Little confirms New Plymouth candidacy

Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, July 21st, 2010 - 33 comments
Categories: Politics - Tags:

According to Stuff Andrew Little has confirmed his candidacy for the New Plymouth seat.

I’d say he stands a very good chance of winning and will be a real thorn in the side of the National Party.

It would seem that David Farrar does too: the odd wee fulla’s already trying some clumsy attack politics.

33 comments on “Little confirms New Plymouth candidacy ”

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  1. jnd 1
    21 July 2010 at 12:07 pm

    Good news. So when will Little stand down as NZLP President?

    • Juan Manuel Santos 1.1
      21 July 2010 at 12:30 pm

      “Mr Little said he would stand down from his Labour Party president’s role before the election, and from his EPMU role if elected.”

      http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3936152/Andrew-Little-to-run-for-Parliament

    • luva 1.2
      22 July 2010 at 12:20 am

      Although this is hardly a surprise it is news that should excite New Zealanders, not just the party cheer team.

      Labour has been in need of new blood that will excite the electorate for a long time. The Goff, King, Mallard show worked very well 10 years ago but it hardly represents a new direction for Labour or New Zealand.

      I hope Little comes into the Labour Parliamentary team and knocks some heads, clears out the dead wood and presents to us a party that will put real pressure on Key and provide a viable alternative.

  2. Len 2
    21 July 2010 at 12:13 pm

    Not likely bveing a trougher

    • The Voice of Reason 2.1
      21 July 2010 at 12:20 pm

      The Labour Party presidency is not a paid role, you twit. It’s an extra role Little has taken on in addition to the more than fulltime effort he puts into his union secretary job. He’s not a trougher, he’s a hard working, honest bloke who is going to be a great MP for the people of New Plymouth. Which is much much more than can be said for the cardborad cutout currently ‘representing’ the city.

      • Juan Manuel Santos 2.1.1
        21 July 2010 at 12:40 pm

        I do love that the principle attack on Little coming from the right stems from the fact that he is a hard worker and an high achiever. I’m sure it keeps him up at night.

    • bbfloyc 2.2
      21 July 2010 at 1:03 pm

      @len. it’s reassuring to be able to rely on the bigotry and ignorance of our nact brethren.

    • Craig Glen Eden 2.3
      21 July 2010 at 1:04 pm

      We are not talking about Bill English on this post Len you seem to have the wrong post.

    • Ryan 2.4
      22 July 2010 at 1:58 pm

      What makes us think Len has a job? He’s ripping of the dole, because a National Party delegate pay’s him cash to comment. Pity he can’t spell.

  3. prism 3
    21 July 2010 at 12:45 pm

    I get the impression Len that you think that every public face that has more than one job is a ‘trougher’. In fact if you advance beyond your present job, and grow older and wiser, you will find that many people have another job, paid or unpaid, besides their main employment.

    Many businessmen have numbers of business directorships or council positions.
    Usually because of an interest in using skills in another area of work. Sometimes it does not provide any money or light relief, just a change, even if its serving on sports, creative bodies. You may be asked to serve on a school board when you are older. Don’t accept if you aren’t prepared to spend time on reading reports, discussing points, managing finances – all time consuming.

    • lprent 3.1
      21 July 2010 at 1:06 pm

      Yep.. As an example…

      Apart from my rather strenuous (but fun) paid job, I help run this site, contribute time to both my home electorate party organization, to the one I’m currently living in, and many others that want data campaigning assistance.

      I’ve helped out many organizations where I feel the need and get a request. These include organizations like Womans Refuge, Workchoice, my Body Corporate, as well as many others.

      I also help out on other peoples projects. Just at present this is largely helping Lyn out on her projects.

      Personally I tend to avoid positions because the best use of my time is using my tech skills rather than doing the boring (to me) organizational work.

      Len appears to not understand the role that the voluntary sector does in our community. One position of which is the president of the NZLP.

      I’d guess Len is a greedy little bugger who wouldn’t dream of doing anything unless he was paid for it, so cannot conceive that others aren’t like like him, and has a big envy problem because he has a problem with other people trusting him…

      In short – Len is a utter dipshit…

  4. comedy 4
    21 July 2010 at 2:07 pm

    As president of a major political party in NZ I’d expect you’d get some pretty cushy government appointed board positions/opportunities and likening it to true volunteering for truely charitable organisations is bs.

