Mark Osborne Nat candidate for Northland

National Party members in the Northland electorate have selected Matthew Osborne as their candidate for next month’s by-election.

. . . Mr Osborne was selected at a large meeting of party members in Kerikeri today, pledging to work to maintain a strong voice for Northland in John Key’s National Government.

“National is working hard and delivering for the north,” said Mr Osborne.

“National’s focus on investment and growth helped to create 7500 more jobs in Northland last year and Northland is currently one of the fastest growing regions in the country.”

Mr Osborne highlighted eight ways National’s plan is lifting Northland’s growth rate and helping more Northlanders into work:

• Building the Puhoi to Wellsford Road of National Significance to link Northland to Auckland
• Investing $255 million over three years in local roads and highways across Northland
• Backing Northland’s primary industries through the $750m Primary Growth Partnership.
• Attracting more investment and job growth in Northland through the Northland Regional Growth Study.
• Reforming the RMA to address the costs, delays, and frustrations that are holding our regions back.
• Rolling out much faster broadband services for Northland.
• Introducing the Maori and Pasifika Trades training initiative across Northland
• Supporting Northland families with free doctors’ visits for under-13s and investing over $134 million to improve and expand Northland’s school network since 2008.

“These are vital initiatives for Northland’s future. I’ll work hard to see them delivered and build on that momentum by keeping Northland’s strong local voice in the John Key Government.”

Based in Taipa, Mark Osborne is an Asset Manager for Far North District Council. Through his work as a Northland public servant, former General Manager of Te Ahu Charitable Trust, Trustee of Mangonui School, and experience running family-owned local business Doubtless Beauty, Mr Osborne has strong ties to Northland. Married to Jodi, he is also a father of two.

Northland covers a large geographical area with several diverse communities.

It is regarded as a safe Nationals eat but and neither Mark nor the party will be taking anything for granted.

Peters standing to give Invercargill MP at Northland’s expense

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is standing in the Northland by-election.

. . . He said today that standing in the by-election was not an easy decision, but he had a long held concern for “Northland’s forgotten people”.

National had forgotten Northland for years, and the region was stagnating, Peters said. . .

He will be hoping that Northland voters have forgotten, or never knew, about the vagaries of MMP.

Should he win the seat he will become an electorate MP and the next person on NZ First’s list will get into parliament. That’s Ria Bond from Invercargill.

Quite how Peters will persuade the good people of Northland they will be represented by voting him in as an electorate MP with his reputation for talking big and doing little and in the process losing an MP from their end of the country and gifting parliament one from the other will remain to be seen.

Labour has confirmed Willow-Jean Prime as its candidate, and the Act Party will stand Whangarei orchardist Robin Grieve.

The Green Party and the Maori Party are not standing candidates.

If Labour sabotage their candidate in an attempt to unite opposition votes behind Peters it could happen.

Voters often punish the governing party in a by-election and a new candidate usually doesn’t attract the same level of votes a sitting one did.

The 2014 election results show:

NZ First didn’t bother standing a candidate in Northland last year. Mike Sabin won the seat for National with 18,269 votes and a majority of 9,300 over Prime who got 8,969 votes.

National gained 17,412 party votes; Labour got 5,913 and NZ First 4,546. the Green Party managed to get 3,855 votes and its candidate gained 3,639 votes.

National members in the electorate will select their candidate tomorrow.

The five in contention are: Grant McCallum, Mita Harris, Matt King, Mark Osborne and Karen Rolleston.

 

 

 

 

 

McCallum seeks Northland selection

Dairy farmer and party board member Grant McCallum is seeking selection as National candidate for Northland.

The party’s rules give the right to select a candidate to members in the electorate. Voting delegates  must have been members for at least six months.

They take that very seriously and would take a very dim view on interference from anywhere else, in or outside the party.

Grant is the first candidate for selection to announce his intentions.

He and his family have a long history of active membership in the party which means he will be known to many of the delegates who will vote in the selection.

That will give him a head-start but every candidate has to earn the support of the delegates and nothing can be taken for granted.

Northland is the seventh biggest general electorate, stretching from the top of the North Island, skirting Whangarei, to Wellsford and covers an area of 12,255 square kilometres.

It has no single big centre of population and many diverse and far-flung small ones.

Better than not very good

A 3news Reid-Research Poll shows  55% of voters think Andrew Little is potentially a better match for John Key than his predecessors.

How hard is that?

Helen Clark resigned on election night and anointed Phil Goff.

He never made any traction and had to work with a divided caucus.

He was followed by David Shearer who had to work with a divided caucus and who struggled to string sentences together in interviews.

A change in party rules resulted in the election of David Cunliffe who had to deal with a divided caucus and who could string sentences together but strung different ones for different audiences and tripped himself up with several of them.

Now we have Andrew Little who was elected on the strength of union votes not the majority of members or his caucus. But he can string sentences together, has yet to trip himself up with them and the caucus has managed to hold itself together over the Christmas break while it was largely out of the news.

Being better than three previous leaders who weren’t very good at all isn’t much of an achievement especially when measured against the popularity of the man whose job he wants:

Mr Key is on the up too though, and as for Labour’s bump in the polls, he’s got that covered.

“I’m not surprised,” says Mr Key. “I think Labour is cannibalising the vote on the left of politics as Andrew Little goes through his honeymoon period.”

