Written By:
redfed - Date published:
5:26 pm, June 1st, 2014 - 101 comments
Categories: election 2014, MMP -
Tags: Josie Pagani
This morning on Q&A, the right’s anointed spokesperson of the left, Josie Pagani, came out swinging at David Cunliffe over the Internet Mana Party’s use of the MMP coat-tail rule.
“If [David Cunliffe] really means he’s going to stand behind Labour values and a candidate like Kelvin he should go into Parliament on Tuesday and offer to do a deal with the National Party and say ‘let’s get rid of the coat-tailing legislation by lunch time’. And then nobody’s going to play these games… if he really means it he’ll go to Parliament and he’ll do that on Tuesday.”
It won’t surprise you to learn that Josie is talking nonsense. Labour already has a bill to remove the coat-tailing legislation. They’ve written it, put it in the ballot and it’s been drawn. All John Key has to do is say he’ll support it and it can be law any time he chooses.
Josie Pagani has made a small career out of repeating the right’s talking points off the back of a one-time stint as a Labour candidate in an unwinnable electorate. But it’s important that this one is set straight.
The continued existence of the coat-tail rule is entirely National’s doing. The Electoral Commission recommended removing the rule after the 2011 election and National cynically ignored it because it was in their electoral interests to boost ACT, United Future and the Conservatives.
Labour has been consistent in its position that the coat-tail rule should be removed. They can hardly be blamed now for another party making use of it.
These are National’s rules and only National can be held to account for them.
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If Pagani’s strength was in reading policies, there’d be no reason to be on Q&A, lol.
edit: Also, you can have your no-coat-tailing rule when we get a half-way to reasonable threshold, like 2%, or ideally winning your first list seat outright.
Congrats Redfed. Simple, concise and 100% accurate.
if it drops to 2%..
..i’m gonna start a vegan/animal-rights party…
start it anyway.
maybe i should leave the ‘vegan’ bit out..
..then i cd try for the votes of those people who march against dogs being tested on for legal-highs..
..and then grab a bacon-butty on the way home..
..they consider themselves ‘animal rights activists’..
..but i feel..in the interests of honest-advertising..they should put the word ‘some’ before ‘animal’…
..when self-describing..
Eh, veganism (and by extension, animal rights) is going to be pretty important in reaching carbon neutrality, so I’d just give the Greens some time on that front to sell the idea.
“Eh, veganism (and by extension, animal rights) is going to be pretty important in reaching carbon neutrality”
How so?
Ruminants produce a lot of GHGs in comparison to vegetables.
Cropping annuals conventionally produces a lot of GHGs.
Not all meat comes from ruminants.
“These are National’s rules and only National can be held to account for them.”
QFT
And if it comes back and bites them on the bum, then they have no one else to blame but themselves.
It will be an interesting dilemma for Labour if it gets to govern because of IMP.
Not really. They’ll say they supported changes to the law, and may even enact them once in parliament- but they’ll stand by the fact that New Zealanders voted under a set of rules that deserve to be honoured, even if Labour didn’t want those rules. Not hard to sell at all.
Mana was one of the parties in the current parliament that rejected the recommendations of the commission.
It would be difficult for Labour to implement these rules if one of their support parties opposed it. Much in the same way as it was difficult for National with 3 of their support parties opposing it.
Not that difficult.
National 59
Labour 34
Green 14
Total 107
So, how many votes do you need to pass legislation?
My memory isn’t what it used to be, but pretty sure 107 is enough.
It really depends on the results of the next election. If Labour actually puts in the yards, it’s entirely possible they’ll have room to flex between some of the coalition partners, and won’t need IMP for every vote.
Good article except the Rangitikei is winnable but you have to have a good candidate, Pagani couldnt win a raffle.
…… but ….. but but Pagani is a Labour “insider” ! (according to her Q+A billing); an oracle!; a sage! whose expertise and opinion we must all be in awe of.
How very dare you (/sarc)
Labour has lost a lot of the skills needed to campaign in rural seats, to the extent that a lot of Wellington based Labour types simply write them off as unwinnable.
