Come to Uncle Winston little one, would you like some candy?

Wont someone think of the children!

Attention shoppers!

It is never a good sign in a functionally democratic state when a politician starts using a phrase like “enhanced democracy” to defend a political bill which has clearly nothing to do with democracy.

So in that vein hearing Winston Peters rename the odious Waka Jumping bill the “Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill” we know this has NOTHING (emphasis all Minnie Mouse mine) to do with democracy, not a shred, not a jot, not even a sliver.

In fact saying its “enhanced democracy” is a bit like how the US described its waterboarding torture process as “enhanced interrogation”; a classic case of political doublespeak and euphemisms to cover up what is a rather nasty bit of ethically and legally dubious behaviour.

Meanwhile, as the hot froth of last Septembers Jacindamania hardens into the greasy scum of our current coalition government, it’s becoming abundantly clear exactly what New Zealand’s first genuine coalition government really looks like and in the eyes of many beholders it’s not pretty.

But before we wade into who said what and when lets take a look at this goulash of words and ideas that Winston is proposing.

Thus reading through the amendment it’s striking that this reads less like legislation (and I read legislation for a living) and more like something you would find in a zero hours employment agreement or job contract (ie unfairly weighted in favour of the employer).

For starters the additions the proposed purpose of this amendment is to:

a)      Enhance public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system; and

b)      Enhance maintenance of the proportionality of political party representation as determined by electors

And it’s worth stopping for just a moment to masticate over what exactly does “enhance public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system” mean and how this amendment would do that because the implication in that phrase is that we have had some sort of democratic crisis every time a MP jumped ship from their party to another or formed their own.

Ostensibly the argument would go that MPs going rouge from the party (ie waka jumping) creates a crisis in the public mind that the electoral system is flawed or broken and that by giving a party the power to strip a MP of their seat and kick them out of the party would fix that.

However the period of miscreant MPs leaving their party is more an artefact from the early days of MMP and a by-product of the FPP system with its monolithically two party structures which were never going to honestly encapsulate the plurality of positions and opinions on New Zealand’s political spectrum rather than some ongoing or dire threat to the integrity of the electoral system.

But if rolling that phrase round in your mouth a few times is a bit much may I suggest the word salad contained in b) which is where, under a thick dressing of euphemism, the actual purpose of this amendment is stated.

Maintenance of the proportionality? Political party representation? As determined by electors? Enhanced? WTF?

In short this abomination says the following: Lock party share of seats in parliament to general elections only and tie those seats directly to the party rather than the MP.

Yes kiddies, political parties don’t really want or need MPs as the elected representative of an electorate and they sure as heck don’t want a MP leaving the party (and taking their jucy vote share with them) and think about that for a second because if YOU like the idea of democracy then this is extremely undemocratic.

Elected representatives are a key component of democratic politics and in by-passing the MP in the process you turn them into nothing more than a glorified customer service representative between the party and the voter.

Which is where we get to the contractual conditions part of this political power grab as the mechanism for kicking a MP from the party starts when the leader of a party:

Reasonably believes that the member of Parliament concerned has acted in a way that has distorted, and is likely to continue to distort, the proportionality of political party representation in Parliament as determined at the last general election.

And where to begin with this furshlugginer waste of words, do we start with “reasonably believes” or what the definition of “distort” means (because this amendment has an actual definition section but “distort” aint there).

Or, perhaps, it better to start with the fact that this whole intellectual process starts and ends in the mind (no matter whatever fervid state that its in) of the parties leader.

Then, once the leader has made up their mind, it’s a case of issuing a written warning to said member, give them 21 days to respond and a final consideration before pulling the trigger, expelling said member from the party and giving their seat to someone more willing to eat chain for the leader.

The only brake on this hideous process is section 55D(c) which requires 2/3rds majority of parliamentary members of that party agree that written notice should be given but that brake becomes a lot less effective when you consider that if you were a MP in such a situation and not willing to back such a process you could very likely be next to get expelled under the “distorting the proportionality of political party representation” clause.

And all of this leaves out the vital question of how exactly does a party prove that its MPs really want to kick one of their colleagues out when it’s clear that the whole situation is one of deliberate imbalance in favour of the party leader. Who is going to stand up and say they are not down with the party chopping off a head when the consequence of doing so is your neck on the block!

So in summary, Winston wants political power vested in the party structure and directly under the control of the party leader while marginalising the elected representatives (the MPs) and all because of the supposed threat to democracy of MPs not doing what their party wishes.

All which takes on the most delicious coating of irony (Mmmmmm Irony!) when you realise that the very reason for the existence of Winston Peters as acting PM today is because he jumped ship from National in the early 90s and took his “electoral proportionality” with him.

But if your ironometer* on your phone is not going off right now the hypocrisy alarm should certainly be because Winston planning to eliminate the very means that he and NZ First came into being smacks a lot like how MPs, who got a free tertiary education in times past, one day decided to make going to university study fees based (along with the monstrous student loans that is often required) from now on.

And few are happy with this development.

Labour and Andrew Little, currently the shepherd for this black sheep of a bill though parliament, is not keen on the idea and neither is Nick Smith or National** who described the Greens participation in this crime as “selling its soul for power” which is exactly spot on and Nick should know as he has re-mortgaged his soul so many times he has a timeshare in Hell.

And my season of cognitive dissonance continues when I again (for the second time in less than a month) find myself in full agreement with Barry Soper over this thing while both the left and right sides of blogsphere are also against this political version of being tied over a hobby horse while being painfully rogerd from behind as Winston recreates the basement scene from Pulp Fiction with democracy as Marsalis Wallace, Winston as Zed and the Greens as the weedy guy standing off to the side passively watching the action and getting all turned on***.

The only good in this is it’s not law yet and still in select committee but with the coalition having the numbers (thank James Shaw kids!) we could very easily have this being enacted and serving as prima facie evidence that the price of power in this collation government is letting Winston kiddie fiddle democracy in public all the while he is claiming it will “enhance” the experience.

Make no mistake about it; if you value democracy or have ever been helped by your local MP then you should be against this because the only people a MP should be answerable to is the people who elected them, not whatever blowhard happens to be party leader.

