The gender divide
It’s always interesting when media outlets provide demographic breakdowns of their political polling. The Herald has a story today illustrating something that’s been clear for a long while: women like Labour; men like National. In a Fairfax poll a few weeks ago, Labour had a 13-point lead over National among women, while National led among men by 7 percentage points. In yesterday’s Herald poll, Labour led among women by 6 points and National led among men by 13 points. I’ve yet to see any pundits weigh into why this gender divide might exist, but it’s certainly an interesting topic for discussion. How can Helen Clark reach out to men? Embrace rugby? How can Don Brash reach out to women? Talk about his kids? Those were jokes, of course, but I am sure these are conversations that both parties are having.
As for the Greens, the Herald’s demographic shows a gap between our support in Auckland (1.5% in their poll) and our support in the rest of the country (5%). Fairfax’s poll a few weeks back had a narrower gap - with 4% support in Auckland and 5% nationwide. However, the message is still clear: the Greens need to do better in Auckland. As Rod says:
If the reason [for the lower support in Auckland] is because of the public’s perception of our transport policy, then we need to do a much better job explaining to Aucklanders that we are the only party that has serious solutions to their congestion problems.
Building more motorways is not going to solve the problem in the long term. With oil hitting US$60 a barrel today, the writing is on the wall that if we don’t move rapidly to fast, efficient and affordable public transport, only the very wealthy will be able to afford to drive on the motorways.
June 29th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
If I was to vote Labour instead of Greens, then my choice would be made not on the basis of the leaders gender, but the broader stroke of policy. Generally speaking, Labour, (except for Rogernomics) has had a more community minded, inclusive policy with a commitment to a welfare safety net. National has, to me, always seemed to have a survival of the fittest attitude and a ” to he who has most, more will be given”.
June 29th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Buses travel on motorways as well as cars. And since motorways take a more direct route and have fewer inertsections then buses travelling on motorways are probably more energy efficient than those on normal roads. Your end of the world scare tactics about oil suply aren’t not doing you much good in Aucland.
June 29th, 2005 at 12:38 pm
um, sorry..rod’s talking a crock here..i’ve blogged on why the ratshit polls in auckland..people around you frog, really should read it,.. eh.?
in it i note that if the greens get booted out of parliament this time around, it will be because of their willfull ignoring of/inattention to, the biggest voter pool in the country..(as i noted there,..go figure..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 29th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
sock thief,
True, and if motorways were free then they’d be a great way to improve the efficiency of public transport - if you include building bus-only lanes on your motorway.
But motorways are extraordinarily expensive.
You can get a lot more transport bang for your buck if you focus on bus lanes to avoid congestion, changing traffic flows to advantage busses, better cycle routes, more bus routes so more people find busses more convenient, etc.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
Mr Thief
You dont need to believe any of the Peak Oil stuff, just watch what happens at the petrol pump. Prices are rising and will continue to rise until “demand destruction” occurs. When demand destruction does occur, we will have adequate road capcity, without the need for any further road-building. Traffic congestion will no longer be a problem.
When will demand estruction occur? I dont know, no-one does, but it will happen, because it is one of the very few ways to get out of the fuel price rising loop.
I dont see diesel powered buses as being part of any sensible, sustainable public transport policy, but that maybe an unusual view.
June 30th, 2005 at 12:04 am
The failings of both rail and road mean that you have to have both to achieve efficient balance. dbuckley expects demand destruction, and it will come in some measure (wait for the global recession), but at $2/liter the bio-diesel starts to come good, and at $3 it becomes quite nearly OK.
That isn’t so high. Especially considering the fact that you can buy a car today, and a very nice one, that will go from Wellington to Auckland and back on a single tank of the stuff. So writing off the Automobile and the Bus… and the Truck, is probably wrong. The balance will shift, but the car is far too convenient a thing to be abandoned entirely.
