Posts by Dennis Frank
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
TVNZ like the angle: featured in Q+A & then they had Bolger promoting it as lead story tonight on their news. Framed to appeal to the common sense of viewers.
The notion that the Greens suffer under a self-imposed handicap via retention of the leftist parliamentary alignment isn't new or rocket science, of course. Gareth Morgan made much of it after the 2014 election, calling for the establishment of a blue-green party. It wouldn't surprise me if he believes TOP is one, but I haven't noticed anyone in the media calling it one. Perception/reality?
Also saw David Clendon commenting on it on The Nation. He described the Greens traditional stance (neither left nor right) as a nineties thing. Obviously Green parliamentarians prefer to mask their ideological departure from the broader Green movement, but I appreciated that he followed up with a suggestion that they'll need to return to it. They do need to: but it won't be politically feasible this cycle if we get a change to a government that includes the Greens, because we will then need to give collaboration a chance to work in that context.
-
Hard News: The Day After Tomorrow, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Your Bluegreens link brings up " 404 Error. That page was not found.
Strange. I copied their website address into here, never had that technique fail before. Anyway if you select the "About Us" tab on the page you linked to, you'll get the one I was looking at with the photo of the five ministers, Blinglish dead centre.
-
Hard News: The Day After Tomorrow, in reply to Trevor Nicholls,
If anyone can find me a genuine friend of the environment making the case for a blue-Green coalition I'd be interested to read it.
Me too. Kiwis who relish the opportunity to demonstrate intellect are always hard to find. A rationale could be found in the wake of the Values Party schism, in the writings of Guy Salmon (http://www.ecologic.org.nz/?id=75) but since the Progressive Greens floated on our political waters like a brick nobody has been game to try.
A principled case for such a coalition would have to address the functional part played by the blue-greens within the National Party (https://bluegreens.national.org.nz/about_bluegreens) and explain why that group has been prevented from demonstrating relevance in the MMP context. You'd think that having five ministers in the current govt including the PM would give them considerable mana in the public mind, eh? Given that the Green movement has been making way more progress globally via blue-green tech than red-green talk, the lack of brand differentiation seems peculiar.
-
Huh. Reading Glen Jameson's defense of National's ads & various responses from critics seems much ado about nothing. Political attack ads get made by ad agencies because advertising is propaganda & the pros do it best. What's all this about expecting ads to tell the truth?? If the left really wanted that a leftist govt would have legislated accordingly before most of us were born!
I do share the leftist moral outrage somewhat: watching Blinglish tell the nation "everyone agreed" that the eleven billion dollar Labour hole was real proved he's totally full of shit. The Nats couldn't even get a single prominent economist into the media to say they're right. Unless GJ can provide evidence to the contrary, that was a blatant lie. Uttered by Joyce, then repeated by the PM.
Still, Joe Public has had the opinion that all politicians are liars for a long time. So no amount of being offended is ever going to be effective in stopping elections being won by good liars, right?
-
Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to pohutukawa tree,
Time to reduce MMP threshold to 2% and make broad (2-5 party) coalitions the norm.
Then, the required skills for politicians would be: collaboration, communication, relationship-building, authenticity and longer, more enduring political cooperation
Yep, I've been thinking likewise. A design that provides an incentive structure to extend consensus on common ground. It would reflect the actual diversity within Aotearoa, creating an enhanced sense of political equity. The progressive part of the Green vote that migrated to TOP would not have been wasted.
-
Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Katharine Moody,
This is a great re-read;
http://www.nzfirst.org.nz/rt_hon_winston_peters_budget_speech_2017
Taken at face value it provides reasons to assume he'll be favourable to the Labour/Greens option. May seem a tad naive to assume he means what he says, but I'm inclined to regardless. I suspect he's now primarily motivated by the need to create his legacy.
Provided Labour pull finger and transcend their sectarianism, a new government designed on common ground is feasible. I'm confident James and Jacinda have the goodwill and intelligence required to produce a suitable outcome. I'm not confident that Winston is sufficiently adept to yield to the public interest when necessary.
He probably has a sense that the win/win/win three-way coalition is possible, and I bet his bias against the Nats is so strong now that he won't repeat that mistake from 20 years ago willingly, but being stubborn and holding out for all his bottom lines could yet be the character flaw that denies him an exceptional legacy.
-
So the youthquake came in at 0.9%. Kinda like a tsunami coming in here six inches high after travelling across the Pacific. The Couldn't Care Less Party measures 21.2%, coming third after National & Labour. No point voting when the same old shit happens regardless who wins, eh?
-
We're likely to get our first ever refugee into parliament due to the usual boost to the Greens from special votes. Golriz is a specialist in human rights law, so will add considerable value. Her bio describes her as Kurdish/Persian (Iranian).
As James Shaw has been pointing out, the three parties who campaigned to change the government have a substantial majority. Presuming they will collaborate is unwise: none of them signalled any such collaboration to the electorate in advance of the voting. The failure of the leftists to invest the MoU with any substance instead signalled to the centrists that they must keep supporting NZ First, so they did.
The congenital inability of leftists to comprehend that swing-voters are centrists who control the outcome of our elections is sociopathic. Most humans learn from experience. Leftists don't. It has long been obvious that our governments change when centrists can see a viable alternative government in waiting. The leftists who control both Labour & the Greens gambled that they didn't need to provide that collaborative design. A foolish gamble, competing instead of collaborating. Zero-sum thinking that fails to cater to our common interests.
Best outcome now depends initially on the extent to which Winston has already identified common-ground policy priorities with Labour/Greens. If he reaches a significant extent of consensus in the preliminary negotiations, a viable three-way coalition becomes more likely. I'm seeing the preliminary election result as a verdict on neoliberalism: as Gareth Morgan said, the nation voted on the basis of self-interest, and nearly half the country want the status quo. If Winston really sides with those who aren't getting the trickle-down, since he now has the opportunity to help shape a genuinely-progressive new government his negotiating strategy ought to prioritise that design.
-
Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to linger,
The previous day's advance votes are not tallied until 2pm on polling day – but the actual results are not scrutinized and therefore are not released until after close of polls.
Okay, but I was commenting on the basis of seeing a couple of political reporters telling us that the results from advance voting are likely to be reported soon after 7pm. One would think they'd have inside knowledge to justify that expectation.
Also, if I were running the process efficiently I'd expect my counting team to report their tallies at the end of each voting day of the advance voting period, so the tallies get regularly updated, so as to enable today's count to be expedited. I grant our civil service haven't become famous for having a culture of efficiency. Anyway, we'll see early evening if the advance voting tallies get reported promptly.
-
If the skewing effect on the polls since advance voting started is real, highly-motivated voters who are quick off the mark will already have been tallied prior to the polls closing tomorrow and the first media reports thereafter will be of their tally.
If they mostly want a change of govt we'll see evidence of a swing to Labour/Greens as these first counts are reported - but later in the evening it'll even up (due to most traditionalists voting tomorrow). If this effect happens, early electorate results may contradict recent polling to a surprising extent, but then things will even out later in the evening...