Can’t run party, can’t run country

The release of a party list ought to be a well managed positive PR opportunity.

Labour’s was not.

The seeds of trouble were planted months ago with rumbling’s over leader Andrew Little’s promise of a winnable list position for Willie Jackson.

Another trouble sprouted a few days ago when sitting list MP Sue Maroney announced she would stand down at the election because she wouldn’t have a winnable list position.

This confirms my contention that Labour’s anti-employer sentiments are based on its own mishandling of its people.

On the heels of Maroney’s announcement, the release of the list was delayed because Jackson had a tantrum.

This raises more questions about Little’s judgement and leadership.

Ironically Jackson’s chances of winning will increase if Labour’s sitting MPs in Maori Electorates, who chose not to be on the list, lose their seats to the Maori or Mana Parties.

 Barry Soper sums it up:

 . . .The first public fallout from the current Labour list preparation was the paid parental leave campaigner, 12 year veteran MP Sue Moroney who was a Cunliffe supporter, who said she’d lost the support of the party’s ruling council who’d given her an unelectable position so she’s quitting.

One would have thought before Labour made public when it’d be announcing its list, it would have ironed out those who could have been disgruntled with it. Yet again they’re spilling their guts in public, being forced to delay their announcement until this morning to give them time to either placate Jackson or to send him up the political creek without his waka. . .

The list release debacle reflects poorly on Little and shows Labour still can’t run itself.

If it can’t be trusted to do that it can’t be trusted to run the county.

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Hone hasn’t learned

Those who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them:

The Mana Movement is planning for the 2017 election and Kim Dotcom could be involved, leader Hone Harawira says.

Mr Harawira lost his Te Tai Tokerau seat to Labour’s Kelvin Davis and Mana’s alliance with the Dotcom backed Internet Party only gained 1.26 percent of the party vote in September’s election. . .

The election result gave me faith in democracy and one of the best illustrations of that was voters in Te Tai Tokerau who voted Davis in as their MP.

By doing so they saved us all from the electoral rort that Harawira, Dot Com, Laila Harre and their fellow travellers tried to inflict on us with their unholy and hypocritical alliance under the Internet Mana Party banner.

Harawira’s willingness to work with Dotcom again shows he doesn’t understand that.

He will find it much harder to campaign without the salary and allowances he had as an MP and party leader in parliament.

He’ll be further handicapping himself if he enlists Dotcom’s help again.

Political Compass

Political Compass places New Zealand political parties:

 

Whoever is behind it says:

This time around there can be no more important and over-arching issue than the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) which New Zealand is poised to sign, yet receives scant attention in the campaign and is ignored in any of the “surveys” that we’ve seen. From the authenticated leaked information that’s available, it’s clear that this agreement is much more than the free trade deal that its National Party adherents describe. It is in fact an unprecedented move towards international corporate involvement in governance, including vital areas like education, health and pharmaceuticals, environment, agriculture, investor rights and much more. Under the TPPA, government legislation in the interests of the public — but against the interests of foreign business — may be challenged by a corporation in a closed tribunal on the grounds of impeding free trade. This precise thing has already happened in Australia, where the country’s plain packaging laws on tobacco were legally challenged by a tobacco company. The truth is that many of the electoral policies of some NZ parties could not be implemented under the TPPA! This, and not the flag, is the real sovereignty issue, and it\`s barely being raised. By comparison, every other electoral issue is window dressing.

I don’t think most voters share this view of the importance of the TPPA, nor what appears to be a hard-left, anti-trade view of it.

However they are right about this:

We remain perplexed about the electoral alliance between Mana and the Internet Party, given that Mana’s leader is an avowed socialist, while the Internet Party’s founder is an economic libertarian in the mould of the anti-state Pirate parties of other countries. . .

I took the test:

 

 

That isolates me from any of the parties but I think that’s the fault of the placing of the parties, the questions – some of which are on issues and ideas which aren’t relevant here – and assumptions made about how answers relate to the parties.

TVNZ’s Vote Compass shouldn’t be taken as fool-proof, but it has the parties better placed and is based on questions more relevant in New Zealand.

It put me in a similar place but has the National Party there as more centrists and liberal than the Political Compass does:

Cunliffe yeah-nah on Mana

Last week David Cunliffe refused to rule out working with Internet Mana.

Last night TV3 reported the Labour Party had told Te Tai Tokerau candidate Kelvin Davis to shut down a website aimed at his rival for the seat, sitting MP and Mana leader Hone Harawira.

