Labour offers nothing to vote for

As the election campaign grinds to a close Labour’s getting more and more negative.

They’ve never promoted their leader which is understandable given his lack of traction and the tenuous hold he has on the position.

They’ve stopped talking about their policies, and given how ill-conceived most are, that’s understandable too.

All they’ve got left is negativity.

They’re throwing it all at John Key and a single National policy, the plan to sell up to 49% of a very few state owned companies which they’re misrepresenting as a fire sale of state assets.

They’re leaving us in no doubt what they’re against. But they’re offering nothing positive to vote for except more debt and unstable government when uncertainty around the world dictates the need to reduce debt which requires a strong, stable government.

The choice is clear between positivity, strength and stability or negativity, weakness and instability.

November 25 in history

1034 – Máel Coluim mac Cináeda, King of Scots died. Donnchad, the son of his daughter Bethóc and Crínán of Dunkeld, inherited the throne.

1120 – The White Ship sank in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England.

1177 – Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.

1343 – A tsunami, caused by the earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea, devastated Naples and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, among other places.

1491 – The siege of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, began.

1667 – A deadly earthquake rocked Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.

1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reached its peak intensity. Winds gusted up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people died.

1755 – King Ferdinand VI of Spain granted royal protection to the Beaterio de la Compañia de Jesus, now known as the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary.

1758 – French and Indian War: British forces captured Fort Duquesne from French control. Fort Pitt built nearby grew into modern Pittsburgh.

1759 – An earthquake hit the Mediterranean destroying Beirut and Damascus and killing 30,000-40,000.

1783 – American Revolutionary War: The last British troops left New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

1795 – Partitions of Poland: Stanislaus August Poniatowski, the last king of independent Poland, was forced to abdicate and was exiled to Russia.

1826 – The Greek frigate Hellas arrived in Nafplion to become the first flagship of the Hellenic Navy.

1833 – A massive undersea earthquake, estimated magnitude between 8.7-9.2 rocks Sumatra, producing a massive tsunami all along the Indonesian coast.

1835 Andrew Carnegie, British-born industrialist and philanthropist, was born (d. 1919).

1839 – A cyclone in India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroyed the port city of Coringa. The storm wave swept inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths resulted.

1844  – Karl Benz, German engineer and inventor, was born (d. 1929).

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Missionary Ridge .

1867 – Alfred Nobel patented dynamite.

1874 – The United States Greenback Party was established consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.

1880 John Flynn, Founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia, was born.

1880  Elsie J. Oxenham, British children’s author, was born.

1890 Isaac Rosenberg, English war poet and artist, was born.

1903 – By winning the world light-heavyweight championship, Timaru boxer Bob Fitzsimmons became the first man ever to be world champion in three different weight divisions.

1905 – The Danish Prins Carl arrived in Norway to become King Haakon VII of Norway.

1914  Joe DiMaggio, American baseball player, was born(d. 1999).

1915 – Augusto Pinochet, Chilean dictator, was born (d. 2006).

1917 – German forces defeated Portuguese army of about 1200 at Negomano on the border of modern-day Mozambique and Tanzania.

1918 – Vojvodina, formerly Austro-Hungarian crown land, proclaimed its secession from Austria–Hungary to join the Kingdom of Serbia.

1926 – The deadliest November tornado outbreak in U.S. history struck on Thanksgiving day. 27 twisters were reported in the Midwest, including the strongest November tornado, an estimated F4, that devastated Heber Springs, Arkansas and killed 51 with 76 deaths and over 400 injuries in all.

1936 – Germany and Japan sigedn the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing to consult on measures “to safeguard their common interests” in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation.

1940 – World War II: First flight of the deHavilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.

1943 – World War II: Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina was re-established at the State Anti-Fascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1947 – Red Scare: The “Hollywood Ten” were blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.

1947 – New Zealand ratified the Statute of Westminster and thus became independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.

1950  Alexis Wright, Australian author, was born.

1950 – The “Storm of the Century“, a violent snowstorm, paralysed the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, recorded 57 inches of snow; 323 people died as a result of the storm.

1952  – Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London later becoming the longest continuously-running play in history.

1958 – French Sudan gained autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community.

1960 – The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic were assassinated.

