Kiwiblog

Matt Nolan at TVHE rips into an academic who claims higher mortgage rates lead to higher house prices, confusing correlation and causation.

Some readers said they were unable to edit their own comments, starting from a couple of weeks ago. Has the problem been resolved now?

I can’t test it myself as I always have the ability to edit anyon’es comments!

From Fairfacts Media. Bush was a disaster fiscally, but Obama’s borrow and spend plans will bankrupt the country.

1. Twitter fans in the UK can use TweetMinister to follows Ministers and MPs.
2. Andrew Geddis blogs on collective responsibility and Pita Sharples. He is from the school of thought that it is a pragmatic practice, not a constitutional convention.
3. Eric Crampton blogs an excellent example of how a tax credit for alternative fuels led to massive rorts by the paper industry. He concludes: “It’s kinda the point of the price system that nobody has to know all of the alternative uses to which resources can be put. When markets set prices, nobody in Congress has to know that the paper industry uses a byproduct biofuel which readily could be adulterated with taxable fuels to harvest a subsidy. When Congressmen instead set prices, there will always be consequences they hasn’t thought of, no matter how well-intentioned or careful they’ve been.”
4. MacDoctor shines more light on why ACC is costing us so much.
5. The Tailor of Panama Street regrets that no media organisation (except NZPA with a subsidy from the Asia NZ Foundtion) went with the PM to Thailand. He notes that when the summit got cancelled due to protests, the only “journalists” available was John Key who did a phone report on what had been happening.  Key makes a good foreign correspondent, but you know best not to get into the practice of having the PM moonight as a reporter.

Colin Espiner writes:

The change of Government last year left Helen Clark feeling rejected. She couldn’t and still can’t understand why Labour lost.

Nor her colleagues.

Like her Australian counterpart John Howard, or former British prime minister Tony Blair, or any other number of world leaders (in democracies at least), Clark fell victim to the curse of not knowing when it was time to go. We all thought we had given her a fair suck of the sav, to use the Kiwi vernacular.

If a party wants a good chance at a fourth term, it should have completed a massive rejuvenation by mid way through the third term – including the leadership. And for such rejuvenation to be credible, you have to start it towards the end of your first term. I hope National retires around six Ministers in 2011.

Clark felt rejected by us. She couldn’t and still can’t understand why Labour lost. Why voters wanted a fresh face on the ninth floor of the Beehive. She had given blood, sweat, and even a few tears to the job. Why wasn’t it enough?

Clark always wanted to remodel New Zealand in the social democratic traditions of Western European democracies, where the same party remains in power for decades and the support parties revolve around it.

This is what they looked to have after the 2002 election. And then Don Brash and John Key came along and spoiled the dream. Hence why they introduced the Electoral Finance Act.

Clark was the most popular New Zealand prime minister of modern times. No-one else, since the advent of reliable and regular political polling in the 1970s, has averaged such a consistently high approval rating.

This is true – her Preferred PM ratings stayed strong throughout.

The newspaper is only the first draft of history, but it is doubtful Clark’s long-term legacy will be judged as that of a great prime minister.

Great leaders have a vision, and the ability to get people to follow them to it. Clark was always more the manager than the visionary.

However, her intellect, determination, energy, accomplishments, and devotion to her country means she is likely to be remembered as a very, very, very good one.

An interesting perspective from Colin. I’m actually planning to do my own review of her career achievements, and her strengths and weaknesses – will blog it later this week. I hope it will be seen as pretty fair – I won’t be focusing on policy disagreements, but on political management, vision etc.

A reader has suggested a new candidate for Labour for Mt Albert, concluding they need a well known name with a track record of winning.

He is a household name, an active campaigner, and won as recently as 2007.

Will Labour be bold enough to grasp this opportunity?

The blogs are now the only source of uncensored news from Fiji.  The media are now now allowed to report news that is “negative”. And even the blogs are at risk – there is talk that the Commodore has ordered Fijian telcos to cut off Internet access to Fiji.

I encourage people to read and promote these blogs. Also I am always happy to do a guest post from any Fijians who don’t want to set their own blog up.

