The next ACT

Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, September 22nd, 2010 - 52 comments
Categories: act - Tags: , , ,

With Garrett likely to resign from parliament, Key is sending a strong signal that he wants Hide to remain as ACT leader:

From stuff:

I’ve found him to be a very effective minister so there’s no reason for me to sack him because there are problems internally within the ACT party.

In fact it’s starting to look like Key would keep Hide on as a minister even if he did lose the leadership.

I can think of a couple of reasons for this. One would be that Key needs Rodney to keep doing the dirty work on the super city so that National can continue to keep its hands clean of that whole fiasco.

The other reason is that Hide fronted National’s attack on Winston. Make no mistake that dirt digging and the strategy to roll it out didn’t come out of a tinpot party like ACT. It had the fingerprints of the hollowmen and their online echo chamber all over it. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that Hide knows where a lot of National party skeletons are buried.

Of course some on the right, such as that tired old fool Richard Long, are trying to push Boscawen up as the next leader.

The problem with that idea is he’s clearly stated he has said he won’t challenge Hide:

I have actually no intention of challenging for the leadership – I think he’s doing a great job.

And for all of his flaws he is a principled man who wouldn’t go back on his word.

There’s also the slight problem of his deeply ingrained weirdness.

So the more I look at it the more I think my prediction of a Roy-led/Douglas-run ACT party is likely to come true.

Key’s problem is that a newly ideological ACT won’t be easy for him to deal with and if he decides to keep Hide he’ll have to own him and his unpleasant poll-damaging antics.

52 comments on “The next ACT ”

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  1. randal 1
    22 September 2010 at 2:22 pm

    hey irishbill.
    think I wil go with the deeply ingrained weirdness.
    wodney looks like he dresses up in funny glasses and fake noses if you know what I mean.

  2. Carol 2
    22 September 2010 at 2:33 pm

    And today Goff gets to ask Key his questions about Hide’s ethics. And key is dancing on a pin, avoiding saying Hide is unethical. Now Hide’s talking about PM’s signing paintings.

    • gobsmacked 2.1
      22 September 2010 at 2:45 pm

      A couple of classic answers from Key there. Digging himself deeper in the hole. Good to get those on the record.

      Hide only made it worse. He equates signing a painting for charity, with stealing a dead baby’s identity. And he thinks he’s scored a point! Instead, he just shows how much he doesn’t “get it”.

      Key and Hide are being dumb. They’re only helping to keep the story in the headlines.

      • bbfloyd 2.1.1
        22 September 2010 at 5:15 pm

        Gobsmacked…i would be interested in seeing how the media poodles spin that. again… profuse apologies for mixing you up with that gosman cretin. i wrote in a fit of irritation.

      • Draco T Bastard 2.1.2
        22 September 2010 at 6:50 pm

        Key and Hide are being what they are – without empathy or conscience. Two acts that are similar are, in their minds, the same no matter that one caused massive damage and the other none whatsoever.

    • Vicky32 2.2
      22 September 2010 at 4:59 pm

      “Now Hide’s talking about PM’s signing paintings.”
      There’s a sign of desperation!
      Deb

  3. tc 3
    22 September 2010 at 2:37 pm

    Sleep with dogs wake up with fleas……..they’ve been there awhile now it’s just that the butt scratching is so obvious now. The spectre of the hollowmen will continue whilst it’s main benefactors remain in power.

    Sideshow again displays he’s a political novice as waving the red cloth at Douglas’s not a very smart move as old Rog is the last person you want to piss off I reckon…..experienced and nasty.

    Welcome to MMP clueless….all those ACT votes to pass your backers agenda with comes at a price and if you don’t pay it you’ll find it cuts both ways…..clumsy indeed should be fun to watch.

  4. freedom 4
    22 September 2010 at 3:23 pm

    if only there was some way to communicate these events to the public in an honest efficeint, rational, informed and verifiable mannner

  5. Rex Widerstrom 5
    22 September 2010 at 4:02 pm

    Call me an old fool then, because I’d like to see Boscawen lead Act. “A principled man who wouldn’t go back on his word” is exactly what politics needs (and, from a partisan perspective, is exactly what Act needs at this point if it is to have any hope of putting this fiasco behind it).

    His “deeply ingrained weirdness”? In the words of a deeply ingrained weirdo, “Please explain?”

    • Blighty 5.1
      22 September 2010 at 4:57 pm

      he’s a bit OCD. First on the EFA, now on the ETS. He literally can’t drop the subject of his fixation. Watched him on Backbenches a while back. Every question he turned to the ETS to the point where you could hear the crowd yelling it out and mocking him.

      No ability to think like a leader and an endless source of jokes in a campaign. No, he would be terrible. course, I’m all for ACT having a terrible leader.

      Bet there’s some dodgy dealings with the K-Mart project in Hastings that made him rich, too.

      • Anne 5.1.1
        22 September 2010 at 7:33 pm

        Blighty is right. He’s not only obsessive/compulsive, he is tunnel visioned and can’t see beyond the end of his nose. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he declared his anti-Climate Change stance. He is the one driving the relentless attacks against NIWA.

