election 2008

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Polity: National dropped 6% in 2008, 2011 campaigns

Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, July 7th, 2014 - 8 comments

At Rob Salmond’s briefing to Labour’s Congress over the weekend, he made a point about National’s performance in recent campaigns, which was later picked up in David Cunliffe’s speech.

National has dropped six percent each time. For those interested, here is the data that sits beneath this claim.

It is no wonder that John Key is worried when 3 months out from an election they are sitting on less than 50%, with dead and dying coalition partners.

New Zealand is doing nothing about climate change

Written By: - Date published: 7:56 am, January 5th, 2014 - 178 comments

The latest report on New Zealand’s performance under the Kyoto Protocol is out and the news is disturbing.  Net emissions compared to  our 1990 CO2 equivalent emissions are predicted to treble by 2030 at a time where they should be trending to below the 1990 level.  And Government policies are shown to be making little difference.  Meanwhile a report by Prof Euan Mason advocates that Agriculture should be in the scheme and that with a proper price for ETS credits significant reforestation with attendant benefits could occur.  And meanwhile RWNJs continue to show their belligerent lack of understanding of the science of climate change …

Three lies in one

Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, November 14th, 2011 - 4 comments

Wave goodbye to higher taxes. Not your loved ones.

Choose a Brighter Future. Derp de derp.

This is what John Key was promising last election – before he came to power, raised GST, and record numbers of kiwis left New Zealand permanently for a brighter future in Australia.

A new low

Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, October 19th, 2011 - 44 comments

Last election, National promised to subsidise a treatment for the rare and deadly Pompe disease. Now, they won’t even meet with the sufferers. The truth is that New Zealand can’t afford ongoing treatments that cost $1m per patient per year. National promises us whatever we want to hear to get our votes. Knowing from the start they’ll never deliver.

Parallels with the Past

Written By: - Date published: 11:08 am, October 17th, 2011 - 12 comments

On Sunday the 10th of May 2008, John Key gave a speech at the Southern Regional Conference explaining National’s platform for the looming election. It’s an interesting read, and looking back to consider words from the past can uncover some revealing realities about the present

River of Kiwis now flood to Oz

Written By: - Date published: 2:29 pm, June 22nd, 2011 - 56 comments

3300 Kiwis left for Australia last month, breaking a 32-year-old record. Remember when John Key promised to stop the flow of Kiwis across the Tasman? Well, now it’s a flood…

[and mostly it’s not from Christchurch either]

US Embassy: Political Objectivity of NZ Media Questioned

Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, May 5th, 2011 - 9 comments

Here’s an interesting Wikileaks cable on the ‘objectivity’ of the New Zealand msm, particularly the Herald. The cable relates to the period leading up to the last election. Most of it seems like a pretty fair appraisal to me, despite it perhaps being a little optimistic about the influences ideology and profit motive have on […]

Chose a brighter future?

Written By: - Date published: 7:27 am, April 4th, 2011 - 100 comments

With news now that a starving boy was found eating cockroaches, and that impoverished elderly are eating catfood, the plight of the underclass is getting nothing but worse.  Is this the “brighter future” that National promised?…

Kiwiblogblog is not completely dead

Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, February 11th, 2011 - 35 comments

Archiving websites is a bloody good idea because the public debate and emerging history of NZ society is shifting more and more into these electronic media. So I asked NatLib about one of those political blogs that disappeared from the blogosphere – KiwiBlogBlog. It still exists…

Tax Cuts or High Wages?

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 27th, 2010 - 17 comments

At the last election we chose tax cuts and unemployment instead of stimulus and stability – which was the more ambitious, high wage way to go?

National are not fulfilling their government’s core reason for existence: closing the wage gap with Australia.  No, we’re fast going backwards on that score, and it’s predictable: high unemployment causes low wages.

Key voters waking up, pity about the hangover they’ve given us

Written By: - Date published: 9:32 am, August 18th, 2010 - 81 comments

National is governing like National governs. Anyone could have foreseen this, there were plenty of clues, but its only now are people who switched to Key waking up to the fact that he’s just the grinning face on the same old beast. I wonder: if someone is smart enough to see that Key’s government is a failure now, how were they dumb enough to ever believe things would be different?

The original justification or no justification at all?

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, July 28th, 2010 - 3 comments

During the election the National Party packaged up its policies so as not to scare voters. The 90 day probationary period was for two specific reasons. It was targeted toward people on the margins of the employment market and only applicable to small businesses. Either the original justifications still hold true, hence undermining any argument to extend the scheme, or the original justifications were rubbish from the very start.

Hysterical media coverage

Written By: - Date published: 2:45 pm, March 17th, 2010 - 26 comments

Suddenly John Key is all over the place complaining about “hysterical” media coverage of National’s plans to turn large chunks of our National Parks into smouldering slag. John seems to have forgotten what “hysterical” politics really looks like. Let’s take a trip down memory lane…

Liar, liar, pants on fire

Written By: - Date published: 1:09 pm, February 10th, 2010 - 75 comments

Apparently promises made before the election don’t count. GST was different then anyway.

What really wins elections

Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, October 22nd, 2009 - 1 comment

Why did you switch to National?