*-trademarked and patented

**- Again doing the job of opposition party spokesperson and blowing my mind at the same time

***-Who gets to be Bruce Willis's character is yet to be detremined

The pissed away revolution: Labour's impotent rage in the winter of our discontent

Not quite a rant, not quite...

Something happened in NZ politics last week and no I don’t mean the birth of the PM’s baby.

Nor am I referring to the last minute averting of the nurses strike, the grumbling over the fuel tax, the removal of health targets or the creeping suspicions that Kiwibuild is a well-meaning but ultimately futile piece of feel good government propaganda that will do little to actually fix the housing hernia.

Neither was it the fact that Trevor Mallard seemed the only person in the party with the sanity (which many other in Labour seemed to lack in this regard) to pull the plug at the very last minute, on what would have been a bona fide scandal over the foreign buyers exemption (involvement of John Key or not) or the entirely correct point being made by welfare advocates that the families package is a good start but it can’t just be a one off.

It also was not the fact that acting PM, Winston Peters, is going against the advice of IRD in giving a $40,000,000 tax break (the only one) of this Budget year to his good friends in the racing industry or that the long expected counter-revolution by NZ business (moaning and whining because even a single step away from how good they had it under National is a step too far for those little snowflakes) seems to have caught Labour unprepared and unable to respond.*

No, the change in NZ politics this week was that the glorious summer that Labour (and to a lesser extent NZ First and possibly even the Greens) had been enjoying came to a sudden end with an icy tumult of discontent blasting out from NZs blogging and media communities.

I have said myself that the political honeymoon would always end sooner or later but after a delicious Indian summer of public polling, which the government had been basking in like a certain type of lazy grasshopper, the writing was finally on the wall as the post budget blues hit hard and the PM seemed to sense that the gig might be up when she mused on the life expectancy of her government being that of only one term.

And thus began their winter of our discontent.

If the defining motif for the nine years of John Key and the National government was one of hideous monsters sucking the vitality and life out of a hapless New Zealand for the benefit of a few wealthy fat cats then the Labour/NZ First Coalition government has been come to be seen as all talk and little action as the Champaign socialists of Labour yore and the vested interest pandering political gigolos of NZ First have yet to deliver on the promise of a better future of Kiwis or give capitalism that friendly face (or should that be farce?).

Of course what helped create such an extended period of smug was the seemingly water tight argument that fixing the mess of the last nine years would take more than a few months so all and any complaints were invalid.

However that logic only applied to Labour making attempts to clean up Nationals mess and not its own inability to deal with rising labour unrest due to clear public expectations, based on the new governments own comments from last year, about the market getting reigned in, its own MPs putting their foot in their mouths or the rising tide of “we know what’s best for you” smugness, that only a Labour government can deliver.

And that is the core of this sudden cold snap of political critique. The almost violent realisation, by bloggers and the media (as the public had already started to turn sour), that it’s not just enough to make a few minor changes to the crappy edifice that National bequeathed New Zealand, then start seeking kudos by saying “look what we have done” and expecting the public to sing hosannas to Labour all the live long day.

Some might see the shift as a once star struck media final coming to its senses and doing its job (some of which is true) but this is the same media which was busy pointing out the issues with John Key and National when they were in power and clearly understood the size and scope of things like the Housing Hernia, the Labour situation, immigration issues and all the rest of the little pustules that National had generated with its filthy activities and thus understood that any genuine response needed more than just some feel good spin to make work.

The reason the blogging/media response is finally getting so frosty is that they have seen that the same problems that persisted under National are still persisting under Labour with no real change in the circumstances except that its now a Labour government and the PM is a woman.

It’s true that National left NZ in a mess, no one is denying that, BUT the people that voted for Labour, NZ First and the Greens voted for radical change away from the free-market ethos of the last 30 years and anything less than clear and undisputed changes to the direction NZ is heading is not going to be enough because it’s is not enough.

Jacinda Ardern, in her musings about her political life expectancy, was smart enough to know that without public support almost any policy plank put forward will be rejected (as we have seen with the nurses, service workers and public servants strikes) but not smart enough to realize her comments in that article betray less of a concern for actually doing anything and more disappointment that she and Labour did not pump enough PR into the public sphere to convince people that the little Labour had done was not momentous or deserving of praise.

The result is that politically NZ is on a knife edge and there is a distinct possibility that Labour and NZ First will piss away what little political capital they have left in more of the same desperate bamboozling they have been pushing lately instead of just rolling up their sleeves and doing something concrete.

And if such a thing happens then two things will follow.

The first is that those who feel disenfranchised in this country will start to swell as the clear perception that neither side of the political divide is able to fix the mess Aotearoa is in and the second is that the door will open to a range of alternates behaviours and perceptions (such as political parties, forms of action and even government) which will challenge the current status quo in every way shape and form.

Labour is barely holding on to its popular mandate now (as the unwavering level of support for National shows) and if it can’t make the changes needed it’s going to find itself facing a resurgent FukYoo Politix (as it did in the last nine years when ticked off Labour voters flocked to The Greens) as politics in Godzone becomes open to anyone (and anything) who can promise solutions to the problems we face, no matter how insane or impracticable.

So the next two years of the first real MMP government NZ has ever had could very likely be its last as Jacinda & Co slowly sink into the mire of impotent liberal rage** as people genuinely start to question if Labour was worth voting for if all they get is National-lite politics.

I have said it before and I am going to say it again here; one of the base truisms of politics is that’s its reform from above or revolt from below and the reform has to be genuine as the public is no longer in the mood for the political management practices of Third Way politics, which Labour seem intent on delivering, when inequality, housing, health and basic living standards are continuing to slip.

Henry Cooke in his article about Kiwibuild is right is noting there is “power in a brand” and Labours brand is losing its potency at an alarming rate as the gaffs pile up and ministers, who sounded so confident when in opposition, start sounding as clueless as those they were criticizing (see Kelvin Davis’s latest foot in mouth incident) when in government.

And I end this post by only half-jokingly saying that this is all Helen Clark’s fault.

If “Auntie” Helen had not been so effective in politically neutering Labour to ensure her own continued role as leader (because Clark was as good, if not better, than John Key at playing her minions off against each other as a means of retaining power) then Labour may not have been so wickedly impotent in its nine years of opposition or should have regrown the stones it needed to act, as it did in 1984 when it damned the torpedoes and gave birth to the free-market bordello that Jacinda’s baby has been born into, to do what must be done.

