Kiwiblog

The ODT has a front page article on the battle for Dunedin South between Don Pryde, Clare Curran and David Benson-Pope, plus a couple of others.

Liek many, I am surprised DBP is fighting so hard to stay on as it is obvious he will never be a Minister again.  Perhaps he thinks re-selection followed by re-election will redeem his reputation.

A couple of people have suggested to me Curran is most likely to win.  We’ll find out on Saturday.

The Dom Post interviews Mark “Borat’ Hansen about the ban on his costume this year.

Colin James notes:

Sir Robert Muldoon had to wait 15 years after coming into Parliament to make Prime Minister. Jim Bolger took 18 years. So did Helen Clark. Can John Key do it in a bit over six and set a record?

Colin them looks at the necessary strategy for Key to retain his lead:

First, discipline. Not for decades have National MPs been so concerned to be on message. They want to win, sense they are going to and accept the necessary self-restraint. The parallel is the iron unity Kevin Rudd instilled in his Australian Labor Party.

Second, paralleling Rudd again, no targets for Labour to score easy points. Nuclear ships, a critical turning point in 2005, have gone. Iraq has gone. “Privatisation” (of state-owned enterprises) has gone. The Exclusive Brethren have been sent to purgatory. Maori-bashing is out. Climate change is in.

Even the usual Labour clincher that National will cut social services carries less weight after a year of damaging attacks on the Clark regime’s public health services. Labour’s “eviction” notices which swung state house dwellers’ votes in 2005 will cut less ice now that National is led by a onetime (brief) state house tenant.

Third (Rudd again), three or four distinguishing points, preferably painting Key and National as the future and Clark and Labour as the past.

All sensible stuff – discipline, burying toxically unpopular issues and a few simple but important points of difference.

Fourth, a positive, prime ministerial Key. That requires Bill English and other MPs to do most of the attacking. It requires Key to work (and he has been, a little) on his sloppy elocution and over-folksy general presentation, in order to project gravitas …

Fifth, a credible front bench. There is work to do and the word is it will be done. Some on the front bench cannot expect to be there in a Key Cabinet.

Sixth, good relations with small parties.

No 4 is well in train, and No 6 is relatively healthy in that ACT, United Future and Maori parties all seem to have a positive relationship with National, while not of course agreeing on all issues. Russel Norman’s outrageous attacks on Bill English’s integrity mean that the Greens are only serious about Labour (which means once again they will get few concessions).  And as for NZ First, who can know?  Winston Peters and Jim Bolger absolutely loathed each other to a degree only a Bosnian Serb could relate to, yet they did a deal.  If NZ First does make it back, who knows.  One big issue is will Peters pledge (as he did in 2005) to give the first priority for negotiations to the largest party?

Finally, worth looking at No 5.  There are some frontbench National MPs operating extremely well, and will form the backbone of a Cabinet if they win.  There is also some good talent in the new intakes who need some experience to be safe and competent Ministers.  They may not become Ministers in 2008 but will start to get grumpy if they don’t make it in 2011 (if National wins both times obviously).  This will put pressure on some of the MPs who have been there for a while.  Key will have a challenging job managing the tensions, but it isn’t one he should shy from.   No-one has a divine right to the front bench, or to becoming a Minister, or even to staying a Minister for an entire Government’s term.

Obviously the short-term issue is to have a strong front-bench in Opposition, and spokespersons who can develop good policy.  I don’t see a huge need to have any major changes before the election, even though there may be some tinkering.

The real challenge will be, if Key becomes PM, does he has a huge Ministry of 30 or so people like Clark or go for quality over quantity?  The more Ministers you have, the more targets for what would be a pretty strong Labour Opposition.  Also Key will need to avoid the mistakes Clark made of leaving renewal to near the end of her third term. Even if National says gets nine years in Government, MPs should not expect to be Ministers throughout,except for a couple of key personnel. Renewal will need to start at the end of the first term, not subsequent terms.

Waikato University (yeah I know, try not to laugh) has done research that shows KiwiSaver will increase income inequality and most benefit the rich.

