McCarten on Mana
November 28th, 2010 at 11:59 am by David FarrarMatt McCarten looks back on Mana:
These days you wouldn’t know what the differences were between the two main parties. Listening to Labour’s Kris Faafoi and National’s Hekia Parata at candidate meetings over the campaign, I’m still unsure if there’s any difference.
The only point where they disagreed was over Labour’s disingenuous promise to take GST off fresh fruit and veges to help “struggling families”.
However, at the same time, Labour said it would keep GST at 15 per cent. That means the weekly family groceries would still be more expensive than they were before the GST increase.
That is pathetic, really. But Faafoi insisted that, wherever he went, his supporters were enthusiastic with the extra scraps thrown their way.
I’m not sure the founders of the Labour Party would have bothered sacrificing their blood, sweat and tears for a socialist paradise if they had known their difference a century later to the capitalist class was GST off stuff they grew in their gardens.
Indeed not exactly bold and visionary.
Despite that, I always assumed Labour would retain Mana but I was amazed how close the final result was. At the beginning of the campaign I said that if I couldn’t get a close third or second place in the last week, then any support I had would slip to Labour.
We had identified about 2000 supporters but, in the last few days, Labour’s message that I was splitting the vote resonated andit would have been a loss – most of those people moved to Labour to keep Parata out.
They were right, too. If I had retained my earlier support, Labour certainly would have lost. Retaining the seat by just over 1000 votes is a wake-up call for Labour.
I understand around 1 in five people in Cannons Creek etc were initially saying they would vote for McCarten. If that had happened, but the Labour vote machine is quite formidable.
This brings me to whether there’s a space for a new party if Labour continues to drift. This idea was surprisingly raised on the Labour Party-aligned Standard Blog during the Mana by-election. It suggested I’d been in cahoots with Hone Harawira and Sue Bradford in planning such a project.
That is nonsense. I’ve never had any conversations about such a thing with either Harawira or Bradford. However, I do have enormous respect for both and, if such a coming together of people like them did happen, I wouldn’t stay away.
Shock horror, they made it up.
I believe in a strong progressive force within the Labour Party but my experience as the president of the New Labour Party and its successor, the Alliance, is that it’s also necessary to have a strong force outside that party.
Without such a presence outside, Labour tends to swing to the right to compete with National for the so-called centre vote. Labour’s been doing that for the past two and a half decades and trying to be National-lite won’t get Phil Goff into government next year.
So here’s my advice to Labour. If you don’t look after your left flank then it may well create an opportunity for another progressive party to appeal to people who were once reliably in your camp.
In the Mana campaign I promoted traditional Labour policies to working class people who loved them. Fortunately for you, enough of them went back to you last Saturday to save your party from humiliation.
Next year they may not. That’s the real lesson of the Mana by-election.
I can’t wait to see the reaction when Matt realises Labour policy is now to allow part-privatisations of SOE subsidiaries!
No tag for this post.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Labour said they will remove GST from fresh fruit and veges
Phil Goff | Monday, September 27, 2010 – 12:07
Phil Goff today launched a campaign against National’s GST increase to 15 per cent, announcing that Labour will remove GST from fresh fruit and vegetables.
Speaking at an event in Porirua Phil Goff said …
“A typical family of two adults, an adolescent and a five-year-old spends at least $42 a week on fruit and vegetables. They will save about $6 a week, or $300-$400 a year.
“Kiwis need to be able to afford to make choices around the type of food they put in their supermarket shopping trolleys. Fresh fruit and vegetables can’t become luxury items because of the increasing cost of living
So McCarten is misrepresenting this when he says –
However, at the same time, Labour said it would keep GST at 15 per cent. That means the weekly family groceries would still be more expensive than they were before the GST increase.
Labour quite clearly said there would be on GST on fresh fruit and veges, however that was handled at the check-out.
Not that Labour was promising much –
Phil Goff said Labour estimated loss of tax revenue at around $250m
$ 250 m divided by population 4.5 m gives $55.55 a year – or $1.06 a week: or just over 15 cents a day discount on fruit and veges.
But stiil, If McCarten will misrepresent one thing so obviously why pay attention to anything else he says?
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Poor deluded Matt – I suspect if you walked up to some of the voters that said they would vote for Matt, dressed as a monkey offering free bananas, if they voted for the Hairy bastard party, as long as you said your primary policy of free bananas to the workers was left, they would say they would vote that way.
I did some work for an iwi authority around internal voting capability, database technology to support that etc a few years back. They had an internal meeting about getting their people to enroll. The decision was made to give away a frozen lamb to each person who registered. Rationale being, from the Runanga Chair, that they were a bunch of lazy fuckers, give them something, they would turn up.
