Where was Franks?

Davey links to the Salient review of the NZBR’s election discussion on policy at which it sounds like an extensive list of modern approaches to the business of the state were considered.

The Salient review identifies that Rod Deane was there in some capacity, as were the ACT and Labour Party candidates but there was no Nat?

Was Deane there in lieu of Franks?

Is Franks wary of being associated with the NZBR, the major funders of the party he previously represented? What would he have said if asked, as was Labour’s Grant Robertson, for a position on the sale of assets? Would his answer have squared with that of the party’s leadership?

Franks has a difficult race in Wellington Central, possibly made more so by his choice of advisers, but does he intend to face up to the electorate or simply bash out blog-posts? He’s deluding himself however, if he thinks he can pretend he’s not an advocate of the kind of policies being advocated by Roger Douglas, Rod Deane and the NZBR.

Robertson handed Wellington Central

Well, if National was going to be able to beat the sterling Grant Robertson it needed a damned fine candidate - someone who truly reflected the Wellington set: smart, liberal and economically sensible. Labour’s candidate, Grant Robertson, fits that profile extremely well.  National, on the other hand, has decided to go with former ACT MP, Stephen Franks.  A smart but ultra-dry conservative.

Franks a lawyer with an admirable commercial and legal background developed in parliament a strong focus on crime and financial regulation.  Franks proved himself to be a very able MP and he would no doubt make valuable contributions to parliament and National if he were to return.

The thing is, he’s a terrible candidate for Wellington Central and Robertson is a very good candidate.  So, unless Franks scores a decent position on National’s list, he chosen the wrong place to make a charge back into the House.

Whale’s Questions

WhaleOil is a bottom feeder…but he recently posed nine questions supposedly to shame anyone who supported the government. They’re supposed to be killer (snigger). Despite Whale being NZ blogosphere’s own hagfish, I thought we’d post them here where real people might actually get to see them. I am sure no one will be able to answer these cunningly designed Gordian Knots of conundrums. The nine questions are:

1. Why, after eight years of Labour, are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world?
2. Why, under Labour, is the gap between our wages, and wages in Australia and other parts of the world, getting bigger and bigger?
3. Why, under Labour, do we only get a tax cut in election year, when we really needed it years ago?
4. Why are grocery and petrol prices going through the roof?
5. Why can’t our hardworking kids afford to buy their own house?
6. Why is one in five Kiwi kids leaving school with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills?
7. Why, when Labour claims it aspires to be carbon-neutral, do our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an alarming rate?
8. Why hasn’t the health system improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it?
9. Why is violent crime against innocent New Zealanders continuing to soar and why is Labour unable to do anything about it?

Here are some quick answers off the top of my head…I am sure some of you guys can do a lot better.

1. The Reserve Bank says inflationary pressures are coming from a tight labour market, high food prices, high energy prices, weakness in the US dollar and finally “Following several years of strong growth, firms have indicated that capacity remains stretched and that finding both skilled and unskilled staff has become increasingly difficult. These pressures continue to underpin inflation”. So, it’s a combo of things. Global warming, the USA’s ludicrous wars, and the vigorous NZ business sector.

2. By implication Whale is suggesting the government should have intervened to drive wages up. Yay!

3. the Labour-led government has cut taxes. You should read more. A more interesting question is why National never EVER cut corporate taxes in NZ. It took Labour-led governments to achieve this. Why’s that?

4. It’s called capitalism. Oh, and when cartels go unregulated in a market and then a stupid bully beats up on members of the cartel…expect payback.

5. Ummm…they can. I think this is about affordability…but posed so poorly. Dude, try harder.

6. Hmmm…as we’ve previously observed. New Zealand is, according to international surveys (i.e. OECD), churning out some of the smartest, best educated kids in the World. We have to make up ground with disadvantaged kids. That’s where NZ is failing. And looking after the disadvantaged is a real strong National Party selling point.

7. We’re an agricultural nation. Read up.

8. By what measure? New Zealand has a bloody good health-care system. Hey, we could bugger it by privatising it - it’s worked so well overseas hasn’t it!

9. Yeah, well crime genuinely “soared” back in the nineties. Overall crime is not out of control. There has been an increase in violent offending - but it soars like Mt Eden “soars”. It’s a bump. The average length of time people spend in prison has increased and NZ has (shamefully) one of the highest rates of banging up crooks. What more would you expect?

Anyway, you guys have fun providing better answers.

Time to write off Labour?

As DPF comments, the latest polling shows a widening gap between Labour and National. Even if this gap were signaling a significant shift of support to National…the problem remains a viable National coalition partner. National’s past decade of divisive politics and wedging will not be easily forgotten.