    • The Voice of Reason 4.1
      21 July 2010 at 2:22 pm

      You’re an idiot.

      There are no cushy numbers attached to the position of labour party prez. Even if there were, how much chance would the president of the opposition party have getting them under this government, whose only success in job creation has been in putting their mates into the real cushy numbers. For example, two more hacks have just been appointed to the board of RadioNZ.

      Little already has a fulltime job with his union. The pres’s position is probably almost a fulltime job as well, but without the salary. I think Little may be on a couple of ITO boards, representing the union, but the fees for that would go to the union, not him. I think he is or was on the New Plymouth polytech board, which I guess he might get a small stipend for.

      The point is he is not doing this stuff for personal enrichment. He’s just a good bloke, battling for the battlers.

      • comedy 4.1.1
        21 July 2010 at 2:40 pm

        I was making the point that president of a major political party comes with the associated power and baubles ask the current cock who’s with the Nats ask Mike Williams.

        “The point is he is not doing this stuff for personal enrichment. He’s just a good bloke, battling for the battlers.”

        And you have the gall to call me a idiot …. grow up………. you are clearly a naive cock.

        • The Voice of Reason 4.1.1.1
          21 July 2010 at 3:03 pm

          And you are Gareth Keenan in disguise, Comedy. Evidence here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3T_xczFl5A

          I appreciate I have an advantage over you, what with me knowing Little for a good few years now and you being such a sad wee fantasist, but please try and make up stuff that’s just a bit more plausible in future. It makes shooting you down all the more fun.

          • comedy 4.1.1.1.1
            21 July 2010 at 3:29 pm

            Oh your a party stooge, well fair enough then – too much to expect any perspective from you.

            And re Little I think he’d make a good MP. What stuff am I making up ?

  5. Harry 5
    21 July 2010 at 2:16 pm

    I know Andrew and I can report that he doesn’t make a cent from any on his board memberships or from his presidency. As far as I can tell his only income is from the union. I can also report that he’d be one of teh most honest blokes I’ve ever met.

  6. Policy Parrot 6
    21 July 2010 at 2:24 pm

    Re: Farrar’s comments: “A part-time candidate”

    With regard to the above I wonder if he considers himself only a part-time propagandist?

  7. Zaphod Beeblebrox 7
    21 July 2010 at 2:49 pm

    Who would want to be in politics? They guy has only just announced a candidacy to a seat he probably won’t win and people who have never met him are making shit up about him based on heresay and association.

    I don’t care which side he is on but can’t we give people the benefit of the doubt.

    • The Voice of Reason 7.1
      21 July 2010 at 3:08 pm

      Little’s going to piss in, Zaphod. The current MP was an afterthought, bought in when the Nats’ chosen candidate self destructed just before the election. Labour only lost the seat by a handful of votes, Duynhoven backs him, and NP folk want a working MP with clout, not a party grandee’s offspring with only the family name for credibity.

  8. Alwyn 8
    21 July 2010 at 3:17 pm

    He might be a good candidate, and God knows the Labour party need some, but I very much doubt that he can win in New Plymouth.
    His problem is that he doesn’t live there NOW and the one thing that the rural districts hate is someone who is seen as a carpetbagger.
    Look for example at Stuart Young in Napier when he tried to get the Labour nomination. He might have originally been from Napier but he had left and gone to Auckland. He couldn’t even beat Fairbrother for the nomination, a man who had managed to lose Napier for Labour for only the second time in nearly a century.
    Little will be in the same boat. He might be able to force his way into the nomination but the people of New Plymouth will vote for what the see as a local, in Young, rather than someone who is only trying to use the place as a platform for their own ambitions and who doesn’t have a permanent attachment to the City

    • The Voice of Reason 8.1
      21 July 2010 at 4:10 pm

      Good call, Alwyn. I didn’t mean to say that he wouldn’t have to work to get the seat, but I still think he will win comfortably. Young is invisible, while Little has maintained good links to the town (on the polytech board, family still there, a strong EPMU presence, etc). He can engage with voters, does the media well, has name recognition and a good electorate committee too. All those oil workers enjoying Aussie rates of pay thanks to his union will probably be happy to spread the word as well.

      I agree with your point about blow ins, though parliament is full of parachute MP’s and to give an example, just down the coast, the Whanganui electorate has an MP who lives in Taranaki and still manages to get enough sth ‘naki/nth Whanganui rural votes to scrape in, despite losing the vote in the city itself. And that effectively means Whangaz doesn’t have an MP at all and hence there’s a huge political vacuum currently being filled by the soon to be ex mayor.