1963 – President John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

1970 – In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot committed ritualistic suicide after an unsuccessful coup attempt.

1973 – George Papadopoulos, head of the military Regime of the Colonels in Greece, was ousted in a hardliners’ coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.

1975 – Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands.

1977 – Former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. was found guilty by the Philippine Military Commission No. 2 and sentenced to death by firing squad.

1982 – The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire destroyed an entire city block.

1984 – 36 top musicians recorded Band Aid‘s Do They Know It’s Christmas in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

1986 – The King Fahd Causeway was officially opened in the Persian Gulf.

1987 – Typhoon Nina pummelled the Philippines with category 5 winds of 165 mph and a surge that destroys entire villages. At least 1,036 deaths are attributed to the storm.

1988 – German politician Rita Süssmuth became president of the Bundestag.

1992 – The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia voted to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia from January 1, 1993.

1996 – An ice storm struck the central U.S. killing 26 people. A powerful windstorm affected Florida and winds gusted over 90 mph.

1999 – The United Nations established the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the murder of three Mirabal Sisters for resistance against the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic.

2000 – Baku earthquake.

2005 – Polish Minister of National Defence Radek Sikorski opened Warsaw Pact archives to historians. Maps of possible nuclear strikes against Western Europe, as well as the possible nuclear annihilation of 43 Polish cities and 2 million of its citizens by Soviet-controlled forces, are released.

2008 – A car bomb in St. Petersburg killed three people and injured one.

2009 – A storm brought 3 years worth of rain in 4 hours to Jeddah sparking floods which killed over 150 people and sweep thousands of cars away in the middle of Hajj.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Thanksgiving -  the act of giving thanks; a prayer of gratitude; a public acknowledement or celebration of divine goodness; a celebration in Canada and the United States, generally observed as an expression of gratitude on the fourth Thursday of November in the U.S. and in Canada on the second Monday of October.

Sideshows dominate media

If you think the media had spent more time on sideshows than policy in the last couple of weeks a University of Canterbury study of election coverage proves you right.

The results to 22 November of an ongoing University of Canterbury study into media coverage of the election show that coverage of policy is being sidelined by continuing media interest in the tea tape scandal involving Prime Minister John Key and the ACT Party’s candidate in the Epsom electorate, John Banks.

“Media references to policy issues (41% of coverage of issues) were outnumbered by references to non-policy issues (59% of coverage of issues),” said University of Canterbury researcher Katherine Roff. “This is in contrast to the first week of the election when the majority of the media coverage focused on policy issues.

For the first four weeks of the campaign the economy got 16.6% of the coverage of issues;  social and public services  got 15% and state-owned assets got 12.2%. In the last couple of weeks the side show has had more prominence than policy.

Of the coverage devoted to parties at the four-week point of the campaign, National led Labour by attracting 37.6 % of coverage compared to Labour’s 28.4% of coverage. However, National had 25.4% more negative coverage than positive while Labour had 10.4% more negative coverage than positive coverage.

The Green Party received the largest net amount of positive coverage at 21.2%.

Prime Minister John Key attracted the majority of media coverage amongst party leaders at 52.6%, followed by Labour leader Phil Goff on 24.1%. However the Prime Minister received 28.9% more negative coverage than positive coverage whereas Mr Goff attracted 8.9% more negative coverage than positive coverage.

A now former Green Party member was behind the vandalism of National’s billboards. Russel Norman denied any knowledge of the campaign but no-one’s bothered to ask other MPs and office holders whether they knew anything.

This reinforces Liberty Scott’s post Why do the Greens get an easy ride. Part two: 50 questions that should have been asked of the Greens.

 

 

Twelve little lies plus one

National’s campaign manager Steven Joyce has a little list.

It has 12 lies Phil Goff has told during the campaign:

• 12.      Labour left the economy in good shape. WRONG - The economy had been in recession all year in 2008, floating mortgage rates were at 10.9 per cent, government spending was up 50 per cent in five years, and Treasury      was forecasting debt to rise out of control forever.

• 11.      National has cut hundreds of millions from early childhood  education.  WRONG – ECE funding has risen 40 per cent over the past three years.

• 10.      ‘We will get back into surplus the same time as National.’  WRONG –      Under any straightforward scrutiny of Labour’s revenue and expenditure  numbers over the next four years.

