Or announcing further attacks on citizens. Heck, the more assaults on the New Zealand public the greater the chances he’ll be this country’s longest serving PM. Don’t know quite how that’s supposed to work but it does.
No, no need, strong leadership and Policies are what the voter is looking for.
Besides, if my memory serves me correctly, were not Student Loans and Working for Families Labour bribes on a grand scale which served them well to win two elections, when they looked odds on to lose?
3 News also poll people on leaders performing well/badly.
Shearer lost 10%. Core Labour voters are staying loyal to the party and expressing dissatisfaction with the leader. Only a fool or a payroll hack can fail to get the message.
So many ears and eyes cannot be wrong. Despite a corrupt, cronyistic and nasty National Government, people neither see nor hear a leader-in-waiting on the opposition bench who can lead a party that is ready to govern.
Labour needs to show it can get its own house in order and that it is a unified ‘broad church’ party from caucus to membership and affiliates, before it can convince people it is able to manage a coalition government, take the country through these difficult times, and start helping us all adapt to a different future of financial, energy and environmental crises and challenges.
Come on, Labour Caucus, come on and show us your better selves. Give us reasons, nay, just a very good reason, and remind and rally us, to provide our solid support to you so that you can govern for the common good, in the interest of the many of us in NZ.
Finally got round to watching Us Now last night. It highlights how people are organising via the internet and, interestingly, building trust. The lesson is clear, time for real democracy and not this BS representative democracy that got put in place because the rich/powerful were concerned that the people would lose their dependence upon them.
I’ll have a look at that, but have to say that plethora of white male faces on their youtube page doesn’t bode well. Nor the idea that we can all be connected as easily as on FB for the purposes of democracy.
…that plethora of white male faces on their youtube page doesn’t bode well.
Yes, I always find the ethnicity of the participants is a handy way of assessing how worthwhile something is… Oh, wait, I’ve got that the wrong way round – it’s completely fucking useless for that.
I know, it’s really bizarre to think that discussions about new kinds of democracy should include wimmen and non-white people, rather than it being optional.
One of the points made in the documentary is that, through the online organising, people are no longer basing their decisions on what people look like or what they know of the person but what information the discussion has brought out. And one of the other points made was that wrong information is rapidly corrected – a point that was made by one of the women’s groups covered.
Reid poll???? snigger i would never dare to suggest nor hint that the Reid poll is possibly the most corrupted, twisted, biased poll of them all, never you hear,
Should be a giggle soon as the Slippery cheerleaders start squealing in delight over ‘national governing alone’ as they did during the last trimester…
Hmmm so if Labour was polling 47% and the Nats were on 31% you would still say the same thing?
Ignoring the polls won’t make them go away – they are a sign that the voting public is not happy with who Labour are right now and haven’t been since 2008.
Instead of bleating on for years about the inaccuracies of polls and how the evil Nats will be gone once the public awaken to cronyism Labour should have spent 2009-10 reviewing why they lost the lost 2008 election.
Having worked this out via review they should then have selected a whole new crop of candidates for the 2011 election with the aim of building towards a 2014 victory.
By 2014 you would have had a crop of keen, fresh upstarts chaffing at the bit to get into the treasury benches with a party and policy to match (and a leader??)
Key would have found it a lot harder to aim for a 3rd term under this scenario.
But no what did Labour do? Installed the old has beens in the caucus leadership, kept the same tired policies, and pretended that the polls were inaccurate.
Result? Record loss at the 2011 election, and very few new MP’s coming in. Throw in a new insipid leader, a broke party, and factional splits more ways than a dominos pizza.
Now everyone realizes that its a mess but who is gona fix it?
And too many of the new MPs who did get in were chosen because of their support of the status quo hierarchy, not because they were expected to upset the status quo hierarchy.
Hmmm so if Labour was polling 47% and the Nats were on 31% you would still say the same thing?
Possibly but humanity is a strange beast.
At the last election a number of voters didn’t vote because they believed National had already won, i.e, influenced by the polls. If they had voted National wouldn’t be in power today.
Thing is, the people most likely to vote happen to be the right-wingers and so a poll that showed Labour was going to win may, in fact, spur more of them to vote rather than turn them off voting.
The fact that voting was influenced by the MSMs polling is why it needs to be banned before the election.
Record loss at the 2011 election
Um, what? It was one of the closest elections yet in NZ.
Why do we assume that the people who did not vote in 2011 were lefties. I have seen no evidence to suggest that proposition is correct.
The fact that the polls suggested National was going to win could have same effect on right leaning voters. Righties assuming they were going to win stayed at home as there was no real need to leave their palace to stand in a line to vote.
Some voters only get motivated if they think it will be close and their one vote will make a difference.
I am not saying that is the case but can has anyone got any evidence that the 2011 non-voters were proporitionally any different to those who did vote?
Election Labour National
1999 800,199 629,932
2002 838,219 425,310
2005 935,319 889,813
2008 796,880 1,053,398
2011 614,937 1,058,636
While showing the total number of votes received, I couldn’t find the number of people enrolled to vote, so no idea if non-voters increased or decreased from election to election
What I am asking is how those numbers stack up for non-voters. It is quite possible that noone has any idea. But for some reason the left thinks the reason we lost was because a million people didn’t turn out to vote in 2011.
I want to know why we think those non-voters would have voted for the left?
The polls before and after the election would in fact suggest the opposite.
I want to know why we think those non-voters would have voted for the left?
It’s a fact that’s been popping up in research around the world for the last 50+ years. The group most likely not to vote are the poor and they’re most likely to vote for a left leaning party if they voted.
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell …
Left wing people did the Long March and thew out the fucking Chinese capitalists, they also got rid of the Romanovs and then fucked the Wehrmacht
the neoliberal pricks took all the jobs away from the working class and now you have the gall to pick over the remains and call people lazy
If you want lazy look at the rentier capitalists who sit on their fat asses extracting money from actual productive workers.
Apart from rambling incoherently, I think the issue is that there is no left wing political party to vote for, just different shades of the market led capitalist status quo, and political leaders all hyper-attuned to the opinions of the comfortable middle class.
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell …
Thinking about these numbers a bit more, two things emerge:
1. Bill English will never, ever lead the national party again (joy)
2. Labour has lost 320,000 voters since the 2005 election.
Surely someone in the Labour party would be wondering what the party should be doing to get those 320,000 voters back instead of plodding on with the same ol’, same ol’ bollocks which sees them shedding voters.
It is the fault of the bloggers on The Standard?
It is the fault of David Cunliffe?
It can be fixed by coaching from Ian Fraser?
If the whole party was run a well as Wellington Central there would be no problem.
If Shearer was only given enough time, to prove himself, there would be no problem.
Hmmm so if Labour was polling 47% and the Nats were on 31% you would still say the same thing?
If Labour were doing the amount of dodgy things that Nat are; such as removing our rights and breaking rules left, right and centre and showing blatant disregard for democratic process on a regular basis and the polls were as positive for Labour as they are for Nats now, yes, I would still be thinking the same thing; that the pollsters are poll pushing ~ using polls to shift opinion. [Because, really, it is hard to see the politicians doing anything to warrant that level of popularity.]
“Ignoring the polls won’t make them go away”
I did not say I ignored the polls I said I have trouble trusting that they are anything other than tools of opinion manipulation. A good lie often has some truth involved. A little exaggeration perhaps can go a long way, for instance:
Why did so many stay at home on election day?
Could it be that lots of people thought “What is the bloody point; Nat is polling so high~everyone else must like them. My vote won’t make any difference.”?
Sometimes I suspect that the weakest point of left wing politics may be a certain naivety regarding how low political tactics can go; and discounting such tactics leaves us unable to counteract them. I am aware that opinion manipulation is a pretty sophisticated field of activity; there is a whole science developed on the subject. (more than one science).
Which brings me to the subject that you mainly speak of, a way forward: strategy.
I agree with your comments (which, by the way, require none of these reid/roymorgan polls to act upon ~ to have taken the election results seriously would have sufficed)
What you write is a pretty straight-forward common-sense dare I say obvious way to address the election result; which brings me to the question that naturally arises:
Where are Labour’s strategists? Who are they? Do they exist at all?, and if so, Where are their heads at???
The advisors are usually amongst the most desperate to keep the status quo hierarchy in place; they know if the Leadership team changes, they too will most likely be gone.
Labour strategists and staffers have fuck all job options compared to the ones working for National. The Tories always look after their own. Well, unless you screw up on a Gilmore scale.
Labour – and in this case it is not nomen est omen – is outdated and irrelevant. The few good people who could have saved the day have been put into the corner of shame – for non compliance with these boarding school bullies. It is especially the young that are feeling disaffected and whilst they are not really looking to the Nats they have not many choices. The greens have too early aligned themselves with labour and thus stall. It would be better for the Greens to go it alone and split the vote at a far greater rate so that Dunne and the Teacaddy won’t be the deciders.
I belief that the time is not quite come for a New Labour but it will come.
Polls show that no left party has credibility to run the treasury benches. That’s all. Shearer said labour needs to concentrate on power and house affordability. What about things like international trade, r & d, super bubble and let’s talk about jobs. With GFC reclining now and natural market forces take over the only thing national needs to do is getting the debt levels down. Agree 200b is too much, 80b seems about the right gearing.
Labour is all about labour now.
Greens are all about labour swing voters and mana and Maori about individuals. National is the complete package at the moment
Bill English has no plans to repay ANY debt. Hell just keep on rolling it over.
If theres a surplus, which seems to be just around the corner after the next election…. moving the goalposts every 9 months or so, it will go in tax cuts for the wealthy
Breaking news…….Yes drowns in his own excretia, excrement……no one cares. Particularly ShonKey Python – “Thank Christ……that wannabee fuckwit won’t be phoning again. I’ve told him/her/it time and time again. Ambassador Galapagos Islands has gone ! Gilmore. Shut the prick up”.