Instead Labour is spending more and more of its time backpedaling or having to water down its proposals and plans or worse just not doing enough with its actions. 

Anything less than a truly revolutionary approach by this government will leave a legacy that is not kind to Jacinda and Labour (or NZ for that matter) and will place her and the party in exactly the same position National is in today (ie politically bankrupt and bought out by vested interests) and if both of the big two in NZ politics fall into disrepute then we have the perfect scenario for populism in its worst form (think Shane Jones polling at 15 - 20%, determining the next government and being PM - Eeeek!!!!!).

Its been less than a year but I suspect this revolution is already over and Smiths Dream will morph into Winston Smith's reality and our new dawn will fade as the public realizes that we were fooled again.

*-I suspect the timing of this campaign with the birth of the PMs baby was deliberate so that the Jacindamania effect was reduced in any government response.

**-And if readers want an image of what a raging, impotent Labour looks like I highly suggest watching the link above

Jacinda or Judas: If Labour bows to pressure from businesses then this government is sunk!

All dogs might go to heaven but politicians always go to hell!

For me the honeymoon period with the Coalition government ended suddenly this week in the jarring screech of brakes as my political expectations slid off the road and crashed into the ditch of political reality.

My doubts had started with the recent budget, which was nothing more than Grant Robertson using the cancelled tax cuts to fund up big on various areas which needed it and in reality turned out to be little more than National-lite budget in a bright red wrapper. 

Then there has been the breaking of so many of Labours pre and post-election promises, so as not to spook the ever fragile business community, that has made the scales fall from my eyes.

Watered down immigration reforms, check; A housing policy which does not set aside housing for those who most need them but leaves it open to the market, check; Tax "reform" but no actual taxation increases on those who should be paying more (read corporate and the wealthy), Czech; One hundred million dollars for a rich man’s sport (the Americas Cup) but still dithering about how to fix the mess in Christchurch, cheque; an endless stream of money spent on pork barrel jobs for Labour cronies in all the new committees, Chek; employment law reforms on the odious “90 day trial period” law scaled back and now appointing Jim Bolger (the man who ushered the Employment Contracts Act into law) to the review committee (the political equivalent of asking the rapist to judge their own trial); and check, checky, McCheck, checkmate!

Add to this industries like Nurses and Teachers still underpaid and being offered pittance for work which is essential to the health and well being of our society and Jacinda’s bizarre protestations of ignorance when it’s clear that New Zealand’s relationship with the Five Eyes is under threat due to Chinese infiltration and interference* and I have decided that Jacinda and Labour are on the verge of selling out the hopes and expectations of most of the people that voted for her.

For Judas it was 30 pieces of silver while for Jacinda it is a half million dollars a year salary as PM plus all the money she gets to make selling photos of her and her baby to Womans Day.

And why am I suddenly so negative you ask?

The answer is simple. In the years leading up to the 2017 election there was strong stream of discussion on the many political blogs that I frequented (many left but some right), where the discussion often found itself coming round to the topic of “The Great Betrayal” of 1984 by the then Labour Government of David Lange and how any future Labour Government would have to do serious penance for this betrayal or suffer the consequences of a backlash from an electorate which was expecting Labour to start fixing the damage it helped usher in 30 years before and had now grown so acute (think housing, the environment, water, poverty and immigration) that these issues had metastasized into cancerous and toxic sores on the land that could no longer be ignored.

Not everyone agreed with the whole view but the mainstream perspectives were clear that the Great Betrayal had occurred at Labours bloody hands and on its watch and the damage was a generation of Neo-Liberal politics and economics which had gutted Aotearoa to the benefit of a wealthy few in the business community and any attendant political parasites (Richard Prebble always springs to mind when the topic of the Great Betrayal and the term “parasite” springs to mind) that had helped oversee the selling of New Zealand and the creation of Nu Ziland for their financial masters.

Thus if a future Labour government was to make good on atoning for this heinous act then the healing could only begin with rolling back most, if not all of the reforms it had helped bring in, but if it did not then the dark project that had been started by it in 1984 would be complete and Nu Ziland would prevail over New Zealand into our grim dark future.

Now fast forward a few years to early 2017; Labour is sunk in the polls and stuck with Andrew Little as leader while National under Bill English looked set to sweep into power for a fourth term, destroy any remaining vestiges of pre 1984 new Zealand in the process and bring about Nu Ziland at large. It was a doom struck time and the mood of any not on the National party train to “prosperity” was gloomy to say the least (see this post from me from that time for an idea).

Then a miracle occurred, Little bowed out of the leadership and relative political noob Jacinda Ardern stepped in and Labour started climbing in the polls on the strength of mostly the expectant mood of change her ascension had created.

Then, in a further political miracle, Labour was able to form a coalition government out of the election results and the National party inspired nightmare of pedophiles running the day-care was aborted in a frenzy of a post-election announcements about fixing the damage to NZ, from things like the housing hernia and child poverty, and giving capitalism a friendly face.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No the above sentence is not a typo but the sound of the needle of reality scratching its way off the political record as the warm, soft and fuzzy tune (you can substitute the music for We are the World here for effect if you wish)of the post-election “we are going to fix things” Labour Coalition Government was hijacked by the grubby reality of a Labour government “talking loud and saying nothing” while playing much the same game as National did for nine years.

Put in simple terms, the fact is that in the age of FukYoo politix Labour has only one mandate from the public and that is to atone for the damage it helped cause from the Great Betrayal and if it cannot deliver on that then this will be a one (or maybe two if its lucky) term government which will backslide on any meaningful promises for change so long as it can remain in power but in the end will become mired in the toxic filth of its own defunct legacy.

And it’s become clear that Labour, as it is in 2018, is clearing thinking that the politics of the Third Way, as it was under Helen Clark in 1999 (or even 2008: when Labour had blown its mandate to rule by 2005 and had to cook up a deal with Winston Peters to maintain its political program) is still a viable option in the minds of the Labour brain trust.

This kind of thinking is 19 years and a bitter generation too late for the harsh realities of politics in a time of populist parties and political instability.