• Intelligensiya
• Raw Fiji News
• Discombobulated Bubu
• Luvei Viti: Children of Fiji
• Soli Vakasama
• Fijigirl
• Tears for Fiji
• Coup Four and a Half
• Talking Fiji

And here is the news that they don’t want people to know:

• Fiji Reserve Bank Governor arrested
• Two Fiji Sun journalists detained
• A Fiji TV reporter detained
• TV3′s Sia Ashton detained and deported
• Fiji Times publisher to be deported
• The former head of the military legal service appointed a High Court Judge and another military person as Court Registrar
• That Internet access may be cut off in the very near future.
• Soldiers have taken control of banks and petrol stations
• The head of the Dept of Public Prosecutions has been arrested
• The President of the Fiji Law Society may have been arrested

I suspect Fiji is going to have a run on its foreign reserves, due to the Reserve Bank sacking.

Hat Tip: Andrew Bartlett and Roarprawn

NZPA reports:

The New Zealand Herald on Monday reported that Labour used UMR Research to hold focus groups meetings of Mt Albert voters. One question asked about Ms Tizard in terms of well-known people or celebrities standing for politics.

Mr Goff defended the use of focus groups saying they were a good way of getting a sense of local issues and how people would respond to particular candidates.

And they are common in national politics, but very rare for a by-election, And you have to wonder who will get to read the results of the focus groups? Will everyone at the selection meeting get it, or just the head office appointees?

“I think what we want from Mt Albert actually is a local person, a person who can identify with the needs and aspirations of the people of Mt Albert,” he told TV One’s Breakfast programme.

He disagreed the expensive measures showed Labour was nervous. “I’m not nervous about the outcome, I think we will win Mt Albert but we’re not complacent about that.”

They are very expensive. And Labour generally is thought to be very short of cash. That suggests how seriously they are taking this.

Mr Goff said when a vacancy came up on the list it was automatically filled by the next person on it.

Unless you are in the Green Party and they threaten and harass you to give up your list seat to let someone lower down the list enter Parliament.

Asked how he felt about the potential return of Ms Tizard, who lost Auckland Central to National’s Nicky Kaye, Mr Goff said: “I am very happy to see any former Labour colleague back in parliament.

That’s Nikki incidentally. And if Goff is so happy, why is he spending so much money focus grouping how the public will respond?

“Judith Tizard is a very experienced member, very well respected particularly in the arts and culture community where she has worked so hard for so long.”

If Judith does return, that will make her one of the most experienced members of the Goff team. The only Labour MPs who will have greater Ministerial experience are Goff and King.

So will Goff appoint Judith to Labour’s frontbench? Her experience would suggest she is a logical choice. At a minimum he would have to have her in the Shadow Cabinet, you would think.

And what portfolios will he give her? She is the third longest serving Minister. Cunliffe is doing quite a good job in Finance, so maybe Education or Health?

Free-IQTest.net – Quick IQ Test

I’ve got more intelligent – my last formal test was 159!

The NZ Herald is against capping rates:

Nobody enjoys paying rates, any more than they do taxes, and the rates bills come to households in visible instalments. If local bodies were allowed to raise their revenue insidiously, as the state does through employers and GST returns, rates would hardly be noticed. They amount to just 4 per cent of the average household income, against 40 per cent that goes to the Government in various taxes.

The visibility of rates is a thoroughly good thing. It makes councils agonise over their annual demand and any increase above the inflation rate is bound to bring an outcry. When it happens too often the ratepayers wreak their revenge at the triennial elections. Mayors and councils often lose office on resentment of rises and gain it on promises to better control spending.

I disagree with the Herald on this issue, as there are major differences to how taxes and rates are down.

First of all, the way local Government operates is upside down. They draw up a list of everything they want to do, and them set the rates level to fund it. So income changes to meet expenditure.

In central Government (and in 99% of the private sector), you adjust your expenditure to fit within your income. You have a much higher degree of fiscal restraint.

Yes the Government can put up tax rates, but doing so is a very public, very high profile event. Not even Labour put taxes up every year, like rates go up.

The second key different is transparency. Almost all taxpayers know when their taxes have gone up. Ratepayers often have no idea as to how much a Council has increased rates by – because changes in relative house values affect an individual’s rates as much as the overall change on the level of rates. If your rates bill goes up 10%, you don’t know how much of that is increased relative house value, and increased Council spending unless you go out and research it.

So I back there being a population and inflation based cap on rates, with a referendum needed to increase rates beyond that level.