And, of course, these early polls do not mean much - it’s the big poll in November that counts and we’ve got months and months to go. As good as this poll seems, if I were National I would be worried. The polling does not show voter support for National as much as it shows a reaction against the Labour-led government.

These polls really show voters are sending a sharp signal of dissatisfaction to the incumbents. Hell, ironically you need only need to read the hysterical celebratory threads over at Farrar’s pit to see the issue. Kiwiblog’s monkeys are cheering the demise of Helen Clark and the Labour administration - but interestingly very few are actually saying this poll shows the strength of the National brand.

So, between now and November, Labour needs to comprehend this message from the voters and work to overcome voter dissatisfaction. National’s problem is that it is probably easier for Labour to achieve this turn around in dissatisfaction than it is for National to convince the electorate that it’s more fit to govern than Labour.

All but the most bigoted Tory would concede that Labour has shown itself to be an extremely competent government. Rather than being a complete breakdown of trust and confidence in Labour, the voter dissatisfaction showing up in these polls is about the accumulation of year’s of minor gripes and issues. It is, in effect, a death by a thousand cuts for Labour - which is in itself an artefact of the length of its tenure. But none of these cuts are, in themselves, fatal and Labour has the opportunity to rejuvenate its brand and heal these minor wounds.

But as we get closer to the General Election and people have to think seriously about the kind of government they want, National will need to show it has the potential to be a more competent and intelligent government than Labour (and its partners) have been over the past three terms. And that means policies, vision and talent. Three things National struggles with.

But the really big danger for National is the size and softness of this early lead. If, as I suggest, Labour starts to respond to voter dissatisfaction (and actually acknowledging there is dissatisfaction might be a good start!) and voters begin to get a clearer picture about National’s unappetizing ideological agenda there is a real risk of a swing back towards the government. The danger for National is that with such an early and significant lead, even a relatively small swing against it has the potential to pick up momentum and develop a self-propelling logic. In fact, the shifting polls can actually inform voter preferences and reinforce perceptions not just reflect them.

In a nutshell, this year Labour has everything to play for and National everything to lose.

Parliamentary Services and the OIA

With all this focus on election finance and Winston’s sudden and theatrical ejaculation that NZFirst had paid back it’s outstanding monies, other fairly interesting aspects of parliamentary accountability and electioneering have slipped into the background. One worthy candidate for a bit of discussion is Parliamentary Service’s OIA exemption. I know the Speaker has talked about it a bit - but it’s as worthy a topic for discussion as DPF’s concerns about the EFB.

I would have thought one of the most important areas for full public disclosure would be Parliament and, in particular, it’s use of taxpayers’ funds. While it is important for people to know how their tax dollars are being used to deliver services, I am sure if you asked a good cross-section of citizens what they would be most interested in knowing about it would be how MPs spend their money. It seems weirdly unbalanced that the Official Information Act places such a heavy (but necessary) administrative burden on government agencies but that, at the very heart of our democracy there is obfuscation and opaque systems.

As I write this, I sense National Party supporters might start chomping their gums in agreement thinking it’s only Labour who has been uncovered as being profligate with our tax dollars. But as we keep pointing out on this Blog, Labour is certainly not alone in blurring the line between legitimate parliamentary expenditure and electioneering.

In fact, to insert a bit of balance, we should recall back in March of this year the Dom revealed that National had used taxpayer funds to set up a new tracking database for managing its constituency affairs (and in doing so building up a comprehensive and tactically important picture of electorate vital statistics and local constituent issues). This story didn’t really ‘bite’ in the public domain although it was blogged on by two fave reads: IdiotSavant and Bryce Edwards.

I think this is a topic worth opening up for public discussion. I personally would love to know how the Leader of the Opposition is spending his funding. But except for generalities, we will never know.

Gone Cold on the Play?

Is it true? Has National jerked its DVD featuring John Key because of “copyright concerns”? Oh dear. Maybe while the vids offline HQ could fix up some of the more misleading half-truths too? A basic fact check might not go amiss.

[Update: Using the "two wrongs make a right" logic DPF is now citing the Progressives as first breaching copyright a couple of year's back.  So, appropriating other's property is OK because a bunch of socialists have done it before?  Hang on, isn't National meant to be a bit obsessive about people's private property.  So, I am not sure of the merits of arguing Jim and co. have set a benchmark for National to measure itself against.   The more DPF tries to spin this, the funnier it's getting.]

Trading on someone else’s creativity?