But this morning Cunliffe told TV1’s Breakfast: (@ 2:28)

“. . . We’ve ruled out working with Mana in government  as well. I’ve said yesterday, I’ve said before Mana will not be part of a government I lead fullstop.”

Has he or has he not ruled out Mana?

If he has why is Davis being told to pull his head in – and his website off-line – and why isn’t Labour supporting its candidate in Te Tai Tokerau?

A strong campaign there would unseat Harawira and Mana would go with him in spite of the millions of dollars Kim Dotcom is throwing at it.

While Labour is yeah-nahing about whether or not it will work with Mana and whether or not it wants to win the seat, Davis is in no doubt.

He posted on Facebook last night:

I was on 3 News tonight because my campaign team had a look at a proposed website designed to take down Kim Dotcom and stop him from buying the seat of Te Tai Tokerau with his $3million dollars.
We explored this concept, debated it, then along with the Labour Party hierarchy decided it wasn’t in line with our Vote Positive messages and ditched it.
It was all about Kim Dotcom.
This is the same Kim Dotcom who donated $50,000 to far-right wing disgraced politician John Banks.
This is the same Kim Dotcom who said the police turning up at his front door was as bad as the suffering Maori have endured for close to two centuries.
This is the same Kim Dotcom had nothing to do with Maori until he found a way to take advantage of some to try to keep himself out of an American jail.
This is the same Kim Dotcom who’s garage is bigger and flasher than 99% of homes in Te Tai Tokerau, and still cries ‘poor me’.
This is the same Kim Dotcom, who if he really cared about the people of Te Tai Tokerau, would have got out with all the Labour volunteers after the floods and storms and distributed food packages to those who needed them instead of staying tucked up in the mansion.
This is the same Kim Dotcom who turned up to hui up north in a limousine while kaumatua and kuia rode in a rattly bus.
This is the same Kim Dotcom whose interference in Te Tai Tokerau politics was described as a disgrace to over 300 people at the Ngati Hine hearings in Pipiwai yesterday.
I make no apologies about looking at a website that asked the public to donate $5, $10 or whatever they wish to koha, to bring down a fake.
I’m just an ordinary Maori living up north trying to stop the biggest con in New Zealand’s political history from being pulled against my whanau, my hapu, my iwi.
I make no apologies if there’s another Maori politician in the north feeling pretty sensitive about all the criticism he’s copping from hapu throughout Te Tai Tokerau because of the con job.
I’m prepared to cop the criticism from him because it’s just the price a person pays when he stands up for his people and his principles.

Davis is quite sure he wants to win the seat, and on current polling he’d have to if he wants a seat in parliament because his list placing isn’t good enough win a seat that way.

But it’s difficult to know whether his leader and his party are as keen.

The only thing we can be sure about  is that Labour is unsure.

It’s as confused and divided about this as it is about its campaign, its direction and its leader.

Another candidate from political crypt

The Mana Party is following its stable-mate the Internet Party in dragging out candidates from the political crypt:

The world’s first openly transsexual MP Georgina Beyer is standing for the Mana Party in the Te Tai Tonga electorate.

Ms Beyer will stand in the Maori seat, which covers the entire South Island, Stewart Island, Chatham Islands, Wellington and parts of the Hutt Valley.

She has links to the electorate through her Te Ati Awa and Ngati Mutunga whakapapa, Mana Party Leader Hone Harawira said today.

“Our goal this election is to raise the profile of Mana, grow our numbers in Parliament, and help change the Government,” he said.

“Georgina’s a respected household name in politics so she’s an important part of helping achieve that goal. We feel honoured to have her.” . . .

Respected? By whom?

Certainly not the Fortune Theatre:

Transsexual former MP Georgina Beyer has quit the Fortune Theatre production 6 Dance Lessons in 6 Weeks two days before it was due to open in Dunedin.It is the first time a production has been cancelled at the Fortune Theatre.Ms Beyer said yesterday she had made the decision to leave the play after realising “I bit off more than I could chew”.

The play was scheduled to open tonight and run until March 7.

“It’s a massive disappointment. I feel terribly disappointed for the Fortune Theatre and for the Dunedin public. But, in my view, it would have been irresponsible to put it on,” she said.

Ms Beyer gave her decision to the theatre management after rehearsals on Wednesday afternoon.

“I just felt that I couldn’t put my co-star Douglas Kamo in danger and put on a production that could be slammed by the critics,” she said.

“It was a massive role. I wasn’t going too badly at the start, but I just couldn’t anchor the script in my head. I kept blowing my lines.” . . .