• 9.      ‘We will only borrow $2.6 billion more than National over the next three  years.’  WRONG – Latest calculation is $15.6 billion extra over four  years (excluding the Greens).

• 8.      ‘Labour would forgo power company dividends and reduce prices.’       WRONG – Labour now says it will keep dividend income in government  accounts.

• 7.      ‘National will sell Kiwibank’ – WRONG

• 6.      ‘Borrowing money to buy assets in the Super Fund is not borrowing.’       YEAH RIGHT

• 5.      Fruit and vegetable prices ‘continue to spiral upward’.  WRONG –      currently same price as November 2008.

• 4.      Prices have risen four times faster than wages in past three years.      WRONG – After tax wages up 18 per cent in last three years, prices up 8      per cent.

• 3. Mixed ownership means forgoing dividends of $6-700 million per year.  WRONG      – Actually, around $220 million per year, and save that amount at least in reduced interest.

• 2. The  income gap withAustralia has widened.  WRONG – After tax incomes here have risen faster thanAustralia over the past three years.

• 1. Police recruitment being cancelled for all of next year.  WRONG – One intake only postponed      two months because of increased staff retention.

“Labour said they would campaign on the issues, but in fact they’ve gone back to the old Labour way of making things up, and hoping if they make a false allegation often enough people would start to believe it.”

Lindsay Mitchell has another lie: “New Zealand has the highest youth unemployment rate in the developed world.” . . . .

The rate for 15-24 year-olds is currently 17.3%

This is lower than the US, the UK, France, Finland, Sweden, Chile, the Czech Republic, Italy, Belgium and a few others.

Kiwiblog has a link to Sean Plunket’s interview with Goff  this morning in which the latter refuses to admit he’s wrong about police recruitment.

And Whaleoil has the tweet of the day:

Did Phil Goff really not know his police numbers claims were a sack of excrement? Or was it a lie to scare people into voting Labour?

about 5 hours ago via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@seanplunketzb

SeanPlunketMornings

Mixed Ownership model made simple

The debate on National’s plan to sell a minority share in a very few state-owned assets (just 3% of the $245 billion worth of assets it owns) has been characterised by misinformation and scare tactics.

Opponents who don’t want the facts to get in the way of their stories don’t explain the alternative to selling a minority share of a very few assets is having to take on a lot more debt.

The debate has also shown a high level of financial and business ignorance from opponents who don’t understand what’s being suggested and why.

Credo Quia Absurdum Est has come to the rescue with a simple explanation:

Say you own a business.  You have invested a lot of your capital into it (this is where it may get hard for pinkos to understand, as they have probably never experienced this) and growth is stable.

You need to expand, but you are wary of taking on debt to fund your expansion.  You’ve also had your production manager come and tell you that you are going to need to reinvest in new technology and replace machinery to keep up with the play and ensure you remain competitive.  There’s also the small matter of your factory needing a new roof.

You know there are a few people keen on your business, but you don’t want to lose control of it after working so hard.  So you approach them and say “hey, for X dollars, you can buy up to 10% of my company.”  You ensure you retain 51% ownership, and sell two lots of 10% shareholdings and a lot of smaller shareholdings up to the 49% level. . .

You can read the rest here.

Thursday’s quiz

1. It’s choisir in French, in scegliere  Italian,  elegir in Spanish and whiriwhiri in Maori, what is it in English?

2. Who said: “An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”?

3. How many members should (as distinct from does) a party need to be registered?

4. Will you vote on Saturday (or before by special vote)?

5. Have you decided how you’ll vote?

Who’d work with whom?

John Key has proved he can work with some unlikely coalition partners.

He’s managed to provide a strong and stable government with Act to the right or him and the Maori and United Parties to the left.

How would you rate Phil Goff’s chances of keeping together the stack of colation partners he’d have to appease?

They’re not even in negotiation yet and already the Maori Party is unenthusiastic about one of the other parties  which would be in the stack. Deborah Coddington left this comment:

What newsrooms should really be asking the Greens is whether they can work with the Maori Party. I interviewed Tariana Turia today and asked her if she can work with the Greens and her response was astounding. I asked her if she trusted the Greens to return the conservation estate to tangata whenua and her response was an unequivocal, “I don’t believe they would”.