        He was the original Hollow Man, and it was his management of Act’s finances in the 1990s which were adopted by Nat. and Brash a few years later. I regard him as even more dangerous than Rodney Hide.

    • bbfloyd 5.2
      22 September 2010 at 5:29 pm

      my votes on douglas…. love him or hate him, the man knows his onions….. not that i would ever vote for them at all…..

    • lprent 5.3
      22 September 2010 at 6:00 pm

      From what I’ve heard, periodically he has been known to completely drop off the trolley with rage when people question him beyond his pre-programmed lines. At those times he says what he thinks (always a problematic trait amongst politicians) and some of his ideas are not particularly coherent with each other. Furthermore he also tends to get quite incoherent himself.

      One person who was describing an incident of this type said that it was pretty clear that he hadn’t bothered to think that his slogans and one liners don’t make a policy or a strategy.

      I’d expect that he’d get better at being a politician over the next decade

      • the sprout 5.3.1
        22 September 2010 at 6:12 pm

        Yep – I’ve witnessed Boscawen’s rage, it’s a sight to behold!
        Provoking it is an excellent weapon for his opponents because believe me, it’s not a good look for him 😆

      • Rex Widerstrom 5.3.2
        22 September 2010 at 8:16 pm

        I’d agree that, on the face of it that’s not a personality well-suited to a poltical leader.

        But then again, I’d have to observe it never did Winston any harm…

      • jcuknz 5.3.3
        23 September 2010 at 10:02 am

        He certainly got the country out of the Muldoon dog-box back in the eighties and his book common sense was largely that apart from a couple of screwy ideas to my reading … I don’t know what baggage he’s picked up since so I’m on the fence ….Helen Roy recently showed some of her colours in her newsletter which didn’t appeal to me either.

  6. Policy Parrot 6
    22 September 2010 at 4:35 pm

    I have actually no intention of challenging for the leadership – I think he’s doing a great job.

    Isn’t that (or something similar) what Julia Gillard said three days or so before rolling Kevin Rudd?

    • Lanthanide 6.1
      22 September 2010 at 6:53 pm

      It is was politicians, at least those with any sense (see Chris Carter for one that doesn’t) always say before the leader is rolled, because they never publicly declare their intent until they are sure they have the numbers to do it.

  7. the sprout 7
    22 September 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Key looked a frightened rabbit in the House yesterday hiding behind the substantial meat shield of Sgt Shultz.

    After 40 minutes of avoiding the question posed by Goff, and which the Speaker asked Key to answer 3 times, Lockwood eventually caved and let Key off the hook by deciding to give consideration to whether Key could be forced to answer.

    The question was along the lines of (after Key said Hide had always shown good judgement as a minister)… “and how is appointing someone who stole the identity of a baby a spokesperson for law and order evidence of good judgement?”

  8. Ian 8
    22 September 2010 at 5:05 pm

    Richard Long, dreary, predictable and right wing stupid. This man is a complete waste of space.

  9. gobsmacked 9
    22 September 2010 at 5:25 pm

    It’s hard to keep up with this farce, but here’s today’s ACT digest – and yes, it really is the news, not satire:

    1. Douglas launches personal attack on Key. Not with some “taken out of context” off-hand comment, but a planned, deliberate campaign. Hands out flyers, with a picture of a head in the sand (Key).

    2. Key praises Hide. Says he has high ethical standards.

    3. Hide attacks National.

    “The National Party, if you like, are straddling the middle and adopting largely Helen Clark, Michael Cullen-type policies. The ACT Party says we’ve got to do much better.”

    4. Hide defends Key. Says Douglas is wrong, and Key doesn’t have his head in the sand.

    5. Douglas says he supports Hide.

    Confused? Bewildered? Why not join ACT! You could be on the list.

    • bbfloyd 9.1
      22 September 2010 at 5:36 pm

      you gotta love a good cat fight! bring on the hair pulling and eye gouging i say…. would be more honest than hide and key are capable of being.

    • Draco T Bastard 9.2
      22 September 2010 at 6:55 pm

      I LOL’d 😀

    • RobertM 9.3
      22 September 2010 at 7:31 pm

      Douglas is right that National is essentially following the policies of Clark and Cullen . Indeed I would go furthur and say that excepting J.Collins, National is hardly even a right centre party anymore. The Nats of Bill English, Keys and that St Pats Silverstream man Christopher Finnalyson is more of a Christian Democrat regime like the one that Chile had between 64 and 70 which essentially surrendered to the left on everything and paved the way for disastere.
      Having said that there is no longer any support in this country for more market or more market liberalism except over minor details. Only about 0.5% want that sort of policies of cutting by furthur tax cuts or reducing the money supply. If the public service and hospitals are going to be significantly reduced it will have to be done by political action rather than economic levers and enforced by the police.
      Every other western nation seems to be moving to the right centre and hard right the difference is often different to distinghish looking at Abbot < Bernasconi and Sarkosy. NZ is on a different and wrong trajectory.
      Garrett deserves a pat on the back and an apology. He was the only NZ MP who was right in the international sense. He supported Israel, refused to clap the disastorously misguided ex PM Clark when she left to take up her appointment in the UN.
      The right wing party of the future in NZ does not exist yet. But Laws and Peters mine some of the territory with little credibility. Basically it will have to reject the consensus of the political class, support Isreal and the US and a balanced defence force and be opposed to Islamic immigration and increases in Pacific Island immigration.