Now this is true.  Take for example a property investor whose company makes many millions per year.   He has a choice of paying the profits to himself as dividends or as salary (or a mixture of both). With inputted dividends it works out much the same eventually.

Now with KiwiSaver he has a real incentive to pay himself more in salary, due to the tax deductibility of the employer contribution.

You see if he pays himself $1 million a year, then he will put in $40,000 a year as the employer contribution.  Now normally that would attract 39% tax, which would be $15,600.  The millionaire has effectively just made $15,600 through reduced tax, thanks to KiwiSaver.  They also get the $2,040 of government subsidies also.

So Dr Cullen has given CEOs who earn $1 million a year a $17,640 tax reduction.  People should remember this if he ever attacks actual tax cuts as favouring the rich.

Now I actually support KiwiSaver. because it has many positive benefits.  But it is undeniable it helps the rich by far the most.  And they will be the ones that are already saving, so it may not increase the levels of savings but just restructure their current savings to take advantage of the tax credits and deductions.

The Dom Post reports on further allegations regarding Hutt Valley High School, with an investigation finding one third of students had been bullied or abused. And half the teachers had also been abused.

Some current and former pupils of HVHS have commented on this previous thread defending the school and the principal.

Audrey Young in the NZ Herald covers the “leaked” policy from John Key’s speech today about providing free skills and sub-degree training to under 18 year old school leavers, as a step towards having everyone under 18 either in work or in education or training.

Colin Espiner in The Press also writes on the speech and the “youth guarantee” scheme which will give under 18s a universal educational entitlement.

I hope to have time to blog the speech itself this afternoon, once the actual details are known.

Who the hell put the Police in charge of costumes for the Sevens?  They have said they will not allow people in dressed as Borat in his swimsuit.  Don’t they have any effing criminals to catch?

Hell the Borat movie played  on TV on Christmas Day. And there were dozens of Borats last year.  I mean did the Police actually have any complaints from people actually at the Sevens last year who complained about the costumes?  Or have they just self appointed themselves as fashion police because they were bored?

Seriously, this is real thin end of the wedge stuff.  And we are talking about the Sevens, not the Santa Parade.

The Hive says the major focus of either party should be to lift NZ’s earnings compared to other OECD countries. I agree.  They say productivity growth is key, and note our productivity growth is at its lowest level ever.

They suggest some steps which would help:

• tax cuts
• huge infrastructure investment
• bigger technology investment by business
• world class broadband
• less domination of the economy by Government
• rationalisation of local government
• moving in concert with the OECD on climate change policy response, not trying to be the leader

Nothing there I can disagree with.  Of course if you don’t try to be the climate change leader, then you won’t win awards from the UN. And hey that is much more important.

The reality is none of these steps by themselves will do the job.  You need an all of Government effort over all areas to really start to make a difference.  Kevin Rudd knows this and he is determined to increase the gap between Australia and NZ, not have it lessen.

The Herald Digi-Poll finds that tax cuts are cited as the most important election issue – a whopping 26%.  This is historically very high.  A year ago only 6% said tax cuts.

If Labour had put Goff into Finance, they would be in a much stronger position to be seen as delivering tax cuts because they actually think people deserve their own money back, rather than a desperate bribe just 12 months after they cancelled the last set of tax cuts.

On a purely personal note I hope Labour pledge as huge tax cuts as possible.  Because National will of course at least meet that, and so their tax cuts will be even larger than might otherwise have been the case.

The NZ Herald reports on how Andy Moore has pulled down his Don’t Vote Labour website, after the Electoral Commission said it was an offence to keep it up without an authorisation statement which would mean publishing his family’s address.

In a fit of irony the anonymous Idiot/Savant claims that Moore should not be able to advocate against the Government without listing his name and address. He also rails on about unlimited money when in fact Moore spent less than $50 on his website.

And I/S is wrong when he claims the EFA just updated the definition of an advertisement.  It has expanded to include protest placards, chalk slogans, posts into Usenet and even a press release if you publish it on your own website.