The Herald describes some amazing sniper skills in the rescue of American hostages from Somali pirates:

The SEALs who ended the five-day pirate drama parachuted from their aircraft to the sea off Somalia and were picked up by the destroyer USS Bainbridge, which had been negotiating with the pirates and was towing the pirated lifeboat at the time. …

Military officials Monday widely praised the snipers for three shots, which they described as remarkable, coming at night, come 25 yards away and from the stern of a ship on a rolling waters to a small lifeboat.

The order to fire came after one of the pirates was seen holding an AK-47 so close to Phillips that the weapon appeared to be touching him. Two other pirates popped their heads up, giving snipers all three of their targets, one official said.

To shoot accurately in the dark, from the back of a ship in rolling seas, into a lifeboat on the same sea is no easy task. The chance of missing or killing the hostage would be considerable for most people.

One of the candidates for the Labour nomination, Meg Bates, has a campaign website up.

Putting aside all the interesting ramifications of if a List MP wins the nomination, and then the seat, it is good to see there will be a hard fought battle for the nomination, with a number of good candidates. Safe seats (and I still consider Mt Albert relatively safe for Labour unless a List MP is selected as their candidate) should have a vigorous contest for the nomination. After all, that person who wins it could well end up being an MP for 20 – 30 years.

And even though it is a decision for the party only, I think it is good to see campaign sites from candidates for the nomination. That way the public gets to see what is on offer at an earlier stage.

National has extremely restrictive rules on campaigning for a nomination – basically you can’t do so publicly. You can’t even confirm you are seeking the nomination until after pre-selection. The rules were designed to stop candidates from attacking each other publicly, but in my opinion should be amended so that websites, like the one for Meg Bates, are allowed at any stage.

If readers know of any other candidate websites, let me know and I will cover them.

Kiwiblog likes elections. We consider the three years between general elections as boring (even though academically we think a four year term is preferred) so relish a by-election. Haven’t worked out yet exactly what sort of coverage we can do, but at this stage I am keen to spend at least a week in Mt Albert doing interviews with voters, candidates etc. Also cover some meet the candidate meetings.

UPDATE: The Greens have confirmed they are standing a candidate, despite some informal approaches by Labour not to do so. A Green candidate could do quite well – by-elections often do strange things – the Alliance almost won Selwyn and Tamaki, and ACT almost won TKC.

This fit of stupidity deserves a caption contest. The woman had to climb over a fence, a line of prickly hedges and a wall to get in!

Hat Tip: Gonzo

Achtung. You have been wasting energy. This is prohibited under state directive XXVI. It does not matter that you paid for it. Ve will launch aerial surveilance of your homes, so we cann ame and shame offenders.

Think this is a joke. Read this:

Christchurch City Council is considering using a spy-in-the-sky to identify poorly-insulated homes.

The proposal to use an aircraft with an infra-red camera to track down energy wasters is part of an ambitious plan to cut the city’s annual $1.6 billion energy bill, with an aim to reduce energy use by every resident by 9 per cent, the Press reported.

Council energy manager Leonid Itskovich said the thermal-imaging map could shame people into improving energy efficiency.

“People will be shamed and will have to do something about insulation,” he said.

How about some public lynchings also? How dare a home owner not have insulation.

Unless it is just me, the Treasury website has been on strike for the last three days or so. Maybe it is Treasury’s protest against Easter shop trading laws?

Remember all the howls of outrage over the Patriot Act in the US? Well welcome to the new Cybersecurity Act:

Powerline blogs:

Now we have the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which goes far beyond anything ever contemplated by the Bush administration. The most controversial provisions are Sec. 18 (2), which gives the President authority to shut down all or any portions of the internet that he may designate as “critical infrastructure information systems and networks,” and Sec. 14 (b)(1), which gives the Secretary of Commerce access to “all relevant data concerning such networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.” Critics have interpreted this clause as giving the Secretary the ability to access, without any sort of search warrant, any internet communication. That looks like a reasonable interpretation, as long as the President has designated the network “critical infrastructure,” which he has unfettered (and unguided) discretion to do.

They quote the Washington Examiner:

Civilian libertarians were apoplectic over former President George W. Bush’s “warrantless wiretap” program, which sought to monitor communications from terrorist networks overseas. So why are they not screaming bloody murder now that President Barack Obama appears slated to receive unprecedented power to monitor all Internet traffic without a warrant and to even shut the system down completely on the pretext of national security? The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 – introduced by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, and cosponsor Olympia Snowe, R-ME – bypasses all existing privacy laws and allows White House political operatives to tap into any online communication without a warrant, including banking, medical, and business records and personal e-mail conversations. This amounts to warrantless wiretaps on steroids, directed at U.S. citizens instead of foreign terrorists.