Which is fine, so long as they have a plan to grab the rural party vote. Labour doesn’t need to be buddy-buddy with farmers, but as the Nats are spitting on them by selling power companies and other fiscally wacky policies, Labour could wedge in some of the party vote in rural New Zealand without betraying their principles, if they were smart.
Which specific principles are you referring to, please, and why would being supportive of rural communities like the one Helen Clark grew up in risk a “betrayal” of them.
I was specifically thinking of not just shilling for dairy farms when I said that. Labour has a lot of appeal to rural communities I think, but it’s a difficult sell just because National has a bit of a stranglehold on the language of rural politics. 🙂
And let’s also remember that townsfolk comprise quite a sizeable chunk of those Rural seats. They ain’t all farmers by any stretch of the imagination.
I still remember how brilliantly the Alliance did in many of Taranaki-King Country’s towns in the 1998 By-Election. Haven’t had time to check, but memory tells me the combined Left (Labour/Alliance) vote outperformed the Right in most of T-K C’s towns. Certainly Stratford, if I remember rightly, and probably Inglewood and Eltham as well. Not to mention a handful of smaller towns.
I’m not sure though that the Left is ever gonna win much of the purely rural Farmer vote. Even in 1935 they didn’t win quite as much of the rural vote as legend would have us believe.
swordfish..
..that bye-election was the scene of an epic ‘fail’ on my part…
..i was @ bfm at the time..
..and i was able to beg/inveigle the cream of nz hip-hop etc to do a benefit gig down those parts..for the green party..
..(and i mean ‘the cream’…they were pretty much all there..)
..small problem..hip-hop had yet to reach the king country..
..jeremey newsboy was the compere on the night..
..and at that time (we thought) had a high profile around the country..
..but he came back from the local supermarket saying:..’nobody knows who i am’..
..and of course..nobody turned up..
..(a fact that still does my head in..a free gig in a hick-town..on a saturday nite..and nobody bothered going..?..must have been something good on the telly..
..or another reason cd be what a young local told me..
..”..the pot crop is in..and everyone is at someone elses’ place..getting wasted’..
..and that occaison was about the only time i have had negative feelings about pot..)
..and when i say ‘nobody’ turned up….i really do mean ‘nobody’…
..i can laugh now..but y’know..!..humour/goodwill was thin on the ground that nite..
..it was ‘j’accuse…!..and i was it..
..i am sure all those artists have that one marked down as..
..worst..gig..ever..
It’s the “insider” label which really grates. Anyone can claim to be leftwing, but when somebody’s being touted as having specialist, restricted-access knowledge they should be able to back it up.
(I’m reminded of Cam Slater’s turn with Mark Sainsbury over the Richard Worth debacle – Sainsbury kept trying to make Slater talk about his “party contacts” but it became clearer and clearer that Slater didn’t have any.)
So labour insider = voice of the left. Interesting.
The bill is here (http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/member/2013/0171/latest/DLM4881202.html).
The explanatory note is also concise. It includes this:
The only thing wrong with the Labour proposal is that – like the Electorate Commission – it doesn’t go far (low) enough and make it 2%. 4% is still a big ask for emergent parties and that is a lot of disenfranchised voters.
Yeah that’s my thinking too Macro, personally I think the limit for representation should be around the number of total votes cast in a large electorate, 25,000 – 30,000 or so. Like you said 4% disenfranchises too many voters.
There is debate about how low do you go. The normal example offered is Israel and the concern that a 2% threshold would fragment party support, mean there were a multitude of parties and make governance more difficult. I found an interesting passage from the MMP review website abut the subject(http://www.mmpreview.org.nz/proposals/thresholds):
The thing which would sort it Mickey is preferential voting in addition to MMP.
Party 1
Party 2
Party 3
If your first preference party doesn’t cross the threshold then your second preference party would count. So no wasted votes.
That would probably work. Throw in preferential voting at the electorate level as well and we’d have a comprehensively fair electoral system. Man, would the RWNJs whinge.