National Review is one of the leading conservative voices in America. They are not fans of liberal politicians. So you know a speech is good when you get two of their online columnists saying this about Obama. First Peter Wehner:

Barack Obama’s speech tonight was simply exceptional — and a reminder of why he is one of the most remarkable political talents in our lifetime. He was able to speak in ways that seem to rise above conventional politics, even as he was able to masterfully push back against the Clinton attacks of the last several weeks. His capacity to touch and stir authentic emotions is remarkable. And unlike Clinton and especially Edwards, the Obama message is about unity, not divisions; and hopes rather than grievances.

Then K-Lo:

I tell you, he almost had me tonight until he talked about the war that shouldn’t have been authorized and reminded me there are real policy issues at stake in this election! But listening to his inspirational, rallying speech tonight it’s clear and obvious that if he’s the nominee, he will be tough to beat.

The second half of his speech is above. He is indeed quite inspiring at times, and I can understand very much how he is seen as a candidate for the future, not the past as Clinton is seen as. Of course policies and experience are very important, but Obama does remind us also of the power of leadership and inspiration.

I’ve never regarded the Preferred PM polls as particularly important because the PM almost always is the Preferred PM.  Nevertheless they can give some useful insight as to how the PM and Opposition Leader are doing.

Now Colmar Brunton has a Preferred PM series going  all the way back to 1984.   What I’ve done below is to combine the scores for different politicians into whether they were PM or Opposition Leader at the time.  Because generally that is who it is between.

Let’s look firstly at the PMs. Clark from 2000 to 2005 had a popularity higher than Lange at his peak.  And even now she has a popularity higher than any PM but Lange.  In other words still very formidable.

Going from the beginning Lange’s popularity started to fade straight after the 1987 election. He left office little over 20%.  Both Palmer and Moore got honeymoon bounces but they did not last long.

Bolger’s honeymoon lasted only weeks and his popularity dropped to below 10%. Desite that he won the 1993 election and had a modest recovery to a peak of 30% in 1996.  Coalition with Winston pushed him down and Shipley replaced him in 1997.

Shipley had a recovery to over 30% and had some modest  fluctations over her two years in office.

Clark came in already at 30% as Opposition Leader and by March 2000 made 48%.  The winter of discontent saw this fall back but then over the next two years just went up and up to an unprecedented 52%. This then fell back to 36%  against English and at the height of Orewa she was just ahead of Brash.  She then steadily recovered to peak at the 2005 election.

Since then downhill for her to 33% when Key took over.  What is interesting is that since Key became Opposition Leader,  her rating has stayed much the same (a small decrease over time) -it is more Key’s which has increased.

Now we turn to the Opposition Leaders.  Just as Clark has achieved unheard of ratings as PM, Key has polled higher than any other Opposition Leader in the last 23 years. The only one who has come close is Clark herself with a peak just before Bolger was rolled and just before she in fact became PM in the 1999 election.

Now going to the beginning of the Opposition Leaders we had Muldoon for a month before McLay who polled dismally and got rolled by Bolger in 1986. Bolger got his honeymoon but only to 16% or so and despite the 4th Labour Government falling apart never was the Preferred PM before he got the job.

Moore polled relatively well as Opposition Leader, beating Bolger most of his term. His rating itself wasn’t that high at 20%, due to other politicians (more on that later) scoring significantly.

Clark has appalling ratings and was at 5% for most of the next three years.  Her rating lifted to 17% just before the 1996 election.  She then polled at between 20% and 30% while National and NZ First had their stormy term in Government.

Shipley as Opposition Leader polled around 20% which once might have been an okay rating but not against a PM on 40%.  English had a very brief honeymoon and also was at close to 20% until his massive 2002 loss which pushed him to under 10%.

Brash has an initial boost to 15% on becoming Leader.  Orewa saw him soar to 32% – a then high for Opposition Leaders (but still behind Clark). This dropped away until May 2005 when a bad budget and a good campaign lifted him back up to 30% for the election.  After that it was all downhill until late 2006 when Key took over.  Key kept climbing over several months to 38% and has stayed above 30% since.

So why were both PM and Opp Ldr so low polling before 1997?  Because Peters, Anderton and to a degree Muldoon polled highly.  This next graph shows you the PM, Opposition Leader and highest polling other MP.

As one can see, up until 1997, other MPs polled highly, sometimes in fact above both the PM and Opposition Leader.  The graph above just shows the highest polling other MP, so who were the Preferred PMs who were neither PM or Opp Ldr?

From 1984 to 1988 it was Muldoon.  From mid 1988 to 1993 it was Winston Peters.  From 1994 and 1995 it was Jim Anderton, and it was Peters again in 1996.  If we want to look at the three individuals by themselves we have the below graph:

First of all we have Muldoon in teal. He never outpolled the Pm after losing office but he did outpoll the National Opposition Leader up until 1987 and kept up some support until his death eight years after he left office.  Not many other ex PMs will ever claim that.

In black we have Winston.  He started to overshadow and outpoll Bolger in opposition in the late 80.  This faded away until he started to criticise his own Government in mid 1991. He became Preferred PM in 1993 but lost support in the run up to the election.

His Asian bashing pushed him back up in 1996 and he again became Preferred PM. This dropped away a but during 1996 as National polled strongly. The coalition saw his ratings drop below 10%.

He did then make a recovery from 2002 to 2005, but since 2005 has fallen far away.

Finally we have Jim Anderton.  Yes for a period of time he was our Preferred PM.  Don’t panic though – 30% once said they back Social Credit also.  Anderton polled a bit under 10% until 1993 and late 1993 he soared in the polls reaching 25% in July 1994.  But since then has all been a gradual downwards slope towards zero.

So all very interesting.  As I said at the beginning they are not that important overall.  The party vote is everything and the correlation between preferred PM rating and party vote rating is not that strong.  Bolger won three elections without polling highly. If I get bored one day I’ll do some graphs showing the party vote and the leader’s preferred PM rating for various parties.

Barack Obama has won South Carolina.  This was expected as 30% of the population are black (not that all support Obama but most do).  But what was not expected was the size of his victory – by 28% over Clinton.

The next race is Florida, which has no delegates at stake (as they broke the rules over timing) but has significant moral value and momentum.  But going into Super Duper Tuesday, both candidates remain viable.  And polls at this stage suggest Clinton might win more delegates but Obama more states.

If that happens then neither will concede and Edwards could become a Kingmaker.  But if Clinton’s lead with delegates is significan, pressure will be on Obama to withdraw for unity.

On the delegate count it is Clinton 230, Obama 152 and Edwards 61. However take away superdelegates and it is Clinton 48, Obama 63 and Edwards 26.

For the Republicans the count is Romney 73, McCain 38 and Huckabee 29.

The SST reports that it looks likely that opponents of the anti-smacking law will gain the 300,000 signatures they need to trigger a Citizens Initiated Referendum.

They have to do it by 1 March 2008. Now just because on paper they have over 10% of the eligible voters, doesn’t mean they automatically succeed. A proportion of the signatures are always found to be invalid.

The Government will have a dilemma over the timing of any referendum. The Clerk of the House has two months, or until the end of April to determine the the petition has enough signatures. Then the Government sets a date within 12 months.

Now the most logical thing to do is include it with the general election, which will be only six months off.  But Labour may not want people voting on the anti-smacking law at the same time as they vote for a party. So they may try to hold the referendum earlier.

But this will cost significantly more money to have it as a separate election.  So Labour would be accused of wasting taxpayer money for its own electoral purposes.  The ballpark estimate is this increases the cost from around $1.5 million to $10 million.  Will the Govt has a convincing reasons for spending an extra $8.5 million rather than just have the referendum with the election?

Matthew Hooton writes in the SST that Phil Goff should be a contender for New Zealander of the Year if in 2008 he managed to achieve both the completion of a comprehensive free trade agreement with China, and an agreement to negotiate with the United States.

He concludes:

How ironic if a combination of communist China, the right-wing Bush administration and Clark’s impatient heir apparent, Goff, were to conspire to create the issue to give her some hope of a fourth term.

