The opening skirmish
Making abolition of the Maori seats a hard and fast policy tied to National’s election was fatal and galvanised the opposition.
The public also sees the reduced place of women in the National Party, either in leadership or policy formation, as an indication of a certain culture within National not in sympathy with minorities, exacerbated by the coining of its campaign phrase ‘mainstream New Zealanders’.
I agree with these sentiments, and have been abused by right-wing dwellers of the blogosphere for saying so. The thing is, the above quote comes not from a scummy communist, social engineering, PC leftie like me but from Michael Kidd - the Waitakere branch treasurer of the National Party. Dr Kidd is forming a group called NATFORT - Nationals for the Treaty.
It seems Don Brash’s assimilationist policies on race have made many in his own party very uncomfortable. Dr Brash said at the time of his Orewa speech on race that 26 of the party’s 27 MPs stood behind every single word of that speech (with the exception of Maori Affairs Spokesperson Georgina te Heuheu). At the time, I found that very hard to believe. Did members of the centrist wing of the National caucus (step up, Katherine Rich, Simon Power, even Bill English) really stand behind every single divisive word?
Well, if the Herald this morning is any guide, my suspicions appear well-founded:
Dr Kidd believed the group’s views were widespread among National’s membership, with many feeling its stance on Maori issues in particular had probably cost it the election.
The Herald understands there has been concern among some MPs about the stance taken by party leader Don Brash on race issues.
While the pre-election caucus had been determined to provide a united front, there is believed to be support for a review of some policies, and relief the party did not have to carry through on some of the plans outlined.
We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of this story. If the Herald is reporting that it “understands there has been concern among some MPs about the stance taken by party leader Don Brash on race issues” then this means some National MPs are telling it so. This is like Labour MPs telling the media that they believe Helen Clark fluffed the election. I don’t think it would be too bold to call this story the first skirmish in what could be a long, debilitating National leadership contest.
I, for one, am looking forward to the spectacle. Bring me the popcorn 
September 25th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
So the Green Party is communist?
September 25th, 2005 at 10:16 pm
No, it was a joke, though a pretty lame one. Certainly, some of our opponents (Richard Prebble, for example) consider us communist. You’d be hard pressed to find a Green Party policy that could be described as communist.
September 25th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
Frog:
You’re not being too bold - just a very, very naughty little tadpole stirring the pot.
I’ll be quite happy to see Dr. Kidd & his chums front up to party members and participate in the endless opportunities for policy debate, because doing it through the media (oddly enough) doesn’t play very well in any political party.
I’d be more interested in hearing how the Green flaxroots are feeling about the election strategy that saw your vote near-fatally cannibalised by Labour.
September 25th, 2005 at 10:46 pm
green party as communist, thats a joke
September 25th, 2005 at 10:49 pm
Craig, you just prove frog’s point that this is not about policy development, or election feedback, this is about the leadership battle. Leadership battles are played out in the media as well as internally.
BTW, the Greens are conducting a thorough post-election feedback exercise, internally, where we look at what went well and what went badly.
September 25th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
This article is a welcome relief !
Having never supported National, I have managed to live reasonably comfortably under its governance several times in my life.
The proposed outrage against Tangata Whenua (and newer migrants) to the Aotearoa I know and love was unthinkable. It will be a great relief to find that within the National Party there is serious dissent over these issues. “They may be Blue but they are Kiwis too …”
Hopefully we can now put aside our comfortable marching shoes and our banner and placard making materials for at least another three years!
eredwen
September 25th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
He is merely pointing out the negative perceptions of the National party and wanting to change it. It does not mean that these perceptions are correct.
Greens are perceived as Anti-Business and Pro-Drugs
and Pro-Family
Labour are perceived as Anti-Wealth and Pro-Welfare State
Act are perceived as Anti-Labour and Pro-Wealth
UF are perceived as Anti-Greens
NZFirst are perceived as Anti-Immigrant and Pro-NZ
MP are perceived as Anti-Crown and Pro-Tinorangatiratanga
September 26th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Hmm, where do I go to place feedback. I would really like to know whose idea the billboards were.
