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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 4, 2017 10:25:16 GMT
As horrible as this is, could this help Labour peel off socially liberal votes off the Greens (and maybe even the Nationals) or are those votes in the bag for them already? They aren't entirely, and it seems to be working - especially as Green co-Leader Metiria Turei has divided moderate opinion by making her admission of historic benefit fraud a major plank of their campaign. |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 4, 2017 15:17:56 GMT
uhurasmazda Am I missing something as repeatedly talking about committing crimes does not strike me as something that would endear oneself to voters?
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neilm
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Post by neilm on Aug 4, 2017 15:56:05 GMT
I find references to the Fifth National Government confusing- I keep assuming it's a national government of the Ramsay Mcdonald type.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2017 19:54:19 GMT
My 2nd cousin is an activist for the nationals.
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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 4, 2017 20:22:50 GMT
uhurasmazda Am I missing something as repeatedly talking about committing crimes does not strike me as something that would endear oneself to voters? She's pitching it as "Things are so bad for single mothers that the only way I could survive was to commit a bit of light fraud - let's sort it out." The Greens actually went up in the polls initially after that because things are pretty bad for single mothers, but that initial surge tapered off pretty quickly and it's beginning to seem like a tactical misjudgement. |
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Post by finsobruce on Aug 4, 2017 20:47:31 GMT
uhurasmazda Am I missing something as repeatedly talking about committing crimes does not strike me as something that would endear oneself to voters? Possibly the most bonkers political pitch of recent times and that's saying something.... |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 4, 2017 22:16:22 GMT
She's pitching it as "Things are so bad for single mothers that the only way I could survive was to commit a bit of light fraud - let's sort it out." The Greens actually went up in the polls initially after that because things are pretty bad for single mothers, but that initial surge tapered off pretty quickly and it's beginning to seem like a tactical misjudgement. Thanks for the explanation. Of course there will be some sympathy but I would have thought any sensible person would have worked out this would be outweighed by being labelled a criminal/welfare cheat. Bizarre. |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 4, 2017 22:21:54 GMT
uhurasmazda A few questions regarding the election: What are the main issues? Are the Nationals popular or is it that the opposition parties are unpopular? What's the realistic scenario for a Labour-led government and what would the sort of policy direction be? Thanks in advance, and best of luck 
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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 5, 2017 2:18:04 GMT
uhurasmazda A few questions regarding the election: What are the main issues? Are the Nationals popular or is it that the opposition parties are unpopular? What's the realistic scenario for a Labour-led government and what would the sort of policy direction be? Thanks in advance, and best of luck I'm mainly responsible for the Auckland campaign, which has slightly different issues to the fight in the provinces and even in the other cities - so in Christchurch, there's mounting anger against National over mismanagement of the earthquake recovery, but that doesn't have much impact up here. So in Auckland, there's one issue which trumps all others: housing. Because of a ludicrous tax system, Chinese apparatchik speculators, and decades of land misuse (the average house here has over twice the square footage of a British house, higher for new builds) we've got a housing bubble and a housing crisis. House prices are unaffordable, The Rent Is Too Damn High, and we've got 250 people sleeping rough in the CBD alone, including people with good jobs. We're the worst country in the OECD for homelessness, and people are starting to take notice. We're also the worst for child poverty and one of the worst for child abuse, but those issues don't seem to have filtered through to the 'normies'. Related to the housing issue is the terribleness of transport in Auckland: the isthmus creates bottlenecks, which makes driving difficult, but it's the only option due to severely limited public transport. We don't even have a public transport route from the City to the Airport. National are the natural party of government - you'd historically only get a Labour government if the Nats fucked up beyond belief - so it isn't a surprise that they're popular. But Kiwis are a moderate people, and when they notice problems, they look for alternatives, and this what we're seeing. The problem has been that the Greens have struggled to cast off their image (their male co-leader used to work for PwC and mentions this as often as he can), Labour have been frankly uninspiring under Andrew, and NZ First are Interesting. However, because we have MMP, as long as we can get National down towards 42%, the Opposition parties can overcome the hurdle posed by National's use of dodgy