The roads in this country are shocking. Particularly around Wellington. The rail is no better, and in fact manages to surpass the non-existent motorways by being even less usable. Has to be fixed, and more thoroughly electrified, and sooner rather than when government gets weary of talking about it instead of doing what needs doing. Rail complements road when both work well.
Finally, the bus doesn’t come when I’m ready to leave, nor does it go exactly where I need to go, and that is a pretty consistent problem with both bus and train versions of Mass-Transit. For it to work it has to entail few delays and rapid transfers to get people from one place to another. You can reach anyplace in Moscow from anyplace else in Moscow, for about 50 cents and 15 minutes of subway travel. You do not, in general, wait more than 2 minutes for any connection, and it is no more than a 10 minute walk to reach a station. That is how well it has to work if it is to be accepted in a world where time IS money.
I have no illusion that NZ will do anything that useful. So we’d better get used to having efficient cars, bio-diesel buses and electric trains with real rails underneath them.
Has anyone noticed how thoroughly this thread has drifted off-topic
respectfully
BJ
June 30th, 2005 at 2:07 am
Rod’s fault!
“transport policy”
Or maybe it’s Frog’s fault, for confusing us all by naming the article gender & then talking about demographics…?
Getting back to the gender thing though, (and then off topic) I think modern feminism will be business & politics etc with morals & compassion, caring about people and the environment & so on, as well of course with economics & all the rest. Men can absolutely do this too (Dick Hubbard for example) but I reckon the 3rd wave of feminism will be women taking the top jobs & running them like women, not just like a woman competing in a man’s world.
Re: public transport not being perfect, I think we should just have to learn to deal with it. Personally I don’t drive & it can be a pain sometimes getting around but I just make sure I never make appointments too close together or anything, make sure I have time enough to get around. If we all relied on public transport not only would it have to become more efficient and widespread thus easier & more convenient; but we all might be able to relax a bit more during our day in the transit bits. Or you could take a laptop and work on the public transport between venues as I regularly saw on the excellent metro trains in Australia
How about solar buses that have a battery store thing which charges as they drive? That would be cool
June 30th, 2005 at 6:35 am
Yes, I was well aware that the postings were off the topic. Interesting in themselves, but not clearly on gender and politics.
I do strongly support public transport policies in general, and rail frieght too, but as a rural dweller must rely on the private car.
I still maintain that the current, (as well as past), Labour policy directions are more toward the inclusiveness in society, welfare, and the environment. National pronounces very traditional white male business and personal wealth policy, with some obvious divisiness between groups in society.
June 30th, 2005 at 7:38 am
Zoe, I have no clue what the future holds with respect to feminism. I always wondered about women wanting equality, wanting to give away all that power they have…
There’s a thing. It has to do with business and leadership, and it goes sorta like this. Men and Women lead differently. In groups of men, the ability to lead correlated well with the ability to lie convincingly. In groups of women, this is not true. In business or government, a female “leader” has to have that ability to lead the male portion of her company/electorate. Which gives the women who have risen to leadership positions some distinctly un-feminine leadership styles. It’d be nice if it would change, but I reckon that bit of evolution will take a long time.
The thing about public transport being imperfect is that it is a cost/tax on the people who use it. Time=Money. It really REALLY does when you are working for a living. I had SO much time when I was a student. I wasted it in gobs and took public transit everywhere. Now, I have 2 kids and a job that doesn’t permit me a free second. If I relax it costs money. If I wait 10 minutes for a bus it is time lost to other things. The time ON the bus isn’t a problem, it is the waiting time.
When you are working you learn that there’s an overhead rate. What it costs the company to employ you including office space, computer support, insurance, management. It typically works out to a substantial percentage more than your pay. You spend 20 minutes a day waiting for buses and in 4 days it’s cost the company a $100. That comes out of profits one way or another and your paycheck reflects it, one way or another. Taken another way, it’s an hour and 20 minutes I don’t have with my children.
I don’t want to increase the pace of life, far from it, but I HAVE to compete with people all over the world who work a lot more like I do than I wish.
