Written By: - Date published: 12:40 pm, November 19th, 2008 - 96 comments
Categories: helen clark, labour -
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A crowd several hundred strong turned out this morning to farewell Helen Clark as she left Parliament as Prime Minister for the last time to present her Government’s official resignation to the Governor-General.
Even though I’m a Greenie, I always find Labour events amazingly heart-warming – such a huge variety of people young and old from all walks of life. And whether they’re officials, members, or supporters, they’re all just ordinary warm, good-hearted Kiwis who believe in a fairer, better New Zealand. It’s always a wonderful atmosphere amongst them. Although this was a sad occasion, there was still a strong sense of camaraderie, and of pride in a job well done.
After Clark’s car pulled away, the out-going ministers were surrounded by supporters. I was standing just beside the cameraman as this pic of Michael Cullen was taken. The woman must have asked him if he was feeling OK and, with that quick good-humoured wit that I’ve always found him to have in person, he smiled ‘well, I’ve had better months’ before bounding up the steps back to work.
So, we farewell the best government of my lifetime and one of our best ever. They and every one of their supporters can be enormously proud that their hard work has made New Zealand a better place for all.
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They didn’t only convince people to stay home. National increased their votes in a number of electorates. Largely, the ones they already won in 2005. But they did increase the swing in parts of Auckland, West Auckland, Christchurch. Not sure about Dunedin and Wellington haven’t looked at the data more carefully. But they certainly increased it in Invercargill and Nelson.
This saturday will see what National managed to do in terms of specials. I expect from 2005 there will be an increase to them and I’m not sure the Greens will pick up a seat. I do think Labour will.
Also watch out for ways to limit enrolments, eg making it harder to enrol, closing the rolls earlier, limiting the rules for special votes. And bringing in electronic voting on machines purchased cheaply from friends of the Republican Party..
TE: Yep thats the legal part. But not the whole of the effort funded.
You forgot the people who actively go out and chase people who aren’t on the roll in the malls and shopping centres. The contracts with NZ Post to assist with people changing address. The large mailouts to identify people on the roll that have moved, etc.
All of those keep the percent of voters up and slowly increasing. It is always noticeable that when the Nat’s get in control of the budget, then all of those wind down, and so does the percentage of people on the roll.
gc: Yes but I’m only really interested in party votes. The main indicator is the lower voter turnout. It looks to me like the NAct increased their vote, but not by a whole lot over 2005. Certainly less than 100k, probably more like 50K. Whereas it looks like the drop in total vote was in the order of 200k+. The total roll is about 2900k people.
The effect of the blogs is magnified by the paucity of time in the MSM. As they slowly cut back, they are over working their people more to fill the content. One of the ways that journo’s cope is to read blogs looking for issues and stories. So the question isn’t how many people read the political blogs, it is who reads them. I’m always surprised at the awareness of this blog amongst people I met in the chattering classes (politicians, academics, and journo’s). You have to remember that there are probably less then 20k people in NZ (more like 10k) who are actually interested enough in politics to actually be active in some form.
Janet: I’m planning on taking a particular interest in highlighting changes to things that affect disenfranchisement… In fact I suspect I’ll try to do it to the level of obsessional – just like the anti-EFA crazies. I think it could be a fruitful way to get people interested in their vote – and who is trying to deprive them of it.
LP, is Phil Goff now an anti-EFA crazy, having announced the day after being elected leader of the Labour Party that the legislation was poorly drafted and that the process was flawed, and that he wants to be part of a multi-partisan rewrite of the legislation?
I agree that it is important that continued efforts should be put in place to ensure voters are enrolled and encourage participation. I would like to see specific examples of when National cut back funding. In which years, specifically, did National do this LP?
I think that far more should be done to encourage overseas voters to enrol and vote as well. Surely with technology and communications we can do far better than getting participation from 5% of overseas voters.
Yes but we don’t always know where that voter turnout has dropped. Arguably because each of the South Auckland seats and to a degree West Auckland saw lower turnout. You would argue that it was far likely that whoever did not vote would have normally favoured a left party. But equally surely some people who favoured the right parties also chose not to vote.
Until special votes are included its only then we can see where there were shifts to National on the party vote side and what the increase is nationwide.
Hands up who thinks it’s a good idea to spend the next 90 days talking about the election?
Ok keep them up please…
Thank you Helen! You showed us all what a real leader looks like. You’re an inspiration and will always be my Prime Minister!
Simon You’re just a wanker, nothing more need be said!!!
I think helen and Michael will be remembered as the leaders who brought back a fair bit of the decency that was taken away by previous governments, and ran the government surpluses that will make it easier to run deficits in the hard times ahead. And if they had lost in 2005, they would also be remembered as the ones who brought honesty back into politics.
But they will also be remembered as the government that let our greenhouse gas emissions rise so dramatically, did nothing to stop most of our lowland rivers becoming polluted, and poured hugely more money into road building just as peak oil was starting to hit.
Iprent
Question
Do the voting paper counters count the votes and are the voting boxes then taken to the electoral office and recounted?
A scrutineer told me that there were several occasions that he had to request the counters to put a vote paper on the correct pile and he told me that was the only count that was taken. There wasn’t a recount.
