Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, December 17th, 2007 - 91 comments
Categories: polls -
Tags: polls
From The Dom:
A One News Colmar Brunton poll last night has National on 54 per cent, 19 points clear of Labour. A Three News TNS poll has National with a slimmer lead – 51 to 36 – but still well ahead.
Well I doubt they enjoy being behind but this can hardly be a surprise for Labour – with The Herald waging war over the EFB as well as continued fallout from a variety of issues. So National’s looking to govern alone but would anyone really want them to?
It seems to me that their leader, for all his style, is still a policy lightweight – having handed off all of the hard stuff stuff to Bill. Key’s job of late has seemed to consist mainly of tours around the country smiling for photo-ops, shaking hands, and kissing babies, broken up only by the demands of a staring role in a Hollywood-style promotional video, short on substance and unanimously panned by the media.
I suppose he’s thinking ‘stick with what you’re good at’ but I’m not sure the electorate will fall for it forever – particularly as scrutiny is brought to bear as the election approaches.
Whenever the Nats have released policy this year it’s been a fiasco and the public has been left with the uneasy feeling that there may be more going on behind closed doors than Key is letting on. English has mused about cuts to super, Ryall accidently let the cat out of the bag on uncapping GPs’ fees, and Key has been evasive over his policy on asset sales.
Given National’s sustained series of policy gaffes so far I’m betting that Labour’s not writing off its chances just yet.
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I like chardonnay.
and Whit.
Don’t think much of kumbaya, but think that some ‘no hitting zone’ threads could be nice. Talk about funny video’s as TDS suggested, or books, movies and whiskey.
Come on Billy, I last visited this site (for more than a cursory glance) about three days ago and you were banging on outing Robinsod.
Do you love or hate the man?
“some ‘no hitting zone’ threads could be nice.”
Nice idea.
Do you love or hate the man?
Are those the only choices?
Be nice if we could just get along…
Billy, the ‘Sod is too cool a creature to for me to retire it completely. Think how disappointed Redbaiter would be…
Captcha is “Metropolitan hexes” – good think I’m leaving for the country soon…
If you could assemble 10,000 people into one organisation you’d have one of the largest political parties in the country!
No, you’d have a single issue lobby where a multitude of people agree on one thing and can easily disagree on everything else. Have to be something pretty big, crucial and to the core values of a lot of people, something perhaps like free speech or distrust of politicians or I don’t know…this.
A political party is a different thing entirely, utilising people who agree with each other more than they disagree. Getting people to join a political party is alwaysd harder as it requires subsuming to some degree personal veiwpoint to the practicality of the party.
Notice how contorted you have to get to invent a situation where this effects ordinary people?
“Contorted” like Greenpeace or the WWF or the Cancer Society or the Sensible Sentencing Trust.
so the Cancer Society is going to say “vote Nat” or “change the government”? I doubt it
Is the government about to drop the smoking age to 12? I doubt it too.
“I read that ‘Wasp Factory’. A very disturbing little read.”
No disagreement there. Banks can be a very unsettling author.
Agree, have failed to finish “The Bridge” twice. Like the space opera more as it is faster paced, though still a bit disturbing.
Actually that is:
I agree his fiction is disturbing and have a preference for the space operas.
We are still only talking about 4% -5 % here
I would be worried if the tv3 poll results were the same in Aug 2008 . But I can’t see it.
To win National need to keep Key in the back seat as long as possible and they (the NAts) must NOT talk policy for as long as possible if that strategy works, then hey thats what people want.
To win labour needs to pull off something big that the public will love but the Nats would have to fight
Like.cancel the announced Tax cuts , use up all the surplus and give Doctors , Nurses and Midwifes huge salary increases to combat the brain drain to other countries. A sure fire vote winner in my opinion. The Nats would hate it. The Public would be very supportive and it would not be that inflationary
“Contorted” like Greenpeace or the WWF or the Cancer Society or the Sensible Sentencing Trust.
Unaha – if you want to run this kind of argument you should use the AA. I think it’s the largest organisation in NZ, with over 1.5 million members. Hence $120,000 works out at 8c per member! Never mind the price of a dozen beer, they don’t even make a coin that small!
This shows the problem of costing political advocacy on a “per member” basis. To accommodate the AA the limit would need to be so high as to be utterly meaningless.
Most democracies have legislation that sets limits on spending for political advocacy. We do too. Now you might want to argue that the limit of $120,000 is too low, and I might even agree with you, but you can’t argue on the basis of per member costs, without destroying the concept of meaningful limits utterly.
IP – way back in the discussion you said…
“You conveniently stopped making that call when Michael Cullen flip-flopped on tax cuts, but said he wouldn’t make any announcement until his last budget.”
Basically that is crap… Cullen never ‘flip-flopped’. He has been signalling the conditions required for tax changes since he started at finance. Anyone with half a brain could have figured then out just by reading the budget on the balance sheet side.
