Written By: - Date published: 2:02 am, November 9th, 2008 - 141 comments
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Lynn Prentice
That was incredibly close. National plus Act plus probably Peter Dunne have scraped a small majority.
How close is shown in the election results table.
59 (nat) + 5 (act) + 1 (dunne) = 65. Less one for the speaker is 64 in a parliament of 122. That would mean that they have extra seats in hand for passing legislation after they get a majority. But because the number of seats are limited, it looks like a ‘waka’ jumping paradise because every MP is important. This feels to me like the scenario like the National/NZF coalition of the 1990′s.
The question is if a newbie politician has the skills required to maintain a coalition. Imagine if they do anything that Act objects to and will vote against. That is a hamstrung coalition because National would have to seek external support. Of course they can seek support outside of those two support parties, but there aren’t that many parties that they could work with on the ‘left’. Helen at least had parties within working distance on both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ of themselves.
It should make for an ‘interesting’ coalition agreement because Act has their own agenda. It will be a case of the “tail wagging the dog” as various right commentators have described this type of coalition. But without a alternative partner on particular legislation as Helen managed to do.
It is no wonder that the National politicians are trying to hammer the message of people moving in the same direction – they need the help. It is going to be quite amusing watching the National politicians contorting themselves to inoculate themselves against the dead embrace of Act. They need another party with enough votes to work with on the left of them – there really isn’t one that they can easily work with.
In the meantime it is time for the ‘left’ to start working on being the most effective opposition (in their unique ways) that they can be. I’ll probably blog on Helen standing down tommorrow after I get over the shock.
[Update: The speaker does get a vote.]
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the two people (so far) I have asked who didn’t vote said something like “there was no one good to vote for this year.” If labour had had more positive ads at least one of their votes would probably have been in the bag maybe both.
to be fair national’s billboards were terrible. you’d have to crash your car to finish reading all their fine print.
The Winston peters campaign damage was done by Owen Glen rather than by ACT or National, and that was because Labour was interpreted as being indiscreet with its comments about him. A little more tact and it would not have been a problem and Winston would still be in and you’d have a Labour coalition.
What planet are you guys on? It was a disaster. Better brish up your CVs. Oh yeah, not much call for lapdogs in the real world.
[lprent: Note - probable troll. Definitely hasn't read the About or Policy]
Oh and in case you have forgotten, Key now has to face up to a CIR on the S59 Repeal sometime soon. Wonder how much he is looking forward to opening up that can of worms?
You lost.
I asked a question and i was censored, great democratic action, reminds me of the Labour party’s electoral finance act.
[lprent: we took you at your word (that you'd never be back). Are you saying that your word isn't worth anything? Perhaps you should read the About and Policy. It could save you from aggravation if you wish to comment here]
KJ,
You promised to leave. Now you are back. Your actions are the 180deg opposite of your words.
I wonder if you voted National because you recognised a Party of kindred spirits?
PS Yes we know we lost. Why did you feel the need to point that out?
It’s closer than some of the National / ACT folk care to accept.
The 6% or 7% who went to National this time, backed Labour for 3 elections. If National hurts these people they will go back to Labour. I’m betting these voters aren’t captains of industry….but rather employees of one sort or another.
Also interesting in a down economy would be sacking thousands of “bureaucrats”….
That would make one wonder……..
Steve said:”The 6% or 7% who went to National this time, backed Labour for 3 elections. If National hurts these people they will go back to Labour. I’m betting these voters aren’t captains of industry .but rather employees of one sort or another.”
Very true. I wonder what will happen when they find out that the so-called Anti-smacking Referendum changes nothing?
When crime stays the same or rises?
When they tell Parnell that the new prison will be built in their back yard?
When the unemployed numbers rocket?
When they realize that their Kiwisaver is only half as big?
When they have to employ a lawyer to get their ACC entitlement?
“Oy John Key. You over-promised us!”
Promises? I didn’t see many.
“I’m ambitious for a better NZ” and “It’s time for a change” don’t count.
“Promises? I didn’t see many.
“I’m ambitious for a better NZ’ and “It’s time for a change’ don’t count.”
And he STILL got in! How good is THAT!
Nonsense, there were lots of promises. The question is, will he be held to them?
Julian, are you hoping Key keeps his centrist promises or are you hoping for a big shift to the right?
Time will tell. I hope he stays relatively honest and can carry some of his stallar business credentials over to his new job.
Centrist is good by me. In this climate a step too far to the right is pretty dicey I’ll admit…
Oh and by the way, after Cullens tax cut promises, I wonder what the mini-budget he was going to deliver in December was all about.
NO TAX CUTS.
I’ll bet the farm on that one…
I’ll bet the farm on that one and loose it.
The tax cuts had already been embedded in legislation. Undoing them would have required a new bill in Parliament, and this could not have been justified unless some extraordinary new information comes to hand over the next month or so.
