Change for Labour
December 29th, 2011 at 12:00 pm by David FarrarJordan Carter blogs:
Here’s my short list for starters, of a few problems we really need to face.
- a record low vote, lowest since the 1920s
- low and static membership in the past three years
- over centralisation of control over policy and strategy, with too little power for members
- an inward focused ‘divide the pie’ approach by too many party units
- a cultural acceptance of low to no organisation in too many places, and a related culture of federalism divided between electorates rather than a sense of a nation-wide, cooperating organisation
- too much belief that our connections with a wide range of Kiwis are strong, when they are weak
- a sense that we ‘own’ the voters that went to the greens and nzf, and that they are bound to return to us
- a perception among some parts of the electorate that we are out of touch with their hopes and dreams
- a structure that incentivises our inward focus
It’s a long list to which I am sure you can add things, friend or foe.
The main thing I would add is killing off the culture of the ends justify the means. Some will say there is no such culture, but it has been shown time after time again. There is the belief that they are inherently good, and that those from the centre-right are inherently bad, so hence anything which helps deliver Labour to victory is culturally acceptable.
Danyl at Dim Post has his own key thing to change:
I’d narrow almost all of this down to the problem of candidate selection. The primary goal of a candidate is to win votes for themselves and the party, but Labour doesn’t seem to value this quality in any of their candidates or MPs. They’re chosen for attributes that seem mysterious to the rest of the country, usually from a small pool of parliamentary staffers, unionists and activists and then farmed out to electorates to which they pretend some spurious connection (‘whanau in the region’).
I’ve just been doing an analysis of which Labour candidates did best at getting people who party vote National to vote for them – ie those who can attract support from across the spectrum. The three best are Ross Robertson, Lianne Dalziel and Clayton Cosgrove who attracted 27%, 24% and 21% of National voters respectively.
The three worse were Jeremy Greenbrook-Held (he was against John Key) who got 0.3%, Deborah Mahuta-Coyle who got 0.4% and the Taupo candidates whose name I can’t even recall who got 0.5% – ie less than 1 in 200 National party voters gave their candidate vote to the candidate from the second largest party. The average was 5.4%, or around 1 in 20.
Take Deborah Mahuta-Coyle, a Labour communications advisor who was given a high list position (although not high enough) and ran as a candidate in Tauranga, explaining that she grew up ‘further along State Highway One’ (SH1 does not run through, or near Tauranga). With Mahuta Coyle as a candidate Labour’s party vote in Tauranga was one of the worst in the entire country, declining by 33% (Labour’s nationwide decline was 20%).
And as I mentioned failed to attract even 1 in 200 of those who did vote National on the party vote. This is not to say that Mahuta-Coyle would not be a very good MP, but different qualities can be needed to also be a good candidate who can attract both party and electorate votes.
Nationals’ backbench electorate MPs drive the party’s Wellington based political staffers crazy, because they’re always running off to the Prime Minister and complaining about ‘some trivial little rural issue that no one in Wellington cares about’. Labour’s MPs are, increasingly, former political staffers who share the same elite background and Wellington-centric focus.
This is basically true, and it is important to have this tension. I’ve been a Wellington based staffer and certain MPs did drive you batty over issues you just knew were of no importance to the press gallery, the leadership etc. However those backbench MPs would go on to win massive majorities as they were in touch with their communities and helping stop their party from getting too out of touch with life outside Wellington. Parties need those backbench electorate MPs to keep raising those local issues.
Jordan endorses getting in touch with the voters, and Shearer’s said the same thing. Great. But Phil Goff spent a year ‘getting in touch with voters’ after the loss in 2008. The Labour team drove around the country in a bus singing songs and meeting with ‘real New Zealanders’ like, uh, Darren Hughes’ uncle. Goff then went back to Wellington and cheerfully went about promoting his own office staffers as electorate candidates, including Mahuta-Coyle.
The number of former political staff in the Labour caucus is large – Shearer himself, Robertson, Ardern, Hipkins for a start – three of the top four plus the Chief Whip. Then you also have Cosgrove, Faafoi, Mallard and David Clark. That’s almost a quarter of the caucus.
If Labour decided to operate selections on a one member one vote basis, it would solve Danyl’s problem, but also help solve Jordan’s problem of low and static membership, over-centralisation, low to no organisation in some places.
National’s electorate selection process is incredibly democratic. So democratic there are regular occasions when I groan at whom the locals have voted for, and I wish myself and a few mates could decide all the selections. But the reality is I would never want to give up a system where the grass-roots members decide whom their local candidate is – the benefits of having them do so are significant.
One person, one vote, is a pretty good basis for voting personally. Labour should try it some time.
Related posts:
- