Coddington on Hide
Deborah is no fan of Rodney’s, so makes this column more significant:
The “Politician Wally Award” goes not to Rodney Hide but to the Act MPs who tried to dump him as leader. Hello? Heather Roy, Roger Douglas and John Boscawen – Hide’s the only reason you’re in Parliament, plus the only reason Act still exists, despite his stuff-ups and yes, they’re huge. I’m Hide’s least favourite person but the three coup plotters – who should be sacked except Act has no one credible to take their places – seriously underestimate his intelligence, his extraordinary ability to recover from disaster, and his single-minded determination to achieve his goals (think weight loss, going alcohol-free, winning Epsom).
You have a man down, you lift him up and carry him a while, not press his nose into the mud and think you can take his place.
Some good advice from Deborah.
December 27th, 2009 at 11:25 am
ACT’s stuffed regardless. We need a new right wing party to fill the void to the right of centre in NZ politics. If it can’t get into Parliament with an electoral seat or through MMP’s pandering to minorities, it could become an important faction within National.
Coddington didn’t particularly impress as an MP, and she was just a list MP as were the ACT MPs she is rubbishing.
Coddington may be on the wrong track about Rodney’s single minded determination, too. That drive to dance, to lose weight, to go dry, to lift heavy dumbells, to run marathons, and to swim lakes, was followed by a need for a new and young lover as is typical of the heroes in Ayn Rand novels, loved by many ACT followers, such as the Zappers in Christchurch.
However, the Rand-fiction I can do anything, become anybody bullshit lost us the old firebrand Rodney that so appealed with his dirt digging, his quips, and his humour. That drained out of Rodney with the beer and the superfluous flesh. Gone was our political Robin Hood.
December 27th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Really Jack?
How do you account then for a 10,000 increase in majority in Epsom in 2008?
December 27th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I agree with Jack5, NZ desperately needs a party for those of us on the right, not really sure what the Nats stand for they just seem to flop around in the wind. We need a party that will actually speak out and not be afraid to do so. Act has been silenced by the Maori Party, they seem to have a serve case of laryngitis. It’s now they should be pushing hard and making a noise, what have they got to lose. If they are content to sit meekly on the reserve benches hoping that Shonkey will give them the nod then they are waisting their time. They may never feel the reins of power they have no right to, they must earn it. For to long this country has chosen the path of mediocrity and socialism, it’s way past time we travelled a different course.
December 27th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Rodney will rise up again comes the election time.
December 27th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Side show bob, even if I agreed with you, which I don’t, history tells us most people wouldn’t vote for it anyway. We need to face reality. Most Kiwis are in a malaise. They’re egalitarian and soft in the centre. That’s why the two centrist parties get 85% of the votes at elections. It ain’t rocket science.
December 27th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Mr Farrar – you should quote Coddington’s final two sentences. They are the icing on the cake.
December 27th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Gooner posted at 12.56:
1. Rodney Hide was up against Richard Worth, who had held the seat in 1999 and 2002. Worth as a politician on the National List has since come down in flames.
2. The perks mess of Hide surfaced after the general election. The hubris was still to peak when the 2008 election was held. The nemesis would follow that peak.
Those who set the ACT list for the latest election narrowed the base of the party by ruling out the fart-tax protester with deep agriculture experience, and causing the defection of Stephen Franks with his legal skills and political ability. Unregulated capitalism is at present out of popular favour after the international property and banking turmoil and finance-company carnage in New Zealand. So sadly ACT with its tight focus on Friedman economics would struggle to win new supporters if an election were held now. How much tougher it would be for Rodney H. in Epsom would depend on the candidate National put up.
December 27th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Deborah Coddington turned out to be a pathetic MP. As they say, ‘don’t give up your day job’ – and she is back in journalism, having been far too busy at night for her own good while an MP!!
December 27th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Coddington!
The woman who was Deputy Leader of the Libertarianz! Left to join Act, and gerrymander a seat in the House! Did nothing but swan off to the UK and take part in some Wally Award for tyro Journalists!
A woman last seen being chased or chasing something around the Parliamentary grounds at 2.30 a.m.
A Fruit Cake and a Flake who ditched the ACT Party after the change in Leaders to Rodney, who minged about on the fringes of a lot of things before marrying a farm and income, – Has now proclaimed herself the Mother of the Right?
The woman professed Ayn Rand for Gods Sake! She believes in “Objectivism so she said! She is a failure of mammoth proportions, and is the resaon we need a serious Sunday paper in this country. Dear Lord Rodney, spare us from the pretensions of this looney member of anything, – failed politician and reporter.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:16 am
“Unregulated capitalism is at present out of popular favour after the international property and banking turmoil and finance-company carnage in New Zealand.”
Unregulated Capitalism (read true free markey capitalism….and thats regulated far more efficiently by itself than any politician) has never been IN popular favour for the last hundred odd years anywhere in to really count.The latest financial crisis was due to free market capitalism being absent…and state controlled economics failing yet again.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:04 am
James posted at 8.16 am
It is absurd to say state-controlled economics and absence of free-market capitalism caused the finance-company mass collapse in NZ, which has led to mainly old investors losing or having locked up four or five billion dollars. What state controls? Please explain James how state controls caused this disaster.
Internationally, the financial crisis owed much to absence of regulation of new financial instruments such as credit default swaps. The property bubble which underlay the leadup to the crisis, both in America, and internationally, owed much to the hands off policy of Alan Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve Board. Interestingly, Greenspan was one of the key members of the cult that grew up around Ayn Rand in her lifetime.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Gooner you are of course correct but I feel the time is fast coming when Kiwis will seriously have to stand up for what they believe. NZ can not continue on the present path, we can’t afford to. Sure we might bullshit ourselves for a few more years and follow the path of “egalitarianism” but “egalitarianism” is slowly bleeding us dry. Sooner or later it’s a hard swing to the right or embrace the left and the total despair of socialism, we will have no choice. This is probably now true throughout the whole world. Will it be servitude and obedience to the state or will it be freedom, at the moment it looks like the first choice is leading the race.
December 28th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
good god, all these so called experts on ACT. If National was a perfect example of a centre right party with the best Candidates and water tight ideology we wouldn’t have needed ACT. However we all know that the Nats are overall bloody uesless at leading the centre right and have a history that is hardly glittering.
Coddington was a mistake – as I am sure the Nats can point to dozens of MPs who also fall into that category. So bloody what? This so called coup was a dog whistle and too many of you fell for it.
December 28th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Clint Heine’s 2.18 post:
Hogwash, Clint. ACT’s creaking.
The question’s not whether Coddington was a mistake – everyone seems to agree on that – but whether the remodelling of Hide was a much more important mistake.
We need a right-of-centre party, correct. But whether we need ACT in its current state is debatable.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
What is really needed is a “tea-party movement as the right has begun in the US. A group of people without major political backing to pull the country back to its roots – roots in neither Labour or National, or the Greens, but rather in a simnple fair minded decency. We are however hampered by one major deficiency. We do not have a real and functioning Constitution.
Maybe as an aim, we could start to look at how one would achieve one?