The Press advises Key and Mallard
The Press has advice for John Key and Trevor Mallard on their respective “stuff-ups”:
If one of the fundamental lessons of life is to learn from one’s mistakes, a couple of Parliament’s higher-profile personalities should be starting the new week with newfound wisdom to guide them through the corridors of power, writes The Press in an editorial.
Key comes out of the DVD fiasco looking as if he would struggle to run a bath, never mind a focused, confidence-inspiring administration. But if he can comfort himself that he has been the victim of others’ failings, Trevor Mallard has no such excuse.
… His environment ministry is immersed in crisis, if not scandal, over the recruitment of communications staff, with clear signs of political interference by at least two of Mallard’s colleagues. Mallard’s initial response was to monster a whistle-blower caught up in the rather tacky business, destroying her professional reputation with a broadside delivered under parliamentary privilege.
That it has emerged last week that he based the attack on incorrect advice from his ministry seems to mean little to Mallard. He has dug himself in, refusing to apologise for what can only be seen now as a reprehensible display.
Mallard will surely know that no matter who he wants to blame for his unwarranted attack, the ultimate responsibility lies with him. But perhaps he is more an example of another interpretation of that basic lesson from life: that those who don’t learn from their mistakes tend to repeat them.
Indeed it is all about learning from mistakes.
December 10th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I posted a while back bemoaning the fact that Key and National are not showing enough of the ‘mongrel’ in their approach, and as a result appear weak to te floating voter.
O the other hand, Labour come across as practically ‘feral’ in their approach, and this steadiness of belief in their own ‘rightness’ counts for a lot in the voters’ minds.
I still recall there were people actually calling the radio stations to defend Mallard’s striking of Henare as being proof that ‘he stoodup for his beleifs’.
The problem they will be having though, is that when the public see through the arrogance and twig that it is not ‘principled’ but actually self-seeking’ then they will desert Labour.
They will not come to that conclusion, though if natonal allow Labour to dictate the terms of the debate, which they do tend to do.
Moreover, National have to do more than just allow Labour to implode.
Helen and co are very adept at turning on the charm at election time, and the voters are very quick to forget the cynical contempt with which they have been treated.
A lolly-nomics approach, gagged population, vacillating opposition and Helen Clark are the four strongest suites that Labour have.
If National are to win an election, rather than coming in as ‘also rans’ they need to:
offer more than Labour
speak out for the population
go for the jugular at every opportunity
expose Helen Clark’s and Michael Cullen’s contradictions.
The danger is it will come across as ‘negative’ electioneering. But if National approach this as a duty of care to the electorate, the negative electioneering will only come from the Labour camp as they increasingly bite and gnaw against the snare which is tightening around them.
December 10th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Really? That’s pretty cynical of you, Lee, and not even true from my perspective. (I don’t live in some backwoods Tory commune, so perhaps the Sub-Standard boys needn’t even bother with their usual lame thread-jacking attempt.)
You want a reality check, Lee: There will always be hardcore Labour partisans who could see Clark sacrifice a baby to Satan live on the six o’clock news and still think the sun shone out of her arse; who believe with cultic certainty that their party is the fount of all wisdom and kindness while the infidels and heretics must be smote with extreme prejudice. And they’d have their equivalents in every other party, all across the political spectrum.
Always has been, always will. I just don’t see how trying to outplay them at their own game – with a suitably glossy spin, naturally – is a game you can ever win. Certainly don’t see how it would do anything except turn off those who are already disengaged from the status quo.
December 10th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I don’t know if I am being cynical – I think that there is a psychological trick which Labour have excelled in – that is ‘we know it hurts, but it is for your own good’.
Culllen and the lack of tax-breaks has been a classic example. Even the ‘anti-smacking’ legislation was touted asof ‘principled’ politics, and earned a begrudging acceptance from the electorate.
But I am not seekig to encourage National to be ‘as nasty/feral’ as Labour, I am suggesting that the voters’ impression of National is that they are (to use Harry Enfield’s character – ) ‘Nice, but dim’.
Helen has already suggested this about Key – using the term ‘lightweight’ or ‘least substantial’ of all her previous adversaries. She recently referred to the DVD by Key “I haven’t seen it personally, but I hear it is pretty vaccuous.’
Labour will damn Key and National with faint praise. They will minimise the impact of any national strategy by implanting the idea in the electorate’s head that National just don’t have what it takes to run the country. The recent copyright fiasco is a classic example of how the left can create something out of nothing.