Ardern and Labour have clearly been watering down their plans and actions to accommodate the business community (the same community that was the direct beneficiary (pun intended) of the way the current labour and tax laws are structured) because Jacinda & Co would rather pander to this vested interest rather than take an honest attempt to cleanse the poison that has made this country so sick.

So while Judas Ardern and Labour are banking on a strategy of doing just enough to keep public opinion on side with some photos ops for Jacinda and baby to distract from the skulduggery going on behind the scenes they will be counting the blood money for their dirty deeds both past, present and future.

And this growing mood is not just me, there are rumbles in the public and the upcoming Northcote by-election may be an interesting (if somewhat distorted) barometer of the public feelings about how things are going, as if the current round of teacher and nurse pay disputes/strikes are anything to go by then Labour has not done enough to meet the expectations of those who voted for them (because not a single nurse or teacher I know or have met (bar one) has ever voted for National) in 2017.

The breakdown of public trust in Labour as government is not an impossible scenario. It’s not the one that National and Mike Hosking keep salivating over (because no one on the Left is really keen to let National back into power just yet) but keep in mind that a year ago Labour was 24% in the polls, with half its supporters defected to the Greens and stuck with an unpopular leader and the only noticeable shift on the Left side of the line since then was the rise of Jacinda Ardern and the deals which stitched up the coalition government so the ground under Jacinda's feet is less political bedrock and more shifting sand.

So if Jacinda can’t keep her end of the bargain with the public then don’t expect people to keep on supporting Labour as one of the salient features of FukYoo politics is the willingness of voters to punish parties they feel have betrayed them as well as indulge in self destructive political behaviors (ie voting for extremist parties in what I refer to as Joker politics) far more than staying loyal to any particular politician or political brand.

And while I am not planning to vote National just yet because I am disappointed in Labour reverting to their Champagne  Socialist habits so quickly (because I did not vote Labour in 2017) I won’t be giving Labour any more free passes on this blog so readers can expect me to turn the focus onto the current government just as much as I did on the previous.

Labours talk of a friendly face for Capitalism is now looking more like giving Capitalism a friendly face-lift; simply hiding the wrinkles, crow’s feet and that god ugly nose with a few nips and tucks with liberal injections of political botox to smooth everything out.

Of course the typical response from a Labour Acolyte (because there are still of few of them Left – geddit?) would be that expectations need to be managed and that all stakeholders need to be consulted.

However this is a load of super frosty bullock droppings as the entire theme of the Great Betrayal has been to accommodate business at the expense of the all other interests and stakeholders and the last nine years of National was such an extreme of pandering to the vested interests of the market that Labour playing anything less than the revolutionary march right through the Center and back to the Left is not going to fit the mood of the public.

And if that’s not enough Jacinda should take heed of the case of Ed Miliband, the young dashing and photogenic, middle ground, leader (sound like anyone we know) of Labour UK who found himself deposed by a faster moving and more in touch Jeremy Corbyn because Miliband's brand of same old third-way Labour did not match the mood of the party or its supporters, or even the public.

In such circumstances Jacinda is less than six months away from becoming Judas and if that occurs Labour is going to find out in a rather stinging way that not only will National look better and better to the public (and keep in mind they already poll higher than Labour at this point) as 2020 approaches but that the potential of coalition partners being peeled off (as in the case of NZ First) or neutralized (as in the case of the Greens) will be much more of a possibility than if it’s was actually doing something constructive and not just letting Jacinda flap her considerable gums and smile for photo ops.

Worse still (for her, not us) is the potential for a Labour NZ’s radical faction to find the Right (geddit?) candidate for the job and run Jacinda right off the throne, and don’t say it can’t happen because that’s what got Andrew Little elected (and deposed) as leader, and then genuinely tap into that revolutionary mood of the nation** to make the changes needed.

Then there is the case of places like Australia or Italy with their revolving door politics, parties and leadership changes and while Kiwis like to think that “it can’t happen here” they would be wrong as there is nothing, not even NZ’s legendary political apathy, to offset a groundswell of righteous (or riotous) public anger when the issues which have been simmering away for the last 30 years start to boil over in seething entrails of discontent.

So Labour is now on the verge of the post-election slump and while National won’t be making hay just yet, the dynamics of this Coalition government rely on keeping the coalition partners happy (something for a later post) and to prevent Jacinda from being seen by her supporters as just another traitorous, untrustworthy, scumbag politician who is out for herself (or far far worse hideously delusional and in thrall to business interests) as the only two thing that got Labour elected were a desire for genuine change (ie anyone but National) and the X-factor that Jacinda brought to the game.

Our pregnant PM has not yet left her mark on NZ politics and the specter of Norman Kirk and David Lange loom large over her as both men were willing to take steps, as radical as they were, to fix what they saw were problems with this country and Jacinda Ardern's statements about climate change remain nothing more than gentle farts of smug self congratulation until backed up by serious action.

However Jacinda Ardern has yet to do that*3 and even if she wishes to emulate one such as Helen Clark she is going to have to do more than get knocked up and wear fashionable clothes to parties.

Labour exists as government today on the fact that its not National far more than anything inherent in its own makeup, policies or personnel excepting the star factor that Jacinda has harnessed.

And while Labour is sure to be playing the longer game and planning to drop all sorts of lollies round about May 2020 that maybe too little too late if those lollies are little more than some crappy placebos for the crippling ills of this Nation.

So if I thrashed National for its corruption while it was in power I can sure as heck beat Labour for failing to make good for the Great Betrayal now it is in government.

Labour can’t micro manage away the cancers it helped create and the time for radical surgery is at hand. The prognosis is grim but the outcome really depends if the doctor’s name is Jacinda or Judas.

*-Although to be fair it was National that set the ball rolling with Judith Collins and Jin Yang but if Labour was genuine about addressing this threat it would be doing more but instead its doing pretty much what National did and that makes them as bad, if not worse than National.

**-I admit that with her current popularity its unlikely but in the age of Trump never say never.

*3-And Saying no to further offshore drilling does not count BUT some action over fuel prices might!

Repeat after me – “It’s just a poll, it’s just a poll, and it’s just a poll!”

