Jackson’s list position

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 pm, May 1st, 2017 - 24 comments
Categories: election 2017, labour - Tags: ,

A sensible outcome, without the need for an over-hyped “crisis meeting”:

Labour rejects Willie Jackson’s list complaint

The Labour Party’s ruling council has rejected Willie Jackson’s bid to go up in the party’s list rankings, an insider has told Newshub.
…
The insider said Mr Jackson will remain ranked at 21 on the list below two women, Willow-Jean Prime and Kiri Allen.
…
A crisis meeting to discuss the matter was called off after Mr Jackson chose not to pursue it further.

Jackson’s list position is very winnable – so let’s all get on and do it!

24 comments on “Jackson’s list position ”

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  1. Muttonbird 1
    1 May 2017 at 9:46 pm

    Who the hell is this ‘insider’?

    Anyhoo, I’m not sure why this was even news in the media today who hyped it as Labour falling apart again, unfit to govern, etc.

    So they delayed a list announcement. So fucking what?

    The government today delayed a deadline for submissions on new water quality measures because they couldn’t provide scientists with the relevant information on the proposed changes. Y’know, actual important stuff.

    The current government screws up on a daily basis. Where’s the outrage on that?

    • lprent 1.1
      1 May 2017 at 10:25 pm

      The thing that pissed me off the most was that this new list selection system was specifically set up to stop some of the idiocy of the old selection system.

      Much less prone to blockvoting, baggage carrying, cleaner, and more effective at letting new and experienced non MP candidates through. Even the position that Willie Jackson got was appropriate. If he was worth anything, then he could work to get it. It was within 3-4 mps at the current polling levels. Prove himself as being useful for the Labour party members and supporters.

      Queue jumping was not an option. Especially for someone with his thoughtless background which appeared to be from early last century. And especially because it did have completely destroyed the selection process because of a self entitled ego and some daft decisions.

      Glad I can still consider party voting Labour rather than ensuring and making damn sure that a politically dumb decision carried a clear penalty.

      • exkiwiforces 1.1.1
        2 May 2017 at 12:19 am

        Thank Christ they’ve change the list selection system.
        I was on the very first list selection committee many moons ago and talk about a gerrymander, hell even old Sir Joe would have been proud of this one. The first one was so North Island centric that I give everyone a bloody good spray early sunday morning about the make up of the list and I’ve never seen people move so fast looking for somewhere to hide since the day I IDF (Mortared) on a airfield in Gan. The end move was a very tokenism move of a few Mainlanders up the list, which left me with a very foul taste in my mouth that labour youth and true blue rank and file labour members were kicked down the street over someone who was one or all 3 below.

        There is 3 things I hated about doing the List selections, the Queue Jumping, people’s self entitled ego and focus groups pushing their own agenda.

        • lprent 1.1.1.1
          2 May 2017 at 7:10 am

          I suspect that the new system still has a lot of that (it is politics after all).

          However it is a hell of a lot better than it was. Which is what the intent of the reforms were. Less ability for groups to push individuals ahead of the parties needs and of their own levels of competence.

          There are some impressive (and it is usually bloody hard to impress me) candidates out there with strong political experience in their communities, who have been effective candidates in unwinnable seats, who have wound up with very low positions on the lists. Willow Jean Prime and Micheal Wood being good examples.

          The list was viewed as a way to keep experience rather than bringing in new faces. Both are required. But the party needs the list to be a place as much for renewal as a repository for experience. It hadn’t been.

          The consultation about the list reforms got that message pretty strongly from party members.

      • Matthew Whitehead 1.1.2
        2 May 2017 at 6:43 pm

        Yep, as someone who’s not a big fan of Jackson, I’d say 21 is generous to him but not too generous. He’s new blood to the party and deserves a bit of a soft entrance, despite his previous political experience as a party deputy, and 21 seems like a fair balance between those two things, and he can be re-ranked next election if he does as well as he and Little seem to think he can, as then he’ll have demonstrated he deserved it. Contrast, however, Laila Harré, who is probably just as much of a potential draw to critical voters Labour should want, and has more depth and breadth of experience, who wasn’t even head-hunted for the Party List at all despite very publicly endorsing Labour, and I think we begin to see this is about Little thinking Labour is too Labour, rather than not Labour enough.

        I’m genuinely surprised at how much news oxygen this issue is consuming, though, it honestly merits about two sentences at best. The focus should be on the female talent within the party that needed to be ranked higher, (and Moroney’s an emblematic example of that, she’s probably as much of a draw to the party as Jackson is, having done real hard yards on furthering parental leave) and the achievement of those new MPs, mostly women, who have been ranked appropriately and are likely to be up-and-coming political stars, such as Willow-Jean, or Kiri Allen.

        Also, nearly nobody is talking about how they haven’t really followed their gender-balance rule, which is still supposed to be in force. This list is likely to deliver a caucus that is unbalanced in favour of men, again, in a Parliament that will be unbalanced in favour of men, and it expects Māori in safe seats to win their spot in Parliament without a list parachute, but puts almost all electorate MPs or candidates in general electorates that Labour won in 2014 in winnable list positions, (I went and checked, there are three in an over-30 list position who HAVE to win their seats to expect to be elected on current polling averages, and seven MPs I could confirm were running electorate only including the Māori seat incumbents, compared with eighteen general electorate candidates (and one Māori candidate who isn’t an incumbent exempted from the list exodus) who will very likely be returned via the list if they lose) which is a very odd inconsistency in political strategy that suggests a weird racial double-standard where sitting general electorate MPs are somehow more deserving/beneficial when compared to sitting Māori electorate MPs. If it’s a good strategy for Māori, I don’t see why you wouldn’t feel it should be applied to non-Māori MPs too, where all the incumbents running in safe seats have to exit the Party List for accountability purposes.