The EFF has added its voice to the opposition, and also has explicitly said that Obama’s position on illegal spying is “worse than Bush”.

Previously, the Bush Administration has argued that the U.S. possesses “sovereign immunity” from suit for conducting electronic surveillance that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, FISA is only one of several laws that restrict the government’s ability to wiretap. The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes.

Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ’s radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama’s own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.

This isn’t change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.

So where are the front page stories on the NY Times? The CNN exposes?

Most readers will be up with the latest in UK politics, but for those who are not, let me tell the story from the beginning.

The centre-right (like in many countries) has had stronger voices in the UK blogosphere. The two most popular blogs are run by Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes (Paul Staines).

Dale is a former Conservative candidate and staffer. Also a successful politics niche publisher who through his blog has become a very influential commentator – both online, and in the traditional media. He also happens to be gay, making it very hard for Labour to stereotype him as a typical consservative Tory.

Paul Staines is not a member of any party. He is basically a wealthy libertarian and while he is from the centre right, he has attacked many Conservative figures also including David Cameron and the Party Chairwoman over her expenses. Staines does a lot of investigative journalism and has been responsible for a couple of very senior resignations from within the Government.

None of the left wing blogs caught on to the same degree, so UK Labour set up LabourList and got Derek Draper to run it. Draper is a former Labour activist and lobbyist who swapped careers to become a psychotherapist after it was revealed he boasted to clients that he had so much influence he could get tax breaks for clients.

The LabourList website is nominally independent but has rarely criticise the Government, and has launched personal attacks on Dale and Staines, calling them racist (because Dale defended Carol Thatcher’s golliwog comment).

Then we have the revelations this week, that Draper was working with a senior advisor to PM Gordon Brown to set up another website – Red Rag – and this one would be full of smears about Conservative Party MPs. The advisor, Damian McBride, is very senior – Brown’s former personal press secretary and now Head of Strategy. He has resigned.

The News of the World has full coverage of the attempted smears.Also good coverage in The Times.

The strategy included:

• spreading rumours that Shadow Chancellor George Osborne took drugs and had sex with a prostitute, including that they allude to non existent secret tapes.
• spreading rumours about the mental health of Osborne’s wife and suggesting this will be used as an excuse to demote him.
• challenging Cameron to reveal details of an “embarrassing illness”, ie a venereal disease and demanding he release full medical records.
• Accusing a gay Tory MP of promoting his partner’s business interests in the Commons.
• Suggesting photos exist of Osborne “posing in a bra, knickers and suspenders” and “with his face ‘blacked up’”
• Concocting a tale about backbench Tory Nadine Dorries having a one night stand with a colleague, and hinting a sex aid was left behind in the hotel room

They even taught about how to “sequence” the stories for maximum impact, using timing and technology, and including links to suggestive photographs.

Huge congrats go to Guido, who got hold of the e-mails and exposed all this. He has an amazing track record in exposing wrong doing. It shows how desperate people get to retain power.

It also shows how relatively tame things are back in NZ. The worst “invented gossip” we had to endure was the fantasy smear over John Key “buying” his Helensville seat in exchange for donations totalling $1.5 million. I have always wondered whose idea that smear was.

In the NZ blogosphere there has been a diversity of opinion on Fiji. Most have been highly critical of Bainimarama, but several (mainly on the right) have supported him, as they admired him standing up for the minority Indians and wanting to abolish the race based constitution.

To be honest over the last year I had been creeping more towards the camp that if he does get rid of the race based constitution, and hands over power to a truly democratic Government, then he may be seen one day on the side of the good guys.

But no-one should be defending his regime’s attack on media freedom. Supressing criticism at he point of a gun is what the Stalinist bloc used to do, and what Castro and Kim do.

The Dom Post report:

Fiji’s military have been given permission to shoot civilians without fear of being prosecuted.

Terrified Fijians say they are too frightened to speak out after the latest political upheaval, which has seen the nation’s media gagged by sweeping state censorship restrictions in a crackdown on dissenting free speech.

So the military are now totally above the law.

Reports emerged yesterday of people being detained without charge in the absence of a judiciary. Public Emergency Regulations imposed by the military regime have given military personnel permission to use arms to break up processions, meetings or assemblies. If anyone is injured or killed, the decree grants soldiers immunity from prosecution.