It was quite funny to watch, in a black-humour kind of way. Gower obviously feels like the result is a vindication of his efforts to put the vital political issues of the day in front TV3’s viewers – his choices for said vital political issues being, natch, Labour MPs in Sky City’s corporate box and the proposed “man ban” (in quotes because, apparently unlike the professionals working for TV3, I’m not a complete fucking idiot).
I am disappointed with the negativity shown here over Shearer. OK, I agree Labour is not doing well. But it is holding steady at 31% and the support partner Greens are steady at 12%. NZ First is inching up and I am sure it will cross 5% on election night. All Labour needs to do is claw up another 4% on election night. Then it will be a Labour-Green-NZ First-Hone Centre-Left government. I will start to worry only if Labour drops below 30%. Let us not destabilise the leadership now. Let us stay united folks.
I’m disappointed with the negativity shown towards the patient’s condition. He isn’t doing well, but he is holding steady at only losing one leg. Let’s not destabilise him by pointing out he’s lost a leg. Let’s stay united.
Besides, if we wish really hard other folks will come along to prop him up, which is practically the same as having two legs.
If we don’t act now when it is important and possible to try and get some real Labour integrity in the Leadership, then when? The present poor cowardly pollies running the Left ticket, will be lucky to get their tired legs over the finish line.
Labour’s been steady on around 31 for four years. It’s not getting any better. In the latest poll Shearer’s personal competence rating dropped from 36 to 26. The public know he’s just not up to it.
If your hope of a Labour-led government relies on Shearer picking up four points against Key in the campaign, and Winston getting to five and choosing to play third fiddle to Labour and the Greens (with Hone at his side),then you’re dreaming. He’ll go play kingmaker with his old party the Nats in a second.
Labour can’t win with Shearer. He needs to go, as does every MP who devised and propped up this dreadful experiment. He owes it to Labour to do the honourable thing.
Surely he can see he is useless. He’s earned good money as opposition leader, and he’s got plenty stashed away in his UN account. Why does he perpetuate his and Labour’s misery?
But the “destabilising” line needs exploring. Is it “destabilising” to point out that somebody else is destabilising? So if (e.g.) Shane Jones behaves like a dick, and breaks caucus discipline, is he destabilising, or are we the bad guys because we notice him doing it? If the leader destabilises the party by obeying the right-wing blogs, should we all pretend it didn’t happen?
Our job is to publicly support the destabilisers at the top, because anything else would destabilise, is that how it goes?
I suspect that the level of destabilising dickishness comes down to whether the response is proportionate to the perceived fault, and whether the perceived fault is at all reflective of an actual fault.
E.g. if there was, say, a remit that was shilly-shallied on and then kicked back to council (sorry, council were “asked to reconsider it”), was this poor form because the leader was destabilising the party by obeying the right-wing blogs that thought up a catchy critical tag for that remit, or was the leader boldly listening to the wishes of those proud internet Waitakere Men within the Labour membership who felt that for the good of Labour the remit should never have gotten so far in the process and that even taking the remit to conference was electoral suicide? Or maybe all sides within Labour acted like a dick on that one.
There’s no way that such a centre left coalition will last even 6 months; especially if Shearer is still Labour’s leader and therefore PM. Shearer cant manage Labour and its factions now; let alone a coalition that includes the Greens, NZ First and Mana.
center left?? hone is not center left neither are the greens, both are far left fringe extremists hone particularly. All these egos and nutters in power hone/winston/wussell/lab hacks left over from the clark regime will be an absolute disaster
This response is the reason why Labour cannot gain ground. No idea about the future, just hold steady at 30%…..obviously there is no interest and passion for capturing the PEOPLE’S imagination and trying to gun for a majority at the next election.
Seems a little ironic to me that with polls falling short of where labor was in 2008 that Helen Clark is in/ shortly to be in (?) town. She might have a few words of wisdom about how to pull a divided team together…
It might be nice to imagine we’re otherwise, but humans are creatures of emotion and perception. And the thing that the public think of as “Labour” has failed to create these in adequate measure (I’d argue since 2005 or 2006).
Our household had the pollsters phone in for this Reid Research poll. The questions were so focused we thought it was the Labour Party doing an “internal” poll. The family member who answered the pollster obviously thinks very much like the rest of NZ – Shearer (and the ABCs) have got it totally wrong. The Labour caucus will be history if they don’t change!
Part of the problem is the closeness to the Green Party. Time for David S. to put some space between Labour and the more extreme Green policies.
He seems to follow Norman. It cannot continue that way.
5. On the third coup he arose triumphant to heal the hearts of the unfaithful. And lo, Cunliffe did give the right of the caucus sight and to the left he brought wisdom and he ruled forever and ever.
Shearer is lucky the earthquake hit and took away attention from this poll. The TV1 poll will be interesting. I assume it is next weekend?
Another bad poll, another nail in the coffin for Shearer. Hard to see how he will be able to move on with this continued scrutiny of his leadership. Once it starts, it is hard to shake off esp when your colleagues are trying to undermine you.
On a serious note for a change, how dispiriting is it for you Labour supporters to see Labour going backwards yet knowing how simple a fix it would be to get Labour going forward.
The ideas that are bandied about are quite simple: replace Shearer, older MPs to leave, work as a team, stop shooting yourselves in the foot and refocus on the working man and woman
Its not hard or earth shattering yet time and time again Labour start to gain traction yet someone comes along and sticks their fott in their mouth
But you are wrong that it is merely “dispiriting”. It is much worse than that to have a crooked liar and ex-money trader as the Prime Minister. Someone who panders to the dollar over everything else. Someone who lies so easily he can’t even keep up himself. Someone who continually makes things harder for the lowly and easier for the rich. Someone who wants to record all of my information all day every day. Someone who lies and in a complete and utter fascist manner trashes democracy so that his voters can steal water they could not otherwise obtain for their greedy desires.
You sound like you are one of those unaffected by the acts and lies of this corrupt government and its arsehole participants.
King kong so sophisticated as I didn’t expect caves were so valuable!
Your an example of primitive instincts destroying 100’s of 1,000’s of years of civilization .
Don’t beat your chest to loudly !
New Zealand is not a good place when every second person is using the Hooton inspired interrogative figure of speech.
This one was dreamed up by him to distinguish National Party supporters from others and it is disrespectful, an invalid argument from authorty and dishonest.
Its all over the talkshows and the sports announcers and it is the most dishonest result of slimy politics this country has ever seen.
isn’t it?
Not really. A long gradual positive incline followed by a steeper (but not yet deeper) dip.
Causes? Maybe labour. Maybe the time of year. My personal suspicion is that it might have something to do with two or three of the main political editors in NZ media having placed their reputations on the line for poor labour performance and a leadership change. If there is no leadership change before the end of the year, people might think they are full of shit. If there is a change, they are mystically-gifted seers. If labour goes down further, it’s a “crisis for Shearer”. If labour go up a few points, it’s “might not be enough to save him”. If it goes up further, it’s “managing to hold off the challengers… for now”. My point being that it’s not more than just “tory media” – senior individuals have essentially staked their professional reputation on the labour caucus being a simmering pot of discontent just waiting to boil over. How true that is, or whether people have largely jiggled into their respective roles, is now irrelevant to the story.
How long does it take to get signatures on a letter, anyway? Don’t they only need something like 18?
What – 27 to 35-odd is flat? Nope. That would be underfitting a trendline for rhetorical effect. In fact given that the election is the absolute measure of support (rather than the estimate of support that the polls are – an election is a complete count of the population who cast a valid vote, rather than a likely sample of that population), there shouldn’t even be a MoE on 27%.
“Close to where they started”, maybe, but not “flat”.
And who led labour to the bottom of Cook Strait? I suppose at the moment they’re wandering around the foothills of the Kaikouras, to torture the analogy. Who knows whether they’ll head off to Aoraki/Mt Cook, or boldly stomp off towards the Pacific Basin? Certainly not Garner or Gower.
But at least you’re getting the idea that similar elevations quite some distance apart do not mean that the intermediate elevations are “dead flat”.
Fuck you’re a valiant, if oblique, defender of the current Labour hierarchy.
Labour under Shearer is polling exactly the same as Goff, at the same stage of the triannum. The current polling performance is nothing more than a reversion to the 2009/2010 mean. Dead flat in other words.
On what fucking planet is “steep descent into a deep valley, followed by a long but gradual rise, and then a bit of a drop over the last wee bit to end up at roughly the same elevation before the descent” ever a description that is interchangeable with “dead flat”? Try walking the two, and you might figure out why you’re underfitting the trendline for rhetorical effect. Or, in words you can understand, “making shit up”.
To be slightly more precise, you don’t care to let reality get in the way of your assessments of labour’s performance over the last couple of terms.
For example, the half dozen morgan polls in 2009 where Labour polled in the high 20s. Number of times they’ve polled in the 20s since the 2011 election? Four. None in 2013. Although Labour did slightly better over 2008, (difference seems to be the greens were polling quite a bit lower but that might imply that labour going more left might simply take votes from the greens). 2011 results don’t seem to be on the RM website, but ISTR Labour having at least one RM result in the low 20s during 2011.
OK I admit it, you got me fair and square. There is a real difference between 28% in 2009 and 31% in 2013. Shearer should certainly take all the credit that difference entails.
You still trying to prove yourself right on a technicality? Hey good for you, I concede, you win.
A move in the polls from 28% to 31% over 4 years is not “dead flat”. It’s actually a solid positive trend. Labour should be at 34% under Shearer, by say 2017.
Given that an RM poll just before the election had labour on 23%, and that 31% is the low point of the trends over the last few months, it’s more than a technicality. But the point, yet again, is that calling the line between 2009 and now “flat” is fucking stupid. It’s like calling the earth “blue” and saying no more thought about it is needed. But you need to look at labour’s polling with such massive granularity because if you actually looked at the details you’d have to admit that the world is slightly more complex that ‘cunliffe good leader, everyone else in caucus evil and/or abjectly incompetent leader’.