Ah political polling, the barometer, if you will, of our national mood; the dipstick measuring the public's tolerance for politicians and parties; the rectal thermometer slid, ever so gently, into the backside of New Zealand to see what its political temperature is.

Thus while no poll is exact they can provide a generalised snapshot of the situation and are often a harbinger of changes to come in the political ecosystem.

Poll results can determine the life and death (politically at least) of a politician or party leader, cause a policy shift and, when enacted in the form of an election, change governments.

So building of the back of yesterday’s post about Judith Collins lets dig a little deeper into some of the other results which have come out of the latest round of polling and see what we can find.

And for those who want to know a little more about the polling environment in New Zealand then I refer readers to a post I wrote back on KP entitled Let’s get Statistical! which looked at the political polling situation two years ago and broke down the dynamics of political polling in NZ including who does the polling, the rules for polling and why the margin of error is important.

Also for those who want to see how polling can effect change when the political situation is ripe for it check out my post from early last year when Andrew little was still heading Labour.

Greens and NZ First: circling the drain?

At first glance the polling from the latest One News/Colmar Brunton poll does not look very good for Labours collation partners (with the Greens down 1 to 5% and NZ First down 1 to 4%) and there has been various rumblings about a “one term government” in the comments below the article just to spice up the proceedings.

However since there is nothing riding on those poll results (like an election or a leadership challenge) they are better off as indicators of the public mood at this time, like waves coming up the beach, and not to be taken too seriously. 

The hyperbolic tone of the articles title could just be the editors attempt to spice up what is otherwise a rather dull piece but I think its just a fraction more on the side of media trying to stir things up where there is very little to stir.

That said some context is always good and we know from previous experience that NZ First can sag in the polls only to bounce back up just before an election when Winston takes his mojo medicine show on the road so a post-election poll showing NZ-First at 4% has a lot less impact when Winston is deputy PM (and acting PM while Jacinda is on maternity leave) and NZ First has ensured that for the next two and half years they have their people an policies in government via the coalition agreement.

NZ First has had higher poll numbers to be sure but those are always linked the mercurial Peters so it’s never a good plan to write the party off based on the polls alone. When Winston steps down and Shane Jones (now his successor in all but name despite more than a few in party not comfortable with him) steps up we will have a different ball game (as Jones polling mojo is mostly untested) but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Meanwhile the 5% the Greens got this time round (down 1% from the previous poll in April) is not that big a shift from their 6.3% they got in the election but when you look out across previous elections we see that the electoral decline in vote share over subsequent elections (10.70% in 2014 and 11.6% in 2011) is a come down from the time when Labour was in disarray and ticked off Labourites were swelling the Greens, but looking out over the longer history of the Greens we see that this is the range that the party has normally sat in when being polled.

It’s true that James Shaw’s disastrous handling of the party in the run up to the 2017 election and the rise of Jacinda Ardern hurt the Greens badly by gutting ranks of the Green vote but the reality is that 5% is about where the Greens usually sit on the longer timeline and if Shaw can keep his trap shut and avoid doing anything stupid the party should be able to keep the Green brand above the 5% cut-off come the next election.

National and Labour: Neck and Neck or the Tail Wagging the Dog?

From the same article as provided the stats for NZ First and the Greens there are also the numbers for Labour (no change at 43%) and National (up 1 to 45%) which are really minor shifts in polling but still the articles plays it like things could go anyway with potential coalation partners.

And at the start of the year there was a certain vibe in certain sections of the media (not naming names) that National had won the popular vote and was therefore the rightful party to form a government while Labour, The Greens and NZ First had done some sort of dodgy deal to steal the election (just like people thought Trump had done) by combining votes in some dirty, “disgusting”* and unfair trick to twist things in their favor.

Of course anyone who was subscribing to that theory was ignorant of how MMP politics works, eating too many dogbiscuts and as medical professionals describe it “an idiot!”

I addressed much of this in a post from last year and it was clear that while previous elections had showed Labour wallowing in the 20s and 30s as polling goes that was more of a short term reflection (think the post Helen Clark era comedown from her political neutering of potential challenges to her leadership) rather than some sort of historical norm.

Also Nationals strong polling in 2017 was as much as a product of politics in the John Key era (meaning that the first post Key election for National would probably be able to coast in on the momentum of the massive boost Key gave the party) as well as the fact that with National now the only party of the Right and the partisan dynamics of the NZ political landscape (ie that NZ is more conservative than many believe) there were definite limits to how many would cross the political line.

So the defining factor of NZ politics as we know it under MMP is not the monolithic vote blocks that the two main opposition parties have but the smaller, but crucial, vote shares that parties like NZ First and the Greens can bring to any potential coalition and it’s the ability of those bigger parties to woo those smaller parties to their side that makes the difference.

Thus we have a Labour, NZ First and Green coalition government not because of any inherent skulduggery on the coalitions part any more than the fact that National screwed the pooch (although one of those factors did count to some degree) in the election by driving Winston away via their personal attacks on him and instead the mechanism of MMP did what it was supposed to do and provide a fairer more balanced result than the yes/no/either/or result FPP used to force upon voters.

And with those thoughts in mid we can dismiss the idea that this is some sort of neck and neck situation (even if we discount that an election is still two years away) as it’s the coalition dynamics that count as neither NZ First or the Greens are likely to swing to National any time soon (see my posts on The Temptation of James Shaw and We are all Socialists now Comrade for further details why not).

Also the dog still wags the tail it’s just less of a pure breed mutt and more a MMP flavored “mixed breed”**.

So what can the current polls tell us?

The barometer analogy (along with the other two) I used at the start of this post works best as we don’t look at our barometer to see what’s going to happen next month or next year. We look at our barometer to see what’s going on now or in 12 to 24 hours from now and while political polls do have slightly longer time frames but the effect is essentially the same: a short term forecast which is generally accurate but subject to local factors and conditions.

Current political polling is probably most noticeable for what has been described as a lack of “budget bounce”*** and Simon Bridges leadership remaining open to contest, which is how most commentators have described it but other than that it will only be when we add the data from multiple polls up or when the afore mentioned election, leadership challenge or policy furor is pending can a particular poll be the hinge on which politics turns.