Voters do like what they see, especially when compared to Mr Little’s predecessors. Asked if Mr Little looks like a better match for Mr Key, 55 percent, a clear majority, say yes, up against 12 percent who say just the same and 18 percent that reckon he will be worse.

But this is crucial. Out of National voters, exactly whom Mr Little needs to win over, almost one in every two, 48 percent, rate him as a better match for Mr Key.

“It’s nice to get all that feedback,” says Mr Little.

“If you think of the election result in 2014, Labour was led to their worst result,” says Mr Key. “A lot of people might think that given how bad that was you can probably only improve from there.”

3 News polls on the same questions regularly, and Mr Little has got some of the highest ratings since Helen Clark. For instance, 54 percent say he is a capable leader; only Ms Clark got higher.

But here’s the problem for Mr Little – 81 percent of voters rate Mr Key as capable. . .

As he is and that’s reflected in party support too:

• National – 49.8 percent, up 2.8 percent on election night result
• Labour – 29.1 percent, up 4 percent
• Green – 9.3 percent, down 1.4 percent
• New Zealand First – 6.9 percent, down 1.9 percent
• Conservative – 2.7 percent, down 1.3 percent
• Maori – 1.3 percent, N/C
• Internet Mana – 0.6 percent, down 0.8 percent
• ACT – 0.4 percent, down 0.3 percent
• United Future – 0 percent, down 0.2 percent

As usually happens between elections the support for the wee parties drops.

 

Mike Sabin resigns as MP

Northland MP Mike Sabin has announced his resignation from parliament.

. . . There have been reports Mr Sabin was being investigated by police over assault-related allegations, although neither Mr Sabin, the police or Prime Minister John Key would confirm that.

Mr Sabin announced in a short statement that he had decided to resign “due to personal issues that were best dealt with outside Parliament.”

He succeeded long-serving National MP John Carter in 2011. He had been a police officer then worked campaigning against drug abuse.

A resignation under these circumstances is unfortunate but it is the right thing to do.

The resignation will trigger a by-election.

 

Norman resigning from Green co-leadership

Russel Norman has announced he’s resigning as co-leader of the Green Party.

Dr Norman, whose third child was born two days ago, gave no explanation beyond a generic statement that he wanted to seek his next challenge and spend more time with his family.

His statement to media:

I am announcing today that I will not be standing for Co-leader of the Green Party at our AGM in May.

This is my ninth year as Co-leader and I think it’s time for a change.

This is something I have considered for some time and over the summer break I have had the space to think hard about my future.

I concluded that after nearly a decade, it is a good time to find a new challenge for myself, and to spend more time with my family, and now is also a good time for new leadership for the party.

Norman said at his 11am press conference he would stay on as an MP until the next election. . .

The job of MP places big pressure on families and a desire to spend more time with his should not be questioned.

One could however wonder what new challenges he’ll be seeking and how he’ll be doing that while remaining an MP being paid from the public purse.

That aside, Norman has been co-leader since 2006 and entered parliament then by leapfrogging up the party list.

He can take some of the credit for the increase in Green MPs since then.

The party had dropped from 9 MPs in 2002 to 6 in 2005, went back up to 9 in 2008, gained 14 MPs in 2011 and retained that number, with a slightly lower percentage of the vote, in 2014.

However, he also must shoulder some of the blame for his party’s inability to capitalise on Labour’s low polling last year and for its failure to be part of a government.

The Greens were more effective as an opposition than Labour for much of the last three term and were aiming for more MPs as a result of that.

That they couldn’t do it when Labour was at its lowest point must have been a huge disappointment to them and indicates a need for change.

National has managed to renew and refresh its caucus while in government.

That Labour hasn’t is one its problems and Norman’s decision indicates he might have learned from that.

 

Quiet revolution in Budgeting process

Trans Tasman notes Finance Minister Bill English is driving a quiet revolution in the Budgeting process:

Cabinet Ministers are getting to grips with the new spending processes Finance Minister Bill English is introducing in this year’s budget. Where departments previously put in bids for the amount they thought would be needed to finance particular programmes, they will now be expected to match the bid with an assessment of the return on the investment. This follows the changes initiated in delivering better public services, when departments were instructed to publish results their programmes were achieving. In effect the Govt is seeking to revolutionise the way ministries operate.

It requires different departments to work together, rather than in isolation, particularly in the field of health and community services. The Govt accepts the new processes will have to resolve complex problems such as privacy issues but the objective is to push Ministries towards targeting the money available to achieve tangible results. The Govt argues it has a duty to ensure funds raised from taxpayers are applied to maximise outcomes, rather than just for “nice-to-haves” Ministers or bureaucrats advanced in competition with each other.

The duty becomes more onerous as the Govt strives to bring the Crown accounts back into long-term surplus, without any nasty spending blow-outs from programmes initiated in earlier years. An example where unintended consequences can spring out of the woodwork to damage spending projections lies in Employment Court decisions related to the care of aged people and the definition of work, as well as in pay equity. One decision concerned the definition of work as including driving to and from the places where aged-care providers are working, and another involves the principle of equal pay, with the concept aged care workers should be entitled to the same hourly rates as those in the Corrections Department. How the Govt deals with these complex issues will have long-term budgetary impacts.

National is often criticised for having no plan by people who don’t understand that a lot of what it is doing is being done quietly, like this requirement for a return on taxpayer investment.