      • NickS 9.3.1
        22 September 2010 at 8:33 pm

        lolwut?

        Why exactly should we cut back on health care and other public, let alone support Israel’s illegal building of settlements in the West Bank and human rights abuses against Palestinians? Oh and the really funny thing is, most of the muslims we have coming into to NZ are pretty laid back, heck the Islamic fundies are firmly outnumbered (and outgunned) by the wacko Christian Right, which in themselves are a firm minority lacking in any political clout. Since the majority of NZ’ers rightly consider them nuts.

        Oh, and Chile’s “disaster” was American meddling and inability respect the sovereignty of Latin American nations, leading to decades of major human rights abuses by the right-wing fuckwits the USA supported. Blaming the left for Chile’s fate is like placing all the blame for being bullied on a kid those only error was to be different.

        And you’ve gotta love those state death-squads, torturers and mass graves making Latin America safe for capitalism!

    • Armchair Critic 9.4
      22 September 2010 at 9:09 pm

      Meanwhile, tomorrow promises to be another beauty, what with Mr Garrett understood to be ready to reveal the inside story of the strife within the Act Party.
      I wonder how much better it can get?

    • Vicky32 9.5
      23 September 2010 at 6:23 pm

      I just heard Douglas on 3 News saying “these accidents happen” about Garrett… 😀 The mind absolutely boggles to the max!
      Deb

  10. NickS 10
    22 September 2010 at 5:52 pm

    I’ve found him to be a very effective minister so there’s no reason for me to sack him because there are problems internally within the ACT party.

    I see someone’s been slipping Key LSD again…

    • the sprout 10.1
      22 September 2010 at 6:01 pm

      I’ve suspected that for ages 😆
      My bet is Rodney’s the spiker, for obvious reasons

      • NickS 10.1.1
        22 September 2010 at 8:54 pm

        Nah, it’s Bill English, he needs to try make Key look bad so he can attempt to regain the party leadership. Only it’s just making Key a little bit too happy-go-lucky…

  11. Red Rosa 11
    22 September 2010 at 5:54 pm

    No doubt old news to the regulars here, but No Right Turn has an extraordinary quote…

    Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Mr Hide has carried out his affairs in a personal and private capacity to a high ethical standard.

    http://norightturn.blogspot.com/

    gobsmacked’s Digest above should be framed!

    • Carol 11.1
      22 September 2010 at 5:57 pm

      Yes, Key claimed that Hide showed poor judgement over taking Garrett on as an ACT MP/candidate, but not poor ethics.

    • The Voice of Reason 11.2
      22 September 2010 at 9:58 pm

      I rather like this line, too:

      Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Mr Hide has carried out his affairs in a personal and private capacity to a high ethical standard. But I am not responsible for whom he might hire as an MP.

      It sounded odd to me when I heard on TV and I went back to check the record. Key thinks MPs are ‘hired’ by their leaders. What a strange concept! Mind you, it might explain Richard Worth’s sacking. Didn’t survive the trial period.

      • Luxated 11.2.1
        23 September 2010 at 2:34 am

        Also explains why we haven’t got a reason yet!

        captcha: quality – because you couldn’t make this up.

  12. Jim Nald 12
    22 September 2010 at 6:26 pm

    As the saying goes and it is worth repeating here – you can fool some people some of the time but …

  13. Drakula 13
    22 September 2010 at 11:19 pm

    Regardless of whether ACT has Hide or Boscowen as leader I think that it’s fu#ked because it’s ideology is flawed!!!!

    Basically it is a party for the criminal element, the Mafia types who have wet dreams of low wages, low tax, low evironmental responsibility, less social services and maximum profits; which after all is what it’s all about — – – –
    Isn’t it!!!!!!

    And of course their hero’s are going to be the rogue nations like Israel who seem to be putting into practice (pushing Arabs off the land since 1948) what ACT would like to get away with.

    It always conceals its real intentions (before elections) and its skeletons are strictly hush-hush, but they always seem to be floating to the top. Ah La Donna and Garrett.

    Oh dear, how very embarrassing a little bit like the Freudian slip!!!

    Don’t you think??????????????

    • Draco T Bastard 13.1
      22 September 2010 at 11:24 pm

      (pushing Arabs off the land since 1848)

      FIFY

    • Mac1 13.2
      23 September 2010 at 11:44 am

      The Dom Post of 22/9 has a story where the ACT caucus have pledged their loyalty to their leader.

      With reference to your comment, Drakula, this sounds like the kiss that the Mafia Boss gives to the redundant mobster, soon to be disposed of.

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