By god he was right
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Love the way Matt uses the phrase “socialist paradise” with a complete lack of irony. How bonkers that man must be..
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Of course above, first comment, where I said –
Labour quite clearly said there would be on GST on fresh fruit and veges
I meant to say–
Labour quite clearly said there would be NO on GST on fresh fruit and veges
Gees, you just can’t get good proof-readers these days …
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
– Puzzled in Ekatahuna
He isn’t, if a typical family of two adults, an adolescent and a five-year-old spends at least $190 on groceries excluding fresh fruit and vege.
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
McCarten says:
Why not?
Being Labour-lite worked for Key in ’08.
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I’m not sure the founders of the Labour Party would have bothered sacrificing their blood, sweat and tears for a socialist paradise if they had known their difference a century later to the capitalist class was GST off stuff they grew in their gardens.
I think Matt has this round the wrong way. The problem is not Labour looking more like the capitalists. It’s National looking more like the socialists. Indistinguishable, in fact, judging from the number of Labour policies rolled back in the last two years.
Shame on National.
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Removing GST from fresh fruit and veges is typical Labour. Rather than getting people to grow their own the Labour Party offers the lazy something for nothing. The Labour vote machine goes around people on welfare and in state houses and tells them National will take all that away if they do not support Labour. Just some threatening phone calls is all that it takes. They have even sent around mock eviction notices to make their point.
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Labour should quiver in fear of the votes Matt would have got if his dog hadn’t got into the polling station and eaten them.
Tremble Labour! Tremble! Mighty Matt will take your votes if you do not do his bidding. Should you fail to heed his call he will strike again, and this time he will make sure his dog is tied up!
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Poor Matt. The difficulty that he has is that after a period of time in government, most parties come to learn that there are some things that actually work and some things that do not work. Where Labour and National have essentially the same policies, it is for things that both parties have found to work, or found the electorate thinks will work.
Unfortunately for Matt, the voters of Mana and elsewhere in New Zealand don’t live on the planet that Matt comes from, where his policy ideas might work.
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Personally I think they’re the two worst politicians in the country. Out of all the politicians none are more ideologically driven to the point of being incapable of seeing any point of view other than their own.
In other words, they’re both fanatics.
It doesn’t matter what side a fanatic is on, they’re always bad news.
I would have thought Matt might have discerned that awhile back, say in the eighties.
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
Nearly winning Mana in 2010 should be for Key what nearly winning Remuera was for Lange in 1987. As Lange later recalled, that event made him realise how far Labour had deviated from its core principles.
Vote:November 28th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
But the welfare payroll vote stayed loyal to Labour and gave them the seat.
Vote:November 29th, 2010 at 5:11 am
The left exist in their own echo chamber and always hanker after a Messiah (like Obama) who can articulate the socialist dream in such a way that NZ voters will accept a green collectivist union run workers paradise as envisaged by the likes of McCarten, John Minto, Catherine Delahunty and Sue Bradford. Electoral realities like the fact that middle NZ is inherently conservative (with a small c) are minor irritations. McCarten’s commentary reflects that irritation and also his denial (along with Colin DuPlessis) about the campaign reality of small third parties and Independents who can never match the on-the-ground GOTV machines honed over decades by National and Labour.
David Seymour
Vote:Comparisons with the 1987 election are less relevant because the 4th Labour Gov’t was governing at the time from the economic right and Labour in 1987 was on the receiving end of reasonably strong anti-government swings in its safer urban working class seats. Whilst the Key government is a little too left leaning for my liking, it is not governing as far away from its historical ideological base as Labour was from its base in 1984-87.
November 29th, 2010 at 9:08 am
Actually, I don’t charge me any GST on the stuff I grow in my garden. Should I be?
Vote:November 29th, 2010 at 10:34 am
@kiwi in america “and also his denial (along with Colin DuPlessis) about the campaign reality of small third parties”
Vote:Do you believe anyone would vote for a candidate that stood up and said “don’t vote for me because I don’t think I’ll win”
Do you think for a monement I wasn’t aware of exactly where this was headed when I first started the race? I’ll paraphrase Harper Lee “true is not a man with a gun, it is knowing you are licked (beaten) before you start but starting anyway.”
And you know look at the great victory-Fafooi won and Mana lost. And equally if Parata won Mana would have lost. The way we do politics sucks. It promotes money over talent every time. I would submit that the reason we are all in the position we are in is that we have forgotten how to dream big dreams.