        Back to the list inequality, I could understand if they were 1 or 2 women short, that’s an understandable variance that we might expect to see reversed in a later election, especially if the problem corrects itself with a few changes of scenario around electorates or party vote share, as Labour has a harder go of equalising its list than the Greens do due to its agressive electorate campaigning. But Labour would either need to lose 2 key electorates or win an extra 12% of the Party Vote in order to get a balanced Caucus with this list, which is completely out of whack, especially as it only took me about an hour or so to determine that, and that was with research time to match candidates to electorates, which Labour wouldn’t need. Makes calls of a “man ban” seem patently ridiculous given how testosterone-filled this list has come out. XD

  2. McFlock 2
    1 May 2017 at 9:50 pm

    Crisis, if there ever was one, averted.

  3. mosa 3
    2 May 2017 at 12:19 am

    This non event and how it was covered by the media shows the hysteria they are willing to engage in when covering anything that is perceived as a crisis where the Labour party is concerned,

    They will put a negative spin on anything that helps enforce the perception that the party is divided and can’t govern due to disunity and dysfunction

    It just shows the old right wing propaganda tactics are still being applied against parties of the left and the mountain that they still have to be climb in order to get into government.

    • tc 3.1
      2 May 2017 at 7:09 am

      Key is gone however dirty politics is national SOP now having had so much success with a compliant media and an apathy driven optional to vote electorate.

      Expect a lot more beat ups, spin and outright bs until the GE from nationals media, blinglush and his cronies as the MSM will not call them on it and continue with the ‘better than that mob’ themes.

    • Matthew Whitehead 3.2
      2 May 2017 at 6:51 pm

      Even if it was an issue, it wouldn’t be worth the coverage it was getting. I had assumed he actually HAD wanted to complain, and I still wasn’t interested in hearing about more Willie Jackson drama, and we all know how much appetite I have for political minutiae.

      • Anne 3.2.1
        2 May 2017 at 7:20 pm

        The original Herald online article on the subject of the announced list delay yesterday afternoon was balanced, non-sensational and mentioned Willie Jackson only in passing. It concentrated instead on the fact “some” candidates were disappointed with their position. I wrote a comment based on that article, but when I went back to check something a few minutes later hey presto…. the original was gone and in it’s place was a sensation-driven load of anti-Labour bullshit concentrating on Willie Jackson.

        Did the Herald inadvertently post it’s initial piece before their instructions from ‘on high’ were received?

        • Matthew Whitehead 3.2.1.1
          2 May 2017 at 7:22 pm

          I’m pretty sure the initial unbiased piece was the journalistic equivalent of posting “first!” before you go back to edit your comment. I honestly stopped reading that part because I have no interest in discussing this level of manufactured outrage.

  4. Michael who failed Civics 4
    2 May 2017 at 2:52 am

    Oh well, Labour’s completely fit for government then. I hope all those troughs in the Beehive are filled to the brim for all those selfless Labour Cabinet Ministers (and their lackeys).

  6. roy cartland 6
    2 May 2017 at 8:49 am

    If he doesn’t get in ranked at 21, that will be the least of Labour’s problems. The man’s a boofhead and has just proven it yet again.

    • marie 6.1
      2 May 2017 at 2:45 pm

      Agree! It’s all about him rather than the good of the party. Remember this is the guy who used to say on his radio show what a great guy John Key was. More interested in himself than the people who need help.

    • Matthew Whitehead 6.2
      2 May 2017 at 7:06 pm

      Actually 21 is a lower position than it seems for Labour, as once you factor in the number of electorates they’re likely to win, there’s only about 8-10 spots left for List MPs (Essentially, the way electorates work in MMP, it’s equivalent to every non-ranked or lower-ranked electorate winner bumping a List MP down the list by one rank. In Willie’s case, there are up to 15 of them in seats that are likely to be Labour wins depending on how you count it, making his effective position more like 35th or 36th. For comparison, Andrew Little is effectively 28th or 29th) on current polling, and Willie Jackson gets the 9th, so he’s in a slightly precarious position, which I think is quite fair- he merits a winnable position, but not an easily winnable position, so that he literally has to campaign like his job will depend on it. And with someone with Jackson’s style, that’s by far the best way to motivate him, because he has that talent of making everything about himself, lol.

      This is why the Herald was reporting that Labour needs to pull a 33% Party Vote for Mallard to get back in, because even though he’s nominally in a winnable position for a List party at 32nd, with the electorates added in he’s pushed to 12th position after all the electorates get filled, (ie. effectively 39th or 40th in line to get elected, or maybe 38th if both Davis and O’Connor suck and Labour doesn’t flip more electorates than National does) but there’s only about 9 spots unless Labour’s polling increases by election day.

  7. Tamati Tautuhi 7
    2 May 2017 at 10:37 am

    What a lot of who har and nonsense in MSM Labour delayed announcing their list positions big deal.

    National and MSM on the Dirty Politics Trail Again ?

  8. rhinocrates 8
    2 May 2017 at 10:48 am

    I had a colleague once whose policy was when asked by a student to reassess their grades always regraded them LOWER.

    If Jackson thinks the world owes him a living, he’ll probably find himself in good company with Robertson and Mallard, but good on the the party for ignoring his tantrum.

  9. Enough is Enough 9
    2 May 2017 at 10:56 am

    How does the media get hold of this.

    It should not have even been a story

  10. keepcalmcarryon 10
    2 May 2017 at 2:11 pm

    Well he’s ahead of Poto Williams 🙂

  11. timeforacupoftea 11
    2 May 2017 at 5:21 pm

    Its all over for labour this time.
    Silly rabbits going for the Willie again.

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