Why?
Political instability is an interesting argument against a low threshold, but I’d say that’s more a symptom of social instability in general and it’s better remedied through other measures than simply making the government less democratic.
edit: Whoops, my comment jumped to reply to CV instead of mickysavage.
CV: Makes sense, but surely it’d be better to just have a threshold low enough that there’s minimal risk of vote loss anyway?
The threshold argument has its genesis in Germany wanting to keep the neo nazis out of their Parliament. If the threshold is high enough then it keeps the lunatic fringe away from the levers of power. My own view is that if the lunatic fringe get enough votes they should be allowed a voice in Parliament. I think that it should be more about the minimum size a party should be to be basically effective. I certainly prefer 4%, I can see an argument for 3%. At 2% the party is basically a leader and a hanger on and you have to wonder if the contribution is worth while.
This is an interesting discussion. I certainly believe that a 4% threshold should be adopted.
2.5% = 3 MPs which probably makes sense as a workable caucus.
Yes agree. By the time one in 30 or 40 NZers support a certain political party, having representation in Parliament seems appropriate and fair.
Keeping the “lunatic fringe” out of Parliament actually empowers them, and is part of why Germany still has a nazi problem. The proper response to lunatics is to get them out in the open, where everyone can laugh at them, then they’re not going to be elected again.
2% is actually a bit more than 2 MPs- remember Saint-Lague is actually very friendly to small parties and would get you 3MPs at least, depending on the spoilage.
4% would be fine with the electorate lifeboat rule that the Right is now framing as a “coat-tails provision”. 4% was the initial threshold recommended when implementing MMP. I think given that New Zealanders seem to support smaller parties existing based on our electorate voting suggests that actually 4% is much too high. I’m perfectly happy with a party that can win a seat outright being in Parliament, but if people really want a gap between winning an electorate and the threshold, 2% seems the logical place to set it.
(I wouldn’t support just “lifting” the threshold, as saint-lague is so friendly to 1-mp allocations that you only need about .44% of the vote to win a seat, which is about half of the 1/120th it should take to win outright)
While I agree you don’t exactly have a party at 1 MP, I think that micro-parties deserve the chance to win the national vote instead of having to storm an electorate to get in and start growing. A sufficiently low threshold allows electorates to act how they should have all the time: as a chance to choose a local representative, if for some reason you care about that thing, or boost a really good politician above their low/non-existant list ranking.
And what percentage of the vote did Dunne get in on?
The real reason I wouldn’t support lifting it entirely given any other option below 5% is that .44% is low enough that you risk parties like the Bill & Ben party being elected on previous results. There’s an argument that with a low enough threshold that people won’t vote for parties like this so much given they then have serious options to elect parties they feel represent them better, but I think it’s reasonable to approach these things relatively cautiously. If the joke vote drops off a bit after lowering the threshold to 2% or .83%, then we can revisit complete abolition. (which would really just make it a lot easier to get the first MP into parliament, which could be a good thing, or could be a bad thing)
While I’m all for the barrier for entry being low, let’s not have it literally so low that you can vote for a throwaway party and accidentally get them into parliament. 🙂 (Although if people genuinely want them in Parliament and put in the effort to clear a slightly higher threshold, that seems reasonable)
The other argument to retaining some threshold, which I’m iffy on, is that it allows for parties like ACT that fall into infamy. They might be generally despised and have lost their credibility- but at .44%, it’s actually very hard to get rid of a party altogether if they have a core of support that won’t abandon them, and while I think ACT have polled lower than that only a few times, that was knowing they’d still have an electorate to fall back on.
If we decide we want to allow parties to be able to fade into the night at some point of unpopularity, we should retain some threshold. The reason I’m undecided on this is on the one hand, keeping the John Banks of the world around so people don’t forget what a bad idea ACT was kinda appeals, but on the other, they will occasionally be able to influence National even after they’re discredited if we keep them around, which is pretty worrying.
