Archive for September, 2005

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  Wielding chainsaws - by frog

  
  
  
  Since being elected to Parliament in 1999, Greens MPs have been at great pains to distance themselves from groups taking “direct action” for environmental causes (e.g. ripping up GE crops). In my view, this decision has two virtues: first, it was a principled stand that a Parliamentary party should be trying to achieve policy progress [...] read more
  September 26, 2005 9:32 am - 13 Comments
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  Reasonable - by frog

  
  
  
  Former Listener editor Finlay Macdonald had an interesting take on the Greens and United in his Sunday Star-Times column yesterday, writing: My own hope is that [history] has also finally moved on for Peter Dunne. The pompous little performance on election night, coupled with his shrill and ignorant denunciations of the Greens, mark him out [...] read more
  September 26, 2005 9:02 am - 4 Comments
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  Labour voters to Helen: Go Green - by frog

  
  
  
  Victoria University political scientists Nigel Roberts and Stephen Levine have an interesting write-up in the Sunday Star-Times today of research they did into voter intentions just before the election. One very relevant finding for the post-election negotiations is that Labour voters overwhelmingly want their party to form a coalition with the Greens: One important set [...] read more
  September 25, 2005 4:41 am - 2 Comments
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  Why does he hate us? - by frog

  
  
  
  Many people have asked me why Peter Dunne hates the Greens so much. I’ve tried for a long time to work it out, and have failed. But perhaps former Act Leader Richard Prebble has it right when he says in the Sunday Star-Times today: Peter Dunne is trying to justify the existence of his party [...] read more
  September 25, 2005 4:30 am - 22 Comments
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  Keeping promises - by frog

  
  
  
  Don’t let it ever be said that Greens don’t keep their election promises. Keith – in hindsight, quite foolishly – promised to run the streets of Epsom naked if Act’s Rodney Hide won that electorate. Keith was so confident that the Act leader couldn’t win, he was prepared to put his body on the line. [...] read more
  September 25, 2005 4:23 am - 14 Comments
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  Greens in Cabinet? Sure, why not? - by frog

  
  
  
  The Herald on Sunday asked Kiwis whether they’d support Green MPs being in Cabinet. 39% said yes; 41% said no; with the rest expressed no opinion. Given how much time, money and effort (from the religious right, National, United, and some in the business community) has gone into demonising the Greens, this is a staggering [...] read more
  September 25, 2005 4:15 am - 11 Comments
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  Outage - by frog

  
  
  
  Many readers will have noticed that we’ve been having some technical problems this weekend. We apologise for the inconvenience… read more
  September 25, 2005 3:43 am - 3 Comments
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  Wedge politics - by frog

  
  
  
  One of the scariest aspects of the rise of Dr Brash’s National Party was that it was prefaced on pitting different sorts of New Zealanders against each other. The Listener has a very interesting cover story about “post-election New Zealand”. A comment in it by Auckland University political scientist Raymond Miller is very telling. Of [...] read more
  September 24, 2005 12:10 pm - 7 Comments
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  Let’s sort it out - by frog

  
  
  
  So, the problems with our voting system keep on emerging. Not only are people (and animals!) ineligible to vote successfully enrolling to vote, some genuine voters’ ballot papers have been corrupted by computers. It’s unclear how many overseas voters this affected – but we know of at least a couple of people who wanted to [...] read more
  September 24, 2005 10:56 am - 1 Comment
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  The Emperor’s Entourage - by frog

  
  
  
  Congratulations to Mike for winning the supreme award in the WearableArt awards last night for The Emperor’s Entourage. Mike will only be back in Parliament if the Greens get close to 20 percent of the special votes – an unlikely prospect indeed. However, he summed up his artistic victory coming a week after being tipped [...] read more
  September 24, 2005 9:53 am - No Comments
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  National wins! - by frog

  
  
  
  Richard Prebble’s suggestion that MMP robbed the centre-right of victory on Saturday had me thinking: who would have won our four MMP elections, if they’d been conducted using FPP rules? By which I mean: what would have happened if each electorate got one MP, based on which party got a plurality of the party votes [...] read more
  September 23, 2005 1:31 pm - 7 Comments
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  Clutching at straws - by frog

  
  
  
  National’s John Key was on Morning Report today claiming that there was a good chance the Greens wouldn’t make the 5 percent threshold, once specials were counted. I can understand why he’d say this – National’s only hope of maintaining the facade that it could still form the next government is to argue the Greens [...] read more
  September 23, 2005 12:12 pm - 6 Comments
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  A dog-vote-dog world - by frog

  
  
  
  This just in from the Otago Daily Times: Toby the jack russell terrier signed up on the electoral roll with his paw print and received a voter’s card for the general election. His owner, Peter Rhodes, who filled in the form as a joke, says the successful enrolment highlights the need for more careful scrutiny. [...] read more
  September 23, 2005 9:34 am - 14 Comments
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  A black mark - by frog

  
  
  
  Yesterday, Jeanette put out a press release, urging oil companies to absorb the short-term price spike that can be expected as a result of Hurricane Rita. This had David Farrar hurtling head-long into smarty-pants mode. He writes this morning: I feel sorry for the Greens when they have conflicting urges. One the one hand they [...] read more
  September 23, 2005 9:19 am - 20 Comments
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  Scaremongering - by frog

  
  
  
  Some lobby groups are intoning gravely about the prospects of the Greens being in government, including the Federated Farmers and the Employers and Manufacturers Association. Vernon Small of the Dominion Post has some useful words of advice for such groups this morning: take a deep breath, and calm down. Small writes: We are again hearing [...] read more
  September 22, 2005 11:11 am - 9 Comments
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  Not that divided - by frog

  
  
  
  Every commentator in the land has spoken sternly in the last few days about our great divide between urban New Zealand and provincial/rural New Zealand. Colin James wrote about how Helen Clark must bring “town” and “country” back together again. No Right Turn has put together this amusing map, mimicking the red/blue divide in the [...] read more
  September 22, 2005 10:55 am - 17 Comments
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  National’s loss, not MMP’s - by frog

  
  
  
  There’s a new theory rushing around Parliament, thanks to Richard Prebble and Rodney Hide. The centre-right won this election, but MMP stole it from them. Huh? Well, here’s the argument: the centre-right parties (National, Act, United, and NZ First) got more votes (49.71% vs 48.99%) votes than the centre-left parties (Labour, Greens, Progressives, Maori Party), [...] read more
  September 22, 2005 10:16 am - 13 Comments
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  Valedictories - by frog

  
  
  
  MPs who are kicked out by the electorate, instead of having chosen to step down, don’t get to deliver a valedictory speech. So, we got a valedictory from Mark Peck, but not John Tamihere; from Deborah Coddington, but not Stephen Franks; from Ian, but not Mike. That’s lamentable, because some of the MPs who didn’t [...] read more
  September 22, 2005 9:50 am - 5 Comments
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  MMP doing its thing - by frog

  
  
  
  One of the arguments put forward in favour of MMP was that it would see Parliament be more representative of the general population. In terms of gender, it has achieved this goal, though we still have a long way to go. New Zealand’s last FPP Parliament had 21 women out of 99, or 21.2% of [...] read more
  September 21, 2005 4:15 pm - 41 Comments
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  TVNZ gets it wrong (again) - by frog

  
  
  
  In a press release promoting its election night coverage, TVNZ said: TVNZ has commissioned Massey University statistician Hugh Morton to develop special result forecasting programmes and these will be used as throughout the night by Nigel Roberts in a custom built state-of-the-art studio to forecast how many seats each party will have in the next [...] read more
  September 21, 2005 12:08 pm - 18 Comments