system-gaming. National govern with the support of their puppets in United Future, ACT and the Maori Party, and if they didn't encourage their voters to vote for these parties in certain electorates, they'd have been much further from a majority in 2014. On our side, our preference is a Labour-Green coalition, for which we've already got a Memorandum of Understanding, and that would look like a standard Labour government (no more tuition fees, house-building programme, immigration reform, trains) plus some Green stuff, like an effort to make our filthier rivers swimable. But as it stands, we'll have win over the support of NZ First, led by Winston Peters. It shouldn't be too difficult: they're essentially Blue Labour mixed with RedKIP mixed with Harold Macmillan in British terms. But it will mean further immigration reform, and he's been making noises about abolishing Maori electorates, which most Maori (who are usually in the tank for Labour) don't want to even think about. It might also be possible to get UF and the Maori Party on our side instead of Peters, but: 1) We're trying to wipe them out this time, and I understand we're succeeding; and 2) They're far too vestigial at this point to be anything but Nat puppets. The final relevant party is The Opportunities Party, an ideologically incoherent and slightly Lib Demmy sort of party set up by millionaire businessman and cat killer Gareth Morgan. He's holding rallies across the country and has bought up most of the prime billboard locations. He will pull in 1-2% of the vaguely progressive vote, which is a problem because that vote will be denied to the parties which can get into Parliament. I have heard rumours that his campaign is bankrolled by National, but I don't think they're quite that scurrilous. Sorry, there's one more party which I think could be relevant: the NZ People's Party, which despite the name is designed to cater to South Asian immigrants. The leader, who has previously been rejected as a candidate for both Labour and National, got 5% in the Mount Roskill by-election last December, and I've just seen a roadside hoarding that they've put up, so they evidently still exist, and could prove to be an annoyance. This is a party, by the way, which is definitely proven to be bankrolled by National. |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 5, 2017 13:41:34 GMT
uhurasmazda Very interesting. There does seem to be a lot of splitting from Labour with Maori, United Future and ACT, and of course Rogernomics. Is this all by chance or has Labour been ideologically non-cohesive and/or had a lot of power hungry individuals? Regarding the coalition, would Labour-Green-NZF be sustainable? From what you've said/I've read, it does look like a bit of big tent.
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Khunanup
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Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
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Post by Khunanup on Aug 5, 2017 16:28:47 GMT
A big good luck from Yorkshire! 🌹 "Top Yorkshireman admits red rose is superior". Give me sheaves of wheat any day... |
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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 5, 2017 21:00:23 GMT
uhurasmazda Very interesting. There does seem to be a lot of splitting from Labour with Maori, United Future and ACT, and of course Rogernomics. Is this all by chance or has Labour been ideologically non-cohesive and/or had a lot of power hungry individuals? Regarding the coalition, would Labour-Green-NZF be sustainable? From what you've said/I've read, it does look like a bit of big tent. The only reason why Lab-Grn-NZF would collapse is Winston's ego - he and his MPs much preferred working with Labour in 2005-8 than National in 1996-9, because we'd actually tell them what they needed to know. However, that ego is prodigious. Rogernomics was the big thing, and we struggled with the legacy of that until quite recently - essentially, with the move back to the centre-left under Moore and Clark, the Rogergnomes split off to form ACT, which was initially your standard classical liberal party. Both Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble led the thing, but it later moved to a more right-populist thing, and now it's just a party for people too socially awkward to vote National. United Future was also a bunch of pro-Rogernomics breaking off with Labour and fusing with a few moderate Nats to try to create the Lib Dems - but they didn't really get it, and only took on board the 'triangulate between the main parties' aspect. They almost certainly wouldn't have split without the introduction of MMP. And of course, National had just as many splits right before the 1996 election as Labour did, because people thought that PR would mean that every party would get a seat. The other major one was NewLabour, which split off to the left while Rogernomics was going on, then partnered up with the Greens and others to form the Alliance party, and then split and declined. Those who are still in politics have tended to return to Labour in dribs and drabs now that our right-wingers are definitively powerless. The Maori Party is a different kettle of fish, and was essentially founded over the Seabed and Foreshore issue, which is only related to the ideological debate in that neoliberal economics fucked over generations of Maori while the liberalism of the Fourth Labour Government promoted their Treaty rights and started to pay the tribes off for land that was unjustly stolen, which created a class of influential tribal leaders with money to splash on election material. |
