Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Christopher Nimmo,
You're implying that there is no such thing as a back room deal with that analysis. The whole thing could easily be quite carefully stage managed, with the break-away wanting to "get back to core principles" or some other such thing. They only need one policy differential, really. The point is to maintain a honne/tatemae (as they would say in Japan) vote split so that voters don't feel too conflicted. The tatemae is their public position, their policy, their having a different party name with different logos and branding. The honne is that they're nearly 100% aligned with the mother-party. Even if they argue with them on policy, the important thing, their vote, will always fall in line.
This is precisely what is going on with Epsom. Epsom voters, when explaining the way they are going to vote, can claim to be worldly in this, that the tatemae of voting for ACT is that it's a real party with policies they don't entirely disagree with, even if they find them a bit extreme. The honne is the fact that splitting their vote to National on the party sends a very clear signal where their real hearts lie, and wields at least twice as much influence as most other votes around the country.
Labour could do the same thing quite easily, if they had a similar level of organization. Perhaps they're above it, but if so, they're just prey to it.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Sacha,
The comparison is perhaps more United Future.
Not really, they're in the middle and have gone both ways. That's not at all what I'm suggesting. ACT will never go both ways, they will always align with National. Similarly with Anderton, there was never a question of him going to National.
The Greens were used by Labour like this for quite a while. I have to say, even though I prefer their leftist economic policy, I think them moving towards the center is the most sensible thing they've yet done. They are, after all, primarily environmentalists. In the center they are in nowhere near as much danger as, say, United Future, which loses votes in both directions because it doesn't actually have anything really unique about it, it trades entirely on centrism. In a funny way, this actually frees Labour to be Labour again, breaking from the 27 year neoliberal curse. The Greens can talk to both leftist and rightist economics, they just use different language for each. To the left, it's about fair use of scarce resources, how a better environment benefits rich and poor alike, etc. To the right, it's about user pays, they just have to clearly sell the externalization of cost as being not much different to being a beneficiary, indeed far more so, on a much grander scale, and hurting each other in the process. I think farmers could be far more amenable to this than is obvious at first glance. They do understand the consequences of the polluting activities of their neighbors. They're not a very long way from grasping that the Greens do have quite a powerful handle on the science of agriculture, and could present a powerful international branding advantage to NZ agricultural produce.
But Labour could easily install a far more compliant group to their left, possibly even via a bunch of independent breakaways like Anderton. They just have get with all the secret handshakes and stage managed tea parties and they're there.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Er, I hate to say it, but as far as I can tell Labour aren't running any pseudo-parties, and haven't, ever.
No but they were able to rely on Anderton on the left of them in much the same way as National has relied on ACT.
And my question was really "why haven't they done more of it?". From a purely out-to-rort-MMP stance, electorate candidates are an easy fight-fix. Goldsmith only has to take a dive in Epsom, and they get at least Banks. Even if ACT got zero party votes, National would still get all the seats their own party vote adds up to, and they get a bonus loyal goon who is, in some ways, slightly *more* valuable to them because he can be more right wing.
Why stop at Epsom? They could have stood ACT people in all of their safe seats and had their own candidates campaigning for the party vote only, exactly as Goldsmith has done. With a vote splitting strategy like that, it makes perfect sense for National voters to split, especially since they can see how weak the electorate only party is, that it can never hold the mother-party to ransom because it can be killed completely in one electoral cycle. Everyone who splits their vote in that way has a vote at least twice as powerful as people who don't, and if that party can even pick up some party votes, this could be magnified even more.
Essentially, if this crap continues, if you can't beat them, join them. Fix fights. Isn't that the logical answer to Epsom's smug little position? Wouldn't that make the case for MMP reform the strongest?
This is a thought experiment, btw. I'm not saying any of this is right. It's a case made to show that there is a response to Epsom, which would clearly show the way that the two major parties have abused MMP since the very beginning.
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Actually, I don't know why Labour and National don't do this even more, if they're going to be so bloody cheeky about using this to their advantage. There would be nothing lost to them to set up a new shadow party, identical in every way to their party, to stand for all the safe electorate seats, with the advice to voters to split their vote. They could do it right now, Labour could pick up 15 extra seats that way. Paul Goldsmith is effectively doing it by refusing to campaign, letting two former chief National party ministers take his spot (and he gets in on the list anyway).
It's the big joke part of our system. Electorates are an FPP hangover - MMP is the system that recognizes that party politics has subverted local representation since the very beginning of Westminster democracy, and actually addresses it with a proportional top up. But it can't deal with the fact that blocs are the shadow cast over the system by non-proportional electorate representative selection.
FPP reaches beyond its grave. It's not as bad as it was, proportionality is much closer than the %30 wasted votes of the bad old days, but I honestly never really saw so clearly what it was that I disliked about FPP electorates right back when MMP first came in as I do at this moment.
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Matthew Hooton on iPredict suggested he knows the Epsom voters too well (being one himself), and that on election day they will "do the dirty" (his words), and put Banks in. I couldn't tell if he was shamefaced or smugly happy about voting for someone who claimed on camera not to be able to remember a meeting and then about 40 seconds later suddenly getting total recall when being offered a transcript to actually look at. He actually had the same look on his face as Banks at that moment, ironically. It was a "yeah well, sure, you can have that one, because everyone knows it's all about rorting the MMP loophole, and Epsom voters are smart".
He then went on to make a very telling comment, which says a great deal, in my opinion, about what I consider to be the biggest flaw in MMP, that electoral representatives are such a huge part of it. He said that Epsom supporters don't need a local representative because they are basically rich enough to look after themselves. I presume he meant "most Epsom voters" and wasn't trying to deny that anyone at all in that electorate might undergo severe hardship at the hands of his preferred party in the next 3 years.
He also had a brutally honest appraisal about the cunningness of Key's strategy over the tapes, which is that he gets to say "look, I want to talk about the economy", when of course he actually doesn't. Again, this is Hooton's honest appraisal as an openly aligned Nat supporter.
I'm glad he's being so honest, that's great in a political commentator, but I have to say that after watching 3 weeks of him talking about the Machiavellian tactics of the National party, and repeatedly pointing out that he pretty much agrees with most of the policy of the Labour party, I can't figure out why such an obviously smart person would be voting National in this election, if they really do think that they're doing nothing right for the country as a whole.
I guess I'm not used to people saying "yeah, it's a class war, but I'm winning so that's all cool by me". It seemed that David Shearer, the other commentator, was also a little disquieted by it, it was hard to disagree with any of Hooton's analysis, and he ended up having little to say, other than that he basically thought that the power blocs were clearly shifting away from the right this time around. It is still going to be damned close, and it will very likely come down to Epsom.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
It's an interesting question though: Would FDR's adultery and Churchill's heavy drinking and severe depressive episodes make them both unelectable today? And would the world have been a better place if the media then was more like it is now?
Yes, and yes. Many things that happened might not have happened, if people had been widely aware that they were happening. Most especially, this is the case within the Axis countries.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Sacha,
Apparently the Herald's polling may contain quite a different picture tomorrow. I'm giving iPredict the most heed myself.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'm doubting he has them. It sounds like someone's given him a verbal summary and he's repeating that.
Or he could be being very cautious, whilst showboating at the same time. There is an outside chance of jail stretch.
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3 News is liveblogging Peters' utterances.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to 3410,
I predict that the tape will escape, today or tomorrow.
Yes, as Assange would put it, the information will seek freedom.
Peters has just announced he will announce the contents at 2pm, before his support has their afternoon nap.
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