Posts Tagged ‘election 2008’

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 […]

CTU YouTube vid

Written By: - Date published: 10:38 pm, October 22nd, 2008 - 25 comments

Yep, that’s a pusy Roger Douglas zombie eye staring at you. Ew.

Fairfax poll

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, May 17th, 2008 - 27 comments

This morning’s Fairfax poll is bad news for Labour, with National easily having the numbers to govern alone. Following the hugely popular rail buyback it’s hard to see what could have caused a swing of this size, so it’ll be interesting to see if the next few polls show a similar trend. The Greens and […]

CTU Secretary selected for Maungakiekie

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, May 3rd, 2008 - 49 comments

CTU Secretary Carol Beaumont is set for a change of career later this year. She’s been selected as the Labour candidate for the safe Auckland seat of Maungakiekie currently held by Mark Gosche. As we know, Mark is standing for the list only this year, in order to spend more time with his family and […]

Who do you want answering the phone?

Written By: - Date published: 3:41 pm, April 30th, 2008 - 71 comments

Just received this parody of Hillary Clinton’s 3am ad, but with a New Zealand twist. Very funny.

Child beating petition falls short

Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, April 29th, 2008 - 95 comments

Family First’s petition for a referendum on reversing the amendment to s59 of the Crimes Act that removed the defence of reasonable force for assault on a child (try saying that three times fast) has failed to get enough signatures. It needed 280,275 signatures and seemed to have enough but the Office of the Clerk […]

Put it on the kids’ tab

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, April 29th, 2008 - 6 comments

Some may have noted an odd series of questions in Parliament and press releases from Bill English around government borrowing over the last month. The questions purposely conflated the idea of maintaining current debt levels with increasing debt. We noted this at the time and Tane correctly picked the strategy: First, sow confusion about debt […]

Mistakes, I’ve made a few

Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, April 26th, 2008 - 91 comments

David Farrar’s three more prominent weaknesses came together in a speculator PR disaster yesterday. The weaknesses are his ego, his trick of using pictures of naked women to boost hits on his site, and his reverse midas touch, whereby every he touches turns to, well, it doesn’t turn out well. See, Farrar led the campaign […]

If I were National’s campaign strategist

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, April 24th, 2008 - 61 comments

National will not win by running on its rightwing principles and policy. For 20 years, New Zealanders have consistently said they do not want to sell public assets, they do not want weaker employment law, they do not want tax cuts at the cost of public service cuts, and they like government assistance like Kiwisaver […]

What would National do?: Emigration

Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, April 22nd, 2008 - 18 comments

Simon Power has hit on the fact that Stats New Zealand produces migration figures every month, and that means every month he gets to report the number of New Zealanders heading for Australia as if a) the number is unprecedented, which it is not b) it’s all the Government’s fault, which it’s not. Not that […]

National makes work rights the defining issue

Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, April 21st, 2008 - 32 comments

National’s strategy, the strategy of a weak party, is to present a ‘small target’ by promising to change virtually nothing if they were in government. Problem is, their small target has a great big bull’s-eye on it called work rights. With flip-flops on health, education, welfare, annual leave, parental leave, assets, Working for Families, Kiwisaver, […]

Note to John: get a new lawyer

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, April 21st, 2008 - 18 comments

John Key: ‘ my lawyer actually does those things clearly [he] had the wrong information.’ That’s how Slippery John explained why legal documents showed him living at different addresses at the same time. For election purposes he had claimed to be living at his $1.1 million home in Waimauku in his electorate, but on documents […]

Ralston sez: leave poor Johnny alone

Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, April 20th, 2008 - 61 comments

In the Herald today, Bill Ralston sticks up for poor John Key who has been the subject of personal political attacks recently. Like Key, Ralston wonders what is “the cost of the Government using countless bureaucrats to endlessly scour records in an attempt to discover inconsistencies in any utterance [Key has] made”. Ralston needs to […]

Business to Key: ‘You’re ruining everything’

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, April 18th, 2008 - 54 comments

Business is starting to get worried. This was meant to, finally, be the year that they got the Left out of government and started making New Zealand work for the business elite again. But there’s a problem: the man they chose for the job. Sure, Key’s got a cheeky grin but on real ‘prime minister […]

Cost of benefit system plummeting

Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 26 comments

Continuing our benefits theme, here’s a look at how much the benefit system costs you. The figures are the combined expenditure by the Government on the Unemployment, Sickness, Invalids’, and Domestic Purposes benefits per day per working age New Zealander, in 2007 dollars. Sources: MSD (1,2,3), StatsNZ (4,5) The portion of the working age population […]

If I were the Maori Party’s campaign strategist

Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 27 comments

The Maori Party is in an enviable position going into this year’s election. It is likely Kingmaker, and the more seats it gets the more likely it will occupy that ground. Polls project the Maori Party to possibly win all seven Maori roll seats while obtaining around 2% of the party vote. That will create […]

Peters doesn’t trust National

Written By: - Date published: 12:33 pm, April 16th, 2008 - 10 comments

Yesterday, Winston Peters said that in any deal with National he would require all National MPs to personally sign the agreement and that he wouldn’t require the same conditions of Labour. That is an unprecedented demand and one that no leader could agree to without losing face. The deeper message here from Peters is ‘look […]