    • ak 8.2
      21 July 2010 at 9:22 pm

      His problem is that he doesn’t live there NOW and the one thing the rural districts hate…

      Nup. Neither did Johnathon Young. (for the 25 years prior to 2008 – tory website)

      He’ll piss in. Young’s a slightly creepy Ned Flanders “youth leader” caricature – minus the charisma.

    • ogg 8.3
      22 July 2010 at 8:00 am

      Alwyn, do you mean Stuart Nash? Didn’t he get the Labour nomination…twice

      • Alwyn 8.3.1
        22 July 2010 at 10:43 am

        Not in Napier he didn’t. Tremain won the seat in 2005 from Fairbrother.
        Nash tried to get the nomination in 2008 but lost to Fairbrother who then lost again.
        Nash may now get the nomination, (I don’t know whether they have had the selection meeting yet), but that will be for the first time. He may be able to win but from what I have heard it is unlikely.
        However Nash at least lives in Napier now. It isn’t like prior to the 2008 election when he dropped in from Auckland for the selection and didn’t get it.

        • RobertM 8.3.1.1
          23 July 2010 at 12:28 am

          Yeah but Tremains father was one of the greatest all blacks and the 70 tour was wrecked because Fred Allen wasn’t the coach, Kel Treamain and Graham Williams should have been the flankers. Its a national tragedy that Wylie that retard that St Andrews boarder was ever an All Black.Little is a discrace. Apparently Lin Pillay was Andrew Littles wife, and six years ago I might have looked at her photshot. Now I’m only intersted in being bumped by Jacinda if I get back to the backbencher. I might even forgive her for having a prole provincial cop as a Father. But really Little is pathetic, for god sake he disowned the idea of being compared with Bod Hawke a decent boozing, whoring man, always inclined to stip a fellow unionist female in the corridors and get into bed with her. For gods sake Little is impossible a cretin, I suspect he may even have supported the Anzacv frigates. i once spent a night in New Plymouth. I had a dozen in boriring provicial pubs with amataeur acoustic guarists. Then slept the night off at the waterfront busstop. Can you not give us justice. Hetrosexual justice. A total jackbbot in the face of what provincial working class males want. Little is utterly pathetic. Tiger woods would be far more honourably. I can not abide a wimp like Little. Give us a Tiger that never apoliges and keep that Nazi cunt Greg O’Connor confined to Haast at gunpoint.

          • felix 8.3.1.1.1
            23 July 2010 at 9:55 am

            How it relates I have no idea but I wholeheartedly agree with you last sentence.

  9. Herodotus 9
    21 July 2010 at 4:29 pm

    I think you will find quite a few electorates where the MP is now not local. There are a few isolated cases which have resulted in change in electrate boundaries, some could argue thatthere family situation and preference for a change in residency has meant that they have moved out of the electorate.
    Also thanks to list MP’s some electorates are over represented with MP’s offices. From memory inner Wellington and Auck. So where does that leave those whos MP’s are not so readily assessable either thru large electrates e.g. Many Maori seats, west coast etc, of those whos MP’s have for one reason or another distanced themselves.
    Nice to see that there is some increase in compenancy with Littles elevation and I am sure that Mr Little has a wider acceptance than many that have held any of his roles or similar roles within Nat, my main concern is that we are getting some great name recognition in potential MP’s (Remember last year the rush for Lab and Nats to claim Anton Oliver as theres!!) but where is the policy, I would sooner have a cardboard cut out rep me with a strong party policy (That there adhere to !!)than a great candiate and crap policy on which they stand for. Perhaps the later has already been achieved in many cases !!!

  10. Kevin Welsh 10
    21 July 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Just look at the Clutha-Southland MP. Pretends to live in the electorate, but really lives in Wellington.

    • Zaphod Beeblebrox 10.1
      21 July 2010 at 10:29 pm

      Pretend should be in parentheses. Like my children pretend to go to sleep sometimes when I am on their case.

  11. vto 11
    22 July 2010 at 9:04 am

    Having known Mr Little very well some long time ago I would definitely vote for him.

    A weak point may be the lack of so-called “real world” experience (and labour party policies hee hee), but that doesn’t seem to stop many pollies today.

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