So yeah, I think once you get south of 2% the merits of reducing the threshold further start to get a bit fiddly. But much further above that and we’ll have situations where Peter Dunne can get his seat, but Winston drops out if his party vote dips too low. And while I’d like to be rid of both of them, I want it to be because voters have decided to, not because of artificial limits set by Labour and National.
Dunne got in on 38% of the electorate vote and an electorate is actually smaller than 0.8% of the total vote. Of course, he did have 0.6% of the total vote.
As far as I’m concerned, on those numbers Dunne shouldn’t be in parliament. He’s also breaking all of your arguments for thresholds because he’s in parliament on numbers that you say should keep him out.
What I’d like to see is:
1.) Preferential voting in electorates
2.) A threshold for the party vote of 0.8%
The first ensures that the most preferred person gets in rather than the person with the most votes which, in Dunne’s case, means that ~2/3rds of the electorate actually voted against him. The second ensures that a party has enough support for one seat rather than getting in with less. We’d have to modify the St Lague(sp?) formula (again) to fit the new conditions.
Don’t disagree that Dunne shouldn’t be in Parliament, but the only reliable way to get him out from an electoral reform is to switch from MMP to a fully proportional system without electorate votes. The issue with Dunne is that winning an electorate gets you into parliament no matter what.
Single transferrable voting will help when the Left should actually win Ohariu, but if centrists or right-wingers hold the balance of power, I imagine Dunne would come back at some point. If we’re going to have electorates, I think STV or an evaluative voting system would be big improvements to them.
We’ve got two parties in parliament with less representation than that now and that seems to be working fine for them.
Yes I can see that for larger parties – having to deal with smaller “players” could be difficult – but it is not an impossible ask – Labour has done it before, National as well (maybe not the best – but it is not “ungovernable”. Just how many smaller parties would succeed it is hard to say. But larger Parties might need to look at their policies and think why people are not so enamoured with them and seek alternatives.
With a smaller threshold the “wag” vote of the “Party” Party (can’t quite remember the name now) but you recall the one where it was really a spoof – but gained a fair number of votes, and the McGillicuddy Party (whom I think were a little more serious but not much) for example would be less likely to feature because of the threat that they might actually get in! So from that point of view fewer wasted votes as well.
Exactly. Letting in the smaller parties by their share of the party vote makes the contest of ideas much more reasonable, and elections become about convincing the public more than strategic or practically corrupt use of electorates.
As for wagging the dog, the bit people forget is that in reality, a tail can only wag a dog if a dog goes along with it. The negotiating power will always be with the largest bloc in a coalition, and in some of them that will simply be the largest party. They need to negotiate assertively and fairly- not giving away the whole country in a bid to centre parties. Likewise, I think centre parties should do the right thing and say who’ll they’ll negotiate with first, to avoid too many bidding wars.
Yes, that’s asking people to behave honourably while scrabbling for the treasury benches, but if parties won’t do it and people are upset about tails wagging dogs, it’s really National and Labour that are to blame for their own conduct, and nobody else.
I pretty much +1 everything you’ve said on this post, Matthew 🙂
Thanks for that clear account of it all MS.
Urgh Pagani, the really sad thing about her is that she actually believes the crap she blurts. At least with someone like hoots you can write off an illogical or ill-thought out position because it’s his job to spin stuff, Pagani though…
Yes hoots had a look of smug satisfaction when he slipped in a quick bit of spin and no one challenged it. ie National didn’t go with The Electoral Commission’s proposals because “there was no agreement”. Was it National that didn’t agree?
It was. Those naughty opposition parties didn’t agree with National so the govt. couldn’t go with the recommendations. How’s that for upside down, back to front and wrong way round logic?
And from memory, nary a murmur from the MSM.
The msm factchecking? Thats a job for SUPER PG
He didnt spin, he lied. Lets call this stuff, from all sides what it is. He lied or deliberately misled, two options.
