Expats needed to hold back National’s conservatives

Rumour has it that Key’s keen to rebuild the liberal moderate winglet of the National Party in order to resist the McCully-led conservatives. With McCully, Ryall and Collins all playing leading roles, Key knows the electorate will be understandably worried about the privatisation of health, bulk-funding of schools and benefit cuts.

Sources in the Australian media suggest (Crikey, story in subscriber email only) National have apparently reached out to former National candidate and now media magnate David Kirk. Kirk is now CEO of Fairfax media in Australia but has previously worked for the Nats in Bolger’s office. He unsuccessfully contested the Tamaki seat after Muldoon retired (bizarrely losing to Clem Simich). If Kirk takes up the offer, you’d have to think he’d be in line for a very senior role, at least front bench if not top three.

Whether Kirk would risk his career to bolster Key’s leadership or parachute into the leadership himself after Key loses the election is another matter altogether.

The Herald Hits Rock Bottom

The Herald is in full campaign mode now, making outlandlish comparisons between Clark and Fijian dictator Bainimarama (whose rule she opposes).

After questioning by the Herald, “Prime Minister Helen Clark says her criticisms of the New Zealand Herald bear no similarity to the ejection a newspaper publisher from Fiji by that country’s military regime.”

In other news, the Herald reports that Bill English says his farming background bears no similarity to a North Canterbury man’s charge of attempting to have sex with a goat.

Republican models for NZ

I heard Dean Knight on the radio the other day talking to Kathryn Ryan about republicanism and it reminded me to do a quick post on Knight’s earlier but excellent blog post about models for an indigenous Head of State in New Zealand.  I think Dean’s piece is an excellent primer on the issue of what kind of Head of State you’d want to have.  Of real interest is that Knight pulls in arguments from well-respected legal beagles Andrew Ladley and the Palmers about possible options.  I am interested in Ladley’s idea of a ’soft republican model’ (i.e. converting the current GG position into Head of State) versus the ‘hard republican model’ (going to whole hog on designing a new Head of State role).  Personally, I’d go with the soft republican model if only to advance republicanism and yet minimise the risk of disruption.  Our constitution is such an organic and delicately balanced thing, I would be worried about effecting too much change at one time.  But that’s me - risk averse.

Poneke on Moodie

Poneke has done a lovely piece on Miss Alice/Ron Moodie, the larger than life fielding lawyer and former head of the Police Association (ahh, those ‘kaftan’ days!) who has, in recent times, struggled to extricate himself out of his Quixotic legal battles.  Like Poneke, I would like to see Moodie find his feet again and hope he once again shines. Life is so much richer with colourful and well-intentioned characters like Moodie on the scene.

State Services Commissioner

I see Gerry Brownlee is calling on the government to include the National party in any decision on the appointment of the next State Services Commissioner.  I don’t think National has a right to be included in the appointment of this position.  It’s the role of the government of the day to make the appointment and I think to mix that up in anticipation of an election outcome is wrong.  That being said, given the critical role the Commissioner plays in the public service, I think it would be prudent for the government to defer appointing someone to the permanent role until the General Election outcome is resolved.  Prebble will be leaving in June - which means we’re talking about six months at most.  There are some very competent people within the SSC and the wider public service who could act in the role for six months. 

A-bomb powered giant rocket ship to Jupiter!

In much the same vein as wanting sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads, you’ve got to watch this funny yet frightening talk by science historian George Dyson whose Daddy worked on Project Orion - which was DARPA’s first funded project and was aimed at putting a spaceship “the size of the Marriott Hotel” into space and on a rendezvous course with our Solar System’s two largest gas giants. Dyson has plenty of spooky pictures, plans and declassified (and re-classified??) material in his amusing show and tell.

If Dyson’s presentation doesn’t grab you, amuse yourself with this great bit of comedy combining presentation skills and stand-up comedy from Demetri Martin. I like his breakdown of Hummer owners: “Tough Guys - 43%, Pricks - 27%, Douche bags 15%…”. For those who like Will Ferrell, you may be interested to learn the site hosting Martin’s presentation Funnyordie.com is hosted by Ferrell and some of his friends.