The Standard has an interesting analysis of the music used in John Key’s latest foray into the hearts and minds of young YouTubers. OK, to all but the most “retarded” listener (sorry, DPF’s metaphor) the music does sound awfully close to Coldplay’s Clocks.  All Your Base’s crude but effective ‘compare and contrast’ shows the similarity is more than superficial.

The web has brought the technology and the convergence of digital formats into an area where it is all too easy to copy the work of others. We’ve all probably been a bit sloppy sometimes.  We’ve previously challenged Davey’s mate, the self-confessed purveyor of “political pornography” about his use of other’s creativity.  For example, one of us challenged his use of NewLine Cinema’s Kill Bill imagery as the basis for his Kill the Bill campaign.  We asked how easy it was to obtain NewLine’s agreement to use the imagery for this purpose - but Cam failed to answer - possibly because no such permission had ever been sought. Hopefully, now the question has been raised (a month or so ago) he’s fixed that.  I hope so - given Killthebill is now also actively merchandising (so it’s a commercial venture with a political dimension).

What makes National’s gaffe palpably annoying is the cheap and nasty threats  the humourless souls in John Key’s office made earlier this year against The Standard.

I think All Your Base and The Standard have issued a challenge.  Is their aural analysis valid?

Australia makes a work choice

As Zoster predicted, since Saturday we’ve seen a flurry of attempts to ‘lesson-jack’ the Rudd victory in Australia. So I thought it might be worth looking back to what Colin James wrote in his Herald column two weeks ago:

But if the coalition looks like losing, those voters will go to Labor and he will lose his seat along with his prime ministership, the first to do so since Stanley Bruce in 1929. His otherwise impressive political epitaph would be forever clouded.                

And Howard would share with Bruce that both were felled by a tough stand on workplace relations. Labor’s polling has shown a consistent 2-1 majority against Howard’s “work choices” laws (similar to the 1991 Employment Contracts Act in New Zealand) which were to be the crowning legislative achievement of his fourth term.

I’m picking that Davey and his mates at HQ won’t be smart enough to take that lesson from Howard’s end.

P.S. Can’t help contrasting James’s analysis with my old pal Colin Espiner whose keen journalistic instincts couldn’t detect any substantial issues in the Australian election, despite being flown over there at his readers’ expense. He belatedly discovered Work Choices in his post the day after the election . . .

P.P.S. I did find his post about how the Aussie campaign is run rather interesting, tho’. Better on tactics than issues I guess.

Giving it a bit of the ol’ english

Americans use the phrase ‘giving it a bit of english’ meaning to spin something - usually a ball (like a billiard ball). I reckon over at Kiwiblog DPF is giving it a bit of english for English and is spinning for all it’s worth.

As we have opined frequently on this blog, DPF is a pretty loyal member of the travelling circus that is the National Party. But he does have personal loyalties too. DPF is clearly in the pro-English camp. So, it’s fascinating to watch how he spins for National but sometimes within that subtly spins for English.

It’s clear Davey wants to whistle-up support Bill’s cause whenever he can. But DPF also knows he has to be careful - the timing is lousy. And, for the Party’s sake he’s got to talk up Key. The EFB has proven itself to be a great opportunity for DPF to pump Bill’s cause while still seemingly doing the Party’s bidding.

Take the latest bit of English english - the YouTube footage of Bill’s second reading yell speech. Davey’s subtle spruiking of English was sufficiently overt to set some of the dogs running:

“it seemed to me the kind of speech a leader would give, more for the troops than the opposition, when they feel they are on the front foot. Has John Key given a speech like this yet?”

Really? English is showing leadership and Key’s nowhere? I see Davey jumped in to defend the honour of his Leader. Not!

So, if we take Farrar’s efforts as being emblematic of wider sentiment within the wider Party, I think it fair to speculate that Key has got some real problems ahead.

Labor Won: I am now taking bets…

OK, it looks like Labor has romped home in the Australian Federal election.  Great stuff.  Good bye and good night, John Howard.  I don’t know whether or not Howard’s lost his seat - but, like Mardy, I am hoping so.  It would be a suitably ignominious ending to a despicably cynical and manipulative “hollow man”.

But here’s the thing:  What do you think the odds are before Farrar and his Tory paymasters attempt to appropriate Labor’s victory to their own ends?  You know something like:  Long term government knocked out because people wanted a change.

The Tories won’t see this as a smart electorate rejecting divisive and greedy politics. They won’t see this as an electorate seeing through the crap and realising the Coalition would say or do anything to win elections. They won’t understand the Australian result is a wake-up call for their own shabby connivance’s and wedge politics.