In sport they stopped calling it cheating and called it gamemanship to make tge behaviour acceptable. Its not spin, its lying or deliberately misleading. Lets also not foget hoots role in the nats in 2002 and 2005… Leopards and all that
It’s not a lie. National (and NZ1 too I think) disagreed with the recommendations so there was no consensus, so under convention the status quo remains. National was allowed an opinion on all this, you know, even if you disagree. You seem to be saying National has no right to form a view.
Oh, but Matthew, you must know very well that there’s a huge difference between “there was no consensus” and “there was no consensus because only one party disagreed and that was us.“
No point Stephanie.
These people don’t debate honestly.
Did Act agree? Did the Maori Party agree? Did Mana agree? Did UnitedFuture agree? Did NZ First agree?
Did anyone other than Labour/Green agree with dropping coat-tail rule?
Not worth discussing issues with people like Hooton.
Puppets and mercenaries are beneath contempt.
Brace yourselves folks for another post by Josie Pagani explaining why we got it all wrong and how naaaaaasty, naaaasty, naaaaasty we are.
Well, Josie here’s MY reply in advance.
Get your facts right and stop spinning faulty yarns, then we might start treating you with the respect you believe you deserve.
Nah, she doesn’t care about our opinion; she’s already picked her friends and they are all on the Right and the power elite.
Lololololol
I posted yesterday that i have only read her on here once and that was a whiny crybaby protected by a glass bubble post about what meanies some people are. She never came back and the bullshit about climbing a hill to post the whiny piece was just an excuse. Who on tge left is she inside with? Goff, prebble, douglas, moore, bassett… Caygill???
Laila Harre tweeted a couple of corrections to Pagani today as well.
Pagani should read up on Labour policy?
Meh, she should just fuck right off.
With you Felix just another pretend leftie one of the reasons why I hardly watch the show just another National Party fuckfest with the panellists they have on. The producers will still be dirty with themselves for inviting Robert Reid from First Union on that won’t happen again I,m certain the corporate paymasters had plenty to say about him.
reid was perhaps the best commentator i have seen on that rightwing wank-fest..
..and what is it with the media fawning over both those dregs/fag-ends of neo-liberalism..?
..pagani and williams..
..yesterdays’-people..by any measure..
and hardly voices of the left.
Lets go back to university academics, it couldntbe worse than paid shills
You’re comparing apples and wildebeest are being compared here. She’s talking about Cunliffe actually taking action to make stuff happen. A PMB, as you admit, is basically relying on John Key’s whim.
By all means slam Pagani for whatever, by try to be honest and sensible and avoid making yourself look as vaguely silly as she is.
I thought the criticism was perfectly appropriate. Pagani is meant to be the representative of the left, particularly of the Labour Party. Rather than saying something which makes it sound like Labour is doing nothing on the issue she could have said that Labour has a PMB on the issue and praised them for it. Just the odd occasion where Labour was actually given just the slightest bit of cudos would be good.
Labour!?! Kudos!?!
You must be crazy micky. You can’t just go cutting against the grain of a multi year anything-Labour-does-is-shit MSM narrative like that.
Exactly micky. God forbid Pagani actually use her exalted position to promote the left wing govt-in-waiting.
FFS Josie, look at what Matthew does. Do that, but for the left. It’s not fucking rocket science.
Or just come out as a National Party supporter. She doesn’t have to get in line, but she could at least be honest if she’s not really left-wing any more.
Well yeah, she could rep for the right instead of Hoots. But it’s a bit rich having them both on and no-one from the left at all.
Hoots will pretend to be on the left, how much you gonna pay him?
At least he’d make an effort.
😆
Then she wouldn’t be the useful fool the corporate media needs to spin their ‘fair and balanced’ pretense.
Who appointed her representative of the Left, or a representative of Labour?
Nevertheless, representatives who cannot act and speak in the interests of their organisation need their ass fired ASAP.
Sue bradford has some time now. Bradford v hooton… Imight just watch that show
My money would be on Bradford – she has a streetfighter’s eyes
and she isnt for sale, unlike hooton
Sue used to do the left side of rnz’s monday politics bit, opposite Hoots. She was bloody good too.