Are you really so stupid as to think that:
A) because the line between two arbitrarily-selected points is straight, the best description of the observations between those points is also a straight line; and
B) party polling is interchangeable in meaning with party leadership;
so therefore
Conclusion) the entirety of party leadership performance can bejudged by the slope of a straight line between two arbitrarily-selected points?
Any one of those statements is stupid, and yet that seems to be the gist of your argument: shearer is proved to be bad because the polls have not much slope between two arbitrary points.
Point (a) is Labour’s support when Shearer took office. Point (b) is Labour’s support now.
If you think there are any two less arbitrary points by which to measure Labour’s performance under Shearer’s leadership, I’d love to know what they are.
Apart from the fact that CV wasn’t using election night as his initial points for “dead flat” were “2009 and 2010”. But even if we compared the real observation of election night (rather than an RM estimate from Nov2011), the best description of the RM estimates between those points is not a straight line, “flat” or otherwise.
The last three RM points have been a deviation from the pattern over the last 18 months (three consecutive falls for Labour), and this is a concern. About three times as much of a concern as a single lower point – so I’m not shitting bricks just yet.
But what’s more of a concern for me is the frenzy by Garner/Gower et al – it could possibly just be a self-fulfiling prophecy (a bit like talking down stock price). If it’s genuinely someone else in caucus angling for position before list selection (I don’t think it’s Cunliffe if it is), then they deserve a kick in the nuts. Taking this long to have the confidence issue done and dusted beggars belief.
Heh – come to think of it, if there is someone trying to do that and making such a pig’s breakfast of it, then the lack of political deftness would seem to be in character for someone who likes to shit on Labour’s only real coalition hope for the government benches… well, now that Chris carter’s gone, anyway 🙂
Its an upslope, I tellsya, Shearer despite a few minor flaws has been such a boost for Labour, why can’t everyone see that?! Yer bunch of ungrateful Judases!
One was the upswing of a downward trend (RM had one point before the election of lab on 23.5%) whereas the other is the downswing on an upward trend?
18 months?
Whether your glasses tint is rosy red, tory blue, or depression black?
If you insist on ignoring every single datapoint in between.
If you ignore the possibility (likelihood) that RM used the election to calibrate their regional and demographic sampling weights in order to make the first poll after the election match the election result.
If you ignore the other parties and performance of likely coalition partners in parliament and pretend it’s an FPP two-horse race.
If you’re prepared to throw out every principle of statistical analysis in the textbook, just so you can act all emo teen, then if all that, why even bother looking at the polls? Reality might get in the way of a really good sulk.
Over time-series datapoints between 27% to 35.5%? It means you’re trying to find a midpoint of the set rather analyse whether/how the set has changed over time. Finding a line of best fit would be more suitable.
It also means that this insomnia is a bitch, and I’ll probably be quite nasty todarrow. But then you’re in the same boat, unless you’re shiftworking. 🙂
…it might have something to do with two or three of the main political editors in NZ media having placed their reputations on the line for poor labour performance and a leadership change.
That’s my suspicion too. Watching Gower peddling a survey he’s had done on whether Labour voters think Shearer needs to go for Labour to win the next election, I was wondering why he’d commission that poll – the most plausible answer is he’s now got a personal stake in Shearer getting rolled, having effectively staked his reputation on it.
Shearer has been handed an enormous amount of ammunition by National in the form of lies and half truths he could have used to cut Keys down to size and yet he has repeatedly failed to monopolize on these opportunities. He has to GO NOW and let someone more capable such as Annette King take the reigns.
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As expected, Donald Trump just threw Ukraine under the bus, demanding that it accept Russia's illegal theft of land, while ruling out any future membership of NATO. Its a colossal betrayal, which effectively legitimises Russia's invasion, while laying the groundwork for the next one. But Trump is apparently fine with ...
This is a guest post by George Weeks, reviewing a book called ‘How to Fly a Horse’ by Kevin AshtonBook review: ‘How to Fly a Horse’ by Kevin Ashton (2015) – and what it means for Auckland. The title of this article might unnerve any Greater Auckland ...
This story was originally published by Capital & Main and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Within just a week, the sheer devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires has pushed to the fore fundamental questions about the impact of the climate crisis that have been ...
In this world, it's just usYou know it's not the same as it wasSongwriters: Harry Edward Styles / Thomas Edward Percy Hull / Tyler Sam JohnsonYesterday, I received a lovely message from Caty, a reader of Nick’s Kōrero, that got me thinking. So I thought I’d share it with you, ...
In past times a person was considered “unserious” or “not a serious” person if they failed to grasp, behave and speak according to the solemnity of the context in which they were located. For example a serious person does not audibly pass gas at Church, or yell “gun” at a ...
Long stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, February 13 are:The coalition Government’s early 2024 ‘fiscal emergency’ freeze on funding, planning and building houses, schools, local roads and hospitals helped extend and deepen the economic and jobs recession through calendar ...
For obvious reasons, people feel uneasy when the right to be a citizen is sold off to wealthy foreigners. Even selling the right to residency seems a bit dubious, when so many migrants who are not millionaires get turned away or are made to jump through innumerable hoops – simply ...
A new season of White Lotus is nearly upon us: more murder mystery, more sumptuous surroundings, more rich people behaving badly.Once more we get to identify with the experience of the pampered tourist or perhaps the poorly paid help; there's something in White Lotus for all New Zealanders.And unlike the ...
In 2016, Aotearoa shockingly plunged to fourth place in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Nine years later, and we're back there again: New Zealand has seen a further slip in its global ranking in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). [...] In the latest CPI New Zealand's score ...
1. You’ve started ranking your politicians on how much they respect the rule of law2. You’ve stopped paying attention to those news publications3. You’ve developed a sudden interest in a particular period of history4. More and more people are sounding like your racist, conspiracist uncle.5. Someone just pulled a Nazi ...
Transforming New Zealand: Brian EastonBrian Easton will discuss the above topic at 2/57 Willis Street, Wellington at 5:30pm on Tuesday 26 February at 2/57 Willis Street, WellingtonThe sub-title to the above is "Why is the Left failing?" Brian Easton's analysis is based on his view that while the ...
Salvation Army’s State of the Nation 2025 report highlights falling living standards, the highest unemployment rates since the 1990s and half of all Pacific children going without food. There are reports of hundreds if not thousands of people are applying for the same jobs in the wake of last year’s ...
Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Correction: On the article The Condundrum of David Seymour, Luke Malpass conducted joint reviews with Bryce Wilkinson, the architect of the Regulatory Standards Bill - not Bryce Edwards. The article ...
Tomorrow the council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee meet and agenda has a few interesting papers. Council’s Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport Every year the council provide a Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport which is part of the process for informing AT of the council’s priorities and ...
All around in my home townThey're trying to track me down, yeahThey say they want to bring me in guiltyFor the killing of a deputyFor the life of a deputySongwriter: Robert Nesta Marley.Support Nick’s Kōrero today with a 20% discount on a paid subscription to receive all my newsletters directly ...
Hi,I think all of us have probably experienced the power of music — that strange, transformative thing that gets under our skin and helps us experience this whole life thing with some kind of sanity.Listening and experiencing music has always been such a huge part of my life, and has ...
Business frustration over the stalled economy is growing, and only 34% of voters are confidentNicola Willis can deliver. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, February 12 are:Business frustration is growing about a ...
I have now lived long enough to see a cabinet minister go both barrels on their Prime Minister and not get sacked.It used to be that the PM would have a drawer full of resignations signed by ministers on the day of their appointment, ready for such an occasion. But ...
This session will feature Simon McCallum, Senior Lecturer in Engineering and Computer Science (VUW) and recent Labour Party candidate in the Southland Electorate talking about some of the issues around AI and how this should inform Labour Party policy. Simon is an excellent speaker with a comprehensive command of AI ...
The proposed Waimate garbage incinerator is dead: The company behind a highly-controversial proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant in the Waimate District no longer has the land. [...] However, SIRRL director Paul Taylor said the sales and purchase agreement to purchase land from Murphy Farms, near Glenavy, lapsed at ...
The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a vital tool in combatting international corruption. It forbids US companies and citizens from bribing foreign public officials anywhere in the world. And its actually enforced: some of the world's biggest companies - Siemens, Hewlett Packard, and Bristol Myers Squibb - have ...
December 2024 photo - with UK Tory Boris Johnson (Source: Facebook)Those PollsFor hours, political poll results have resounded across political hallways and commentary.According to the 1News Verizon poll, 50% of the country believe we are heading in the “wrong direction”, while 39% believe we are “on the right track”.The left ...
A Tai Rāwhiti mill that ran for 30 years before it was shut down in late 2023 is set to re-open in the coming months, which will eventually see nearly 300 new jobs in the region. A new report from Massey University shows that pensioners are struggling with rising costs. ...
As support continues to fall, Luxon also now faces his biggest internal ructions within the coalition since the election, with David Seymour reacting badly to being criticised by the PM. File photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Not since 1988 when Richard Prebble openly criticised David Lange have we seen such a challenge to a Prime Minister as that of David Seymour to Christopher Luxon last night. Prebble suggested Lange had mental health issues during a TV interview and was almost immediately fired. Seymour hasn’t gone quite ...
Three weeks in, and the 24/7 news cycle is not helping anyone feel calm and informed about the second Trump presidency. One day, the US is threatening 25% trade tariffs on its friends and neighbours. The reasons offered by the White House are absurd, such as stopping fentanyl coming in ...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Wherever you look, you'll hear headlines claiming we've passed 1.5 degrees of global warming. And while 2024 saw ...
