Labour MPs in 2009
I’ve done the above table ranking the productivity of the 44 Labour MPs, in 2009, on three criteria. They are:
- No of press releases issued, and the associated rank (1 is most, 44 is least). This is based on a search of Scoop for their name in releases from Labour.
- No of news stories mentioning them, and the associated rank. This is based on a search of the NZPA database for political stories mentioning them.
- No of written questions asked by them, and the associated rank. This is based on a search of the Parliamentary PQs database.
So you can see the output and rank for each category, plus an overall rank based on an average of the three category ranks.
To some degree the three categories represent inputs, outputs and outcomes. The written PQs are the inputs – the grunt work you do to find out information for your portfolio. Some MPs actually abuse the facility, but overall it is a reasonable indicator of activity.
The media releases are the outputs – how often an MP is actually putting a statement out there for the media to pick up.
The news stories are the outcomes – how often activity by that MP actually makes the news. Of course not all news stories are positive ones, but overall a harder working MP will get more news stories.
I have not surveyed the number of oral questions they ask, or the number of speeches in the House. The reasons for this is that the leadership tend to allocate these out or roster people on for these. It is not the same as MP generated activity.
People may wonder why I have only done these for Labour. Well Government backbenchers are not actually encouraged to do press releases (except on local issues) or ask PQs. It is only for an Opposition party, these stats make sense. I did a similar survey of National MPs in 2008.
So what do these stats tell us, starting from the bottom:
- Ashraf Choudhary is in bottom place. Originally I had him with even lower stats as I was searching on Choudary, not Choudhary, but even after I corrected for this, he remained on bottom place.
- Next two lowest are Rajen Prasad and Raymond Huo.
- Steve Chadwick is Senior Labour Whip, so she is not expected to be doing a lot of releases.
- Carol Beaumont and Stuart Nash have little activity for new MPs wanting to win electorate seats.
- Nanaia Mahuta has had family issues, and Damien O’Connor only entered halfway through the year, explaining their fairly low ratings.
- Phil Goff’s rating is a bit misleading. He has put out by far the most releases and had many times more news stories. However he is only ranked 9th as he has done almost no PQs. Now in reality he is in 1st place, as the Leader never does his own PQs – they are done by other MPs.
- Very interesting that Grant Robertson is in No 2 place. Is he already Leader in Waiting?
- Shane Jones can be a talented performer, but his lack of activity is part of the reason why his colleagues are unlikely to make him Leader. He prefers to rely on his natural showmanship, rather than do the hard yards to a degree.
- In terms of press releases the top five are Goff, G Robertson, Chauvel, Anderton and Cunliffe.
- In terms of news coverage the top five are Goff, King, Shearer (due to by-election), Cunliffe and Mallard.
- Those MPs who have done less than 250 (average one per work day) PQs, releases or stories are (in order) Prasad, Choudhary, Chadwick, Horomia, O’Connor, Huo, and Dalziel.
Now these are a fairly crude measure of activity. I’ve used them because they are totally quantifiable, not because they are necessarily the best way to rank MPs.
Having said that, there is some correlation. MPs seem as future Ministers such as G Robertson, Twyford and Chauvel are in the top ranks, while I don’t think anyone is betting money on when Ashraf Choudhary will become a Minister!
I’ll update these in early 2011, and people can see what changes, if any, there has been.
April 7th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Shane Jones has a few other reasons why he may never be considered leadership material. These reasons have Chinese names.
April 7th, 2010 at 10:44 am
I love it when Adolf pretends to have super secret insider information. Always good for a giggle.
Go on Adolf, spill the non-existent beans!
x
S
April 7th, 2010 at 10:52 am
@Sonic: See DPF’s next post on “The Yang Liu case”. I assume this is what Adolf Fiinkensein is referring to. I could be wrong though.
April 7th, 2010 at 10:56 am
JiveKitty – got it in one. Andrew Little will be watching closely as two of his rivals for Labour’s post-2011 leadership (Jones and Cunliffe) spontaneously combust.
April 7th, 2010 at 11:05 am
DPF – I would do these rankings a little differently. Use the cardinal numbers rather than the ranks, cos using only ranks throws away a lot of information. Then standardise the raw numbers to be multiples of the caucus mean. Finally either do a simple average or weight them for which is most important (say .5 weight on media, .33 on pressers, and .17 on PQs), and rank on the basis of those.
If you do this with a simple average, the top 10 are (in order): Goff, King, Mallard, Hipkins, Cosgrove, G Robertson, Twyford, Chauvel, Cunliffe, Dyson.
If you do it with the weighting I suggested, you get (in order): Goff, King, Mallard, Chauvel, Cosgrove, Twyford, Cunliffe, G Robertson, Anderton, Hipkins.
I think both these lists make more intuitive sense than a list putting Goff 9th.
[DPF: Ta. I didn't just add them up as the PQs would dominate. I like the idea of grading them as multiples of the caucus mean (or median) and will re run it with that.
I thought of weighting the three criteria (and tend to agree with your weightings) but didn't want my subjective view of weightings to be part of it. However can do weighted and unweighted as you have done.
Another calculation I may do is ratio of news stories to press releases, which may indicate which MPs are being somewhat ineffective with their releases.
I'm working on similar stats for Cabinet also, and hope to have next week]
April 7th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Goff clearly has trouble writing. National standards for him perhaps?
April 7th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Jin Anderton a Labour MP? Is he no longer receiving all that extra funding on behalf of the Progressives?
Sheesh, that sounds like a Tui billboard in the making …
April 7th, 2010 at 11:55 am
In these times when increased productivity is an almost universal mantra, I wonder how we came to regard asking fatuous questions, putting out self promoting puffery, and getting talked about for all the wrong reasons, as a measure of these people’s usefulness to society.
I would rather know: to how many constituents did they give legitimate help; what role did they play in rationalizing our arcane legislation; and in what way did they make life better for New Zealanders.
[DPF: None of these are quantifiable from public sources.]
April 7th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Well put, Brian, I am surprised there was not a fourth indicator: number of reams of photocopy paper consumed.
April 7th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Good points Brian. Interesting that David Shearer is quite high on the list even though he didn’t actually come into parliament until a few months after the rest.
April 8th, 2010 at 7:49 am
DPF + Rob – what dreary old MSM driven people you are.
April 8th, 2010 at 8:12 am
Trevor: I’d like to do an analysis of Red Alert also, but you may be able to do it better from the backend. Would be good to publish:
1 – number of posts per MP
2 – number of comments per MP
3 – average number of comments per post from each MP (ie which ones get the feedback)
4 – top ten posts in terms of no of page views
5 – top ten posts in terms of no of comments
April 8th, 2010 at 8:18 am
Fire the bottom five.