I am delighted Clark has been such a supporter of free trade and the China deal is looking to be a good one as it doesn’t have lots of exclusions unlike the Aus-US deal which was more in name than substance.

One of the great privileges of my involvement with the International Young Democrat Union, and its parent International Democrat Union, is the people you meet. And I have been fortunate enough to have spent many days over the last few years with William Hague – John Major’s successor as Conservative Party Leader. One of the nicest and most interesting people you can spend time with – and absolutely down to earth. His biography on Pitt the Younger is incidentally also a superb read.

Anyway William didn’t succeed in the 2001 election, but he was then and still is regarded as a superb parliamentary debater – winning Parliamentarian of the Year several times. Now watch the You Tube video above as he has the House of Common in hysterics, including many Labour Ministers, as he paints a scenario of Tony Blair as President of Europe and how happy Gordon Brown would be with this. Superb stuff.

Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan

Peter Hain, a senior UK Minister, resigned this week over donations to his campaign for Labour Deputy Leader which he did not disclose.

What the story doesn’t mention is the a blogger, Guido Fawkes, did most of the work in investigating the scandal and the ensuing resignation. He actually made the phone call to the suspected donor and got him to confess on the phone.

Kiwi Trader was early carrying the now well known news about the French trader who lost/stole $10 billion from his bank, and that this may have led to the fall in European sharemarkets.

Fran O’Sullivan believes interest rate rises are no more, and that if anything a recession can’t be ruled out if bad policy decisions are made.

Chris Daniels in the HOS reports that some economists are saying the global problems make tax cuts far more desirable as a way to spice up the economy.

Bill Ralston is unimpressed with Dr Cullen’s response:

Michael Cullen gave a remarkable impression of the blissfully imbecilic guy on the cover of Mad magazine this week with his “What? Me? Worry?” utterances on the crisis facing world financial markets and the prospects of New Zealand following them down the gurgler.

… In Australia, the US and elsewhere, governments and central banks raced to try to save the situation. In New Zealand, Cullen and Bollard had a cup of tea and a lie-down.

And finally the SMH has an article on the rogue trader and how he has gone into hiding.

Today’s Dom Post editorial make my criticism of the royal no-show seem very restrained. Some extracts:

No one expected the Queen, an 81-year-old, to fly halfway around the world at short notice, but it was surely not beyond her gift to dispatch one of the skirt-chasing, dope-smoking minor royals to the Antipodes to personally represent her. Even better, her heir Prince Charles could have been torn from the grasp of his new wife to do honour to this country’s most famous citizen.

New Zealanders born since World War II tend to view Prince Charles as an irrelevance, which, to be fair, is much as he appears to view this country. What useful purpose is served by a man who spends his days opening church fairs and requires an army of flunkies to dress him and put toothpaste on his toothbrush?

But if the prince harbours ambitions of succeeding his mother as New Zealand’s head of state, he has missed a golden opportunity to change the way he is perceived. What better way to demonstrate his commitment to New Zealand than to drop whatever he was doing and fly halfway round the world to pay his respects to a man who brought glory to Britain as well as New Zealand?

… If the royal family wished to retain its constitutional role in New Zealand, it should have been represented in Auckland. More than anyone else, Sir Ed shaped the way we think of ourselves and the way the world thinks of us.

The fact the royals did not attend underlines yet again the tenuous nature of the links between New Zealand and the royal family. It is only a matter of time before the evolving nature of the relationship is formally recognised by New Zealand becoming a republic.

The Dom Post is of course right.  There are of course arguments both for and against keeping the British Monarch as our Head of State.  But by not turning up, they have weakened one of the arguments in favour of their retention.  To retain support they have to have a presence in NZ.  This has happened in the past with regular visits, Prince Edward teaching here etc.  But to miss this occasion was unwise – maybe the NZ Government failed to make clear how desirable attendance would be.

But if the role of the Head of State becomes reduced to merely rubberstamping the PM’s nomination for Governor-General every five years, then more and more people will say what are the advantages to NZ from this arrangement.

The Dom Post reports on a controversy over the $10 firefighter calendar, as it was not widely known that only $1 per calendar goes to the Child Cancer Foundation, and $5 to the Firefighters Sports Association.