I asked her about the Greens’ policy to put a price on water for irrigation, and the tangata whenua’s very strong relationship with waters and rivers, and what she thought about who that money should be going to, under principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Her reply: “I’ve always been a bit suspicious of him [Russel Norman]…I don’t think they’re as honest as they make out to be.”

Someone, she said, should be putting these questions to the Greens before Saturday.

Someone should, but will they? See why do the Greens get such an easy ride? Part One for the answer.

Look who’s telling you not to

Camapigners for MMP who reckon we should support that system because of the people who’re telling us not to, might want to think again.

Look who’s telling us not to vote for change – the Right Wing Resistance:

Don’t make the mistake to vote for anything but MMP, the tricky slimy government have tried to confuse people by chucking in other options, MMP ain’t perfect but its better then the one party system these anti democratic people want to go back to.

What do they stand for?

Mission We are an organized unified resistance movement against mass immigration, the Dilution of our European Culture and Pride, and the current multicultural agenda created by the current government networks designed to destroy our colonial rights and identity. We stand with an active structure that rewards those who work hard for the movement. Function Our primary purpose is to recruit like minded individuals and groups into an organization of active men and women.

They also support New Zealand First, or they did yesterday when the website said:

 If you want traditional Kiwi life vote NZ First.

Today that line has been changed to:

In this country we must vote for the smaller parties.

There’s only one of the wee parties they could possibly mean.

If these people are telling us to support MMP that’s a very good reason to vote for change.

Hat Tip: Keeping Stock

Strong and stable or shaky stack?

Last night’s TV1 leaders’ debate confirmed that Phil Goff is an able and experienced politician who ought to know better than to promote policies which will increase debt, hamper growth and costs jobs.

It also confirmed that John Key is an able politician and his real world experience is more than a match for Goff’s parliamentary longevity. Unlike Goff he leads a party with a plan to reduce debt and encourage growth and the jobs which will come from that.

In announcing National’s action plan should it lead the next government, Key said:

We will get straight back to work on making our economy stronger, by balancing the books, repaying debt, and creating more jobs.

The plan outlines the next critical actions a National-led Government  will take in several important areas – debt and the economy, welfare,  law and order, education, health, and rebuilding Canterbury.

Each of these areas is vitally important to the future of New Zealand,  but none more so than getting back into surplus and reducing New  Zealand’s debt. But to carry out this plan, we need a strong, stable National-led Government.

Although the polls suggest that a National win is a near certainty, it isn’t.

. . . the reality is that Saturday is the only poll that counts, and the result will be much closer than some people think.

Under MMP, you can stack up the parties in all sorts of combinations  and the potential for a Labour Party-led stack of minor parties is very  real. And the more complex the stack of parties, the more expensive it will be.

Two things are certain. Firstly, that a Labour-led stack will lead to  more debt – around $21 billion over four years collectively so far. 

Secondly, it will stack up more costs and burdens on business – Labour  has 10 big extra costs of their own – and that means fewer jobs for New  Zealanders. New Zealand can’t afford that recipe.  

A strong, stable National-led government or the shakey stack of Labour, Green Party, Maori Party, New Zealand First and Mana?

The choice is clear. If we don’t want to join the European PIGS – Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, we need strong and stable government focussed on cutting debt and increasing growth, not  a shakey stack competing with each other to get their expensive and economically irresponsible policies implemented.

The action plan is here.

November 24 in history

380 – Theodosius I made his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.

1429 – Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieged La Charité.

1542 – Battle of Solway Moss: The English army defeated the Scots.

1639 – Jeremiah Horrocks observed the transit of Venus, an event he had predicted.

1642 – Abel Tasman became the first European to discover the island Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania).

1806 William Webb Ellis, who is credited with the invention of Rugby, was born (d. 1872).

1815 Grace Darling, English heroine, was born (d. 1842).

1849  Frances Hodgson Burnett, British-born author, was born (d. 1924).

1850 – Danish troops defeated a Schleswig-Holstein force in the Battle of Lottorf.

1859 – Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain – Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant captured Lookout Mountain and began to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

1864 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter, was born (d. 1901).