Hardly likely to encourage soldiesr to use restraint!

Yesterday’s Fiji Times had blank pages after police censors forced the paper to erase international reaction to latest developments.

The first action of a tyrant is to stop people being able to hear the truth.

Privately owned Fiji TV pulled its 6pm news bulletin yesterday, refusing to allow the military regime to censor its broadcast.

Good on them. And a useful reminder why the media should not be owned by the state.

“We must all be loyal to Fiji, we must be patriotic,” Commodore Bainimarama said. “The necessary regulations are in force. I’m sure we will all including the media co-operate with the relevant agencies.”

And if not, we’ll shoot you.

A Fijian citizen, too afraid to be named, spoke from Suva yesterday about his fear of being arrested, beaten or killed for speaking out. “There’s no constitution, there’s no law. They are the law.”

Many Fijians had struggled since sanctions against the regime crippled the economy, the man said. “People cannot afford to send their children to school or put food on the table. People are just struggling to find ways and means to live. You can’t fight the military because they’re the ones with the guns.

“Everybody’s praying and hoping that things will change soon that will return the government back to democratic elections … where people are free to speak [and] you’re not always looking back and worried about what will happen to you and your family.”

The promise to have elections by 2014 should only be believed by those of terminal stupidity. It does not take eight years to run a census, draft a new constitution and run an election.

One can debate the pros and cons of what Bainimarama claims he wants to achieve. But there should be no debate at all in condemning his attacks of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

The Herald reports:

Up to $1 billion could be moved from specific projects for Maori to a bulk fund aimed at broad goals such as improving Maori education and health.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia is driving the radical proposal through her two portfolios as Associate Minister of Health and of Social Development.

She said it would help cut the huge compliance costs agencies faced and reduce the need for the Government to deal with many small contracts tied to specific goals such as youth work, social workers in schools and alternative education.

“We will get a better spend because people will be able to access a pool of money to deal with a range of issues,” she said.

“It’s a great opportunity to build trust because the sad thing about it is that the bureaucracy doesn’t trust the non-government sector and that’s why we end up with particularly prescribed contracts and with people being over-audited. I’d like to see that change.”

She said she had asked Massey University professor Mason Durie to produce initial ideas on how to do it, and was hoping it would begin at some level by the end of June.

Look forward to details. The aim is very worthy.

Professor Durie said the scheme would almost certainly start on a trial basis in a few places to find out “under what circumstances this would work and under what circumstances it wouldn’t work”.

Agencies said they often ended up working with the same families under various contracts.

Receiving a bulk sum of money to achieve broader social outcomes such as lifting families’ health status, education and work achievements would enable them to take a “holistic” approach to each family’s needs.

The Family Start programme takes a similiar holistic approach. I’ve always wondered why we don’t fund it more.

Just read this article and laugh and cry:

The spat comes comes as Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey is trying to act as a peacemaker and bring all the mayors together for a meeting on Wednesday with Mr Hide.

“It’s hugely important that the mayors are united in a common voice,” Mr Harvey said.

But his peacemaking efforts have been criticised after he emailed colleagues to suggest some leading figures in the governance debate, such as Warehouse boss Stephen Tindall, Deloitte chairman Nick Main and Committee for Auckland chairman Sir Ron Carter, take part in the meting.

Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee replied: “Sound likes elitist bullshit to me Bob.”

Mr Lee said it was the “hair-brained (sic) scheming of those amateurs” which encouraged the failed mayoral coup of 2006 that would have consigned the ARC to the political scrapheap.

Mr Harvey has since agreed not to invite the businessmen to the meeting, which may have to be moved from North Shore City Council’s headquarters to have any chance of getting Mr Banks to attend.

So the Chair and the Mayors can’t even agree on who to invite to a meeting, and where to have it.

Mr Williams is convinced Mr Banks is part of a right-wing smear campaign that includes Mr Bhatnagar, Mr Banks’ former press secretary Cameron Brewer, who now heads the Newmarket Business Association, and the right-wing blog Whaleoil run by Cameron Slater – son of Citizens & Ratepayers president John Slater, and a friend of Mr Banks.

Banks accidentially sent a text to Williams:

“I leave this to Whaleoil. TV3 are running this lunitic (sic) tonight?”

