Posts by NBH
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Universities have a horrible habit of creating experts and then turning them into managers
To be fair, that's partly because management as a skill in its own right is pretty undervalued - if not viewed with downright hostility (see comments around the horrors of 'managerialism') - by many academic staff. Research expertise (i.e. publications, grants & prizes) is the basis of status in The Academy, so for managers to get the necessary respect they need from people in their Department, they pretty much have to be high-quality experts first. Can you seriously imagine, for example, a Chemistry department accepting as head someone who had 20 years management experience but only an honours degree in the field?
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to BenWilson,
Which is probably why the fait accompli for Shearer slipped out of Matthew Hooton's mouth 3 weeks before the election. The result was known, and we're all just being played for dicks.
I think that's a bit harsh Ben - I haven't seen any indication that this was just a sham election and the caucus had already made up its mind. Shearer's been talked about as a leader from pretty much the day he entered Parliament, and I think that Labour probably took on board a lot of the narrative about looking tired and old and several of the caucus genuinely decided that they needed to take a risk in that regard. Hooton's comments I don't see as anything other than mischief-making during the campaign to keep up the political narrative that Labour were destined for a loss and Goff was a lame-duck leader.
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I just don't know what these people stand for aside from wanting to win the leadership and I don't think that's entirely my fault.
Part of the issue here, though, is that for all the talk of 'factions', my impression is that Labour is actually pretty united in terms of policy. I don't have any secret inside knowledge of the party, but I don't get the sense that there are any virulent disagreements about the overall platform that Labour's adopted - despite commentary online, Cunliffe and Shearer don't seem to actually represent 'left' or 'right' factions (and somewhat ironically given parts of the discussion here, my understanding is that Cunliffe's traditionally been placed on the right of Labour when those factions are discussed). That's why the leadership campaign's been based around who's best placed to re-energise the party and extend its base - it's been about tactics since they both agree on strategy.
If you're wondering what Labour as a whole stands for, then I'd think that the policies it took into the campaign provide a good indication: a pretty standard model of social democracy that accepts a market capitalist economic state as part of current society but believes that its excesses need to be curbed through both moderate regulation and active state intervention, and has a commitment to equality of outcomes and 'investment' in society to achieve that but also a strong dose of pragmatism which means it will accept the status quo as a baseline and often favour gradual rather than radical change to achieve that.
Now that might not be an overarching policy stance that appeals to you. It certainly doesn't speak to me, which is why I've only voted for Labour once (in 2005, when I was terrified of a Brash-led government). But I don't think its fair to claim that Labour doesn't have a pretty clearly articulated basic position that informs its approach - and, I would argue, has always informed its approach except for the Rogernome period - and if you're looking for a more radical policy approach then the Greens or Mana will always be a better bet.
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Thank Mr Stephens, his supervisors, and the VUW Pols department - not me. :-)
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to BenWilson,
Cheers for that link NBH, you're a real goldmine
I'm blushing! :-)
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Perhaps someone could give a quick succinct for dummies-like-me explanation of how it's done these days
It's the very opposite of a succinct explanation, but there's an MA thesis out of VUW specifically on changes to National Party selection processes as a result of MMP: http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10063/302/thesis.pdf?sequence=2
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NB: Labour is a right wing party, just not far right like National.
I stick to my view that the next left-wing government in NZ will be Green led with Labour as a support partner.
I'm a consistently Green voter, and I'd just like to say that comments like the above actually make me think twice about that support. For all the complaints about Labour sniping at the Greens, I can't help but see a huge amount of ill-informed, naive, and equally pointless Labour-bashing amongst my fellow Green party supporters (far more so than amongst the actual Green party members I know).
OTOH, this:
I'm not suggesting that the Greens are going to overtake Labour any time soon. But I do think Labour would get a lot more out of working out what happened to the 10% of voters who dropped off the voting game altogether, and making some kind of assault on the high party vote that National got, many of whom must have come from Labour. Taking those votes counts twice, because it's a vote off the opposition. Taking votes off the Greens counts zero when it comes time to put a coalition together.
is absolutely 100% true. Internecine fighting - whichever side starts it - doesn't do any good, and given the turnout this time there's pretty clearly huge room to grow the overall left/progressive vote.
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Graeme, given all the discussion about the future of ACT, Banks being a natural fit for the Conservatives etc., I had a question about the point at which proportionality is fixed with regard to the threshold. Specifically, what would happen if Banks shifted affiliation to the Conservatives now? If entitlement to list seats is fixed at the point of the election, then that point must presumably be when the final count is announced (i.e. Dec 10). But what about the threshold exemption for winning an electorate? Surely that must relate to the results of the final count as well, so what would happen if Banks changed his affiliation to Conservative before the announcement of the final count?
I presume that any such shenanigans are avoided through party affiliation of electorate candidates being formally determined at the point of nomination, so Banks would be an 'ACT' candidate even if he'd resigned from the party and joined National the day before the election. Just wanted to make completely sure that was the case though - it could be amusing if there was no explicit statement to that effect...
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Really? I'd definitely be expecting the Conservative Party to top 0.5%, and so get at least their list deposit back, and from the way I've heard people talking about Rodney, Colin Craig is likely to get over 5% of the candidate vote there. I'd be picking about $1300, maybe up to $1600 if they get very exceptionally lucky in another seat (though you're right with that range, since that would still mean that they've lost $15K).
Bill and Ben got their deposit back.
Yeah, I simply meant that their deposit was $1K - the Kiwi Party would also have got their list deposit back.
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parties outside Parliament trying to enter the scene, pay 'election taxes' of perhaps $15k-$20k.
Ooh, do I get to fact check you Graeme? :-) I just did a very quick calculation using the Electoral Commission's (appalling formatted) summary of the 2008 election table here, and as far as I can tell the only party outside Parliament that had to deposit anything even near this was the Kiwi Party (who paid $11,800). The other non-Parliamentary parties' deposits would have been between $5800 (the Libz) and $1000 (Bill and Ben, who were list only).
I suppose that sneaky 'perhaps' applies, since a party could theoretically stand in all electorates and not get 5% in any of them (and not get 0.5% of the party vote either), but in 2008 it looks like the average deposit from non-Parliamentary parties other than Kiwi was a bit under $4K. From the Electoral Commission's results I'd hazard a guess that the biggest 'losers' from this in 2008 - without actually calculating individual electorate results - were probably United.Future and ACT.
On a compeltely unrelated note, the 'Family Tree' on the Kiwi Party's Wikipedia page is pretty amusing