Brian Rudman in New Zealand Herald today ran a story that Professors’ Healy, Malhotra and Mo had found a correlation between successes or failure in political contests in direct proportion to a local sports team success or failure. The study covered a forty year period in the United States.

Rudman drew attention to Sandra Grey’s (Campaign for MMP) comment to the Electoral Legislation Select Committee about the timing of the public information process and the Rugby World Cup.

Healy et al said the ‘euphoria’ effect was true especially in low-information settings, where emotions take precedence over actual analysis and knowledge of policies.

Consequently, this theory does not apply to large-scale or national politics, where a greater percentage of the population would be more well-informed about politics.

Sandra is right about the footie and MMP – one is a possible distracter for the other – but Rudman is wrong to conclude from research coming from the USA that political fortune turns on the end of Daniel Carter’s boot.

The Dalai Lama’s 2007 NZ visit included a trip up to the Green caucus

I was a little disappointed to read Brian Rudman’s column this week in the New Zealand Herald about the upcoming visit of the Dalai Lama.  In Mr Rudman’s opinion our Prime Minister shouldn’t meet with the Dalai Lama when it could upset the Chinese Government.

Cheeking a non-ally like China over an issue as esoteric as Tibet seems suicidal.

We can’t even persuade or bully our tiny near-neighbours like Fiji to restore democracy, or Tonga to institute it, so why risk our livelihood taunting the elephant with genuinely big tusks?

Now earlier this month Tonga did take some very important steps in regard to its progress on the road to democracy so perhaps Brian needs to keep up with the play on this issue.

As to comparing Fiji and China – well neither countries are democracies and both have issues with human rights. 

New Zealand should as a principled independent country do its utmost to advance globally a respect for human rights.  We should surely be engaging in constructive talks with both Fiji and China when the opportunity arises to press for progressive reforms and to raise the plight of human rights.

 It wasn’t just me getting a little peeved by Brian’s miss-directed missive on the Dalai Lama.  Liam Hehir of Palmerston North felt so incensed by the cavalier way Tibet had been reduced to an ‘esoteric issue’ he dropped the Herald a line.  Personally I think Liam hits the nail on the head with his criticism of the basic moral flaw in Brian Rudman’s opinion piece.

If Tibet is an irrelevancy then what are we? We are a small,isolated and weak like Tibet.  Were the same fate to befall us, would our cause perish under Mr Rudman’s calculus?

 Meeting the Dalai Lama may seem a futile gesture, but as the English Philosopher Edmund Burke noted:

 “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because  he could only do a little.”

 These are separate but related issues; an opinion can be offensive, but well-argued or vice versa.

What was never clear to me in Melissa’s comments was how she thought the motorway would work to reduce crime; would the South Auckland criminals just keep driving once National had bulldozed its way through Waterview?  And if so, what is it about the motorway extension precisely that would encourage them to keep driving?  Would these cunning criminal minds analyse the dropping GV of properties near motorways, re-calculate the cost/benefit of a break and enter for this demographic and move to more attractive targets in the lifestyle blocks of Helensville?

I gave up trying to unpick the logic particularly after the Prime Minister called the comments ‘silly’ and ‘stupid’ – apparently Melissa’s sympathisers could not figure it out either.

 However, this period of puzzlement did lead me to the observation that Melissa’s logic is just as robust as National’s logic on the use of cars in Auckland. 

 When asked about their transport spending priorities, NACT invariably says that lots of Aucklanders use cars so we need to spend more on roads. 

 This line of reasoning does not acknowledge that Aucklanders use cars because public transport is poor, nor does it acknowledge that as public transport improves Aucklanders use it.

 If you admit that fact, it makes sense to invest more in trains and buses which will cut congestion while doing the environment a favour.  As Brian Rudman notes in Granny Herald this week:

Provide decent, reliable public transport and people will use it. 

And if we can cut congestion, maybe we don’t need breathtakingly expensive Waterview extensions after all.   

 Meanwhile Melissa gets another chance to explain her thoughts about Auckland transport on Wednesday afternoon when the candidates are part of a panel discussion at the University of Auckland’s Ecofest.  The candidate discussion is in the Quad at 1.30 PM.

 And she might also get another chance to explain her South Auckland remarks when the candidates are on Niu FM Wednesday morning about 10AM.

Stay tuned for more NACT logic.

The British Government Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in March, was blunt.

“The scientific evidence is now overwhelming; climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response. Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.”

The review warned that “our actions now and over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes”.

And these are the cautious, official pronouncements. Many scientists are much more apocalyptic. Alongside this overwhelming consensus, Mr Hide’s flippant naysaying was easy to laugh off when he was a gang of one. But for Mr Key to now give these views credibility risks making New Zealand a laughing stock as well.

National campaigned on reviewing the way New Zealand meets our Kyoto treaty obligations to reduce our carbon footprint. That’s fine. Act’s global warming denial policy was not part of the deal. Mr Key should spell this out pronto.

I would have said though that scientists are currently apoplectic rather than apocalyptic.  Climate change is a relatively easy thing to combat, if only we want to. We have already developed all the technological solutions we need. We just need to start using them. But first we need some greater responsibility shown by Hide.  If he is a scientist, as he claims, he should understand what a scientific consensus is and what it means.

The sniping about MMP is a smokescreen for the critics’ inability to adjust to the new rules. They’re talking horse racing when the game is now chess.

I would have said it’s a bit more like Twister actually.  Lots of different colours on the board and it’s fairly hard to avoid ending up entangled with the other parties, but the goal is to find something that is balanced and supported enough that it can stand up and doesn’t look too depraved.

On the same topic I have to say that I am enjoying policy.net’s bloggers Chris Trotter and Matthew Hooten.  What a combo – a left winger that says such offence and disagreeable things that left wingers can’t agree with him, and a right winger who peddles the sort of conspiracy theories and scandalised gossip that fuel the right wing blogosphere but, I have to assume, most right wingers also dislike.

Yesterday we had Trotter trying to address this topic of should the biggest party be entitled to govern but then also drifting off and accusing TVNZ of treason for running a badly worded poll.  Then today Matthew Hooten responds by accusing the left of planning to abolish the free press. It’s not as though we don’t have real issues to debate this election without needing to create imaginary ones to totally obscure things.

Meanwhile I think Kahikatea summed up things nicely yesterday:

I’m sure there are some Labor (sic) supporters in Australia who would share John Key’s view. After all, Labor is the biggest party there in EVERY election.

It’s funny how democracy can look different from different vantage points.

The deal with the Government is that Auckland ratepayers have to pay the $495 million cost of a fleet of 35 electric trains while the Government pays for the electrification costs of the track network. Before it can begin the purchase process, ARTA and the Auckland Regional Council have to know there is a guaranteed income stream in place to pay Auckland’s share of the bills. A fuel tax, beginning at 1c a litre, would not cover the full purchase costs, but it would cover the interest on a loan.

So if National pulls the plug on the fuel tax without putting in place an alternative the trains, which suddenly lots of people need as petrol prices soar, go too.

Of course National could always borrow from the Greens’ book of good ideas. Two weeks back, co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons was making the reasonable point that with rapidly rising petrol prices sending commuters fleeing from cars onto public transport, the Government should be underwriting the whole process so new electric trains could be ordered now.

Indeed.  If National is struggling to come up with policies the Greens are more than happy to lend John Key some spare ones.  They all come with a good safety warranty, and I think he’ll find most of them are quite pragmatic and well tested in other countries.