Police confirm Brash email leak an inside job

Written By: - Date published: 10:42 am, April 16th, 2008 - 19 comments

Police have closed their investigation into the theft of e-mails from former National Party leader Dr Don Brash and have announced that they have been unsuccessful in identifying those responsible for the thefts. Despite Brash’s ongoing insistence to the contrary, the police have said that they’ve been able to rule out the possibility than an […]

Nothing personal, John

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, April 16th, 2008 - 74 comments

John Key’s latest line is to whine that Labour and others (including this blog) are launching personal attacks on him, and would we please stop. Our attacks are not personal, they are political. National wants to be in control of the Government, control an operation with a budget of near $60 billion and quarter of […]

Key’s record on Te Wānanga o Aotearoa

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, April 15th, 2008 - 7 comments

The Herald is really doing its best to help out National. Today it proclaims ‘Key’s wananga visit undoes Brash legacy‘. That nice Mr Key has undone all the harm caused by that nasty old Dr Brash, we’re meant to believe. But check the record. It wasn’t Brash who led the attack on Te Wānanga o […]

NZ Growing Faster Than Aussie, US, Japan, and UK

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, April 10th, 2008 - 42 comments

The Reserve Bank produces a series of helpful tables of economic data. One table compares our growth to that of Australia, the US, Japan, and the UK. Here’s a graph comparing growth across the countries between National and Labour’s periods in government. National has a pathetic track record on growth. Under them, our economy grew 1% […]

Fair and balanced

Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, April 8th, 2008 - 16 comments

The Herald could barely contain its self-satisfaction when National’s David Farrar complained to the Electoral Commission that the country’s largest private sector union, the EPMU, which comprises 50,000 working New Zealanders, should not be allowed to register as a third party under the Electoral Finance ACT. ‘ Law gags friend as well as foe‘ proclaimed […]

Davey gets it wrong again

Written By: - Date published: 3:57 pm, April 4th, 2008 - 79 comments

David Farrar’s latest political campaign on behalf of the National Party has, like so many of them before, foundered on the sharp rocks of reality. In an attempt reminiscent of the ramshackle PR fiasco that was the Free Speech Coalition, DPF tried to get the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union’s application for third party status […]

If I were Labour’s campaign strategist

Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, April 4th, 2008 - 18 comments

Part three of the ‘If I were [Party X]’s campaign strategist’ series brings us to Labour. The strategy for a major party is very different from that of a smaller party. Rather than trying to grab attention public attention and target niche concerns, a major party needs a broad-based platform that will appeal to most […]

April 1 changes boost wages and cut taxes

Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, April 1st, 2008 - 15 comments

Today is a big day for government policy affecting Kiwis’ incomes: The minimum wage is now $12 an hour, up from $7 when Labour gained power. Youth rates have been effectively abolished, meaning young people will get the same pay for the same work. From today, employers must contribute to employees’ Kiwisaver accounts equivalent to 1% […]

The parties’ climate change policies

Written By: - Date published: 4:44 pm, March 31st, 2008 - 11 comments

‘Tis the season for surveys of the parties. Greenpeace sent a questionnaire to each of the parliamentary parties asking for their polices on 20 climate change issues. They’ve published the answers and rated the policies for effectiveness tackling climate change. The results are summarised below. Parties could score up to two ticks per answer if […]

Interview the leaders II: The Greens

Written By: - Date published: 1:26 pm, March 31st, 2008 - 51 comments

Well, we’ve made our decision on the two questions you wanted asked of Jim Anderton and one of the decisions we made was that we needed three questions. So we’ve picked the following: For the question that will be asked of all leaders we’ve chosen Wat Tyler’s question as tidied up by Billy: Of which […]

The Kingmaker Debate

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, March 31st, 2008 - 150 comments

TV7’s Kingmaker debate was an opportunity for the leaders of the smaller parties to promote themselves without being overshadowed by Clark and Key. It’s shallow to give out points for a debate like this or announce winners but the debate did highlight the leaders’ strengths and weaknesses. Anderton did bloody well. He pointed to where his […]

Herald Digipoll

Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, March 29th, 2008 - 56 comments

The New Zealand Herald reports that Labour has almost halved National’s lead in its latest DigiPoll survey, following a month “memorable for slip-ups and lacklustre performances by leader John Key.” Labour’s managed to claw its way up towards the 40% mark and that’s good news for the Left, which is now back within striking distance of […]

Interview the leaders

Written By: - Date published: 11:12 am, March 28th, 2008 - 51 comments

We’re going to interview the leader of each party but we’d like to give you the chance to ask the questions. Starting next week we’ll submit two questions to a leader each Monday, one of which will be the same for each of them to allow you to compare those answers; the second question will […]

National’s tax cut dilemma

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, March 28th, 2008 - 14 comments

If National are so keen to cut taxes and so critical of the Government for not doing so earlier, why are they being so tight-lipped about how they would cut taxes and even the size of their cuts? Because the Budget has them trapped. Labour plans to announce its tax cuts in the Budget, probably […]