I really enjoyed being on N2N with Sue for a year or so. Established a bizarre kind of friendship. Respect her a great deal. Hopefully she returns to the punditry circuit.
Redfed:
Your heading that Pagani should “read up” was most polite, I thought.
In that spirit, since she has utterly failed to do the basic, I would really like to tell her in her face should I get a chance, “Please stay away from the media, Pagani. Actually, please go away, Pagani. Far, far away.”
She should just be honest about who she really backs, National Lite.
Do these people get paid to be on these shows, how do i find out if they do and how much?
No payment for going on Q&A, alas
Just for the love of democracy, eh?
Yep, plus you get to meet people in the green room that you probably wouldn’t cross paths with otherwise
Well that, and it’s your job to shift opinion to suit the business plans of your clients.
Q and A’s panel is not democratic.
And looking at the membership of the group this week, they all probably bump into each other when they go to their nearest cafe. I’d say they cross paths regularly.
No payment as such, but ‘payment in kind’ – free publicity. Gets your message out there!
I just made the mistake of watching both the Leila Harre interview and the panel discussion, based on this article.
What a mistake.
The bias was just so overt. Wood was constantly interrupting Leila Harre and barely showing any interest in her answers. Wood dug for gossipy stores about money.
Wood’s body language, tone and manner then completely changed when she chatted with the Panel. Sycophantic giggling was the response to Matthew Hooton as he made snide comments about the Internet Party. Sorry – I thought the role of the host was to be an impartial m.c ?
Very chummy and convivial among all of the panel. It mighty looked they were all in the same club. Oh yes it was the Remuera and Parnell social club in action.
A disgrace if that’s what constitutes political debate in this country
No wonder people are switching off the corporate media.
pagani belongs to the increment-party..
..she self-describes as an incrementalist..
I have always wondered who or what Josie Pagani was whenever I’ve listened to her on a panel. She, as far as I can discern, represents no political view, has a slim grasp of policy making, of the workings of the NZLabour Party and a very slight grasp on reality. Why the MSM gives her air time is a mystery yet to be given to Sherlock Holmes. (no pun or reference to a dead opinionista who harquanged rather than questioned intelligently intended.)
xox
Yes Paul. PaganI is a right winger. I sent TVNZ an email about poor quality, and bias of interviews, particular the Woods/ Harre interview. Now we find out from Hooton, that the panelists do it for free! Out of the goodness of their hearts. Not to mention the petrol money. These panelists should be paid for their questionable (?) expertise. Is TVNZ freeloading? Does Sue Woods do it for free also? haha. She should be replaced by an informed and unbiased professional.
Hate Pagani . . . hate . . . hate. . . hate . . . evil tory . . . . . hate . . . hate . . .
AAAhhhh that’s feels better. Now we can enforce some social equality around here.
I don’t see any hate. Don’t see anyone calling her evil either.
However she is a bit of a tory, and she’s being criticised for doing a shit job of boosting the left.
What’s your problem with that, oh concerned one?
Pagani has never impressed with either knowledge or understanding.
She must be well past her use-by date.
She had a period when she was useful? Im not so sure.
Susan Wood is a seriously terrible interviewer, aka the Laila Harre interview. She needs to stop interjecting like Paul Holmes always did.
Susan Wood would be among the worst interviewers on TV.T
She was actually mocking David Cunliffe at one stage with her comments. Very disparaging. Needs a complaint lodged against her. She is nothing but a mouthpiece for the National/TVNZ alliance.
Two comments: (1) Josie closed the gap between National and Labour in the “unwinnable” electorate.
(2) No electorate will be unwinnable when the flow-on effects of the current immigration policy undermines the value of our dairy industry products … once our skills and techniques that have taken our farmers generations to develop are sent offshore ( there are people from other countries with climates very similar to NZ currently studying our agriculture methods), not to mention the selloff to overseas investors some of the larger farms, dairy prices will drop due to increased supply on the world market and all we will have left as a competitive advantage is our pristine national parks (if they have not also been exploited for short term gain).