1868 Scott Joplin, Ragtime Composer, was born (d. 1917).

1888  Dale Carnegie, American writer, was born (d. 1955).

1894 Herbert Sutcliffe, English cricketer, was born (d. 1978).

1897  Lucky Luciano, American gangster, was born  (d. 1962).

1922 – Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers was executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.

1940 – World War II: Slovakia became a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.

1941 – World War II: The United States granted Lend-Lease to the Free French.

1942 Billy Connolly, Scottish comedian, was born.

1943 – World War II: The USS Liscome Bay was torpedoed near Tarawa and sank with nearly 650 men killed.

1944 – World War II: The first bombing raid against Tokyo from the east and by land was carried out by 88 American aircraft.

1959 – All hands were lost when the modern coastal freighter Holmglen foundered off the South Canterbury coast. The cause of the tragedy was never established.

1961 Arundhati Roy, Indian writer, was born.

1962 – The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany formed a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.

1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. The shooting was broadcast live on television.

1965 – Joseph Désiré Mobutu seized power in the Congo and becomes President.

1966 – A Bulgarian plane with 82 people on board crashed near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.

1966 – New York City experienced the smoggiest day in the city’s history.

1969 – The Apollo 12 command module splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money.

1973 – A national speed limit was imposed on the Autobahn in Germany due to the 1973 oil crisis.

1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discovered the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed “Lucy” (after The Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression.

1992 – A China Southern Airlines domestic flight crashed, killing all 141 people on-board.

1993 – In Liverpool, 11-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were convicted of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger.

2007 – Australians elected the Labor Party at a federal election; outgoing prime minister, John Howard, became the first since 1929 to lose his own seat.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Private - Secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others; designed or intended for one’s exclusive use; of or confined to the individual; personal; undertaken on an individual basis; of, relating to, or receiving special hospital services and privileges; not available for public use, control, or participation;  belonging to a particular person or persons, as opposed to the public or the government;  of, relating to, or derived from nongovernment sources; conducted and supported primarily by individuals or groups not affiliated with governmental agencies or corporations; not for public knowledge or disclosure; secret; not appropriate for use or display in public; intimate; placing a high value on personal privacy; a noncommissioned rank in the army.

What’s up at TV3?

Karl du Fresne isn’t impressed with scalp hunting by journalists:

THE ELECTION campaign has brought to the fore a new style of television journalism.
It is aggressive, confrontational, highly opinionated and designed to provoke a reaction. Its chief practitioners are Patrick Gower and Duncan Garner of 3 News. . .

The Gower approach illustrates two trends in modern political journalism. One is to strive at all costs for what former British prime minister Tony Blair called “impact” – something to excite the public blood lust.

The other is to put the journalist at the centre of the story. The modern political reporter is no longer content to be a passive observer, but wants to be a player – a maker and breaker of careers.

He has followed this up by asking what’s going on at TV3? It is worth reading in full so I’m not going to paraphrase it.

I am however, pleased that someone who admits he’s voted Labour more often than National, shares my disquiet over both the tactics and the bias.

We aren’t alone. Someone has referred last night’s documentary on child poverty to the Electoral Commission.

 

No ruling on private in public

Justice Helen Winkelmann has declined to give a ruling on whether the conversation between John Key and John Banks was private because it would prejudice an on-going police case.

 ”I have not reached any view on whether this was a private communication,” Justice Winkelmann said in her decision.   

“Indeed my decision turns upon the inadequacy of the evidentiary material before me to reach such a view, and in any event, the inappropriateness of my undertaking a mini trial as to whether certain conduct constituted a criminal offence … in advance of a police investigation or trial.”   

The decision means legal doubt remains over whether the conversation between Prime Minister John Key and Act’s John Banks was private, and it may be illegal to publish the tape.   

Up until now media with copies of the tape or a transcript have been reluctant to publish because of the risk of legal action.

If the Herald on Sunday and TV3 had been sure it wasn’t a private conversation they would have published a transcript of the conversation.

Instead they made do with insinuations and someone passed at least some of content on to Winston Peters to enable him to do what he does best – saying something to grab attention but nothing for which he could be held to account.

7/10

7/10 in NZ History Online’s quiz.

It takes more than three years to get this bad

What a coincidence Inside Child Poverty screened just days out from the election.