Photo by Heather M. Edwards on UnsplashHere’s the key news, commentary, reports and debate around Aotearoa’s politics and economy in the week to Feb 10 below. That’s ahead of live chats on the Substack App and The Kākā’s front page on Substack at 5pm with: on his column in The ...
Is there anyone in the world the National Party loves more than a campaign donor? Why yes, there is! They will always have the warmest hello and would you like to slip into something more comfortable for that great god of our age, the High Net Worth Individual.The words the ...
Waste and fraud certainly exist in foreign aid programs, but rightwing celebration of USAID’s dismantling shows profound ignorance of the value of soft power (as opposed to hard power) in projecting US influence and interests abroad by non-military/coercive means (think of “hearts and minds,” “hugs, not bullets,” “honey versus vinegar,” ...
Health New Zealand is proposing to cut almost half of its data and digital positions – more than 1000 of them. The PSA has called on the Privacy Commissioner to urgently investigate the cuts due to the potential for serious consequences for patients. NZNO is calling for an urgent increase ...
We may see a few more luxury cars on Queen Street, but a loosening of rules to entice rich foreigners to invest more here is unlikely to “turbocharge our economic growth”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Let us not dance daintily around the elephant in the room. Our politicians who serve us in the present are not honest, certainly not as honest as they should be, and while the right are taking out most of the trophies for warping narratives and literally redefining “facts”, the kiwi ...
A few weeks ago I took a look at public transport ridership in 2024. In today’s post I’m going to be looking a bit deeper at bus ridership. Buses make up the vast majority of ridership in Auckland with 70 million boardings last year out of a total of 89.4 ...
Oh, you know I did itIt's over and I feel fineNothing you could say is gonna change my mindWaited and I waited the longest nightNothing like the taste of sweet declineSongwriters: Chris Shiflett / David Eric Grohl / Nate Mendel / Taylor Hawkins.Hindsight is good, eh?The clarity when the pieces ...
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashHere’s what we’re watching in the week to February 16 and beyond in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty:Monday, February 10The Kākā’s weekly wrap-up of news about politics and the economy is due at midday, followed by webinar for paying subscribers in Substack’s ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 2, 2025 thru Sat, February 8, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
Today, I stumbled across a Twitter Meme: the ending of The Lord of the Rings as a Chess scenario: https://x.com/mellon_heads/status/1887983845917564991 It gets across the basic gist. Aragorn and Gandalf offering up ‘material’ at the Morannon allows Frodo and Samwise to catch Sauron unawares – fair enough. But there are a ...
Last week, Kieran McAnulty called out Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis for their claims that Kāinga Ora’s costs were too high.They had claimed Kāinga Ora’s cost were 12% higher than market i.e. private devlopersBut Kāinga Ora’s Chair had already explained why last year:"We're not building to sell, so we'll be ...
Stuff’s Political Editor Luke Malpass - A Fellow at New Zealand IniativeLast week I half-joked that Stuff / The Post’s Luke Malpass1 always sounded like he was auditioning for a job at the New Zealand Initiative.Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. For a limited time, subscriptions are 20% off. Thanks ...
At a funeral on Friday, there were A4-sized photos covering every wall of the Dil’s reception lounge. There must have been 200 of them, telling the story in the usual way of the video reel but also, by enlargement, making it more possible to linger and step in.Our friend Nicky ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is methane the ...
The Government’s idea is that the private sector and Community Housing Providers will fund, build and operate new affordable housing to address our housing crisis. Meanwhile, the Government does not know where almost half of the 1,700 children who left emergency housing actually went. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong ...
Oh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youOh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youSongwriters: Alexander Ebert / Jade Allyson CastrinosMorena,I’m on a tight time frame this morning. In about an hour and a half, I’ll need to pack up and hit the road ...
This is a post about the Mountain Tui substack, and small tweaks - further to the poll and request post the other day. Please don’t read if you aren’t interested in my personal matters. Thank you all.After oohing-and-aahing about how to structure the Substack model since November, including obtaining ...
This transcript of a recent conversation between the Prime Minister and his chief economic adviser has not been verified.We’ve announced we are the ‘Yes Government’. Do you like it?Yes, Prime Minister.Dreamed up by the PR team. It’s about being committed to growth. Not that the PR team know anything about ...
The other day, Australian Senator Nick McKim issued a warning in the Australian Parliement about the US’s descent into fascim.And of course it’s true, but I lament - that was true as soon as Trump won.What we see is now simply the reification of the intention, planning, and forces behind ...
Among the many other problems associated with Musk/DOGE sending a fleet of teenage and twenty-something cultists to remove, copy and appropriate federal records like social security, medicaid and other supposedly protected data is the fact that the youngsters doing the data-removal, copying and security protocol and filter code over-writing have ...
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tuneBird fly high by the light of the moonOh, oh, oh, JokermanSong by Bob Dylan.Morena folks, I hope this fine morning of the 7th of February finds you well. We're still close to Paihia, just a short drive out of town. Below is the view ...
It’s been an eventful week as always, so here’s a few things that we have found interesting. We also hope everyone had a happy and relaxing Waitangi Day! This week in Greater Auckland We’re still running on summer time, but provided two chewy posts: On Tuesday, a guest ...
Queuing on Queen St: the Government is set to announce another apparently splashy growth policy on Sunday of offering residence visas to wealthy migrants. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, February 7:PM Christopher ...
The fact that Waitangi ended up being such a low-key affair may mark it out as one of the most significant Waitangi Days in recent years. A group of women draped in “Toitu Te Tiriti” banners who turned their backs on the politicians’ powhiri was about as rough as it ...
National’s cuts to disability support funding and freezing of new residential placements has resulted in significant mental health decline for intellectually disabled people. ...
The hundreds of jobs lost needlessly as a result of the Kinleith Mill paper production closure will have a devastating impact on the Tokoroa community - something that could have easily been avoided. ...
Today Te Pāti Māori MP for Te Tai Tokerau, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, released her members bill that will see the return of tamariki and mokopuna Māori from state care back to te iwi Māori. This bill will establish an independent authority that asserts and protects the rights promised in He Whakaputanga ...
The Whangarei District Council being forced to fluoridate their local water supply is facing a despotic Soviet-era disgrace. This is not a matter of being pro-fluoride or anti-fluoride. It is a matter of what New Zealanders see and value as democracy in our country. Individual democratically elected Councillors are not ...
Nicola Willis’ latest supermarket announcement is painfully weak with no new ideas, no real plan, and no relief for Kiwis struggling with rising grocery costs. ...
Half of Pacific children sometimes going without food is just one of many heartbreaking lowlights in the Salvation Army’s annual State of the Nation report. ...
The Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report is a bleak indictment on the failure of Government to take steps to end poverty, with those on benefits, including their children, hit hardest. ...
New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill which would restore decision-making power to local communities regarding the fluoridation of drinking water. The ‘Fluoridation (Referendum) Legislation Bill’ seeks to repeal the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Act 2021 that granted centralised authority to the Direct General of Health ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill aimed at preventing banks from refusing their services to businesses because of the current “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework”. “This Bill ensures fairness and prevents ESG standards from perpetuating woke ideology in the banking sector being driven by unelected, globalist, climate ...
Erica Stanford has reached peak shortsightedness if today’s announcement is anything to go by, picking apart immigration settings piece by piece to the detriment of the New Zealand economy. ...
Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. The intention was to establish a colony with the cession of sovereignty to the Crown, ...
Te Whatu Ora Chief Executive Margie Apa leaving her job four months early is another symptom of this government’s failure to deliver healthcare for New Zealanders. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
The latest unemployment figures reveal that job losses are hitting Māori and Pacific people especially hard, with Māori unemployment reaching a staggering 9.7% for the December 2024 quarter and Pasifika unemployment reaching 10.5%. ...
Waitangi 2025: Waitangi Day must be community and not politically driven - Shane Jones Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. ...
Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson will return to politics at Waitangi on Monday the 3rd of February where she will hold a stand up with fellow co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. ...
Te Pāti Māori is appalled by the government's blatant mishandling of the school lunch programme. David Seymour’s ‘cost-saving’ measures have left tamariki across Aotearoa with unidentifiable meals, causing distress and outrage among parents and communities alike. “What’s the difference between providing inedible food, and providing no food at all?” Said ...
The Government is doubling down on outdated and volatile fossil fuels, showing how shortsighted and destructive their policies are for working New Zealanders. ...
Green Party MP Steve Abel this morning joined Coromandel locals in Waihi to condemn new mining plans announced by Shane Jones in the pit of the town’s Australian-owned Gold mine. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to strengthen its just-announced 2030-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and address its woeful lack of commitment to climate security. ...
Today marks a historic moment for Taranaki iwi with the passing of the Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill in Parliament. "Today, we stand together as descendants of Taranaki, and our tūpuna, Taranaki Maunga, is now formally acknowledged by the law as a living tūpuna. ...
Labour is relieved to see Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has woken up to reality and reversed her government’s terrible decisions to cut funding from frontline service providers – temporarily. ...
It is the first week of David Seymour’s school lunch programme and already social media reports are circulating of revolting meals, late deliveries, and mislabelled packaging. ...
The Green Party says that with no-cause evictions returning from today, the move to allow landlords to end tenancies without reason plunges renters, and particularly families who rent, into insecurity and stress. ...
The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says. “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is ...
The former Cadbury factory will be the site of the Inpatient Building for the new Dunedin Hospital and Health Minister Simeon Brown says actions have been taken to get the cost overruns under control. “Today I am giving the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build the new Dunedin ...
From today, Plunket in Whāngarei will be offering childhood immunisations – the first of up to 27 sites nationwide, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. The investment of $1 million into the pilot, announced in October 2024, was made possible due to the Government’s record $16.68 billion investment in health. It ...
New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035. Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision ...
Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
Racing Minister, Winston Peters has announced the Government is preparing public consultation on GST policy proposals which would make the New Zealand racing industry more competitive. “The racing industry makes an important economic contribution. New Zealand thoroughbreds are in demand overseas as racehorses and for breeding. The domestic thoroughbred industry ...
Business confidence remains very high and shows the economy is on track to improve, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis says. “The latest ANZ Business Outlook survey, released yesterday, shows business confidence and expected own activity are ‘still both very high’.” The survey reports business confidence fell eight points to +54 ...
Enabling works have begun this week on an expanded radiology unit at Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital which will double CT scanning capacity in Hawke’s Bay to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. This investment of $29.3m in the ...
The Government has today announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035. “We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious ...
Nine years of negotiations between the Crown and iwi of Taranaki have concluded following Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passing its third reading in Parliament today, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “This Bill addresses the historical grievances endured by the eight iwi ...
As schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “A world-leading education system is a key ...
Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson have welcomed Kāinga Ora’s decision to re-open its tender for carpets to allow wool carpet suppliers to bid. “In 2024 Kāinga Ora issued requests for tender (RFTs) seeking bids from suppliers to carpet their properties,” Mr Bishop says. “As part ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today visited Otahuhu College where the new school lunch programme has served up healthy lunches to students in the first days of the school year. “As schools open in 2025, the programme will deliver nutritious meals to around 242,000 students, every school day. On ...
Minister for Children Karen Chhour has intervened in Oranga Tamariki’s review of social service provider contracts to ensure Barnardos can continue to deliver its 0800 What’s Up hotline. “When I found out about the potential impact to this service, I asked Oranga Tamariki for an explanation. Based on the information ...
A bill to make revenue collection on imported and exported goods fairer and more effective had its first reading in Parliament, Customs Minister Casey Costello said today. “The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modernises the way in which Customs can recover the costs of services that are needed ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Department of Internal Affairs [the Department] has achieved significant progress in completing applications for New Zealand citizenship. “December 2024 saw the Department complete 5,661 citizenship applications, the most for any month in 2024. This is a 54 per cent increase compared ...
Reversals to Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions begin tonight and will be in place by 1 July, says Minister of Transport Chris Bishop. “The previous government was obsessed with slowing New Zealanders down by imposing illogical and untargeted speed limit reductions on state highways and local roads. “National campaigned on ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced Budget 2025 – the Growth Budget - will be delivered on Thursday 22 May. “This year’s Budget will drive forward the Government’s plan to grow our economy to improve the incomes of New Zealanders now and in the years ahead. “Budget 2025 will build ...
For the Government, 2025 will bring a relentless focus on unleashing the growth we need to lift incomes, strengthen local businesses and create opportunity. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today laid out the Government’s growth agenda in his Statement to Parliament. “Just over a year ago this Government was elected by ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour welcomes students back to school with a call to raise attendance from last year. “The Government encourages all students to attend school every day because there is a clear connection between being present at school and setting yourself up for a bright future,” says Mr ...
The Government is relaxing visitor visa requirements to allow tourists to work remotely while visiting New Zealand, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Tourism Minister Louise Upston say. “The change is part of the Government’s plan to unlock New Zealand’s potential by shifting the country onto ...
The opening of Kāinga Ora’s development of 134 homes in Epuni, Lower Hutt will provide much-needed social housing for Hutt families, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I’ve been a strong advocate for social housing on Kāinga Ora’s Epuni site ever since the old earthquake-prone housing was demolished in 2015. I ...
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown says the deal with China “complements, not replaces” the relationship with New Zealand after signing it yesterday. Brown said “The Action Plan for Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) 2025-2030” provides a structured framework for engagement between the Cook Islands ...
The government should not set military style academies into youth justice law, the children's commissioner says, despite its first bootcamp getting a glowing report. ...
The infamous over-the-suit T-shirt worn by the PM at a Parliament barbecue has gone on sale to raise funds for children living in poverty, in a TradeMe auction. ...
MONDAYSheriff Seymour rode slowly down the main street of Dodge on his faithful white horse Atlas Network.He liked what he saw.Children were being fed free lunches prepared by kind people who collected the scraps from an offal rendering plant.“Very strongly flavoured liver, such as ox liver, can be soaked overnight ...
Once upon a time it was all about being an astronaut, a firefighter or doctor; but these days kids have their sights set on becoming vloggers or YouTubers.That’s according to a 2019 study by Lego that surveyed 3000 children between the ages of eight to 12 from the US, the ...
Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. From the moment I started high school and realised almost every other girl in my year was at least partially interested in what the boys were up to, I realised that I would be single for life. The feeling wasn’t one of ...
The Pacific profiles series shines a light on Pacific people in Aotearoa doing interesting and important work in their communities, as nominated by members of the public. Today, Selina Alesana Alefosio.All photos by Geoffery Matautia.On a bright Sunday morning from her grandparent’s home in Pito-one, I spoke with ...
The White Lotus star reflects on her life in TV, including the local ad reference that doesn’t work in Australia, and her bananas co-star on Neighbours.Morgana O’Reilly was scrolling her phone next to her sleeping son on an idle Saturday morning when she got the call confirming that she ...
Claire Mabey explores the pros and cons of puff quotes on book covers.In January, Publishers Weekly put out an article by Sean Manning – publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship US imprint – in which he said he’d “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.The ...
New Zealand’s Entomological Society is hosting its annual bug of the year contest. Here are some of the insects in the running. For some reason – perhaps humans’ inherent competitiveness, the idealisation of democracy, the need to demarcate winners and losers – one of the best ways to get people ...
A journey along the border, with words and illustrations by Bob Kerr.The Spinoff Essay showcases the best essayists in Aotearoa, on topics big and small. Made possible by the generous support of our members.The Sunset Limited leaves Union Station New Orleans on time at nine in the morning. We ...
Neville Peat is the 2024 recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in nonfiction. He’s written 56 books, mostly on natural history; this excerpt is from The Falcon and the Lark: A New Zealand High Country Journal, first published in 1992. The falcon wintering on the Rock and ...
It was a light-hearted gesture Greta Pilkington will be forever grateful for – thanks to an Aussie rival who jumped in when the Olympic sailor couldn’t be at her own graduation.Pilkington, then 20, had been leading a double life – while qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics in the ILCA ...
I was born in the back of my grandfather’s ute, by an overgrown windbreak in a remote place called Wahi-Rakauyou can’t find on a map. I was born a girl but given the man’s name Harvey, as my dad always wanted a violent-minded boy to one day help him ...
“We’re not here to interfere in people’s property rights,” Ngāi Tahu’s Te Maire Tau has told the High Court.Tau, a historian, Upoko (traditional leader) of Ngāi Tūāhuriri, and a university professor of history, is the lead witness in a case designed to force the Crown to recognise the tribe’s rangatiratanga ...
Pacific Media Watch Trump administration officials barred two Associated Press (AP) reporters from covering White House events this week because the US-based independent news agency did not change its style guide to align with the president’s political agenda. The AP is being punished for using the term “Gulf of Mexico,” ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific Presenter/Bulletin editor France’s top diplomat in the Pacific region says talks around the “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s highly controversial electoral roll are back on the table. The French government intended to make a constitutional amendment that would lift restrictions prescribed under the Nouméa Accord, which ...
By bringing these global voices to the fight for free expression in New Zealand, we’ll continue to protect and expand our culture of free speech, says Nathan Seiuli, the Free Speech Union's Events Manager. ...
The issue is no longer a hypothetical one. US President Donald Trump will not explicitly suggest death camps, but he has already consented to Israel’s continuing a war that is not a war but rather a barbaric assault on a desolate stretch of land. From there, the road to annihilation is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cecelia Cmielewski, Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University To be selected as the artist and curator team to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale is considered the ultimate exhibition for an artistic team. To have your selection rescinded, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia Severe Tropical Cyclone Zelia is bearing down on the northwest coast of Australia and is likely to make landfall early Friday evening. It’s a monster storm of great concern to Western Australia. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Ireland-Piper, Associate Professor, ANU National Security College, Australian National University A Victorian government decision to allow dingo culling in the state’s east until 2028 has reignited debate over what has been dubbed Australia’s most controversial animal. Animals Australia, an animal welfare ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University Overnight, Robert F. Kennedy Jr was confirmed as the secretary of the US Health and Human Services Department. Put simply, this makes him the most influential figure in overseeing the health and wellbeing of more ...
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Given the quality of the current Labour leadership is anyone surprised?
Only in that the Nats have allegedly increased support.
Even the Roy Morgan has National back around its 12 month highs, while Labour is very close to its 12 month lows.
Voters have decided that the Labour caucus is not fit to govern. Wait until National start applying election year pressure on to Labour.
Key’s leadership is looking safer.
You mean like spending money in election year bribes
Or announcing further attacks on citizens. Heck, the more assaults on the New Zealand public the greater the chances he’ll be this country’s longest serving PM. Don’t know quite how that’s supposed to work but it does.
NZers like strong, firm leaders with smarts and charm.
In other words, it doesn’t matter if they are stupid as long as they have the qualities you’ve mentioned.
No, no need, strong leadership and Policies are what the voter is looking for.
Besides, if my memory serves me correctly, were not Student Loans and Working for Families Labour bribes on a grand scale which served them well to win two elections, when they looked odds on to lose?
3 News also poll people on leaders performing well/badly.
Shearer lost 10%. Core Labour voters are staying loyal to the party and expressing dissatisfaction with the leader. Only a fool or a payroll hack can fail to get the message.
Caucus tomorrow in Napier, time for action.
So many ears and eyes cannot be wrong. Despite a corrupt, cronyistic and nasty National Government, people neither see nor hear a leader-in-waiting on the opposition bench who can lead a party that is ready to govern.
Labour needs to show it can get its own house in order and that it is a unified ‘broad church’ party from caucus to membership and affiliates, before it can convince people it is able to manage a coalition government, take the country through these difficult times, and start helping us all adapt to a different future of financial, energy and environmental crises and challenges.