Why the budget did not “bounce” and Bridges job as leader remains up for challenge are the subjects of my other recent posts but in short one poll result is just one poll result so take a breath and repeat after me “it’s just a poll” as the slightly hyperbolic/hysterical tone of the original articles headline is not quite on par with these beauties.

*-As one national party higher up I spoke to around that time described it

**-for those who can’t bring themselves to say mongrel

***- ie not polling increase for the government after it releases its budget rather than this Budget Bounce (a purveyor of bouncy castles etc)

New Zealand Politics 2017: A change is as good as a revolution

Happy New Year munchkins, I hope your holidays have been as good as mine so far.

I spent the first week of my Christmas holidays in my old hometown; the septuagenarian seaside ghetto of Timaru, more commonly known to the locals as Uramit*: catching up with family and friends or reading Dark History of the American Presidents by Michael Kerrigan**.

Timaru is one of Nationals true-blue heart lands, with Nationals first time candidate, Andrew Faloon, inheriting Jo Goodhew's comfortable electoral majority; even if that majority was cut back from 14,000 in 2014 to six thousand in 2017 in an electorate where the actual number of voters increased by several thousand, due to a clear surge towards Labour via candidate  Jo Luxton.

And like any time I am out and about, I took the time to sample the mood of the public in regards to politics in our fair nation but this time with a clear slant towards life under our new Labour overlords.

I was expecting a rather negative response regarding the regions voting habits but was somewhat surprised when most people I talked to seemed to be rather meh about the whole "communist takeover" thing and happy with what had transpired, except for one small area: house prices.

You can get a three bedroom house in Timaru for under $500,000, and even down to $300,000 if lucky, with a range of options and locations so unlike the major centers there is still a rather buoyant mood for the market.

And I know this for a fact after I spoke to several people in the real-estate business*** who were positively upbeat about the housing market there and who were rather concerned that Jacinda (and given how they phrased things it sounded like Mrs Ardern was coming for them personally) was intending to take away their livelihood and ruin the good thing they have got going in one fell swoop.

And this tone sums up much of this year (and every recent year) in NZ politics but it definitely sums up the outcome of the recent 2017 election as it does not take a rocket scientist to see that anyone who did well out of the housing hernia in the last nine years under National was going to keep on backing that party (and its policies) rather than take a gamble on Jacinda and Labour but that everyone and anyone else was braying for a real change to how things were in our fair isles.

But this time 12 months ago the country was still getting over the shock of John Key's recent departure from the PM role and trying to adjust to the idea of Bill English as a less than adequate stand in for the man who had been the ever-smiling face of the selling of NZ; the housing market was still boiling along in Auckland and Andrew Little was still grimly clinging to the tiler of the then doom struck Labour party and we were prepping for dull election followed by more of the same under National.

So between now and then what happened?

How did we go from the near inevitable certainty that it would be National for another three years to a center-Left coalition trying to give capitalism a friendly face and right some of the wrong in this country?

The answer to that question lies in the past with Labours great betrayal of 1984 and the effects of that betrayal over the 33 years that followed.

In 1984, with the election of the Fourth Labour government, the party embarked on an insane program of radical change to both the economy and the welfare state. There is no room to go into the details here butsuffice it to say that unlike the right wing free-market zealots in the US and UK who were enacting similar changes in those countries the ideological propaganda of trickle down and "letting the market take care of things" were first propagated by a supposedly left wing Labour government which literally sold the soul and spirit of New Zealand to anyone and everyone with the money to buy.

The result is the New Zealand we know today, desperately addicted to dairy farming, paying obscene prices for houses and peddling our asses for the tourist dollar. A New Zealand where the rich have gotten richer and everyone else has stagnated or gone backwards, an Aotearoa where market speak and management science infected government operations to all levels and where politicians are either actively industry lobbyists (like ex-tobacco shill Todd Barclay) or simply so connected to the parasite banking sector (like the John Key) or related concerns so prolifically that the public either does not trust them or care because the market is the new religion and we all have to kneel down and supplicate before the all mighty dollar.

In short the state of NZ today is the direct result of the Great Betrayal and its spreading stain has marked Labour ever since with an air of untrustworthiness and two-faced double talk from Labour MPs and the party mouthpieces in such a way that the real free market, "NZ for the rich only", radicals in National could simply walk into government and continue to enact Labour's "reforms" and no one could tell the difference.

Sooner or later something had to give. Sooner or later NZ had to change its course or become like Thailand or some other semi-failed state where corruption, nepotism and "connections" prevailed over democracy, equal rights and giving people and fair go. There had been attempts in the past but they had failed, mostly because the time was not right, but also because many of those trying to convince us to jump ship had blood on their hands, blood from 1984.

Thus for NZ (and 33 years counts as later rather than sooner) the 2017 election and the year that preceded it were the beginning of the end for Labours foul creation from 1984 (that later become Nationals monstrous step-child) and the dynamic of that year hinged on Labour not only removing that stain (ie talking about the people for once and not peddling its ass to big-business) but also presenting a credible alternate (via something other than letting the market take charge) to the electorate to whatever tired old (but infinitely better than Labors) story that National was peddling.

In neither of these two areas did Labour fully succeed but neither did they fail and it was not without the help of two other opposition parties (NZ First and the Greens) but also with the removal of the face of past (Andrew Little), which Labour had worn ever since the days of David Lange*4, that was promptly replaced by the face of future (via Jacinda Ardern).

And if we imagine NZ politics as a microcosm of NZ society (a sad and demented microcosm but still a sample of what NZ is) it was only a matter of time before the stunted and bitter children of 1984 would come forth in sufficient number to sweep much of the old and sleazy order away and makes their voices herd.

Of course there were a few grizzled veterans, like Winston Peters, helping things along by acting as spiritual mentors to the younger MPs but in the end the youth and energy prevailed BUT only after the stunted dwarf roadblock of Andrew Little had his greedy hands pried from the wheel of the party AND the dire realization that Labour could be in opposition forever if something radical was not done, truly sank in, as parties like the Greens started to take up the social justice and left-wing slack that Labour and lost when it sold its soul in 1984.