Which is correct?
[lprent: No they are recounted and often recounted again. The on-the-night is just the provisional job.]
Each booth is responsible for accurate counting of votes.
Over the next few weeks every ballot paper is checked against each person’s name on the crossed off roll. The sticker is taken off each ballot of course and every roll is checked for each electorate to make sure that there are no multiple voters using the same name. I am sure that if there were any discrepancy they would be so discovered.
The NZ Electoral system has been so far remarkably clean, compared with the USA or Zimbarbwe.
“They just don’t happen to be the ones that the low-head (figure it out..) males talk about. Almost all of those are reflections of their own fears.”
And you wonder why labour got such a hiding Imprent? Did you get bullied by any chance at school? The arrogance of the left is breathtaking.
Thanks Ianmac
It is honestly hard to see the last nine years being that memorable at all.
They were not that bad, but they were not fantastic either. We got Kiwisaver which was a move in the right direction and a trainset a move in the wrong direction – but most policies were just a gentle continuation from the previous govenrments of the 80′s and 90′s – as the major reforms from this period were not reversed.
Most of the issues that got media attentin under this labour government were really overblown ie the smacking debate.
Hopefully we will have a government that might show some definitive actions – but that will probably take several years until politicians feel game enough!
chankly
you are a bore
go away and bore osomeonee;lspliz
Thank you Randal – your feedback is noted and appreciated!
So, we farewell the best government of my lifetime and one of our best ever.
The current one looks to be off to a good start.
I pleased they gave Helen a good send off. I may disagree with her style of politics, but on a human level I wish her well.
Brett… WTH?
the left wing of NZ has a lot in common with the american right? well i suppose we all breathe air and eat food. The similarities end there though buddy! I don’t see Helen Clark as a warmonger who organised planes to crash into the NZX building so we could blame it on Cmdr Bananarama or whatever his name is in Fiji, and invade to prove we have bigger balls (and wallets) than the rest of the world.
You need to wake up and smell the coffee you chump
This is hilarious! Why does every article discussion devolve into petty egotistical squabbling? Let me rephrase an example of the best one yet: “Mehhhh you should learn to spell, punctuate and grammaticize”. To me, this represents the epitomy of finely researched blog rhetoric… It is poignant, insightful, eloquent and renders the target speechless.
Unfortunately even such a fine argument as this is still based on one fundamental error in reasoning. That is, the assumption that a person’s ability or desire to articulate punctuation, spelling and grammar through a computer is in some way a measure of their ability to think and reason freely. In fact, it could be argued that such education can, in some cases, cause the reverse.
Hats off to those who have been humble enough to discuss opposing points of view in a sociable manner without cheap jibes aimed at inflating tempers. To the rest, I say drop your ego please. It’s really getting in everyone’s way. Nobody has the right answer, but everybody has a voice… How do you want your voice to sound?
Dave:
What have you been smoking?
Its comments like that, that makes the left look bad. You really think 9/11 was organized by Bush? Get a grip, I don’t like the guy myself, he couldn’t even arrange for water to be delivered to a New Orleans football stadium.
Thankfully, Obama is the President now, and now the extreme left will have a harder time with all their antiamerican BS.
The NZ left is like the extreme right in the USA, they work on fear, a different type of fear, but its still fear.
Dave,
Are you Ev?
Bush is a moron… he couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, I’m suspecting that someone else rigged that shamozzle up, it is true that the buildings collapsed, of that we are all certain, but why has no security footage from the pentagon been released?
I won’t get started, and just for the record, I’m not anti-america I’m anti-fear… I could go on, but thats not the scope of this post
And no, im not Ev… I’m Dave, although Ev sounds like an intelligent woman, I miss her view on this site already
Shameless plug for this site too, it is far more informative than any other ‘news’ site we have in NZ, keep up the good work
Paddy,
You’re new here, aren’t you?
Dave:
I suppose in your world, the earth is flat, and we didnt land on the moon and Bin Laden is a figement of the CIA’s imagination.
This anti US BS doesnt help the left.
Dave: I don’t think for a moment that George Bush would personally organize a building knock down, Nor would he personally have indulged in water-boarding. As always the President is the front-man but the folk standing in the shadows are the one’s to watch and suspect.
The PM’s role is somewhat different but just the same the effect of “back-room” planning has yet to be exposed. Just the same I knew a schoolteacher who had the oft used happy round-face smile. She smiled and smiled but then I noticed that her smile seldom reached her eyes. She was a mean person behind her smile. At a Garage Sale I saw her pay an elderly couple a pittance for some jewelry, but with her nice smile in place. Today I tried covering John Key’s smile in a photo and looked to his eyes and I found……
well, the earth is round, we possibly landed on the moon… bin laden is real, the CIA trained him. we could argue about this all day, and again, i’m not anti US, im anti war mongering for the sake of profits. and thats not false mate, you try and tell me that the war in Iraq was for the ‘good of the Iraqi people’ it was for oil and to produce weapons.
yes Ianmac, thats what I was getting at, the men in the shadows
eureka, someone knows what I’m on about, cheers