The fact that they do not have the support is what makes them oppositions. ( The following is longer that I intended, but the last para hints at what credibilty actually means for oppositions)

This government for example, has the support to govern, but they at times make an awful hash of it. I’m not here talking about policy that I disagree with, but the mechanics of governing.

Look at the scramble to get an ETS, where they pork barreled the maori Party to get over the line. The forestry issue relating to treaty settlements needed to be resolved one way or the other, but the least credible way of doing it was the way they chose. It would have been far better to keep the two issues separate and dealt with on their respective merits, instead, neither issue was dealt with on the merits.

Or the gang patch legislation fiasco which ended up trading ACT votes against themselves for the 3 strikes bill.

Or the ACC legislation which Nick Smith had to hold back from bringing to the house because he didn’t have the votes.

Or Gerry Brownlee’s management of the house, with urgency brought in, but then the house having to stop sitting because they run out of things to do.

The underlying issue to this events is that this government, for all it’s popularity, is incoherent. Key has tried an experiment with getting as many parties on board as he can. Good on him, he can do that, but it comes with costs.

Were we to face some sort of dire emergency, the system would survive fine (I’m thinking here about a war of necessity or a natural disaster) but only because the solutions to those types of events are generally non ideological, so parliament tends to act in unison.

With a crisis that was prone to ideological solutions however, this govt would struggle. Should a major trading partner, or a central player in the world economy face a genuine collapse or crisis, what would this government do? There would be the same mad dash for votes in the house that we see over any issue that is ideological, with the lead party, National, flailing around trying to find which of it’s smaller partners it wants to wag it’s tail.

And that is why we have a credible opposition. National are not prepared to do anything too radical, or even to put a mark n the sand about much. Most of the position taking under Key has been done by the junior partners in govt, with the Nats picking sides between them on an ad hoc basis. the explanation for that strange behaviour, is that key is all too aware that in Labour there is a credible opposition that people will vote for if he moves too far from the centrist pragmatic branding that he carved out for himself.

There isn’t an election this year. There is unlikely to be one next year. The next election is likely to be in November 2011. Because a good rule of thumb is that governments that call for early elections tend to get punished for early dissolutions.

Please look for the “engage brain” switch. Turn it on.

It seems that you don’t think they are a credible opposition simply because Phil Goff is polling so low. While that means that they obviously aren’t in any sort of position to govern, that’s all it means.

An opposition, by definition, will tend to be polling lower than the govt. Especially at this point in the cycle, and especially after having so recently been in power for so long.

If you define ‘credibilty as an alternate government’ solely by whether or not they have the support to govern, then you are not really giving any opposition the chance to fill the definition, so your complaint is rather senseless.

I suspect the phrase means something else.

You say:

If the National-led Government was so minded they could do what ever they wanted with the opposition doing nothing.

and I’m, again, a bit confused as to what you might mean.

This is what governments are like. They have the power to govern despite the opposition. That is what governments are, the group of politicians in parliament with the confidence of the house, and the votes to do whatever they want, over the objections of the opposition.

Of course you weren’t quoting it, that’s why I asked you to quote it.

I know the family of Kylie jones. I saw what that animal did to her. Its easy for you to jump on your moral high horse about Garth saying there will be no tears, because you still sleep at night. You go about your normal life happy as larry. The people who are left after a crime like this, never get to go about their normal life again. I had the most tenuous connection possible to Kylie, the crime was almost 10 years ago, and I still wake up in the middle of the night to check the house is locked, even though I know it is.
Things like that are across the board, with her family, her fiancee’s family and her friends. we’re talking about 20 or 30 people who have a huge hole in their lives.

Then there’s Taffy. Someone who not only made a concious choice to rape and Murder another human being, who managed to go ahead with it despite her screams and pleading. But who was comfortable enough with what hed done to take her bank cards afterwards, withdraw her money and spend it on booze and KFC for his mates.
He had a party while her fiancee sat at home wondering where she was, phoning anyone and everyone.
No one has moved on from that, and his parole hearings were going to start in only another 8 years. And everyone was going to have to relive it again from scratch.

His death has brought relief to the family that you could never understand. Everyone reads about these horrendous crimes, and everyone imagines themselves in the families shoes and thinks gosh wouldnt that be awful. But untill you sit there, with your family in ruins, with police coming and going through the house, not giving you information making you wait days for the tiniest scrap, being able to stand at the drive way and see the crime scene and know this persons body is still there. Until you experience a total paradigm shift of genuine horror like that. You can have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

There’s not going to be any tears anywhere.