In which case both Cullen and Key would have been hypothetically in the same boat, and faced with the same unpalatable options.
Besides the bad old Muldoon days when govts could hide bad Treasury data from an incoming govt (and the nation) are long gone. These days we have PREFU’s and mandatory updates on a very regular basis.
Hell you could even check the Treasury website for yourself. It really does contain all sorts of hard information anyone with pretensions to being a political tragic should know.
Care to quote that piece of legislation?
Actually, go one better.
Convince me that he wont “defer” these cuts, just like he did in 2007.
Then I’ll believe you.
[lprent: Convince me that he would. Convince me that National won't leave the country in government debt paying additional taxcuts that we cannot afford. That is a extremely stupid style of argument - specifically it is a Act troll technique. Convince me that the world is round - I bet you don't know the arguments in any of these cases]
Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts, Annual Rates, and Remedial Matters) Act 2008
A few minutes google monkeying. In future you will do your own homework.
Now about that farm; I trust it’s a decent milking herd we are talking here, and not some loss making flock of hill-maggots you’re trying to offload onto me.
[lprent: fixed: extra single quote in the href]
Can someone fix the link please? I tried four times to get it right but it keeps changing it’s format on me.
Hahahaha, yes and if you have the majority in Parliament, you just pass another piece of legislation deferring it.
Thats dead easy… something similar to last time around. Cullen is as cunning as a shithouse rat and meaner than my Scottish flatmate.
Plus they are bloody stingey tax cuts, he might as well not have even bothered.
(Yes I do earn a lot of money, I’m one of the “rich pricks” that Cullen despises)
[lprent: Also a characteristic of the breed of act troll. Unable to argue coherently, has no actual content, does maniacal laughing, and claims to be rich - probably a wannabee. All pretty boring. ]
Changing or introducing new legislation in the manner and circumstances you suggest would not be a trivial matter. The political cost would have been immense, and would have been completely unthinkable, unless some absolutely compelling external circumstances dictated it.
Of course such hypothetical circumstances would have applied equally to a Key led govt.
Cullen is as cunning as a shithouse rat and meaner than my Scottish flatmate.
Now you reveal your true lack of character. You clearly have never met the man, know nothing about him, or his values. If you ever do have the pleasure of spending some time with him, and I hope that maybe you will one day, then don’t feel too bad about what you just said… you didn’t know any better.
PS This ‘flatmate’ of yours. Still living with your mum eh?
Of course Labour never had a majority in parliament so it’s a bit of a moot point.
What do you think about English’s tax cuts? Do you think they’re too stingy as well? Do you think he’ll stick to them?
Good grief JG. He’s gone… get over it LOL. You’ll have to find someone else to bag. Speculating what his mini-budget would have been?
The only then thing that is certain is the likelihood of something more prudent than the new borrow, spend and give approach promised.
Funniest thing about this election was the supposedly purist ACT supporters creaming themselves about an incoming government that has every indication of limited fiscal discipline.
Changing or introducing new legislation in the manner and circumstances you suggest would not be a trivial matter. The political cost would have been immense, and would have been completely unthinkable, unless some absolutely compelling external circumstances dictated it.
Like the worst global financial meltdown since the 1930′s perhaps?? That would probably do it. I hear in the USA the government is stumping $700 billion to bail out a few banks. Deferring tax cuts is small fry.
Not to mention he has done it before. And most media sites were suggesting thats what it was all about.
Not having met Cullen does not do anything to my character. Not having any desire to meet Cullen however probably means I have a certain amount of taste.
What name were you trolling under before the election Julian?
Oh, the irony. You’re entirely right of course – like as the polls turned against Labour they spent all their time in Melbourne on a fishing expedition.
As for “not a landslide” – dood, Labour lost 20% of it’s support this election. National has more seats than Labour/Greens combined. It was a rout and will take Labour a hell of a long time to rebuild from this for the following reason:
Voters have roundly rejected the Left bloc (in two elections now). If Labour elects Cunliffe it will show that they’ve learnt nothing from their defeat. If they elect Goff then the Left of the party will start to plot his downfall.
Labour is in a very precarious position – if National remains in the centre then Labour will be out in the cold for a very long time.
Makes me chuckle that you all get worried about Sir Roger, who is without question, our best ever finance minister and popular overseas. My Slovak friends love him for saving their economy and for giving them flat tax which took Slovakia ahead of us in growth and on the OECD tables. But if you like playing the evil baby eating fear thing then be my guest.
Labour got slaughtered – but I am sure you’ll dust yourselves off and be back. Whether or not you guys will do it nicely or in another nasty campaign is still to be seen.
Didn’t exactly get slaughtered. The right (Nat+Act+UF) has a bare majority, and National will have to get a left party to vote with them if they want to keep it.