I haven’t watched it yet but don’t need to, to accept it is a problem.

However the causes are complex and so are solutions.

The problem didn’t happen over night and there was no significant improvement during the nine years under Labour even when the government books were in surplus.

Policies from the left which will increase public debt, raise the costs and risks of employment, hamper economic growth and encourage dependence won’t help either.

Stable government, decreasing debt and policies which encourage independence and economic growth are part of the solution.

Improvements will also require more targetted help, education and improved access to health services. All of those require a growing economy and that won’t come from the left.

Lindsay Mitchell posts on poverty  here , here and here.

 

 

 

Fair empty word in MMP debate

With just a few days to go until the referendum on the electoral system too many people are confused about the options.

That isn’t helped by the poor quality of the debate.

The Maximum Institute is doing its best to address that and says:

After a couple of weeks of the referendum campaign hitting full throttle, one gets the sense that we are watching a version of a beauty pageant, where the voting systems are getting primped and preened to look better than they are—their oddities and quirks sprayed over with fake tan. This is a far cry from what the referendum debate should be about.

Like everyone else joining in this debate, we have an opinion about which system New Zealand should have. But our bigger concern is not that people vote the way we would like, but rather that voters actually understand what type of representation and parliament the voting systems produce.

The systems are not just mechanically different. They produce different outcomes based on different understandings of good political representation. To chuck stones at FPP or PV for not being proportional is like blaming your local burger shop for not serving sushi—you are asking it to be something it was never meant to be. Likewise, blaming MMP and other proportional systems for producing coalition governments misses the point that that is exactly what they are designed to do. New Zealand’s voting systems debate needs to focus on how we understand parliament and representation, rather than just sloganeering.

One of the biggest divides between the different voting systems is whether they are proportional or majoritarian. Proportional systems, like MMP, are meant to ensure that parties get the same proportion of seats in parliament as the proportion of votes they received across the country, while majoritarian systems, like FPP, operate on the principle that whichever party has a majority of the seats in parliament should be able to govern. Neither is inherently bad or “unfair.” They are designed to produce different outcomes, and both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Advocates of proportional systems say that they are “fairer” because of an assumption that the composition of MPs elected to parliament should mirror the representation of interest groups in society. MPs are seen as delegates who govern according to the wishes of the identity group whom they represent. But this is not the only way to think about representation.

The other model of representation is the “trustee” model, which assumes that MPs are supposed to use their discernment to make decisions on behalf of the whole community who they represent, including those who did not vote for them. Under this model, the local electorate MPs are directly accountable to voters through their electorate vote, and the representation of local electorates matters more than how proportionate each party’s representation in parliament is.

Each voting system contains elements of both models of representation to varying degrees, but no system can provide for everything. They are all trying to strike a balance. The advantages of each system generate disadvantages that ought to be acknowledged. For example, an advantage of proportional systems is that they can produce coalition governments, which can reduce one party’s ability to ram through laws on a whim. The disadvantage is that voters can find it hard to know exactly what policy programme they are voting for, and it cannot be predicted precisely which parties will form a government.

Another advantage of proportional systems is that they are supposed to allow for the many different groups in society to have a voice in parliament, in proportion to how much support voters give them. But a proportional parliament does not necessarily mean that all parties or interest groups have a proportional influence on the laws that are made. It is possible for a minor party such as ACT—with 3.7 percent of the vote—to be in Government, while Labour—with 33.9 percent of the vote—is in opposition. ACT gets to help set the government’s agenda, while Labour does not. To borrow from Animal Farm, some politicians are more equal than others.

Majoritarian systems on the other hand are prized for their ability to produce a clear and stable government. MPs are also directly accountable to electorates who can vote them out if they are not performing. Yet majoritarian systems also have their limitations. They can mean a big proportion of the population—sometimes more than 50 percent—end up with a government they did not want. This is because election results are determined by which candidates win their electorate seats. Even though a party can win a significant share of the popular vote, it will not have any seats in parliament unless it wins a majority of the vote in specific electorates. Minority voices can struggle to be heard, and while majoritarian systems give voters a clear government and opposition, that also means there is little need for compromise and negotiation in making laws.