It was hardly a difficult guess that Whale would be responding to Mayor Williams latest outburst.

To me this just sums up why we need reform – no more squabbling Mayors all about patch protection.

The NZ Herald reports:

The Labour Party is sounding out Mt Albert voters on the byelection – including asking whether they want a “celebrity” MP and testing feelings on Judith Tizard re-entering Parliament.

Labour commissioned UMR Research group to hold several two-hour, focus group meetings of Mt Albert voters in the lead-up to the byelection, following the resignation of former Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Now focus groups are part and parcel of politics. However this is the first time I can recall a party commissioning one (or several) for a by-election. Polls are relatively common, but focus groups less so.

And when you consider that Mt Albert is Labour’s safest seat, that gives some indication as to the degree of nervousness within Labour’s ranks. You see focus groups are not cheap. I do not know UMR’s fees, but for four or five focus groups, the cost I suspect is a five figure sum.

So why would you spend so much money on such a safe seat? Because you are worried you may lose it to a Vote Twyford, Get Tizard campaign. There is no doubt that Twyford is the preferred candidate – but they are nervous over the power of such a campaign. They failed to get Tizard to relinquish her list place, so they are testing the waters.

Interestingly the Electoral Finance Act is no longer in force. So there is no $1,000 limit on an individual or organisation running its own education campaign in the by-election. A group could use direct mail to send a personalised letter to every voter (costs around $20,000) explaining how a vote for that nice Mr Twyford will result in that nice Miss Tizard becoming an MP again. And it could quote from various newspaper articles about the desirability of this. Maybe it could also remind people of s92A, what people say about it, and how Judith says it is a good law that should not be changed. Will Mt Albert residents want their Internet access at risk, if they vote for that nice Mr Twyford? Well, okay – that is probably stretching things too far – but you can see how much fun a third party campaign could have.

Anyway back to the article:

One participant said they were asked about Ms Tizard as part of a wider question about “celebrity” or well-known people standing for politics. Examples included Michael Jones, television presenter Paul Henry, comedian Mike King, actor Oscar Kightley and NZX boss Mark Weldon.

The focus group indicated concern about the possibility of a “Vote Twyford, get Tizard” campaign impacting on Labour’s chances.

That is an interesting sentence. Presumably the Herald has been in contact with one or more of the persons who took part in the focus groups. And they “indicated concern”.

Ms Tizard lost the Auckland Central seat to Nikki Kaye but would re-enter Parliament to fill list MP Phil Twyford’s list spot if he was the party’s Mt Albert candidate and won. The participant said the group members were asked what they knew about Mr Twyford – who lives in Kingsland and is favoured by Helen Clark.

There is another risk to having Tizard come back in to replace Twyford. No less than losing MMP. You see the Government has pledged to have a referendum on MMP. Now personally I don’t think people will vote for change (partly thanks to John Key). but if I was running an anti-MMP campaign, then I would use the Mt Albert by-election as a reason to dump MMP – the fact defeated electorate candidates can come back on the list.

Labour’s intensive polling of Mt Albert voters indicates the party is nervous about holding on to the electorate, which has always been viewed as a safe Labour seat, and where Helen Clark was MP for 27 years.

Just 2000 votes separated National and Labour in the party vote last election – and National’s popularity has soared since then.

Yes but the correct comparison is CR to CL on the party vote and that is 55% CL to 40% CR.

Labour Party president Andrew Little confirmed that the party had commissioned the focus groups and was polling in the electorate. He said it was common to test for important local issues.

Polling is more traditional. In Labour’s case it is going to be combining the polling and focus group results. The difficult scenario for them is if the poll shows that say Twyford can win the seat by 5% or so, but the focus groups show up to 10% of voters could change their votes if exposed to a Vote Twyford, get Tizard campaign. The question for Labour then is – do they risk it? Or in the words of Dirty Harry – do you feel lucky today punk?

If the polling shows Labour/Twyford way way ahead, then they can select him without worrying about a Twyford/Tizard campaign. But if things are closer, the head office may plump for another candidate such as Meg Bates.

Does anyone know the date of the selection meeting for Mt Albert for Labour? I understand media are allowed to attend and report on them, so I might pop along for the fun!