September 26th, 2005 at 11:56 am
Craig,
A number of things come to mind:
1) Last election, while 10% of Maori voted Green, this time only 3% did. Perhaps this is attributable to the presence of the Maori Party.
2) Labour’s tertiary policy caused many student voters to ‘defect’ to Labour this election.
3) ALL minor parties - bar the Maori Party, which has different demographics from the rest - got the squeeze this election.
If you’re gloating over how National has increased its votes with its divisive and populist policies, then the Greens are quite happy not to be part of it. Pandering to fear and hatred is not the Green way.
September 26th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
Frog has to try and talk up any issue as meaning a leadership spill - that is his/her job. I used to have fun doing the same thing - once got a Phill Goff “coup” onto the front page of some papers.
Of course not every party member agrees with every policy. I have my reservations on the foreshore and seabed policy for example. But a former Labour party member who is only an electorate treasurer is hardly big news.
I recall the quote of Keith Holyoake who said that even he only agreed with 80% of what his Government did.
September 26th, 2005 at 12:15 pm
David: I’m more interested in which MPs have a problem with the race policy
Any ideas?
September 26th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
I’ll lay money on Bill English being part of the disaffected - after all, his children are part-samoan, and as gorgeous as any of the multi-ethnic children who go to my children’s school. And Mary English is a very very sharp woman, with an extraordinary social conscience; I don’t know how she’s put up with some of the racist statements that have been made in the name of National policy. Perhaps we’d all find out if she was ever allowed to stand in her own name in Parliament.
September 26th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
David:
1) He was also a former ACT party member too. Thought I’d refresh your memory re that.
2) I believe this was the same Michael Kidd who wrote an article in the Herald a couple of months ago chiding National for its divisive race policies and warning that there would be grave ramifications if Maori institutions get the chop. In fact he is a renowned barrister and solicitor…”only an electorate treasurer”?
Suddenly his status and previous affiliations get played down. All he did to deserve this was speak his mind.
I thought the National Party stood for freedom of speech and thought? That’s certainly the image of National that Pansy Wong spent a great deal of effort in portraying when she last spoke in the Quad.
September 26th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Frog:
Just as I’d be very interested in how many MPs (current and ex-) and senior Green Party figures weren’t very happy with the election strategy, but I’m sure those who want to have any influence will be having that dialogue inside the party not calling the papers.
September 26th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
Craig, I am heartened to know you take such an interest in a Party you spend a great deal of your time bashing.
I find the attention you give us very flattering…
September 26th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Katie opines:
Perhaps we’d all find out if she was ever allowed to stand in her own name in Parliament.
I reply:
LOL… Thanks for the laugh, Katie, because I know Mary English and the word that comes to mind is “formidable”. Mary is not a woman who sits around waiting for anyone to “allow” her to do a damn thing - and if she had the slightest interest in giving up medicine to stand for Parliament, I wouldn’t want to get in her way without very good medical insurance.
September 26th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
so Redgreen, are you saying he hates us, but really he loves us (love is the new hate…)…. :-}
September 26th, 2005 at 3:04 pm
RedGreen:
Oh, don’t be silly. I bash, kick, gouge and generally mutilate Winston First at every opportunity because I think it’s a generally destructive personality cult. I disgagree with the Greens on pretty much everything, but at least you folks operate on some base level of principle that I respect.
And I was quite sincere when I said earlier this week that it must have been awful for Green supporters on E-Night, waiting to find out whether you’d (just) break the 5% threshold. I was also very sincere in saying that I thought Jeanette and Rod where the only party leaders whose demeanour on the night really impressed me. Small things, perhaps. But they matter to me.
September 26th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Craig and David: Having read this column of replies, among others, I find your presence intriguing.