Does all this mean we might as well give up? Are there are no good systems on offer at the referendum? Not at all. The point is just that we need to look at the merits and draw-backs of all the systems and determine what we prefer. Deciding how to vote in the referendum should not just be an issue of slogans and system mechanics. It should be about asking how we want parliament to work and what sort of representation we think is best for New Zealand. The debate needs to move to this level.

None of the systems is perfect and whether or not they are fair is very much a matter of opinion.

Under MMP parliament better reflects the way people voted but it  comes at the cost of more power for parties and poorer representation for people.

You could call placing more power in the hands of parties, most of which have little if any more than the 500 members required to register, a lot of things but you can’t call it fair.

There is more on the debate at kicking the tyres.

The wonder of whanau

Quote of the day:

“As a nation, we must transform our thinking from what we can’t do, to what we can do; and we must reinvest in the importance of collective responsibility– looking out for our neighbour; caring for our own kids . . .

“New Zealanders are tired of hearing about the dire predicament they are in, and the quick fix solutions that various parties are promising does nothing to create the long term change we need”.

“For the vast amount of resources spent on the industry of misery, we have to ask have these services progressed the situation of our families? What is the social and economic outcome? . . .

Government needs to be acutely aware that their role is to support the responsibilities that properly lie with family – not make our families redundant.

We have to wake up to the wonder of whanau –the incredible potential of our people to do for themselves.

“Exacerbating our people’s situation and maintaining our dependence on others must cease if we are to achieve inter-dependence of ourselves”. Tariana Turia

Classroom socialism

This story of socialism in the classroom is doing the email rounds:

An economics professor had never failed a single student, but recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equaliser.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.”

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

If socialism doesn’t work and isn’t fair in the classroom, why would it be any better in the economy?

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Incentives work in the classroom and the world.

If people have incentives to help themselves they’re more likely to do it.

If they have incentives to be dependent they’re less likely to help themselves.

 

Labour debt + Green debt = more debt

Labour’s answer to our debt problem is more debt which is bad enough in isolation.

But if it is able to govern it will need coalition partners and the policies they are promoting would mean even more debt.

National Party Associate Finance spokesman and Campaign Chair Steven Joyce says a Labour-Greens Government would drive New Zealand billions of dollars further into debt at the worst possible time.

“The Greens have a huge number of spending policies and none of them are costed.  Some are eye-wateringly expensive.  We’ve calculated that just nine of the Greens’ centrepiece policies would add about $25 billion to debt over the next four years, in addition to what Labour is already planning.

“Even if Labour agrees to just 25 per cent of these policies promoted by the Greens as part of a coalition deal, we would be looking at extra debt of more than $6 billion over four years, on top of the $15.6 billion that Labour is already promising to borrow.  New Zealand simply can’t afford a big-spending Government like that at this time.  That would take the total to around $22 billion of extra borrowing.

“Taken together, the Greens and Labour policies would cost tens of thousands of jobs and massively ramp up debt.”

Among their more costly policies are:

• Extending paid parental leave to 13 months = $4 billion
• Extending the ‘In-Work’ tax credit to beneficiaries = $1.7 billion
• Extending unemployment benefit to all students over summer = $1.6 billion
• Universal Student Allowance at the level of unemployment benefit = $4.2 billion
• Free ‘wellness checks and dental check’ = $3.6 billion
• Wiping one year’s student debt for each year worked in New Zealand = $3 billion
• Green jobs initiatives = $3.2 billion.

On top of that would be the significant costs they would impose on employers – raising the minimu wage to 66%  of the average wage, increasing company tax to 30 per cent as part of the earthquake levy and imposing a 35-hour working week.

Farms would face other new costs including water charges and tax on emissions.

Adding costs without an increase in productivity would cost jobs and make businesses less competitive.

“It is clear that any Labour-Green-based government would quickly revert New Zealand to the high-spending ways of its predecessor, which ramped up government spending by 50 per cent in its last five years in office.  That high spending, high debt scenario is the exact opposite of what the vulnerable world economic situation demands of New Zealand.

“Only National can provide a strong stable Government that keeps debt down and delivers on jobs. The alternative is big spending, big borrowing, and huge uncertainty.  Any way you look at it – a Labour-led Government would owe our future.”

Debt is one of our major problems. It won’t be solved by adding more debt and imposing extra costs on businesses.