Some parts of the Goff interview showed he wasnt getting it, but others suggest he is getting it – and in fact may be able to pull off a political coup. Taking the interview in order:

PHIL Well actually it was interesting I went to a meeting of the Rotorua District Council and one of the Councillors go up there in front of all of his colleagues and the Mayor and said look I think the Labour government did a good job, he said I voted National last time, I think you got the big things right but the little things irritated me. Later on in the day he told the Council well he was re-examining his position, but I think that’s right, there were things that you do after nine years in office that irritate people, people think that there’s a need for a change, give the other guys a go and if we don’t like them we can toss them out in three years, that sort of feedback.

PAUL Are you still in denial, it was a massive rejection.

Not a good start. It isn’t just Clark. Labour are still acting as if they did nothing wrong but a couple of minor things. They think just hold their breath and they’ll be back in office in three years as the natural party of government.

PHIL Well my vision for New Zealand is it starts with a decent society affairs society, I grew up on my grandmother’s knee, her husband a war veteran from the first war died in 1934 right in the middle of the Depression, they lost their job, they lost their home, for me Labour was about a decent society that looks after all of its people, that treats people fairly that treats people with dignity and respect, so that’s the core of my political beliefs, and that could well become very relevant again in the next few months as more New Zealanders the Treasury say another 60,000 New Zealanders lose their jobs, people lose their homes and so on. But it’s about more than that, as Minister of Trade it was about having an economy that was innovative, efficient, competitive in the world. As Foreign Minister it was about being proud of your national identity, not kowtowing to any other country but standing up for the things that you believe in, believing that New Zealand is a country of 4.3 million people can still make a difference, and we did, and finally I think it’s about the environment, a sustainable environment, living up to that brand of clean green 100% pure New Zealand.

The personal stuff was good, and the ending was good. But Goff needs to stop talking so much about what he did as a Minister. No one cares any more – the sad reality. For nine years it has been about campaigning on his record, but to win in 2011, it will be ablout campaigning on a new vision.

PAUL Let’s get to the nitty gritty what policies do you think will have to change, for example can I ask you about smacking, for example should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?

PHIL Well my answer to that is no it shouldn’t be a criminal offence or we should not have people following up and prosecuting parents for a smack in that context, but remember 110 out of a 122 MPs voted for that legislation including every member of the National Party.

Now here I give Goff 9/10. He has said a smack for correctional purposes should not be a criminal offence.  If he comes out and pledges that Labour will respect the results of the upcoming referendum, he;ll leave National wrong-footed and dramatically brand Goff Labour as different from Clark Labour.

Frankly I am not sure he has the authority to force it onto his caucus. But if he can, then it could be a turning point in his leadership. He needs to take some risks, and committing Labour to respect the results of the referendum would be worth the risk.

PAUL What about the Maori seats, take a stand, there’s 160,000 in Auckland shouldn’t they be able to campaign on their own don’t you think?

PHIL Well that’s the Royal Commission’s argument for it, I’ve got an open mind on that, what I’m saying at this stage is that at least it should have been consulted on, it shouldn’t have been scrapped without any consultation.

This is my criticism of Labour. They will criticise what the Government is doing, but won’t actually say what they would do.

PHIL Oh John’s a very nice guy, I think his strength is that he comes across as a middle New Zealander, he comes across as somebody that people can relate to as a human being, I think that’s good for him, what are his weaknesses, I think that his weaknesses are that the policies that’s he’s pursuing on the advice of Crosby Textor are not what he actually believes, and you can see that for the things that John Key said before he became leader compared to what he’s saying now he’s the leader, whether it’s Iraq or whether it’s a range of different issues, he used to push the party down a right wing path, he’s been told that that’s not good you can never win middle New Zealand that way, he’s created a new face but is that the reality of what underlies the National Party and John Key. The electorate will get to see that in course.

Labour don’t realise that no one outside the beltway cares one fuck about Crosby Textor. And Goff is going to get a nasty surprise if he keeps trying to push that Key is a nasty neo-conservative in drag. It did not work in 2008, and will work even less now.

Overall a pretty good interview. Not great, but with some promise. His statement on the anti-smacking law was excellent, and if he follows up by getting his party to promise to respect the referendum results, then he would put the Government on the back foot, and gain some real momentum for Labour.

Goff traditionally has had some pretty good instincts. He needs to be prepared to break with the past more, and trust his instincts.

UPDATE: NZPA have reported that Goff has clarified his comments and says there is no change to their policy on the law. A pity and lost opportunity – it would have left National looking defensive if he had. Now instead he just reminds people of Labour’s association with it.