Clint, you’ve completely avoided my point. Regardless of the merits of Douglas, his philosophical position is poles apart from the National policy articulated during the election. Which is to massively increase spending, including investing in broadband, when Douglas very clearly believes in reduced government spending and not have a stake in infrastructure.
The only solid common ground between the two is the law-and-order get-tough verbage.
lprent – it was a bloodbath. Consider the fact that if the Maori Party get involved you’re looking at 70 MPs all on the same page. That is remarkable and not at all a “bare majority”.
“My Slovak friends love him for saving their economy and for giving them flat tax which took Slovakia ahead of us in growth and on the OECD tables.”
So nothing to do with the EU money then?
Nice unemployment rate there as well.
Roger Douglas is a zombie. Those who suffered his shock horror 1980s will soon be chasing him with pitchforks.
The rich white folks of Epsom now run the country. Rodney is the new Winston.
National’s win was quite modest given the huge power concentrated in their backers.
The election was lost by Labour in the cities where their heartland stayed home or went to the beach in their thousands. The non turnout for Labour in Auckland was spectacular, averaging 7000 missing votes in each of the South Auckland electorates.
In every Labour or swing electorate in the cities for every new party vote that National got, 2, 3 or more former party votes for Labour didnt turn out.
That’s not rejection, but it is demoralisation, and the cause of it I would say is the right’s control of the media which sets the agenda and which shapes public discourse in the absence of any strong political labour organisation firmly rooted in the localities.
My hunch is that many Labour voters were simply inundated by the flood of rightwing crap laid down as authoritative by the media barons and the rightwing power brokers ‘time for a change’ and went with the current.
The lesson for Labour is to rebuild its roots in the working class neighbourhoods with local and union based memberships that can motivate, mobilise and moralise the heartland from below. Fortunately many of the uppity middle class that have tried to escape the working class will get unceremoniously dumped back into it.
They will find common cause and get plenty of opportunity to build solidarity as this rightwing government unloads shit upon their heads over the next three years.
lprent, how come ‘author-change’ doesn’t figure..? jo had to leave, so I’m here – ‘northpaw’. This text to explain.
Election over. One winner, one loser. OR maybe many of either.
But the issue of governnace remains. Governance in a crisis. In need of cohesion. Did the folks who “spoke” Saturday deliver that! I doubt it.
So the crap-callers like Clint Heine – yeah sure a pov is okay, but leaning on it is irresponsible! – better get sorted. Themselves. Tubetime cometh.
Public responsibility movement anyone..? More on this later; suffice to say how the so-called western economic model of corporate responsibility is bust big time.. skills from that past experience amount to PM-lite. At best. At worst…
Can anyone help with this question: how many voters in the total votes cast DID NOT party vote?
Tks to the guy above for where to look re govt.nz site, but I don’t see indicators of this kind of data.
Why do I want it..? To try separate out personaility factors from broader-based voting. As several folks have pointed out the Labour vote dipped some in a number of electorates.. and in the booth my friend attended. His wife saying how he wouldn’t vote, whereas last time in the city you couldn’t keep him out of the place!
“The rich white folks of Epsom now run the country.”
Rave, are whites morally inferior to other groups? I take it that you don’t like the ‘rich’, does the fact that some of them are white add to your dislike of them? Why else would you feel the need to mention their ethnicity?
exbrethren – seems your words are wasted on Craig. As I posit, the supposedly highly principled ACT supporters are not so when it comes to grabbing a share of power. He wants to avoid that point altogether. Others do not though:
“John Key is sometimes to the left of Helen Clark – and that worries me for the future of NZ” – Rodney Hide, Newstalk ZB today (may not be verbatim, but close)
Seems the theory that there will be some inevitable tensions in this coalition are not just “Roger eats children” fearmongering after all, but based on reality.
Craig – if you’re still with us – doesn’t it worry you that your party will be propping up a government supporting some extremely “socialist” (specifically anti-capitalist) policies?
All that furore over Labour’s intervention on the Canadian Pension Fund involvement in AIAL, and I haven’t seen a single negative comment on the much larger issues of the Key fibre plan effectively nationalising Telecom’s copper infrastructure (and that is not the greatest of that particular policy’s weaknesses).
captcha: extortions is…
Ben R:
Why not? Rich white folks always ruled. Epsom is key because it allows National to rule with Wodney. Other wise they would have to rely on the MP which might prove a bit tough since they are not rich white folks.
Timewarp:
I wouldnt call bailing out the banks “socialist” except in the sense of “socialising” the losses of the bosses. Its certainly not “anti-capitalist” as its designed to save the system.
I think Key will live with the Telecom monopoly after all most of the big transnationals are monopolies or oligopolies. He could spin off some contracts for other players to spread the dough around his mates.