lead over Labour thats really interesting, and given the expectation that is raising out there in the mortgage belt of a National win one can only wonder how they and the right and its cheerleaders on the Herald editorial staff in general would react to National having a 11% election night lead over Labour translated into another three years in opposition to a Lab-Green-Prog minority government propped up on supply and confidence by an abstaining Maori Party. And God spare us the reaction of the the Kiwiblog right to a lesbo-anarcho-pinko-brown evil alliance governing the land!!
Its time media stopped being lazy and started to prepare the public for MMP election outcomes.
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"...Personally, I think some folks really need to make up their mind: Is National's problem that there's some horrible far-right secret agenda in the offing, or that it's just 'Labour lite' and not extremist enough...?"
You can't make up your mind about this statement when you don't have evidence either way. At moment, National is letting Labour set the agenda with a nice line of "National's Lack of evidence isn't evidence of lacking" a secret agenda because National is afraid to release policy that might upset someone, so its easy for Labour to make up whatever they want National's policy to be. John Key seems comfortable with this because it allows him to tell whatever audience is in front of him what it wants to hear. At the same time, Labour is playing a shrewd game of seizing the agenda and getting Mr. Key to dance to their tune by daring Key to oppose their policies rather than champion his own - and if he doesn't oppose Labour's ideas, it is more evidence of untrustworthiness, and if he does oppose then its evidence National DOES have a secret agenda.
The big question now though is how much can National's new pragmatism (and what a victory for Helen Clark - she has moved the entire political landscape well to the centre) continue without serious dissension appearing in the ranks? Will Peachy really endorse the end of bulk funding?
I think National know they cannot win without an absolute majority, so they are desperate to try and hold together enough anti-government votes to try and get one. It’s a strategy doomed to fail, but it’s the sort of thinking you'd expect from a cynical and absolutist politician like McCully, a strategist utterly unable to come to terms with MMP.
It the long run it seems to me National needs a party like the Greens, a role ACT can't fulfil. What National needs after it fails to form a governing coalition at the next election is, I dare to predict, a break away Country Party led by, say, Bill English and having several deeply rural MP's - a kind of Federated Farmers answer to the Maori Party, or a conservative foil for the Greens.
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And David Farrar will wade in with "I don't condone the outrageous commnets of Ian Wishart, good lord, we should keep politician's private lives private. But I wonder who the co-owner of wxyz's cosy holiday home mentioned on page 154 might be"?
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I think he'll also claim Helen is the missing last Cylon.
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The use of the phrase "not unlawful" pisses me off. Why doesn't the Herald say, "Is perfectly legal"? Loaded language from Audrey Young designed to implant the impression of illegality. Why am I not surprised?
Meanwhile, in some real news that we should be celebrating, child poverty is FINALLY falling in New Zealand. This is almost certainly because of Working For Families, a policy loathed by the selfish right and one almost certainly going to be targeted for extinction by National so nice, deserving people with big Toyota Landcruisers can get their tax cut.
And I see today John "me to' Key has announced National won't be out-bidding Labour on tax cuts, won't be bulk funding schools (Alan Peachy won't comment, trouble at the mill for Mr. Key on that one methinks...), and won't be selling state assets just now. But they don't want the re-purchase the railways and they would have allowed Auckland Airport to be sold to a bunch of ticket clippers from Canada. What is National now? "Vote National cos, ummm, its time for a change and we'll be just the same only somehow better".
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For some reason an image of an anime Yamato, crewed by a Japanese looking RIANZ crew, cruising the blogsphere looking for mirrors with a Linux/DVD's combo popped into my head.
Weird.
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Much of National's support derives from anger at Labour, not support for National. For the past two years various right wing third parties have conducted campaigns straight from the Republican Party handbook designed to wedge blue-collar voters from the parties that represent their best interests. In the United States, gun control, gay rights, patriotism and abortion have been used to get the poor turkeys to vote for the GOP Christmas. In New Zealand, hysteria has been whipped up over so-called political correctness and the "nanny state". I think it is interesting that in today's Herald Colin James talks of the "renewal" in Labour. I agree with him. The (very) lazy media narrative of a tired third term government running out of steam while the nation frets for a change simply isn't squaring with the facts on the ground for Labour and its activists. Yet this climate of faux moral outage and false political narrative is largely behind the anointing of Key as the chosen one.
Helen Clark, early in her leadership, clearly put a line under the 1980's Labour government and shed the baggage of Rogernomics. She promised the electorate that what she campaigned on would be what she delivered and her government has rebuilt some of the lost faith people had in our democracy. Reading Roger Douglas's lovingly and extensively (for a party polling at less than 1% and a has been ex-finance minister to get the column inches he got was extraordinary) reported recent musings and it is clear he is still a fanatic who commands much support in isolated but influential cliques. And that's the rub for Key. Whilst Key may be this new generation of politician you speak of, I see him very much as the prisoner of a media and business elite that is curiously out of step with New Zealand in 2008 and seem stuck in the last century. The ideological isolation of our business and financial elites from the mainstream realities of the consequences of Rogernomics is reflected in their mouthpieces in the media, who seem more concerned that the neo-liberal reforms of the 1980's and 1990's be defended at all costs than they are to discuss the future of New Zealand. John Key is the product of forces fundamentally flowing in different directions in National, between the Bourbons of the Ruth Richardson era and the need to modernise and move the party to the centre. National's - Key's - failure to draw a line in the sand and declare the neo-liberal revolution over means Beige is the colour of necessity for National. To do otherwise would be for John Key to sign his party’s death warrant with the electorate or his death warrant with the unreconstructed neo-liberals like Murray McCully, Wayne Mapp, Judith Collins and Lockward Smith in his own party and the hollow men who fund National.
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Peter: I saw the other day that Aquaflow in Marlborough has claimed they have started limited commercial production of sewage pond derived algae biodiesel. I've got a mate who is a senior analyst of the energy sector for a large corporate and his view is their is still some skepticism around the claims by Aquaflow of significant technology breakthroughs and the economics of what they are doing. None the less, the jury is still out on whether or not they are a genuine company making significant progress or just another perpetual motion machine company.
My view is that Algae fuel technology is the ONLY realistic fuel technology being developed that can replace our current liquid consumption without all sorts of unpleasant Malthusian consequences for the world's hungry.
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Ben Wilson: I don't know about that. It my experience that one of the defining aspects of the New Zealand character is an aversion to conflict and deep desire for consensual decision making. The amount of times I've seen this manifest itself in cultural misunderstandings with meeting with (particularly) brash Australians and Americans is legion. New Zealanders will sit quietly whilst a go-getter from across the Tasman brow-beats and the NZer's will say nothing, leading to an impression of acquiescence, only to discover that the most important conversations occurred in the corridor after the meeting and a sullen inertia blocks any attempt to actual put into action what they thought had been agreed.
I am not sure why we are like this. Maybe it’s an un-acknowledged impact of Maori culture on Pakeha New Zealand. Maybe it’s a couple of generations of unchecked political correctness gone mad in the education system. Perhaps it’s an echo of our egalitarian past. Or it could be that in an isolated society we've learnt to husband and pool our limited human talent base to try and get the best outcomes. Or maybe all of the above.
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Food prices are now a major sleeper issue. The number and bitterness of complaints over the price of dairy products could easily be turned into votes and, IMHO, this is an issue tailor made for a populist party like NZ First. Given the zero traction they get these days with immigrant bashing, a nice bit of Fonterra bashing with threats to introduce quotas for the home market would win a LOT of votes.