So, my point about the National campaign is that it has to be twice as good as the Labour one to even seem to be equal to it in the eyes of an electorate which has been browbeaten and conditioned into accepting Helen and Co for the past eight years.
you might say I want a reality check, Craig, but I suggest it is the attitude that National can simply win the election by being seen as the ‘nicer’ alternative to Labour, which will leave them short o the vital day.
The single thing Helen Clark offers is leadership – like it or loathe it.
Voltaire returned to Paris after long years in exile and the crowds lined the route to the revolutionary council, cheering his return. Someone remarked to Voltaire how popular he was with the Parisien crowds;
“They would come out in equal numbers to see me hanged.” was his reply.
December 10th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
It’s not about being ‘nicer’, Lee. It’s about being smarter, and having a little faith that people are too – at least not quite as stupid as too many members of the political/media establishment seem to think. Trying to be a bigger pack of alpha bitches than the Labour front bench just isn’t going to do it; behaving like grownups who are fit and ready to lead a Government will.
December 10th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Before we launch into the Nats for not going feral we should stop and think
1 Liarbour is destroying itself wihout much held along with the poodles
2 Nats are 13% ahead without doing bugger all
3 Look back at the major policies lauched by Liarbour at the last election and you see they waited until the last 3 weeks.
What problem are we trying to solve right now apart from the evil EFB rort
December 10th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
You seriously think Labour haven’t done the sums? If they can load the dice, one or two per cent in their favour, do a few sweet deals with their alliance partners, they can still walk out of all this with a workable majority. They are running the country onthe basis of one seat advantage after the last election. After confidence and supply, even the loss of Field’s support did not hurt them.
you think they won’t turn this whole situation around and make out they are the underdogs?
Only needing one or two percent to rule, dominating the media, limiting opposition expression, getting their electoral spends tax-payer funded?
You seriously think they can’t turn this around?
I think they said the Titanic was ‘practically unsinkable’. I’d say the same about about a 13% lead before Christmas. Obvioulsy thinking the people are ’smart’ is laudable, Craig, but wait till the television, the unions, the PR departments and the next expose by Hager is published, (probably a sequel to the Hollow Men called ‘We are the Dead’ about John Key) and then tell me where the 13% lead went.
They only need one or two percent remember.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Lee C.:
Don’t think for a moment that I’m in any kind of poll-driven complacency. I do actually remember 2005, thanks (where I seems to remember evey poll-driven pundit waking up with an egg facial the day after), and since a general election isn’t actually being held this Saturday I don’t put over much store in them anyway.
And do you think I’m naive for one second about how nasty the Government will get to hold onto power? I’m not.
But whatever happened to a wee bit of personal responsibility? If we on the right – and the parties that ostensibly represent us – want to become hoodlums and whores who will do and say anything for power, then it’s because we choose to. And we wear the consequences – electoral and otherwise – of joining the race to the gutter. Don’t give me any bullshit about how ‘we have no choice’; because that’s always the excuse of people trying to justify the choices they made long before.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Lee – I’m not so sure that Labour have many more tricks. I got talking politics with some of the guys at the golf club on Saturday. Now, ours is not THE golf club in town – the bulk of people I mix with are blue collar or retired. Almost to a man they have had an absolute gutsful of Clark and Cullen. Most have been predominantly Labour voters, and several had never voted anything but red. And almost to a man, they will not vote Labour in 2008. They are sick of being told that the government knows best. They are sick of the interference in their lives. Many are on fixed incomes, and are sick of Moneybags Cullen hoarding what they regard as “their” money. If Labour is haemorrhaging its key constituency, it has only itself to blame, and no amount of band-aids will stem the bleeding, it seems.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
This is all good stuff – I am glad to see the tide of public opinion shift. But what will keep it changed?
I am not advocating that National become animals, whores etc to get power. I am not suggesting they abandon principles to secure votes. I am not suggesting negating our responsibilities.
I am suggesting that the fundamental difference between Labour and National is a ‘hunger’ for power, which makes Labour more unscrupulous, more ‘mongrel’ – more nasty.
But I am not suggesting it is a bitching competion in which the nastier ones will prevail, neither am I suggesting that National become a mirror of Labour.
However, I am suggesting that if National want to win the next election they cannot rely on public dissaffection with Labour alone.
I am suggesting that if National’s campaign is any less than twice as good as Labours, they will fail to dislodge Labour.
What is interesting, Craig, is that you keep thinking I am suggesting National lower its game when I am advocating that it raises its game.
The problem I see with accepting that the public is tired of Labour, so National are bound to win, or that to take the fight to Labour is somehow lowering standards, is like gearing the Party up for defeat, and throwing in a get-out clause all in one.