So the inefficiencies of mass transit have to be reduced to be tolerated by businesses, and waiting time is the largest part of that.
Solar buses as you describe aren’t feasible. The energy equations don’t work… or do they? The bus has to have sufficient surface area for solar cells efficient enough to actually power the wheels AND have a little left over. It’d charge when it was stopped. Regenerative Braking. My initial reaction was that it was not possible, but I am not so completely sure given present technology. It wasn’t possible 10 years ago but now? It’d be a challenge, and it’d use a pile of Aluminium… which makes for an expensive bus, but there’s a lot of surface area on a bus and it doesn’t have to go REAL fast.
You may get to see it.
However, building a lot of roads and motorways around Auckland is probably a waste of money and effort unless those roadways are a good 16 meters above mean high water. That’s the fly in the ointment for Auckland. It’s in a bad position for a sea-level rise of even a small amount, and a tropical cyclone hitting it with a storm surge?
That’s something the population can’t relate to and the greens do understand as a real threat. Hard to see it now… but it has to be accounted for in development policy. Infrastructure like a road or a rail link is relatively permanent, even over centuries it doesn’t MOVE even if it changes shape or size.
respectfully
BJ
June 30th, 2005 at 11:46 am
BJ,
I noted an earlier posting of yours, concerning significant rise in the sea levels, and that left me thinking about the Centennial Highway and Transmission Gully. Me being Wellington orientated, (used to live & work there once) I had not considered how low many parts of the Auckland roading system must be.
So our governments, now and in the near future, no matter what colour they wear, they must attempt to factor in the probabilities of climate change and the highly likely significant rise in the oceans. It would be very silly for any government to commit billions to a road or rail system that is likely to be underwater within decades.
I have just been into the nearest town of any size, to keep an outpatient appointment, and of course I have been burning up $$$$$ in my vehicle. Despite the quite lovely weather I am feeling very depressed by the enormity of it all. (Politics and our future.)
June 30th, 2005 at 11:55 am
fwwog .. too much to do for 9 week to worry about oil .. i sell the v8 cheap to biodiverse looking dud and he fat off down the stweet laffing .. .. lokk.. we poison tyrant .. say he eutrophied in own mess .. then you shows pictures of dead fwoggs and fishes in the old peoples homes and thay voters for you .. but fwog theres going be centre right govt. .. what use .. Winston Peters not main stream .. he wreck NZ .. be PM soon then you be scared fwog .. he not like fwwog or fwwogs leader
June 30th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Joy
Building 16 meters above MHW isn’t the same as expecting that level of increase in the next few decades. It’ll be 50 years before the water is enough higher to shut up the idiots who are still pumping crude. The most immediate threat to Auckland is a tropical storm and the related storm surge. Higher roads help in a lot of ways. Preparing a dutch solution early on is not out of the question for some places but it is not something I’d expect to be widely useful.
The 16 meter measure is actually optimistic in a way, as it is a worst-case evaluation that assumes that we will still have a civilization and care about where our infrastructure is/was built two centuries hence. Which is when that worst case 16 meters is possible. The point is that once you build a road or a railroad line or any sort of major bit of civilization, it stays where it was built. Lots of roads in Europe are still where the Romans built roads.
That’s the point to the restriction I propose. It isn’t in anticipation of an immediate threat, but a response to the (hoped for) longevity of what is being created and the civilization it supports. I want my children’s children’s children to be able to pay a lesser price for my generations follies than they might need pay if critical pieces of their lives go under water. I want them to be able to thank us for *something* for they will surely have much else for which to curse us.
I am VERY regretful about Te Papa… but I don’t see how it can be moved, and I don’t see how it could be protected on a fault line.
respectfully
BJ
June 30th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
BJ, Thank you.
My personal belief, (not scientific) is that there will be a surviving population of humans. May some of my wonderful little grandchildren be numbered amongst the survivors. I care little about highways, but a lot about our decendents survival. May they learn wisely from our greedy mistakes and may they have enough healthy food sources left to survive on.