Come on, Labour Caucus, come on and show us your better selves. Give us reasons, nay, just a very good reason, and remind and rally us, to provide our solid support to you so that you can govern for the common good, in the interest of the many of us in NZ.
Finally got round to watching Us Now last night. It highlights how people are organising via the internet and, interestingly, building trust. The lesson is clear, time for real democracy and not this BS representative democracy that got put in place because the rich/powerful were concerned that the people would lose their dependence upon them.
I’ll have a look at that, but have to say that plethora of white male faces on their youtube page doesn’t bode well. Nor the idea that we can all be connected as easily as on FB for the purposes of democracy.
…that plethora of white male faces on their youtube page doesn’t bode well.
Yes, I always find the ethnicity of the participants is a handy way of assessing how worthwhile something is… Oh, wait, I’ve got that the wrong way round – it’s completely fucking useless for that.
I know, it’s really bizarre to think that discussions about new kinds of democracy should include wimmen and non-white people, rather than it being optional.
personally weka, I find things don’t bode well when I see a plethora of brown faces.
funny how we think the same …………
how do you cope at the beach with all the tanned people, must be hell for you lol.
One of the points made in the documentary is that, through the online organising, people are no longer basing their decisions on what people look like or what they know of the person but what information the discussion has brought out. And one of the other points made was that wrong information is rapidly corrected – a point that was made by one of the women’s groups covered.
You fucking racist.
Reid poll???? snigger i would never dare to suggest nor hint that the Reid poll is possibly the most corrupted, twisted, biased poll of them all, never you hear,
Should be a giggle soon as the Slippery cheerleaders start squealing in delight over ‘national governing alone’ as they did during the last trimester…
+1
New definiton for poll: A form of self fulfilling prophecy; Dictating public opinion by telling the public what the publics’ opinion is.
I’d ban the publication of opinion polls in the 72 hours before a General Election.
I’d ban them 72 years before a general election
That may be a little extreme but they certainly need to be banned during the electioneering period.
I’m not convinced that they serve any legitimate democratic function at any time.
I’d go for two weeks minimum, but preferably six weeks or longer. Imagine how the media would have to change for a start.
I went for 72 hours in order to balance the need to maintain maximum media freedoms while still serving the needs of the democratic electoral process.
I would make it a rule that the results of a poll couldn’t be publisized unless they were good news for the party I support.
That doesn’t surprise me.
KK
That’s amusing. A sense of humour and self-deprecation unnoticed before. I must have missed it before.
Banned totally unless Nate Silver has personally approved the pollster’s methodology and media narrative told about it.
Three weeks will do.
Hmmm so if Labour was polling 47% and the Nats were on 31% you would still say the same thing?
Ignoring the polls won’t make them go away – they are a sign that the voting public is not happy with who Labour are right now and haven’t been since 2008.
Instead of bleating on for years about the inaccuracies of polls and how the evil Nats will be gone once the public awaken to cronyism Labour should have spent 2009-10 reviewing why they lost the lost 2008 election.
Having worked this out via review they should then have selected a whole new crop of candidates for the 2011 election with the aim of building towards a 2014 victory.
By 2014 you would have had a crop of keen, fresh upstarts chaffing at the bit to get into the treasury benches with a party and policy to match (and a leader??)
Key would have found it a lot harder to aim for a 3rd term under this scenario.
But no what did Labour do? Installed the old has beens in the caucus leadership, kept the same tired policies, and pretended that the polls were inaccurate.
Result? Record loss at the 2011 election, and very few new MP’s coming in. Throw in a new insipid leader, a broke party, and factional splits more ways than a dominos pizza.
Now everyone realizes that its a mess but who is gona fix it?
+1
And too many of the new MPs who did get in were chosen because of their support of the status quo hierarchy, not because they were expected to upset the status quo hierarchy.
Possibly but humanity is a strange beast.
At the last election a number of voters didn’t vote because they believed National had already won, i.e, influenced by the polls. If they had voted National wouldn’t be in power today.
Thing is, the people most likely to vote happen to be the right-wingers and so a poll that showed Labour was going to win may, in fact, spur more of them to vote rather than turn them off voting.
The fact that voting was influenced by the MSMs polling is why it needs to be banned before the election.
Um, what? It was one of the closest elections yet in NZ.
Oh! I wrote my comment without seeing yours!
I would agree with your generalisation that left voters are spineless morons.
Not spineless but a feeling of powerlessness. They will correct for that feeling in one way or another.
Why do we assume that the people who did not vote in 2011 were lefties. I have seen no evidence to suggest that proposition is correct.
The fact that the polls suggested National was going to win could have same effect on right leaning voters. Righties assuming they were going to win stayed at home as there was no real need to leave their palace to stand in a line to vote.
Some voters only get motivated if they think it will be close and their one vote will make a difference.
I am not saying that is the case but can has anyone got any evidence that the 2011 non-voters were proporitionally any different to those who did vote?
Some figures from http://www.electionresults.govt.nz/
Just looking at the Party votes:
Election Labour National
1999 800,199 629,932
2002 838,219 425,310
2005 935,319 889,813
2008 796,880 1,053,398
2011 614,937 1,058,636
While showing the total number of votes received, I couldn’t find the number of people enrolled to vote, so no idea if non-voters increased or decreased from election to election
Thanks Richard
What I am asking is how those numbers stack up for non-voters. It is quite possible that noone has any idea. But for some reason the left thinks the reason we lost was because a million people didn’t turn out to vote in 2011.
I want to know why we think those non-voters would have voted for the left?
The polls before and after the election would in fact suggest the opposite.
I happy to be proven wrong….
It’s a fact that’s been popping up in research around the world for the last 50+ years. The group most likely not to vote are the poor and they’re most likely to vote for a left leaning party if they voted.
Because left wing people are lazy?
Left wing people did the Long March and thew out the fucking Chinese capitalists, they also got rid of the Romanovs and then fucked the Wehrmacht
the neoliberal pricks took all the jobs away from the working class and now you have the gall to pick over the remains and call people lazy
If you want lazy look at the rentier capitalists who sit on their fat asses extracting money from actual productive workers.
Apart from rambling incoherently, I think the issue is that there is no left wing political party to vote for, just different shades of the market led capitalist status quo, and political leaders all hyper-attuned to the opinions of the comfortable middle class.
I didn’t call them lazy, I was worried you might be.
Nope.
They most likely would have split along the exact same lines as existed so you most likely would have got the same result.
Thinking about these numbers a bit more, two things emerge:
1. Bill English will never, ever lead the national party again (joy)
2. Labour has lost 320,000 voters since the 2005 election.
Surely someone in the Labour party would be wondering what the party should be doing to get those 320,000 voters back instead of plodding on with the same ol’, same ol’ bollocks which sees them shedding voters.
And the population has increased since 2005
It is the fault of the bloggers on The Standard?
It is the fault of David Cunliffe?
It can be fixed by coaching from Ian Fraser?
If the whole party was run a well as Wellington Central there would be no problem.
If Shearer was only given enough time, to prove himself, there would be no problem.
@ Jimmie
Hmmm so if Labour was polling 47% and the Nats were on 31% you would still say the same thing?
If Labour were doing the amount of dodgy things that Nat are; such as removing our rights and breaking rules left, right and centre and showing blatant disregard for democratic process on a regular basis and the polls were as positive for Labour as they are for Nats now, yes, I would still be thinking the same thing; that the pollsters are poll pushing ~ using polls to shift opinion. [Because, really, it is hard to see the politicians doing anything to warrant that level of popularity.]
“Ignoring the polls won’t make them go away”
I did not say I ignored the polls I said I have trouble trusting that they are anything other than tools of opinion manipulation. A good lie often has some truth involved. A little exaggeration perhaps can go a long way, for instance:
Why did so many stay at home on election day?
Could it be that lots of people thought “What is the bloody point; Nat is polling so high~everyone else must like them. My vote won’t make any difference.”?
Sometimes I suspect that the weakest point of left wing politics may be a certain naivety regarding how low political tactics can go; and discounting such tactics leaves us unable to counteract them. I am aware that opinion manipulation is a pretty sophisticated field of activity; there is a whole science developed on the subject. (more than one science).
Which brings me to the subject that you mainly speak of, a way forward: strategy.
I agree with your comments (which, by the way, require none of these reid/roymorgan polls to act upon ~ to have taken the election results seriously would have sufficed)
What you write is a pretty straight-forward common-sense dare I say obvious way to address the election result; which brings me to the question that naturally arises:
Where are Labour’s strategists? Who are they? Do they exist at all?, and if so, Where are their heads at???
They view the entire country and the wider electorate through bubble-lensed beltway glasses. Hopeless and disconnected.
The job market is ferocious for ordinary people ~ are political strategists immune to the pressures the rest of us are under?
Perhaps being fired might give them the life experience they require to engage in everyday issues. (Like joblessness, for example).
The advisors are usually amongst the most desperate to keep the status quo hierarchy in place; they know if the Leadership team changes, they too will most likely be gone.
Labour strategists and staffers have fuck all job options compared to the ones working for National. The Tories always look after their own. Well, unless you screw up on a Gilmore scale.
“Why did so many stay at home on election day” ?
Well just ;look at what they had to vote for, do you really blame them???
“Where are Labour’s strategists”? Mallard was one, maybe the only one??
“Who are they”? The same fools that have been there since the 2k5 election debacle.
“Do they exist at all?, Unfortunately yes
“Where are their heads at???” Firmly up their arses!
It may well be that at least a million plus Labour supporters stay home on polling day, or they vote Green.
@David H
re at least a million plus…Perhaps they are going for some sort of record?
+1, perfect summation Jimmie!