In summary NZ got back a true opposition party to the right wing antics of National (which then balances out the previously skewed dynamic of NZ politics) and previously failed hopes like Winston redeemed themselves by using their populist power for change rather than propping up the status quo and furthering their own greedy ends. The stain caused by the great betrayal has been washed out and a new course has been charted for Godzone.

The fact that the mood around the world echoes this is not coincidental but a change is a good as a revolution in my book and if things had not changed that was what was next via FukYoo politics enacted en-mass with increasing dissent and more physical opposition.

And that all there is to it really, scandals aside, as Labour by its words, and so far its actions also, has provided a counterweight to the right wing razzle-dazzle of National and stared to try and undone some of what it started 33 years ago. It might not get it all right but any loosening of the screws is better than none.

However, this change could not have happened without NZ First and the Greens and that's what is the one major difference between this election and all previous MMP elections, given tat MP was supposed to deliver us from the tyranny of one party-politics and the attended rabid, one sided, ideologies.

This time round was the first real MMP election in NZ history, one where the plurality of the political situation was accurately reflected in the final outcome and where enough of the FPP dinosaurs had been put out to pasture to allow MMP politics to deliver the best result.

But lets get back to those house prices for a moment before I end this because the Housing Hernia is still a thing, along with FukYoo politics.

Neither of those two dynamics have been turned off and both remain dominant forces for 2018 and its how our Left of Center government deals with both that will be the true test of how well the stain of the Great Betrayal is washed away; as inequality and dirty politics remain in NZ and if our hero's cant deliver on their promises then they will surely become villains.

My next post will be a look forward into politics in 2018  but until then I intend to get back into the garden, grow this beard some more and finish off Mr Kerrigans book.



*-Think about it?
**-does my family know me or what
***-I wont say exactly how but lets just say we are related etc
*4-Yes I know Helen Clark and the Firth Labour government existed but it was business as usual under her and Finance Minister Michael Cullen so much so that National was able to survive the near death of the party under Bill English and Don Brash and come romping back to office in 2008 under John Key

Post election fallout contaminates TOP, the Maori Party and National

File this under “what were they thinking!?”

The last few weeks has seen a number of activities which could be accurately described as “post-election fallout” as the particular “coalition oriented reality” that the 2017 September general election has imposed on the denizens of New Zealand’s political ecosystem (that of Labour, NZ First and the Greens as government) makes itself felt.

And in this case the fallout is coming from what could be politely termed as the three “losers” of the election, that being TOP, The Maori Party and National*. Further two of these cases can be seen as the direct result of bad decision making regarding a parties particular electoral strategy prior to the election while the third (in this case National) can be seen as laying the foundation for a similar type of catastrophe if ever implemented.

And as I am back from my blogging sabbatical lets indulge in a jolly game of seeing which of these three dumpster fire, train wrecks stacks up as the worse and how it came about.

TOP tops itself

First up is the Gareth Morgan vanity project more commonly known as The Opportunity Party (TOP).

 In the two months prior to the election I researched and wrote a whole 2000 word post on TOP which went in the dead end file because no matter how I spun it, the phrase “rich man playing at politics” kept repeating itself and there was really little else to say about Morgan treading down the same path as Kim Dotcom and “Creepy” Colin Craig, all of who did little more than spray round blobs of their wealth to purchase political media which had little more content on it than their respectively gormless faces.

Therefore it was not surprising to read last week that Morgan pulled the plug on TOP by resigning from the party, along with other senior members, as the odds of Morgan hauling his political carcass over the 5% threshold became starkly clear round about June when TOP had been in operation for six months and had little to show for it except Morgan looking down on people from billboards (and that metaphor can’t be labored enough) like a baby-boomer version of Big Brother from 1984.

And I will happily go on record in saying that my prediction that TOP would bring some “excitement” to the election campaign was way off the mark as in making said prediction I had anticipated that Morgan would not fall into the same trap as Craig and Dotcom had and actually run a political campaign seeking to worm his way into the voters’ minds with some clever and relevant means to tap into the fumes of discord that were rising from the political morass that FukYoo politics had created in NZ.

But I was wrong and to save space in this post I will sum up Moragn, and the approximately two million dollars he spent on the party and campaigning, as coming up with little more than his face on billboards, one failed legal challenge and the lingering stench in the publics mind that if elected his first act in parliament would be to enact some sort of rabid PC jihad on all felines in Aotearoa**.

Morgan talked big when he launched TOP in November 2016 and had some nice policy ideas buried away in the background but for all his comparison to Donald Trump, Morgan failed to live up to his hype, as at least Trump got elected, and all Morgan could do was flail around and squabble with party members, politicians and the public via twitter.

The key failing of this absurdly quixotic*** quest were simply Morgan deciding that he was to be the face of the party (which was the most obvious flag that this was little more than a vanity project for Morgan’s brittle ego) and not spending enough money to get ones political brand out in an already saturated marketplace (because two million dollars does not buy as much brand awareness as one might expect when you’re spending it all on creepy billboards and torpedoing your own polling by acting like a douche).

If I had the money to enter politics I might consider a run at parliament but the simple fact is I do not have the doubloons to buy myself a political party or indulge in the clearly obvious fantasy that Morgan was labouring under; that he was some sort of kiwi philosopher king writ large and come to save NZ with his unique brand of straight talking, common sense that only he could dispense.

The 2.4% TOP got in the polls is impressive per se for a first time out political party but when compared to what the Internet and Conservative parties polled in previous elections*4 it’s no big deal and clearly not any more resonant with the average voter than what Kim Dotcom or Colin Craig was peddling.

Going down with the waka

And from one wally called Morgan and a failed political party to another (albeit one that previously made it into parliament); this time Tuku Morgan, who recently quit his role as president of the Maori Party and was the architect of the parties disastrous campaign strategy in the recent election.

What was so disastrous about this strategy you ask?

Well for starters, it appeared to be completely divorced from the political reality of the Maori Party in 2017, polling well below the 5% threshold (often so close to zero as to be irrelevant) and being totally reliant on a single seat (all the others being won back by Labour in previous elections since 2005 when the party held all seven).

The kernel of Tuku's strategy was simple: get the Maori King (of who Morgan was an advisor to) to bad mouth the Labour Party in the run up to the election as a means to drum up support and arrest the hideous fall in seats and vote share*5 from their peak in 2005 when they swept all Maori seats in the wake of the foreshore & seabed issue.