You both seem to spend a considerable amount of time reading our stuff, and even seem to like us. However, you still attribute Right-wing-type-thinking to Green motives and actions, and continue to answer with the “put downs” that are a tell-tale part of that genre.
“You can lead a horse to water but … ”
eredwen
September 26th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
katie: Perhaps Craig has a love-hate relationship with the Greens. I too, like eredwen, find Craig a rather intriguing individual - such that I wouldn’t even begin psychoanalysing him!
Craig: Seems like we see eye to eye on one thing: our mutual disdain for Lord Peters. There is nothing to NZ First beyond the musings of their Overlord. I would like to see if there is much of a Party post-Peters.
September 26th, 2005 at 10:23 pm
Hey, Craig.
I like it that you actually think and expound your own views, unlike most of the Nats who just parrot the Party line. Don’t agree with you on many things, but at least you put forward a reasoned and politically coherent point of view. Can’t say Winston does that, and Don fell into the trap of being labelled bigoted and racist in his succesful attempt to cannibalise the NZ First vote, which probably lost him the election.
I respect you, just as I did Doug Graham and Simon Upton a few years back, because you put together a reasoned social and (although I don’t agree with it) economic theory.
Reasoned, but flawed, because you still seem to think that when oil runs out, the market will have responded to provide some magic solution, and that deregulating the labour market will somehow magically give low income people a better opportunity to impove their financial well-being.
I think that the market, in the conjoined extremes of the above scenario, will just result in lots of people killing each other, which is not a happy result for anyone, be they right, left, libertarian, or authoritarian.
And on some issues, like the accommodation supplement being an unacceptable subsidy to residential landlords, we are not far apart, as you have commented in a previous blog.
That is why I like blogs, they are an opportunity for people supposedly far apart to talk to each other, and sometimes we find the differences are not as great as we may have presumed.
Just a pity the Nats have become so captured by the social conservatism they found necessary, in their desperate attempt to win the election, to embrace the constituency of bigots like Muldoon and Peters, otherwise we could really start discussing on a Party-wide basis what being libertarian, in both a social and economic sense, really means for New Zealand and the world.
Maybe Nats like Michael Kidd, who seem to understand and respect the Treaty, as did Graham and Upton, give us some hope. But until and unless the Nats abandon the votes of bigots to the likes of Winston Peters and Peter Dunne, the synergies between them and the Greens will likely remain the preserve of the few of us who bother to frequent the blogs.
September 27th, 2005 at 3:39 am
Hey but this isn’t about Craig… note that he has successfully sent this thread off topic!
I find the news of dissention over race policy very heartening. I actually think that it’s better if it isn’t in the public eye : the Nats have to psychoanalyse themselves then slowly back away from the repugnant position they have got themselves into.
Another metaphor : having painted themselves into a corner, they had best wait quietly watching the paint dry.
I found it pretty appalling that the party of Bolger and Doug Graham should make such a radical policy flip-flop. It was obvious that many MPs must have been desperately unhappy about it, but kept their mouths shut in the expectation that it was going to win the election for them.
Sort of like Labour MPs in the rogernomics days, actually.
When Kidd implies that the issue lost the election for National, he’s right and he’s wrong. Wrong, because it’s the issue that brought National back from the doldrums, and made them a numerically-credible opposition again (I think that’s an excellent thing for democracy : lack of a credible alternative induces decay of accountability, and ultimately undermines democracy itself). Right, because it did indeed galvanise opposition.
From now on, the Nats have a pretty clear choice. They can camp on their “mainstream” positions, but they surely must realise that will make them a “sunset party” (rather like the Alliance in a way) — these are deeply antiquated ideas which have lost most of their relevance, and not a viable base for fighting the next election.
Or they can seek to rejoin the national concensus on race issues. That won’t be easy, but I guess they are making a start.
September 27th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Alistair:
I always get very twitchy when people talk about “national consensus” on any subject, because that so often strikes me as code for “the social and political elites will now ignore anything - and anyone - they consider beneth their notice”.