Genetic politics

A recent edition of the New Scientist magazine (Issue 2641, 02 February 2008, page 28-31) carried a great article about the possibility of a genetic basis for political persuasion. In the article, Are political leanings all in the genes, New Scientist outlined the work of John Alford and John Jost.

John Alford, a political scientist from Rice University, Texas, studied the political opinions of tens of thousands of twins and found a stronger similarity of political views in identical twins than in fraternal twins suggesting a genetic rather than environmental basis.

The article also discussed the research of psychologist John Jost from New York University. Jost has studied the link between personality type and political opinion. For example, he believes ‘open’ people tended to be ‘liberal’ while those with ‘dogmatic’ personalities tended to be ‘conservative’. He found other interesting correlations such as people with a strong fear of death were four times more likely to be conservative than those not so concerned with death.

Jost’s work is disputed though by some worried about the possibility of politically motivated subjectivity. New Scientist interviewed Evan Charney, a political scientist at Duke University in North Carolina, who expressed concerns about what he described as the “pathologising of conservatism”. He believes Jost’s work and others in academia (which he believes has an inherent liberal bias) carries its own bias and attempts to diminish conservatives as being “dogmatic, routine-loving individuals” while representing liberals as “free-spirited and open-minded folk”.

Miracle Max or Frankenstein?

A patch-up job is apparently underway within ACT. Years after Sir Roger abandoned the party, critical of its addiction to tabloid-journalism, he and Rodney Hide have made up and will attempt to revive the party ahead of this year’s election. So is Sir Roger the Miracle Max character of the Princess Bride, able to revive the nearly-dead ACT party, or is he in fact Frankenstein, once again certain to be overwhelmed by his monster?

Bunnings Hop

Your favourite pollster and mine tries another shifty numbers trick on us with his post on the Bunnings strike.

Davey professes not to have a clue of the details of the dispute but basically sides with the company (he even says the fact that the CEO earns millions while ordinary workers get minimum wage is a “red herring”) and prints a long piece of spin from Bunnings on why they won’t give their workers the same pay as they give the same workers in Australia.

Bunnings says that 80% of their workers are shareholders (they have the choice to purchase $1000 of shares for $1, which is a classic cheap way for a company to give a bonus that may never be realised) . Davey thinks that’s great: ‘I absolutely love the idea of a company where 80% of the staff are shareholders’. You’re meant to think ‘hey, this is a worker controlled company, great!’ and ‘hey, what is the union doing getting in the way? workers benefit from higher wages or higher profits’. But it’s that slight of hand at work again: 80% of workers have shares but that doesn’t mean they have any control over the company. They don’t own 80% of shares. The $1000 holdings of a few thousand Bunnings staff represents a mere fraction of its total stock. The $1000 share gift is simply a disarming tactic designed to make workers identify with the companies’ owners, rather than their own interests as employees. That appeals to righties like Farrar because this little crumb, that the company doesn’t even have to pay anything for, can help to break unions’ collective power and reduce future wage rises.

Worker-owned companies are a great thing, but don’t be fooled in to Bunnings is one.

The Rap On Airport Security

Maurice Williamson is not what you might call a ‘nice’ person. He famously said that ‘at least there were no obese people in the concentration camps’, he was part of a National Government that cut benefits, wages, employment, and the budgets for health and education to pay for upper bracket tax cuts, and he was excluded from National’s caucus for his loud objection to Bill English’s moderate leadership. He is definitely of the ‘tightarse’ faction of National (actually, I think that’s the only faction).

So, it was unsurprising, but still saddening, to see him come out against increasing security at regional airports after last month’s attempted hijacking, even before the report on security measures following that incident had been released. ‘Cost too much’ he said. Turns out the cost will be $20 million a year, that’s $5 each, but that’s too much out of Maurice’s pocket to possibly save some lives. The professionals say some slight security improvements are needed and I, for one, always trust them over the bean-counting Tories.

At least we can be glad we don’t need the overkill security the States now has. If this video is anything to go by, things are getting a bit out of control over there (caution: contains explicit language and a white man rapping)