So the Kings message was “screw Labour…” and nothing more which really was not the best way to endorse your own party and certainly not from an individual who, while royalty, seemed to have no real relevance to Maori in general and at best seemed to be an easily manipulated figurehead. And as I noted at the time royalty taking sides in politics is a dicey issue because if your side does not get in your out in the cold and that’s exactly what happened.

Labour now has all the Maori seats, Maori candidates and MPs and in the simple move of raising the minimum wage shortly after taking power did more for Maori, who are more affected by having to work in low paid occupations than others, in that single act than anything the Maori Party did in its nine years in the government.

Tuku Morgan should have known that the key to success in Maori politics was getting and retaining those seven Maori seats, as they conferred the political weight in parliament to make them an attractive coalition partner, and that what gave the party those seats in the first place was the wellspring of discontent that the foreshore & seabed issue had tapped into in 2005 and not the petty backbiting of a mostly irrelevant individual towards the one party which was the traditional resting place of the Maori voter.

And he should have known that if the party was to retain those seats it had to deliver meaningful change to Maori and not just political spin and empty promises which is why by the time 2017 rolled around the party had lost all but one seat and polled so low as to not count at all.

To be fair to Morgan though, by the time he came up with this bat-brained idea the party was already in dire straits under the leadership of Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox and was fatally weakened from the get go when Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia made the fateful choice to go with National in 2008.

But the party could have gone out in a better fashion than it did or even made a fighting stand if there had been an idea better suited than the extremely low budget wrestling smack talk employed by Morgan, via the Maori King, to try and make Maori care about the Maori party.

And if vanity was the downfall of Gareth Morgan and TOP it’s not too difficult to see that Tuku Morgan may not have been the best choice for the role of party president or campaign strategist as Morgan political credentials remain solely an $89 pair of boxer shorts and rhorting the public weal so it’s hard to imagine what else other than his own vanity was prompting him to think that his plan was going to work when every shred of reality would have been saying “Kahore, kahore, kahore!”

National’s imaginary friend

And last but not least in this caravan of, what my staff-sergeant would have politely referred to as, “s**t rushing to the brain” ideas, is the recent news that the National Party is looking to form a new conservative party.

Of course they denied it but after I ran this past my well placed National party contact, T, the response I got was more than enough for me to believe this rumour has some truth to it.

I do acknowledge the sheer science fiction scale to the idea that National clone itself as a means to pad out the illusion that it’s the only party of any substance on the right side of the political line after the coalition of NZ First, Labour and the Greens has made living under a coalition seem like a harmonious possibility and thereby politically and ideologically isolating National.

However what I did get from T was more than enough to indicate that while saner minds might have prevailed at obvious lunacy of the mainline suggestion, one particular comment from him (which I shan’t repeat here) was more than enough to make me think that National is no longer keen on supporting political misanthrope ACT and, with its previous “coalition partners” (Peter Dunne and the Maori Party) out of parliament, it may be feeling a bit lonesome out there in right (wing) field.

And while ACT is nothing more than a political welfare scheme for Seymour, National has to take the blame for creating the god-forsaken, Ann-Randian, one man sewer that ACT has become by their continual gifting of Epsom to ACT as the means to foster the illusion that there is something more right-wing (and all that such a term entails) than National out there in New Zealand.

So while national cloning itself is off the cards I would not be surprised if national sought to clone ACT, which could then be gifted Epsom and thus maintain the illusion that there is something further right of National in NZ politics while simultaneously getting risk of pesky (and uncontrollable) ACT.

However given the obvious rifts that do exists within the party (think: whoever keeps leaking documents and information to Nicky Hagar or to the media (ie the Todd Barclay scandal) and the fact that there is nothing inherently monolithic about right wing politics and it would be prudent for the party to figure out how to keep those issues contained rather than have them spill out in public.

The problem is that splitting the vote base is not the way to do this as creating a satellite party has all sorts of risks. The first (as noted in the media) is that the public may see it as nothing more than a front for National and as such have no faith in its independence while the second is that there is no guarantee that once you spilt the vote base that the other party will remain controllable (think how the Tea-Party antics in the US have hurt the Republicans).

So what to do?

My guess is this issue will simmer away in National until someone feels strong enough to challenge Bill English for the leadership and what will predicate that will be any significant drop in Nationals polling, which at this time, is not an issue but those numbers can’t hold forever given the fickle nature of the average NZ voter and with national in opposition it is only a matter of time before something gives.

So until that time I give Bill & the B Team a pass on this one but the fact that somewhere in National this idea got floated is enough to put them in the same category as TOP and the Maori party in this post under the “what were they thinking!?” moniker.

So who is the most contaminated?

The easy answer to that question is the Maori party, who pissed away the opportunity given to them by the seven seats they once had in parliament and who as per my old KP post Many waka, one star to guide them shows that the biggest problem in Maori politics is the Maori politicians themselves.

TOPs abysmal outcome in the election really only hurt Gareth Morgan and with the party now all but dead expect the 2.4% that voted for TOP to head back to Labour (based on all TOP voters I have met, all seem to be disgruntled Labour) while National can be forgiven for indulging in some off-the-wall thinking, post-election, but the real test for them is that they still need a solution to their obvious problems, that of needing to rejuvenate the party (but more on that in another post soon).

For all three parties, the brave, post election face they had been putting on has finally melted away in the extreme left/center radiation being given off by the coalition government and exposed what lies beneath.

*-No, ACT does not count in this sense as; a) they held onto their seat but more importantly b) they were losers to begin with in the more realistic sense of being purely in parliament at the behest of National.

**-something he doubled down on post-election when the PMs cat died and he decided that it would be the right time to make further comment on it.

***-yes I know it’s probably redundant using absurd as an adjective to quixotic but if the shoes fits…

*4-The Internet Party polled 1.42% in the 2014 election while the Conservatives polled 2.65% and 3.97% in 2011 and 2014 respectively

*5-In 2005 2.12% and 7 seats; 2008 2.39 and 4 seats; 2011 1.43% and 3 seats; 2014 1.32% and 1 seat and 2017 1.2% and zero seats!