And it’s not the public who are angry, but firefighters as only 90 of the 9,700 firefighters are members of the Sports Association.

Nothing wrong with having it go to multiple groups, but whether the advertising makes it clear is the issue.

I blogged yesterday on Chris Trotter’s column. It is now online. His opening lines are:

There are some questions that should never be asked. Deplorable words which, once spoken, can bring down whole empires.

“Can the King be put on trial?”

“Are East Germans now free to cross into West Berlin?”

“Should Helen Clark go on leading the Labour Party?”

I have been berated by one reader for not blogging on Heath Ledger’s death.  To some degree I was wanting to know the cause of death before saying anything, but also not totally sure what to say beyond the fact it is of course incredibly sad.

Anyway Noelle McCarthy talks a bit about his death, and others. And another Herald story covers the spike in Internet usage due to the death.

Whether Ledger’s death was suicide or drug overdose, it adds to a sad string of stories in recent times.  Owen Wilson’s attempted suicide, Lindsay Lohan’s drug addiction and most of all the total meltdown of Britney Spears.

It is a useful reminder that huge wealth and huge fame do not necessarily make people happy, and in fact often seems to leave people unable to cope.  Spears especially seems to be in a bizarre fantasy world, reminding me of Michael Jackson, and their bizarre detachment from reality.

In contrast to Roy Morgan, the Herald Digipoll shows the gap closing to 8.8%.  It was taken over a slightly later period, so the coverage of Hillary’s death may be more of an influence.  As I said with the Morgan poll, normally incumbent Governments get a big boost in January so the Herald poll may just reflect that.

I think we are going to get at least two other polls this month, so will be interesting to see where they are.

The latest Roy Morgan poll has National extending its lead by 5.5%, up from the 13% lead in December.

What is interesting about this is that normally January is the best month for incumbent Governments.  People are on a break, it is summer, everyone is relaxed and there is little coverage of politics, and no opportunity for opposition parties to get publicity through the House.

January 2007 saw the public poll average have Labour go from  7% behind in December to 1.5% ahead.

January 2006 saw the public poll average have Labour go from  2.3% behind in December to 6.0% ahead.

Also if we go back to January 1999, the final summer before that election, National was 17% behind in the Nov 99 TV3 poll, and the next poll had the gap close to just 6%. The TVNZ poll had Labour 10% ahead in Dec 1999, and this shrunk to 1% in their next poll.

So while not a hard and fast rule, it is unusual for an incumbent Government not to improve over summer, let alone for it to fall a further 5.5% behind.

As people know, it was falsely alleged that Bob Clarkson had made no contributions in the House since August, except some interjections.  In fact he had made three speeches on bills and asked one oral question.  This it seems, is a mere trifling error, but enough on that.

It got me thinking about certain Labour MPs, so being bored I went hunting.  And I found one Labour MP who has made only one contribution in the House, since August.  Yep 1/4 as many as Bob (or 1/9 if you count interjections but I don’t).

Now who can guess the MP?

UPDATE: There is more than one of them. Another Labour MP has made zero contributions since August.

Oh and just found a third who has done just one speech.

So that makes one Labour MP who have made zero contributions in the House since August and two who have made just one speech.  Make your guesses below.

UPDATE2: This original post was about Mahara Okeroa, a Minister, who had made only one contribution to Parliament since August. It was because The Standard had falsely claimed Bob Clarkson had made no contributions since August, and he had actually made four.  It got me thinking about whether any Labour MPs had made less than four.  After the original post appeared (note the title is about which MP spoke once, not none), I carried on through Hansard and also found two other MPs who had made few contributions since August and updated the post.  One was Dover Samuels and the other George Hawkins.  A commenter helpfully pointed out Mr Hawkins had had cancer for surgery, which of course explains for him his lack of contributions.  While I didn’t name Hawkins in the main body of the post, I would not have included him had I been aware of his sickness and am sorry for doing so.  The moment it was brough to my attention I posted in the comments that it was of course a very good reason for the lack of contributions.