That cancellation cost the Fortune Theatre Trust thousands of dollars.

If memory serves me correctly, although she announced her resignation before parliament broke for the summer holidays, it didn’t take effect until the new year so she was rehearsing for the play at the taxpayers’ expense.

She then ran out of money and complained about not getting any government appointments:

Former Labour MP Georgina Beyer plans to move to Australia because she cannot find work.

The three-term Wairarapa MP, the world’s first transsexual politician, said she was disillusioned with life after politics and upset at the treatment she had received from her former Labour Party colleagues.

Ms Beyer said that while other former Labour MPs were appointed to boards, she had received nothing and was turned down for a position on the Human Rights Commission.

The former chairwoman of Parliament’s social services committee said she had been forced to accept the unemployment benefit for several months late last year before selling her house to pay the bills “so I didn’t have to be on the dole”.

“I have all this accumulated knowledge and experience and no one wants to employ it, and I’m not sure why,” she said.

“That I’m of no further use to my country is why I’m considering Australia, that my former parliamentary colleagues seem not to want to appoint me to anything, but are quite happy to accommodate others who have left or are about to, so as to shut them up from whingeing from the sidelines in election year.

“One could be forgiven for being a little vexed.” . . .

Lots of taxpayers could well be vexed too but by her attitude rather than the lack of appointments.

In her valedictory speech in February last year, Ms Beyer described her political career as the “greatest moment of my life”.

But she said she now felt disillusioned by it.

“Politics was never my ambition. I was coaxed into it by others,” she said. . . .

“It seems that I am not valued for my experience in either local or central government, so I guess I wasted 14 years of my life in publicly elected service and ended up unemployable.”

And now Mana and Kim Dotcom have found a job for her.

Let’s hope the good folk of Te Tai Tonga, the largest electorate of all, ensure it’s temporary.

Paying price for prevarication

Last night’s 3 News-Reid Research poll gave Labour more bad news:

PARTY VOTE:

National: 49.4 percent (down 0.3 percent)
Labour: 26.7 percent (down 0.6 percent)
Green: 12.4 percent (down 0.3 percent)
NZ First: 4.3 percent  (up 0.7 percent)
Conservative: 2.7 percent (down 0.1 percent)
Internet Mana: 2.3 percent (up 0.5 percent)
Maori: 1.1 percent (down 0.4 percent)
United Future: 0.2 percent (up 0.2 percent)
ACT: 0.1 percent (down 0.3 percent)

The reason’s for Labour’s poor showing are many, but one of those is Cunliffe’s prevarication over whether or not he’d do a post-election deal with the Internet-mana Party:

SHOULD LABOUR WORK WITH INTERNET MANA IN FORMING A GOVERNMENT:

NO: 59 percent
YES: 29 percent
Don’t know: 12 percent
–
Labour voters:
NO: 47 percent
YES: 40 percent
Don’t know: 13 percent

Cunliffe’s following the Winston Peters’ line on this – he’ll play the cards the voters deal.

But by doing this both men are leaving voters without information they need to cast their votes with confidence.

John Key told everyone months ago which parties he would and would not work with.

People know  what they’d get if they give National their party votes.

In contrast, Cunliffe and Peters continue to prevaricate which leaves voters having to take a gamble.

If they give Labour their party votes they can’t be sure they wouldn’t be helping the Internet-Mana Party into government and if they vote for New Zealand First they have no idea if Peters would move right or left.

In spite of what he says about the possibility of staying on the cross-benches, the lure of some baubles would almost certainly persuade him to change his mind.

A vote for either Labour or New Zealand first is a vote for uncertainty and instability.

Clear choice

The choice in this election is stark.

There’s a centre right government led by a strong and popular National Party with John Key, the most popular Prime Minister in many, many years, with several capable new MPs.

It will almost certainly need support parties but their influence will be as minor as they are.

Then there’s the alternative – an unstable left government led by a weak Labour Party with the unpopular David Cunliffe heading stale faces supported by the Green, New Zealand First, Mana and Internet parties who will exert far more influence than their minor status.

That’s a choice between stability and progress from a National-led government or instability and regression from this:

 

 

That looks like two white businessmen which is a strange image for a coalition that includes a radical Maori separatist and several feminists.

Whatever the gender and race of the people behind the hands, I hope we see more of this because this clearly shows the prospect of government by what Bob Jones so accurately described as a rabble of dissimilar, mutually antagonistic parties, all with unpopular leaders and wildly different messages. . . 

If a picture is worth a thousand words – every one in this is telling the undecided in the middle to vote for National.