Written By: - Date published: 4:30 pm, October 14th, 2009 - 133 comments

Down in the comments long time contributor gobsmacked wrote: I have never seen a post on here saying ‘The left parties want the voters who switched to National last time. They aren’t idiots. But we lost them. Let’s find out why.’ That’s step one. I live in hope. Happy to oblige! Gentle reader, if you […]

Three down

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments

Six months in and John Key has broken three of his eleven “personal guarantees”. Impressive. Click on the image for full size.

Broken promises

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, May 28th, 2009 - 27 comments

National have already broken lots of pre-election promises and policies. Their policy to consult on local government and Auckland has been contemptuously ignored. Their pre-election welfare policy promise on benefit abatement thresholds, broken. They broke their promise to include Playcentre in ECE 20 Hours Free. They broke their promise to protect jobs, and particularly to […]

Thinking about a referendum on MMP

Written By: - Date published: 5:54 pm, May 10th, 2009 - 21 comments

There is an interesting paper by Mai Chen in NZ Lawyer Online about the pros and cons of the referendum on MMP that National has promised by 2011 – “Is the MMP referendum likely to result in electoral reform?” The current position is that MMP has managed to operate effectively in the NZ environment. Both […]

Nats still involved in dodgy donations

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 16th, 2009 - 38 comments

The Herald covers some of the donations to parties and candidates before the election. One of the big donors was the Road Transport Forum, the trucking lobby, who were behind the famous ‘truck strike’. They’re getting value for money eh? National’s Transport Minister Steven Joyce has taken half a billion out of public transport and […]

Third party returns

Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, March 19th, 2009 - 10 comments

The Electoral Commission has released the third party spending returns for the 2008 election campaign and it looks like for all National and ACT’s fears that the $120,000 third party cap would stop groups from being able to express themselves, only the Council of Trade Unions came close with a spend of around $100k. Other […]

Now with a little perspective

Written By: - Date published: 4:04 pm, February 11th, 2009 - 88 comments

I was going through some of my 2008 files yesterday and got a sudden reminder of just how nuts the right was getting toward the end: It got me thinking about all the other crazy shit that was going on last year and prior to it. the truck “strike”, the insane advertising the EMA did […]

Kids set back children’s franchise 100 years

Written By: - Date published: 3:55 pm, November 26th, 2008 - 23 comments

The results are in from the NZ Post-sponsored Kids Voting project, and while it’s a worthy project it nonetheless shows why we don’t allow children the franchise. More than 13,000 school students nationwide took part in the project aimed at encouraging kids to take an interest in our democracy. The resulting Parliament had Labour and […]

Labour’s lessons

Written By: - Date published: 6:27 pm, November 23rd, 2008 - 55 comments

54,982 votes, 2.3% of the total. That was difference in the election. If Labour had lost 55,000 fewer votes to National (it lost 142.966 in total, while voter numbers grew 69,000) then a Labour (47), Green (9), Progressive (1), Maori (5) government would have been possible, a more natural and stable government than one that […]

Final results in

Written By: - Date published: 2:27 pm, November 22nd, 2008 - 69 comments

The official count, including specials has been released. The Greens have picked up another seat on specials at National’s cost. Kennedy Graham will be the Greens’ ninth MP. Along with Kevin Hague, Graham brings both intellectual heft and a more ‘mainstream’ face to the Greens. Great news. Labour was just 39 votes short of picking […]

Minnows

Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, November 22nd, 2008 - 21 comments

I always love reading the 100 Word Blog. So few words and such a high degree of clarity. Richard has surpassed himself with this post. All I can say is ouch!, ask to reproduce it, and extend its readership. It is quoted below in full as per usual. Minnow Party post election round up While […]

Wellington party vote breakdown

Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, November 19th, 2008 - 30 comments

The Wellingtonista has a cool post up with a breakdown of Left vs Right voting patterns in Wellington this election. The map above shows party vote on a booth by booth level. The blue bloc represents National, Act and United Future, and the red bloc is Labour, Green and Progressive. NZ First and the Maori […]

He’ll make us ruch as well as thuck

Written By: - Date published: 1:07 pm, November 11th, 2008 - 77 comments

One Aussie view of our election.

What will happen with the specials?

Written By: - Date published: 9:31 pm, November 9th, 2008 - 25 comments

There are about 240,000 special votes still be be counted. That’s about 11% of the vote in total. Special voters include large numbers of students and late-enrollees, which tends to favour the Left. Last election, Labour and the Greens together took 45.8% of the first count and 51.4% of the specials, ending up with 46.4% […]

Election Night Live Blogging: The Explanatory Post

Written By: - Date published: 7:01 pm, November 8th, 2008 - 32 comments

Thanks to the Standardistas for giving me a method of distraction for the evening.  I’m usually to be found at The Hand Mirror, with a group of feminist left-of-centre women blogging about various things.  Tonight though I’ll be live-blogging here at the heart of the leftwing portion of the blogosphere, and I hope I can […]

Contrast the ways of ‘democracy’

Written By: - Date published: 6:56 pm, November 8th, 2008 - 6 comments

I’m happy to say that when I crawled out of my sickbed and voted this morning, it was nothing like the photos on the top and left. I gather that we had queues at some of the major booths later in the day – Edendale primary (my old school) in Mt Albert for instance. However […]

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