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Post by Ghyl Tarvoke on Aug 5, 2017 23:48:48 GMT
uhurasmazda A few questions regarding the election: What are the main issues? Are the Nationals popular or is it that the opposition parties are unpopular? What's the realistic scenario for a Labour-led government and what would the sort of policy direction be? Thanks in advance, and best of luck I'm mainly responsible for the Auckland campaign, which has slightly different issues to the fight in the provinces and even in the other cities - so in Christchurch, there's mounting anger against National over mismanagement of the earthquake recovery, but that doesn't have much impact up here. So in Auckland, there's one issue which trumps all others: housing. Because of a ludicrous tax system, Chinese apparatchik speculators, and decades of land misuse (the average house here has over twice the square footage of a British house, higher for new builds) we've got a housing bubble and a housing crisis. House prices are unaffordable, The Rent Is Too Damn High, and we've got 250 people sleeping rough in the CBD alone, including people with good jobs. We're the worst country in the OECD for homelessness, and people are starting to take notice. We're also the worst for child poverty and one of the worst for child abuse, but those issues don't seem to have filtered through to the 'normies'. Related to the housing issue is the terribleness of transport in Auckland: the isthmus creates bottlenecks, which makes driving difficult, but it's the only option due to severely limited public transport. We don't even have a public transport route from the City to the Airport. National are the natural party of government - you'd historically only get a Labour government if the Nats fucked up beyond belief - so it isn't a surprise that they're popular. But Kiwis are a moderate people, and when they notice problems, they look for alternatives, and this what we're seeing. The problem has been that the Greens have struggled to cast off their image (their male co-leader used to work for PwC and mentions this as often as he can), Labour have been frankly uninspiring under Andrew, and NZ First are Interesting. However, because we have MMP, as long as we can get National down towards 42%, the Opposition parties can overcome the hurdle posed by National's use of dodgy system-gaming. National govern with the support of their puppets in United Future, ACT and the Maori Party, and if they didn't encourage their voters to vote for these parties in certain electorates, they'd have been much further from a majority in 2014. On our side, our preference is a Labour-Green coalition, for which we've already got a Memorandum of Understanding, and that would look like a standard Labour government (no more tuition fees, house-building programme, immigration reform, trains) plus some Green stuff, like an effort to make our filthier rivers swimable. But as it stands, we'll have win over the support of NZ First, led by Winston Peters. It shouldn't be too difficult: they're essentially Blue Labour mixed with RedKIP mixed with Harold Macmillan in British terms. But it will mean further immigration reform, and he's been making noises about abolishing Maori electorates, which most Maori (who are usually in the tank for Labour) don't want to even think about. It might also be possible to get UF and the Maori Party on our side instead of Peters, but: 1) We're trying to wipe them out this time, and I understand we're succeeding; and 2) They're far too vestigial at this point to be anything but Nat puppets. The final relevant party is The Opportunities Party, an ideologically incoherent and slightly Lib Demmy sort of party set up by millionaire businessman and cat killer Gareth Morgan. He's holding rallies across the country and has bought up most of the prime billboard locations. He will pull in 1-2% of the vaguely progressive vote, which is a problem because that vote will be denied to the parties which can get into Parliament. I have heard rumours that his campaign is bankrolled by National, but I don't think they're quite that scurrilous. Sorry, there's one more party which I think could be relevant: the NZ People's Party, which despite the name is designed to cater to South Asian immigrants. The leader, who has previously been rejected as a candidate for both Labour and National, got 5% in the Mount Roskill by-election last December, and I've just seen a roadside hoarding that they've put up, so they evidently still exist, and could prove to be an annoyance. This is a party, by the way, which is definitely proven to be bankrolled by National. Good to see that New Zealand is, indeed, an Anglophone country with Anglophone politics. |
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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 7, 2017 0:24:07 GMT