There have always been three obstacles to doing tax cuts.
1. The enormous debt burden left over from Muldoon in the 70′s and 80′s. Guess what – we finally killed it this year. The goverment doesn’t have the debt burden that required at one stage 25% of the tax take to service the interest alone! Effectively I’ve been helping pay off bloody muldoons “think big” and “supplementary minimum payments” my whole working life.
2. The Fiscal Responsibility Act that Ruth Richardson put in, specifically to prevent the type of fiscal antics muldoon did. It means that if the government has to account for future liabilities in the current budgets. So when people currently talk about a surplus, it is total crap – they’re taking that from the governments equivalent of the profit and loss rather than from a balance sheet. The balance sheet shows a large liability going out to about 2030 . About 30% is prepaid via the Cullen fund. Kiwisaver doesn’t help as it is tagged to individuals. Rest is either coming out of taxes or debt – which then gets paid back out of taxes.
3. Taxcuts are almost inherently inflationary. Yeah everyone says they’ll save it or invest it. Howver the history of past taxcuts in a number of countries says that it goes straight into consumption – and therefore straight into the price/wage system. You put money into an economy when it is slowing down – not when it is running well. Otherwise it just starts to overheat. The economy has been running close to boil since the 99.
So as I see it, this is the first year that tax cuts could even be looked at. It looks to me like we’re slowly moving into a slowing economy after probably our most sustained post-war boom. Parliament should have already done something about the fiscal drag on the tax brackets. A tax cut is appropriate now if only to correct that problem – but then the brackets should be indexed!. That is assuming a slowing economy in 2009 – and the usual 12 month lag between announcement and implementation to do the legislation and mod the payroll systems.
However we can’t go into debt – the looming superannuation burden is too damn close, and we’ll have to go back into debt to cover it. After spending 30 years getting rid of my parents government debt (I wasn’t voting at the time), I bloody well don’t want to go back into it because some snot nosed idiot like Key has a problem reading a balance sheet (say wasn’t that part of his old job ??)
“..use up all the surplus and give Doctors , Nurses and Midwifes huge salary increases to combat the brain drain to other countries.”
What brain drain? Are you talking about the same people Cullen said were economic illiterates and NZ would be better off without them? Sorry, but you cannot have your cake and eat it.
What about the rest of society? The productive sector is crying for tax breaks, although Cullen has found excuse after excuse not to grant them.
Do not be selective: return the money to its rightful owners!
“Basically that is crap. Cullen never ‘flip-flopped’.”
Oh so Cullen never cancelled proposed personal tax changes?
AncientGeek – one thing that astounds me is the complete lack of familiarity with sound, orthodox Keynesian economics the likes of IP seem to have. It is as if between sacrificing virgins to Ayn Rand and building an alter to Friedman they’ve somehow never heard of the 20th Century’s most important and successful economist.
Journalists, to, appear to never heard of the orthodox pragmatism of Keynes. Its’ an astonishing example of the near-complete victory of the extreme-right economic brain washing our country has been subjected to since 1984.
But anyone who HAS heard of Keynes – Michael Cullen certainly has – would recognise the classic Keynesian approach of Cullen. When the economy was hot, he invested. Now it is slowing, he will prime the pump. Simple, elegant and effective.
This shows the problem of costing political advocacy on a “per member” basis. To accommodate the AA the limit would need to be so high as to be utterly meaningless…
…Now you might want to argue that the limit of $120,000 is too low, and I might even agree with you, but you can’t argue on the basis of per member costs, without destroying the concept of meaningful limits utterly.
I am not arguing. I am merely demonstrating how incredibly simple it is going to be for an opposition lobby to create a “Freedom of Speech Mission”, where ordinary New Zealanders can demonstrate their commitment against this bill. A lobby that will be “illegal” under the very law that they are challenging through the democratic process, all for the cost of one or two dozen Lion Red stubbies.
Read the headlines circa August 2008 – “Government Orders NZers to Stop Spending $20 on Dissent”. I suggest that might be a bad look for the government.
“Read the headlines circa August 2008 – “Government Orders NZers to Stop Spending $20 on Dissent”. I suggest that might be a bad look for the government.”
Equivalent beat-ups could have been conducted under the pre EFB legislation, and they never did. You can game any system. So?
But you may be right, such things may happen, given the extraordinarily confrontational state of politics currently. Let’s hope that it will be seen as the beat-up that it is.
Let’s hope that it will be seen as the beat-up that it is.
I’m pretty sure it will.
All political polls should come with a warning.
BEWARE! Mindbenders at work——–
Rob – look like you will have to spin even harder on “overwhelming” as it seems that Dunne has done the dirty on Teh Party at the last moment.
Why TDS – I was expecting you!
My statement was true when I made it, and not many statements in politics remain true for ever. I guess I now have to go with “a majority of parties support the bill” or “an overwhelming majority of parties support the principles of the bill”.
Byeeee….