Posts by tussock
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Russell Brown,
They’ve played down cannabis reform and consciously made themselves appear less radical and less left-wing.
All the Greens did this year was control their own narrative by presenting a consistent and tight message about policy priorities. But seriously, bringing 100,000 kids out of poverty, using government money to create 100,000 green jobs, and nationalising the entire nation's irrigation schemes so kids can swim in rivers is all extremely left-wing policy, at least as far as anything you'll hear in NZ since 1984, eh Russell.
They didn't "play down" anything. They played up what they are going to try and do in the next three years given the likely make up of government, and the rest of their policy got ignored like it usually does because Labour and National game the election funding and debates and every other damn thing to keep everyone else quiet and out of the press.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/nz2011
Greens. Liberal Left. Get used to it. NB: Labour is a right wing party, just not far right like National.
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taxes pay for welfare-bludging single mothers
I've never understood how that one got going. The state recover all those costs from father of the child unless they're low-wage or unemployed, in which case the state would be paying for the kids even if they were together.
I know, repeat the lie enough, but you can always repeat the truth in defence.
As for Labour attacking the left, that will be the death of any chance for them in 2014, all National would have to do is repeat the "stability" meme. Of course, Labour are closer to National than they are to the Greens.
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Islander, I think I agree, but there's no room for paramount in your propaganda. You either including housing in the order it can be provided (it's presumably quicker for most than dealing with health and education, and in part a prerequisite for health) or you leave it out.
Jobs is last because it's the most important, the one that rings in your ears, and the one that defeats National's low wage economy bullshit. They own personal aspiration, it will always belong to them: Labour needs to own the basic decency and dignity of just raising your kids here, no matter what hand life's dealt you. If that means National stays in government by caring for the poor, so be it.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Five seats need to change hands for this coalition govt not to work.
National +2 is the government, 62 v 59, everyone else (the Māori party, Greens, Labour on trade) is just there to avoid tantrums within National costing them supply & confidence.
If they lose 2 seats it's 60 v 61, and they need help to pass everything, including the budget, and that gives everyone more say. Sure, they've got 5 parties to hunt a single vote out of, and it won't happen anyway, but still. Two seats gives the Māori party a budgetary veto.
That second seat by the way? It'd be labours if National hadn't stripped all the convicts of their votes just before the election. Just say'n.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Islander,
But – I’d prefer a different order: good health, good education, good jobs & then good houses – the first 3, I think, are prerequisites for the last-
That's the typical home-owner's bias speaking. 8]
Plenty of labour people bring their kids up in cheap rentals between trips to school, and as we've seen recently it's hard to keep them in good health in an uninsulated concrete pen. Good houses I put first because you shouldn't need the first three to live in one, at least if you're Labour. Make the landlords earn their bloody subsidies, they'll love tax credits that secretly benefit the poor and get clawed back on the CGT anyway.
I put housing there because it naturally highlights the National party's trick of demolishing state housing for the poor to build private mansions for profit (while being positive and goal-oriented), and recalls Labour's past (in part to remind the bastards of it).
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Note that list MPs can also jump parties, as when the Alliance MPs all left the Alliance to betray their basic goals and policies. So it's not that National gets it's list places, it's that those MPs from the list are now parliamentarians, and will stay that way until they retire.
If an electorate MP leaves parliament, we get a bi-election. If a list MP leaves parliament, the next on the list they came from comes in, even if they'd personally swapped parties between times.
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Legal Beagle: Election '11 -…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
3, 4, 5, 7, 9, ++2 are interesting as divisors, but it's a small gap between ACT having 1 overhang or 3 seats. Maybe that's the point, get one or the other, treat one-seat parties as independents unless they hold some wider support.
We'd have far more overhang this time. ACT 1, UF 1, Māori 2, Mana 1. 125 seat parliament, 3 Con, 60 Nat, 9 NZF, 1 Māo, 34 Lab, 13 Grn; plus the overhangs. NAU-Conservative total 65/125. Assume a couple NZF flip back to Labour, and maybe one or two Nat to Con.
One might suggest it would encourage the majors to drop a lot of pseudo-independent MPs in safe seats in their own Micro-party, for the free overhang. At least now Dunne, Banks, and Hone just take their fair share of list seats away from someone.
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Good propaganda doesn't talk about the other team's policies. "Tax" is National's word. "Tax and spend", even.
Labour should be good houses, good education, good health, good jobs.
National says too many taxes? Reply "but we need good education and health, that's where it all goes, that keeps people right for good jobs".
National says you spend too much? Quote by the thousands of millions on education and health, inform people that cuts of tens of millions (a tiny amount, eh) would end the good health of *factual number* people, or higher education of *factual number* people. Isn't that what Labour's about?Eventually, people ask hard questions about your soundbites. That's when the policy highlights come out. Good propagandists look like they're bursting to expand on the basics, and will do whenever time allows. Got an hour? Great, give the whole policy, unfold the message into the highlights, and from there into the detail, back to the highlights, and back to the message.
Then your election campaign is action words. Build houses. Fix schools. Fund ambulances. Raise incomes. Why? Good houses, good education, good health, good jobs.
First, of course, Labour would have to figure out what they can represent, because propaganda works better if it's basically true. -
NB all: people keep saying you need 1/120th to get a seat with no threshold, but that's not true.
The first seat is at roughly 1/240th the total, the rest at 1/120th each. First seat, ~9000 votes, second seat total ~27000, third seat ~45000, and so on (to bring the average as close to 18k per seat as possible).
Various countries use a 1.4 first divisor to chase away micro-parties without distorting proportionality, which would make it ~12600 for the first seat here, but still just 0.58%. ALCP out (though I'd give them one if it would matter, freeing up 10% of the justice system FTW), everyone else in.
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Oh, and what Labour needs, like Mana and Māori, is a positive soundbite that accurately describes the aims and goals their policy will work toward in a way that differentiates them from (primarily) the National party.
If the four pillars of the Green party and hundreds of pages of associated policy can be broken down to "rivers, kids, and green jobs", so can what the others have to offer.
Whatever the hell it might be Labour has to offer. Because other than more taxes, more work, and eat your vegetables children, I must have missed it.
"No asset sales" isn't a policy, eh. People vote for something.