Who is eligible to vote in these separate Maori constituencies and does it not cause terrible confusion with two local campaigns overlapping each other? You are able to identify as Maori if you have 1/64 Maori ancestry, and every five years there is something called the Maori Electoral Option, where you are allowed to switch from the Maori roll to the General roll, and the Electoral Commission do cringeworthy TV ads explaining the difference. There is an anaemic movement to allow people to switch from one to the other at any point, which I imagine could make electorate boundaries a bit interesting. The Maori roll only applies to the electorates, by the way - their Party votes go into the same pot as everyone else's. Around half of the Maori population choose to vote in the Maori electorates, and these tend to be the people who identify most closely with Maori issues, hence interesting things like Maori-electorate voters being more likely to vote for the Maori Party than General-electorate Maori voters. If you don't vote Maori Party in a Maori electorate, you vote Labour. Which is why National and NZ First voters view the system with concern. The result of Maori roll voters being a different kettle of fish to General roll voters is that the two campaigns don't really have much crossover: while most people would doorknock a Maori roll household, the real fight is takes the form of candidates visiting maraes and shaking hands and doing stump speeches, with Maori media also playing a role. Due to tribal aspects, it is also useful to have endorsements from senior leaders. For instance, until this year, Nanaia Mahuta of Hauraki-Waikato electorate has had the support of the Maori King, whose influence is only strong in that area, and now that he has switched to the Maori Party candidate, it will be interesting to see how many, or how few, votes are swayed by this. The frustration is that, because Maori roll households are few and far between outside of specific areas, it is hard to arrange a Maori electorate to doorknock their people - the Maori Party literally don't do this, and Labour only started in 2011/2014, which is what won us those seats. We're getting into a situation where people are realising that Maori roll voters aren't necessarily reachable through the tribal channels, and that's becoming an exciting opportunity. |
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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 7, 2017 1:23:42 GMT
Depends what you want out of your agriculture sector. If you want it to be the lynchpin of your export efforts, then deregulation is a good thing - you don't use tariff protectionism for your core industry, that's just insane. Whether agri is sustainable as a core industry in NZ is another matter, but it makes sense. If, however, you don't want your rivers to be full of e. coli and cow shit, your populace to be one of the most undernourished in the West, and your failing farmers to struggle with mental health issues, you might have different priorities. |
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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 9, 2017 10:55:47 GMT
A small update: Green co-Leader Metiria Turei has resigned, citing press intrusion into her family life in the aftermath of her admission of historic welfare and electoral fraud. Which is fair enough, there's been a lot of people baying for blood, but it might look a little more convincing if she hadn't resigned a couple of hours before the release of a poll showing the Green Party at 8%.
Following the precedent of 2005, when Green co-Leader Rod Donald died a short while before the election, the position will be unfilled until their next AGM, leaving James Shaw as sole Leader for the election. The frontrunners to replace her at that point are Marama Davidson, a Maori woman on the left of the Party, and Julie-Anne Genter, a Canadian woman who is more of a centrist liberal sort. Chloe Swarbrick, another young liberal who will enter Parliament this year unless they fall even further, might also stand and win, but she's extremely young. Anyway, it's not hugely relevant to the election.
The same poll, the first since Jacinda became Leader of the Labour Party, showed Labour on 33%, and a private poll shows us on 36%. Which is a phenomenal increase. But with the Greens down on 8% in both, we realistically still have Winston Peters as Kingmaker again.
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 9, 2017 11:11:41 GMT
uhurasmazda Is Jacinda expected to appeal to National, Green and/or NZ First voters? Just looking at the poll, it looks like the surge in support comes almost entirely from the Greens and NZ First which is worrying.
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Post by uhurasmazda on Aug 9, 2017 11:21:19 GMT
uhurasmazda Is Jacinda expected to appeal to National, Green and/or NZ First voters? Just looking at the poll, it looks like the surge in support comes almost entirely from the Greens and NZ First which is worrying. National and NZ First by being a moderate, attractive woman. Greens by being an urban liberal with more competence than Metiria. What's happening is that there's a reasonable shift from Nat to Lab, but it's being masked by shifts from Greens and NZ First to National. The 36% poll is better in this regard, but yes, there's a worry that the Jacinda effect has been negated by Metiria in terms of building the Opposition vote. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 9, 2017 16:45:04 GMT
I'm struggling to think of a party in the Western world that has had as odd and ideologically intriguing journey as NZ Labour. Fascinating history.
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 9, 2017 22:58:01 GMT
A small update: Green co-Leader Metiria Turei has resigned, citing press intrusion into her family life in the aftermath of her admission of historic welfare and electoral fraud. Just noticed this thanks to @benjl quoting it. Googled it and I'm currently face palming. Beyond parody. |
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