Labour – and in this case it is not nomen est omen – is outdated and irrelevant. The few good people who could have saved the day have been put into the corner of shame – for non compliance with these boarding school bullies. It is especially the young that are feeling disaffected and whilst they are not really looking to the Nats they have not many choices. The greens have too early aligned themselves with labour and thus stall. It would be better for the Greens to go it alone and split the vote at a far greater rate so that Dunne and the Teacaddy won’t be the deciders.
I belief that the time is not quite come for a New Labour but it will come.
Polls show that no left party has credibility to run the treasury benches. That’s all. Shearer said labour needs to concentrate on power and house affordability. What about things like international trade, r & d, super bubble and let’s talk about jobs. With GFC reclining now and natural market forces take over the only thing national needs to do is getting the debt levels down. Agree 200b is too much, 80b seems about the right gearing.
Labour is all about labour now.
Greens are all about labour swing voters and mana and Maori about individuals. National is the complete package at the moment
GFC has only just started.
Nah..surplus projected for next 10 years will kill that debt. Next step reign in council spending.
Nah, projected surpluses can’t be used to pay real debt. And those projections don’t take into account GFC phase 2, which is warming up.
Bill English has no plans to repay ANY debt. Hell just keep on rolling it over.
If theres a surplus, which seems to be just around the corner after the next election…. moving the goalposts every 9 months or so, it will go in tax cuts for the wealthy
+1
National understands that if there’s a government surplus then profits aren’t as high as they could be.
surplus projected for next 10 years will kill that debt.
That’s awesome. Your projected TAB winnings for the next 10 years will kill your mortgage, too.
So you oppose the anchor projects in Christchurch? (National’s ‘think big’ for the city council.)
For the millionth time: it’s the trend that matters.
And the trend says?
That Labour is holding at exactly the same levels as 2009 and 2010.
The Labour patient has been in coma all this time ??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUk0CZ_VjM8
That Labour and the Titanic have a lot in common.
Breaking news..4 MPs resign from labour tomorrow and defects to greens (2).. Mana(1) and independent (1)
dox or gtfo
Yes must be doing an apprenticeship with Garner
It is school holidays. Yes in bored.
Breaking news…….Yes drowns in his own excretia, excrement……no one cares. Particularly ShonKey Python – “Thank Christ……that wannabee fuckwit won’t be phoning again. I’ve told him/her/it time and time again. Ambassador Galapagos Islands has gone ! Gilmore. Shut the prick up”.
It was quite funny to watch, in a black-humour kind of way. Gower obviously feels like the result is a vindication of his efforts to put the vital political issues of the day in front TV3’s viewers – his choices for said vital political issues being, natch, Labour MPs in Sky City’s corporate box and the proposed “man ban” (in quotes because, apparently unlike the professionals working for TV3, I’m not a complete fucking idiot).
I am disappointed with the negativity shown here over Shearer. OK, I agree Labour is not doing well. But it is holding steady at 31% and the support partner Greens are steady at 12%. NZ First is inching up and I am sure it will cross 5% on election night. All Labour needs to do is claw up another 4% on election night. Then it will be a Labour-Green-NZ First-Hone Centre-Left government. I will start to worry only if Labour drops below 30%. Let us not destabilise the leadership now. Let us stay united folks.
I’m disappointed with the negativity shown towards the patient’s condition. He isn’t doing well, but he is holding steady at only losing one leg. Let’s not destabilise him by pointing out he’s lost a leg. Let’s stay united.
Besides, if we wish really hard other folks will come along to prop him up, which is practically the same as having two legs.
Wise words, very wise words.
If we don’t act now when it is important and possible to try and get some real Labour integrity in the Leadership, then when? The present poor cowardly pollies running the Left ticket, will be lucky to get their tired legs over the finish line.
Labour’s been steady on around 31 for four years. It’s not getting any better. In the latest poll Shearer’s personal competence rating dropped from 36 to 26. The public know he’s just not up to it.
If your hope of a Labour-led government relies on Shearer picking up four points against Key in the campaign, and Winston getting to five and choosing to play third fiddle to Labour and the Greens (with Hone at his side),then you’re dreaming. He’ll go play kingmaker with his old party the Nats in a second.
Labour can’t win with Shearer. He needs to go, as does every MP who devised and propped up this dreadful experiment. He owes it to Labour to do the honourable thing.
Totally agree Struth.
Why doesn’t he do the honourable thing?
Surely he can see he is useless. He’s earned good money as opposition leader, and he’s got plenty stashed away in his UN account. Why does he perpetuate his and Labour’s misery?
I suspect that “Core Labour Voter” … isn’t.
But the “destabilising” line needs exploring. Is it “destabilising” to point out that somebody else is destabilising? So if (e.g.) Shane Jones behaves like a dick, and breaks caucus discipline, is he destabilising, or are we the bad guys because we notice him doing it? If the leader destabilises the party by obeying the right-wing blogs, should we all pretend it didn’t happen?
Our job is to publicly support the destabilisers at the top, because anything else would destabilise, is that how it goes?
I suspect that the level of destabilising dickishness comes down to whether the response is proportionate to the perceived fault, and whether the perceived fault is at all reflective of an actual fault.
E.g. if there was, say, a remit that was shilly-shallied on and then kicked back to council (sorry, council were “asked to reconsider it”), was this poor form because the leader was destabilising the party by obeying the right-wing blogs that thought up a catchy critical tag for that remit, or was the leader boldly listening to the wishes of those proud internet Waitakere Men within the Labour membership who felt that for the good of Labour the remit should never have gotten so far in the process and that even taking the remit to conference was electoral suicide? Or maybe all sides within Labour acted like a dick on that one.
There’s no way that such a centre left coalition will last even 6 months; especially if Shearer is still Labour’s leader and therefore PM. Shearer cant manage Labour and its factions now; let alone a coalition that includes the Greens, NZ First and Mana.
But it would be fun to watch him try.
Fair point.
center left?? hone is not center left neither are the greens, both are far left fringe extremists hone particularly. All these egos and nutters in power hone/winston/wussell/lab hacks left over from the clark regime will be an absolute disaster
This response is the reason why Labour cannot gain ground. No idea about the future, just hold steady at 30%…..obviously there is no interest and passion for capturing the PEOPLE’S imagination and trying to gun for a majority at the next election.
Seems a little ironic to me that with polls falling short of where labor was in 2008 that Helen Clark is in/ shortly to be in (?) town. She might have a few words of wisdom about how to pull a divided team together…
Yes.
It might be nice to imagine we’re otherwise, but humans are creatures of emotion and perception. And the thing that the public think of as “Labour” has failed to create these in adequate measure (I’d argue since 2005 or 2006).
It’s the infighting, stupid.
Why should the rest of us vote for a party who can’t even get behind their leader?
We should be at that point where Mike Smith rows in with a patrician ticking off for all of us.
🙂
It’s time to put differences aside and firmly unite behind David Shearer, who is the leader and our only hope.
Stay firm, David S.
Our household had the pollsters phone in for this Reid Research poll. The questions were so focused we thought it was the Labour Party doing an “internal” poll. The family member who answered the pollster obviously thinks very much like the rest of NZ – Shearer (and the ABCs) have got it totally wrong. The Labour caucus will be history if they don’t change!
Labour internal polls tend to be by UMR.
Part of the problem is the closeness to the Green Party. Time for David S. to put some space between Labour and the more extreme Green policies.
He seems to follow Norman. It cannot continue that way.
Lol
Gee Labour going down in the polls…theres a surprise but don’t wonrry its probably just a rogue poll and the only one that counts is on election day 🙂
It’s more complicated than that, Winston.
1. The polls are rogue.
2. All polls are captured by corporate interests and they make the results up to discourage the left.
3. People are waking up. Why, I just spoke to someone the other day who has voted for John Key and now sees he is corrupt.
4. Labour is not popular because it is too right wing. Once it moves left of the Mana party, it will be massively popular.
I second your superb analysis.
Don’t forget;
5. On the third coup he arose triumphant to heal the hearts of the unfaithful. And lo, Cunliffe did give the right of the caucus sight and to the left he brought wisdom and he ruled forever and ever.
Amen.
“Labour is not popular because it is too right wing. Once it moves left of the Mana party, it will be massively popular.”
I’d be happy if they moved to the left of the National party.
Shearer is lucky the earthquake hit and took away attention from this poll. The TV1 poll will be interesting. I assume it is next weekend?
Another bad poll, another nail in the coffin for Shearer. Hard to see how he will be able to move on with this continued scrutiny of his leadership. Once it starts, it is hard to shake off esp when your colleagues are trying to undermine you.
erikter is a troll.
it is saying the opposite on other pages.
erikter to be banned again
On a serious note for a change, how dispiriting is it for you Labour supporters to see Labour going backwards yet knowing how simple a fix it would be to get Labour going forward.
The ideas that are bandied about are quite simple: replace Shearer, older MPs to leave, work as a team, stop shooting yourselves in the foot and refocus on the working man and woman
Its not hard or earth shattering yet time and time again Labour start to gain traction yet someone comes along and sticks their fott in their mouth
I don’t know how you do it
You are right that the formula is simple.
But you are wrong that it is merely “dispiriting”. It is much worse than that to have a crooked liar and ex-money trader as the Prime Minister. Someone who panders to the dollar over everything else. Someone who lies so easily he can’t even keep up himself. Someone who continually makes things harder for the lowly and easier for the rich. Someone who wants to record all of my information all day every day. Someone who lies and in a complete and utter fascist manner trashes democracy so that his voters can steal water they could not otherwise obtain for their greedy desires.
You sound like you are one of those unaffected by the acts and lies of this corrupt government and its arsehole participants.
No not really but the economy is doing better than most, unemployment down, crime down so looking at the big picture NZ is in a pretty good place
Don’t forget that people in my boat just made another $70000 on the value of their house in the last year. Yay National.
fool
cool, what did you buy with it?
lol
I bought a new monocle and a beautifully crafted walking cane with which to strike street urchins who get in my way when traveling to my club.