The difference between a winning athlete and a losing one is that the winning one goes all out until the finish line. The losing one relaxes, safe in the assumption that the game is won before the whistle is blown and guess what? Loses.
Don’t take my word for it – just think back on The All Blacks against France.
December 11th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Lee – I agree that National is in something of a no-win situation as regards the personality politics. In the General Debate last Wednesday (the Hansard isn’t online yet), Cullen totally overreacted to Key’s speech – sure, key had mentioned Cullen’s wife the previous day, but not in a malicious context:
:JOHN KEY: It is no wonder it is a shambles. We are talking about the purpose of the bill, which is in Part 1, and the chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee does not even know what we are talking about. It is no wonder this legislation is a shambles.
The third purpose of the bill is to screw the scrum in favour of the Labour Party, because those members know that they lost 10 electorate seats in the last election. Rick Barker likes this legislation because it hurts him that Craig Foss cleaned his clock last time, in 2005, and he knows that his mate Russell Fairbrother might have won the selection in Napier for a seat he lost for the first time in 50 years and he might know that Nash had the signatory of Michael Cullen on his selection, but he is laughing because he is sitting over there, getting another opportunity to get dealt to in election 2008.
I will give members a very interesting twist on that. This is what some people do not know. In 2002 the person who put up Russell Fairbrother was none other than Michael Cullen’s wife, Anne Collins. In 2002 Anne Collins, Mrs Cullen, wanted him in office and in 2008 the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, Michael Cullen, wants him out of office. That is what that is all about.”
Key led off for National in the Committee stage of the EFB debate. It was a “robust” speech, the like of which many of us here have been calling on Key to deliver for some time. Let’s also revisit Key’s closing:
“JOHN KEY: The purpose of this bill is quite clear; it is to suppress ordinary New Zealanders’ freedom in democracy and in our elections. But that is the bit that cuts the Labour Party to the quick, because its members know that we are right. They know that the campaign the New Zealand Herald has been running is right. You see, even in the bill they refer to third parties, as if somehow they do not belong in elections in New Zealand. That is what this is about. The purpose of this bill is to attack democracy—a democracy that has survived for over 100 years in New Zealand. We know that after this legislation New Zealanders will no longer be free. They are used to operating in a democracy in New Zealand where they are free to express themselves on political issues, they are free to criticise the Government, they are free to criticise the Opposition, they are free to promote policies they like and to protest against policies they do not like, and they are free to be part of a country whose core foundation is backed up by an open and transparent democracy.
Our healthy democracy does not just tolerate that sort of behaviour; it requires it. But under Labour that is all changing. The rights of ordinary New Zealanders no longer count. The rights of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who want to participate no longer count. Well, I have a message for the very out-of-touch Prime Minister of New Zealand: this bill cost her Minister his job. That is what happened; he is no longer here. And I will tell members this for nothing: this legislation will cost the Prime Minister of New Zealand her job in 2008. You see, she has gone—she has gone. She lacks so much confidence now about winning this election on a fair and even basis that she does not care about toughing out, day after day, the front pages of the New Zealand Herald and every editorial around the country. The Labour caucus lacks so much confidence that Labour will win, without screwing the scrum, that it is closing its eyes and doing it.
If any—any—part of the Labour Party thinks that this is going away in 2008, I tell them that it is not. New Zealanders are sick of being told what to do, they are sick of having Labour control every part of their lives, and they are sick of being told whether they can participate in an election. I say to Labour members that they should pick up the New Zealand Herald, read the editorial, and for once in their lives recognise that they are not bigger than the people of New Zealand. Those members have a chance to vote this legislation down; they have a chance to preserve their reputations, albeit they are badly tarnished and badly in tatters. But I will make the prediction that they will not do that, because they lack the confidence to win an election when it is run under the old basis and when electoral law was debated evenly across Parliament.
I make this promise to New Zealanders: when Labour is gone at the end of 2008, the first thing National will do is repeal this legislation. It is gone—it is gone. And we will not indulge ourselves in the kind of behaviour we have seen from the Labour Party where we write self-serving legislation. We will consult, we will actually act in the best interests of New Zealand, and we will not use Nicky Hager and his second-rate book as some sort of compass for the way in which New Zealand’s democracy should be run. That is a disgrace, and we all know it.”
I hope that National will refrain as much as possible from descending to the depths that so many in the Labour caucus have done. However, I think Key showed last week that National will not be Labour’s doormat. Cullen’s “rich prick” comment may well become his epitaph – and I loved a comment I heard on ZB on Sunday night – a woman caller said “I’d rather be a rich prick than a prize prick”!