In fact, I drank champagne.

Also your history is crap. If you want to look at a really pathetic opposition, read up on the 1999-2003 national party. They really did bring a new meaning to the word ‘pitiful’, with exactly the the issues that you’re describing in age ranges.

They basically spent 4 years wondering why in the hell the electorate rejected them and back-biting themselves. This opposition has pretty well pulled itself together in less than a year.

Labour looks pretty good to me as an opposition at present. Mind you, they’d better be. Otherwise I’d be kicking some arse.

In the meantime they’ve managed to get the 1000 cuts campaign underway that is required to destabilize a government (with a bit of help from here). Of course the NACTs are so disorganized that it has been pretty damn easy to date. The wingnuts are starting to do their bit out on the right…

Policy is Labours issue next year, to be done by the end of the year. They started the discussions at annual conference. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes next.

But politicians can’t steel themselves to do what’s necessary, carrot and stick stuff. Those prisoners who haven’t become Hannibal Lecters should be trained and taught skills so they can find a job, and moved out of prison. They would see education as a hard punishment at first. Many have never disciplined themselves to learn at school or have had unknown disabilities, deafness, mental illness etc. The other prisoners, who have shown themselves to be repeatedly violent or repeatedly to prey on society need custodial sentences, long ones perhaps whole of life. Such people may be mentally ill but once it has taken that line, they need to be locked away, for public as well as their own safety.

There is always demand for a bold politician to show leadership (that word has so many facile meanings at the end of the day). But it is usually a cry for more punishment. We need to be selective and keep the worst repeat offenders locked up, and habilitate the others who, once they have proved themselves able to conduct their lives, would be released on suspended sentences into a job on the outside. We should also not let the police trade new identities and clean slates with crims for information, as in a recent case.

The tragedies go on and the media suck up the grief like thick spongey towels. Thursday morning we seemed to have each family member of the murdered Christchurch woman commenting, one reading a prepared statement, about their grief after the killer Peach was convicted. And the same refrain, that the sentence isn’t long enough, that the loved one has had life extinguished while the killer goes on, and it is all true and sad to hear repeated, with so little effective change being made.

I wonder how much hands-on work is being done to reduce habits of violence being passed on from adults to children. There is much education, and publicity as for White Ribbon Day. But do sports people after a few drinks think its okay to attack others? Policemen think its okay to gang up and
intimidate women or men? What are NZ’s attitudes really? And what about the angry, violent women who assault? I wonder is any academic studying the crimes who can put some context on them. Greg Newbold for instance.

How do parents teach their children to handle rejection, bullying, abuse etc.
It would be interesting to know if the demand that women name the fathers of unplanned babies causes resentment and the extreme tension that boils over into attacks on the women, and perhaps the attacks on babies are from fathers linked to the child in this legalistic and moralistic way. I wonder if there is informed comment on the crime stats.

“The Opposition aims to hold the government accountable and to present itself to the electorate as a credible government in waiting’

The opposition led by Phil Goff and the Labour Party has failed to meet these aims.

They have not managed to hold the Government accountable on the issues that really matter and instead have focused on the petty things. The job of the opposition is to ask questions and publically hold the government accountable for their actions. If the National-led Government was so minded they could do what ever they wanted with the opposition doing nothing.

The Labour Party (and Jimmy) have not presented themselves as ‘a credible government in waiting’. They are failing (or should I say “they have not yet achieved’). They are ineffective and present themselves as tired faces with tired policies from the 1980′s. In the latest poll, Phil Goff was at 5%.

They present a man who appears to be drunk onto television prattling on about how bad Roger Douglas is/was and that New Zealand started to go down hill from his time. I’m sorry but, what party did he belong to?

For the Labour Party to gain real traction, they need to have a turnover. They need to remove the old faces and bring in new ones. They need to scrap the leader and his deputy and gamble on a younger face.

As I see it, the real problem with the Labour Party is that their more experienced members are too old and their brighter faces are too young. For the time being, Labour is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I move that this country has no confidence in the Labour-led opposition because they fail to hold the government accountable and they fail to present themselves as a credible government in waiting.