*whoosh*
King kong so sophisticated as I didn’t expect caves were so valuable!
Your an example of primitive instincts destroying 100’s of 1,000’s of years of civilization .
Don’t beat your chest to loudly !
New Zealand is not a good place when every second person is using the Hooton inspired interrogative figure of speech.
This one was dreamed up by him to distinguish National Party supporters from others and it is disrespectful, an invalid argument from authorty and dishonest.
Its all over the talkshows and the sports announcers and it is the most dishonest result of slimy politics this country has ever seen.
isn’t it?
Exactly how low does labour have to go in the polls, until the “You have to look at the trends” people will admit, they’re in trouble.
They’ll never admit it…
They’re right though, you do have to look at the trends. Anything else is noise.
And the trend shows Labour has been flatlining for a long long time.
Not really. A long gradual positive incline followed by a steeper (but not yet deeper) dip.
Causes? Maybe labour. Maybe the time of year. My personal suspicion is that it might have something to do with two or three of the main political editors in NZ media having placed their reputations on the line for poor labour performance and a leadership change. If there is no leadership change before the end of the year, people might think they are full of shit. If there is a change, they are mystically-gifted seers. If labour goes down further, it’s a “crisis for Shearer”. If labour go up a few points, it’s “might not be enough to save him”. If it goes up further, it’s “managing to hold off the challengers… for now”. My point being that it’s not more than just “tory media” – senior individuals have essentially staked their professional reputation on the labour caucus being a simmering pot of discontent just waiting to boil over. How true that is, or whether people have largely jiggled into their respective roles, is now irrelevant to the story.
How long does it take to get signatures on a letter, anyway? Don’t they only need something like 18?
“A long gradual positive incline followed by a steeper (but not yet deeper) dip”
Mostly within the margin of error. Labour’s polling in real terms is flat.
What – 27 to 35-odd is flat? Nope. That would be underfitting a trendline for rhetorical effect. In fact given that the election is the absolute measure of support (rather than the estimate of support that the polls are – an election is a complete count of the population who cast a valid vote, rather than a likely sample of that population), there shouldn’t even be a MoE on 27%.
“Close to where they started”, maybe, but not “flat”.
Dead flat from 2009 and 2010.
By that logic, Edmund Hillary had a dead flat walk between March and June, 1953.
More like walking to the bottom of the cook strait and coming back up on to dry land.
And who led labour to the bottom of Cook Strait? I suppose at the moment they’re wandering around the foothills of the Kaikouras, to torture the analogy. Who knows whether they’ll head off to Aoraki/Mt Cook, or boldly stomp off towards the Pacific Basin? Certainly not Garner or Gower.
But at least you’re getting the idea that similar elevations quite some distance apart do not mean that the intermediate elevations are “dead flat”.
Fuck you’re a valiant, if oblique, defender of the current Labour hierarchy.
Labour under Shearer is polling exactly the same as Goff, at the same stage of the triannum. The current polling performance is nothing more than a reversion to the 2009/2010 mean. Dead flat in other words.
On what fucking planet is “steep descent into a deep valley, followed by a long but gradual rise, and then a bit of a drop over the last wee bit to end up at roughly the same elevation before the descent” ever a description that is interchangeable with “dead flat”? Try walking the two, and you might figure out why you’re underfitting the trendline for rhetorical effect. Or, in words you can understand, “making shit up”.
I don’t care how elaborate a path you’ve taken mate, Labour is right back where it was in 2009, 2010, and most of 2011.
To be slightly more precise, you don’t care to let reality get in the way of your assessments of labour’s performance over the last couple of terms.
For example, the half dozen morgan polls in 2009 where Labour polled in the high 20s. Number of times they’ve polled in the 20s since the 2011 election? Four. None in 2013. Although Labour did slightly better over 2008, (difference seems to be the greens were polling quite a bit lower but that might imply that labour going more left might simply take votes from the greens). 2011 results don’t seem to be on the RM website, but ISTR Labour having at least one RM result in the low 20s during 2011.
“Dead flat” indeed.
OK I admit it, you got me fair and square. There is a real difference between 28% in 2009 and 31% in 2013. Shearer should certainly take all the credit that difference entails.
Shearer should not disproportionately take so very much credit for that 3 percent diff. There is also someone called Shonkey.
aaaaand – you’ve lost the point again. Shit must have been getting too real for you.
You want to give Shearer the credit for that massive uplift? Cool.
Go die in a ditch with Shearer if you like, McFlock, good luck to you mate.
you almost had it, too. “dead flat”… all that?
You still trying to prove yourself right on a technicality? Hey good for you, I concede, you win.
A move in the polls from 28% to 31% over 4 years is not “dead flat”. It’s actually a solid positive trend. Labour should be at 34% under Shearer, by say 2017.
Given that an RM poll just before the election had labour on 23%, and that 31% is the low point of the trends over the last few months, it’s more than a technicality. But the point, yet again, is that calling the line between 2009 and now “flat” is fucking stupid. It’s like calling the earth “blue” and saying no more thought about it is needed. But you need to look at labour’s polling with such massive granularity because if you actually looked at the details you’d have to admit that the world is slightly more complex that ‘cunliffe good leader, everyone else in caucus evil and/or abjectly incompetent leader’.
I’ve already admitted that Shearer has caused an uplift in the polls to 31%. What more do you want?
What would you know about concepts of leadership complexity? Shearer is just fine, remember.
Are you really so stupid as to think that:
A) because the line between two arbitrarily-selected points is straight, the best description of the observations between those points is also a straight line; and
B) party polling is interchangeable in meaning with party leadership;
so therefore
Conclusion) the entirety of party leadership performance can bejudged by the slope of a straight line between two arbitrarily-selected points?
Any one of those statements is stupid, and yet that seems to be the gist of your argument: shearer is proved to be bad because the polls have not much slope between two arbitrary points.
“Arbitrarily selected” lolz.
Point (a) is Labour’s support when Shearer took office. Point (b) is Labour’s support now.
If you think there are any two less arbitrary points by which to measure Labour’s performance under Shearer’s leadership, I’d love to know what they are.
Apart from the fact that CV wasn’t using election night as his initial points for “dead flat” were “2009 and 2010”. But even if we compared the real observation of election night (rather than an RM estimate from Nov2011), the best description of the RM estimates between those points is not a straight line, “flat” or otherwise.
The last three RM points have been a deviation from the pattern over the last 18 months (three consecutive falls for Labour), and this is a concern. About three times as much of a concern as a single lower point – so I’m not shitting bricks just yet.
But what’s more of a concern for me is the frenzy by Garner/Gower et al – it could possibly just be a self-fulfiling prophecy (a bit like talking down stock price). If it’s genuinely someone else in caucus angling for position before list selection (I don’t think it’s Cunliffe if it is), then they deserve a kick in the nuts. Taking this long to have the confidence issue done and dusted beggars belief.
Heh – come to think of it, if there is someone trying to do that and making such a pig’s breakfast of it, then the lack of political deftness would seem to be in character for someone who likes to shit on Labour’s only real coalition hope for the government benches… well, now that Chris carter’s gone, anyway 🙂
“the best description of the RM estimates between those points is not a straight line, “flat” or otherwise.”
And the difference between those two points is…
Its an upslope, I tellsya, Shearer despite a few minor flaws has been such a boost for Labour, why can’t everyone see that?! Yer bunch of ungrateful Judases!
One was the upswing of a downward trend (RM had one point before the election of lab on 23.5%) whereas the other is the downswing on an upward trend?
18 months?
Whether your glasses tint is rosy red, tory blue, or depression black?
3.5% is the most charitable reading. And most of that was made up in the first month.
1. Shearer took over leadership of Labour in December 2011 after an election result of 27.5%.
2. The first RM of 2012 had Labour still at 27.5%.
3. By the end of Jan 2012 RM had Labour at 30.5%
4. 18 months later Labour is at 31%
It’s margin of error stuff whichever way you look at it.
If you insist on ignoring every single datapoint in between.
If you ignore the possibility (likelihood) that RM used the election to calibrate their regional and demographic sampling weights in order to make the first poll after the election match the election result.
If you ignore the other parties and performance of likely coalition partners in parliament and pretend it’s an FPP two-horse race.
If you’re prepared to throw out every principle of statistical analysis in the textbook, just so you can act all emo teen, then if all that, why even bother looking at the polls? Reality might get in the way of a really good sulk.
lolz. Are you saying that the current level (31%) is wildly out of step with the rest of the datapoints?
What is the median level of support over the past 18 months?
ps you’re right I don’t know much about statistical data analysis. What does it indicate when the mean, median and mode are the same?
Over time-series datapoints between 27% to 35.5%? It means you’re trying to find a midpoint of the set rather analyse whether/how the set has changed over time. Finding a line of best fit would be more suitable.
It also means that this insomnia is a bitch, and I’ll probably be quite nasty todarrow. But then you’re in the same boat, unless you’re shiftworking. 🙂
…it might have something to do with two or three of the main political editors in NZ media having placed their reputations on the line for poor labour performance and a leadership change.
That’s my suspicion too. Watching Gower peddling a survey he’s had done on whether Labour voters think Shearer needs to go for Labour to win the next election, I was wondering why he’d commission that poll – the most plausible answer is he’s now got a personal stake in Shearer getting rolled, having effectively staked his reputation on it.
Reputation??????????????
Mine Potty,Gower???????
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m sure he thinks he has one.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The leader David Shearer needs to stay for Labour to win the next election.
Shearer has shown himself to be lacking, Labour needs someone who is willing to stand up and fight.
Shearer has been handed an enormous amount of ammunition by National in the form of lies and half truths he could have used to cut Keys down to size and yet he has repeatedly failed to monopolize on these opportunities. He has to GO NOW and let someone more capable such as Annette King take the reigns.