Renewal, renewal, renewal in Palmy
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10:03 pm, December 16th, 2007 - 22 comments
Categories: labour -
Tags: labour
Today the hotly contested four horse race to become the candidate for Palmerston North (the position being left vacant by the tenth hottest man in NZ – Steve Maharey – can’t remember who ran that poll, a late night TV show no doubt) was won by Iain Lees-Galloway, the Campaigns and Media Advisor for the NZ Nurses Organisation.
Iain is another young Labourite who cut his political teeth as a President of a University Student Association (although we have to acknowledge that Massey is not an organization known as a prolific breeder of left-wing commies but I reckon Iain’s values are well and truly Labour solid).
He’s 29 years old, good looking and with a simply beautiful wife, Clare – forgive my sexism but it ain’t never a negative – plus they have a gorgeous child with another on the way. So as well as hot organisational skills, kissing babies may well be this man’s forte.
Think he sings too & another one for the Chris Knox choir, perhaps?
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And what will his position be on the EFB. Can we have a definitive statement for the good voters please?
Well very good. Candidate candidates… So many excellent newcomers to join the ranks with the excellent ministers.
….And what will his position be on the EFB. Can we have a definitive statement for the good voters please?
Hello, did you see that there were TWO polls out today that show that public opinion of Labour is at an all-time low?
Being a so-called “political blog” I would have thought you’d have something to say about that, or are you still awaiting your instructions?
You knock DPF all the time for not being objective, however he ALWAYS talks about the polls – good or bad. I guess it’s just another example of the double standards around here…
Hi PM, I’m having a weekend bro. You sure are an angry wee fella.
Don’t get yourself too worked up though, there’ll be something on the polls for you tomorrow. You’ll note we haven’t missed one yet:
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/?cat=4
Hello numpties,
we are waiting
what will be the position of the patsies on the EFB?
its not hard
Um, Prat, you should probably calm down eh. That’s the third time in the last hour you’ve asked that question and you sound like you’re getting rather worked up. That can’t be good for your health.
Of course the new candidates will support the Electoral Finance Bill, as does anyone who believes democracy should be about ideas, not who has the biggest wallet.
Come on guys, what will the party line on the EFB, when it comes to the hustings???
Please…………….make it at least half valid?
Prat, I’ve just answered your question. Seriously though, four questions on the same (unrelated) topic in just an hour and a half. What’s your problem dude?
BTP – I for one am having trouble understanding your question. Pretend I’m super dumb, and spell your question out for me slowly and completely…
r0b, I think he was asking about whether the newly selected Labour candidates will support the Electoral Finance Bill, which struck me as kind of stupid considering it’ll be law in a matter of days.
Now I think he wants to know what Labour’s line on the bill will be during the election, but even that’s not clear from his question. Like much of the anti-EFB campaign I suspect Prat’s all wound up but unable to understand what’s actually going on, hence his incoherent contributions tonight.
Tane – that sounds about right.
I think this is your problem
“r0b, I think he was asking about whether the newly selected Labour candidates will support the Electoral Finance Bill, which struck me as kind of stupid considering it’ll be law in a matter of days.”
unfortunately many new zealanders have good memories, you arrogant fuck.
“unfortunately many new zealanders have good memories,”
Why is it unfortunate that NZrs have good memories? I don’t think it’s unfortunate at all. In fact I think it would be wonderful if NZrs remembered the 90’s very well indeed.
Ah, another ex-student politician. Vigorous renewal as a retirement home for the nation’s student association executives, huh? Guess Labour loses my candidate vote as well as my party vote this time.
Given the latest polls, it seems these new candidates are queueing to buy first class tickets on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.
Rodents ready to board a sinking ship?
I kinda agree with you Milt. Not that I’ve got anything against Lees-Galloway but there do seem to be too many people from a liberal student politics background coming in. I’d like to see a few more blue-collar social-conservative newbies or people with rural backgrounds/affiliations coming into the party and less “operators”. That’s the demographic that the Labour party has problems connecting with at the moment and if would be good for them to have a few people who could speak the language of the other side of the emerging culture war – if only to help ameliorate the divisions National seems so intent on creating in our society.
The biggest problem in politics is simply getting candidates. After all who would want the job. It pretty much gets confined to people who:-
1. Have gotten used to it through things like student politics,
unions, interest groups, etc. ie are experienced.
2. The occasional people who are willing to put up with 20 years
effort to get a few significant social or structural change
through.
3. Nutters
4. Egotists
IMHO – Anyone that really wants to really achieve anything in the medium term will do it outside government. It is unfortunate that organization of business has too short-term a vision to be capable of building social or physical infrastructure. They have the talent – but really no way to make it work in government. History gets quite instructive about mercantile political systems. And of course commercial systems depend heavily on the social, legal and physical infrastructure instigated 20 years in advance.
Now you can figure out what categor(ies) your favorite politician is in. I’ll simply comment that most of the national party candidates I look at closely are full of short-term thinkers, and rarely fit in category 1 and 2.
I’m personally just grateful that anyone is willing to take on the job. I’m just very selective about which of the deluded people that I care to support.
Despite my natural inclinations – that means pretty much left candidates for me. The right really have bugger all useful long-term vision.
AG – agreed, it’s a shame there are not more people willing to stand but given the fact that the Labour party has never rebuilt the base it had prior to ’84 (and I believe they could’ve) and the fact that politics has now become a game of short term PR gain I’m not surprised by the paucity of candidates.
The problem with candidates on the right is that their pre-political success has come in a world of dog-eat-dog competition. To them (and I am inclined to agree) you keep up with the competition, or you’re left behind.
I don’t see anything wrong with that outlook, because in the real world it’s exactly true, but once you transfer it to the political arena it needs to be moderated.
I wonder if he remembers the springbok tour, vietnam marches and muldoon policies. If not, he obviously can’t be trusted to express an opinion on behalf of NZ voters.
insider – you should check your stereotyping – not everyone comes from the same background in any party. I’ve had a pretty varied background, probably a bit more than my generation. To give you an idea…
I’m ancient, (well not quite that ancient). Didn’t join in the Vietnam marches, . Joined the army instead a few years later. Did night shift in a factory in auckland for a few years while idling through 5th, 6th and 7th form. Spent the weekends working on a farm.
My first job out of uni was working on engineering of some of the think big (well actually ‘think stupid’) projects, while protesting about the ’81 tour. Muldoon was a great motivator to look at the other side. Did science, did management, did programming. Never did student politics, and never joined a union, and never worked directly for the government.
I’ve lived in auckland, taupo, hamilton, marton, waioru, dunedin, and spent a lot of time pushing various animals in and out of stockyards…
Anyway you probably get the point… The only people I don’t really seem to able to really understand are that recent migrant community in the north shore plus a few other communities with low tolerance levels. Plus of course the attenuated family (we long ago adopted the local extended family culture) is sort of extended right into NZ. We tend to view anyone arriving after the land wars as being latecomers… but hey – you can’t help when your parents arrived…
Don’t know that I could speak for NZ voters – but I’m pretty good at figuring out what they’re likely to do – have very good intelligence sources (ie family ‘discussions’).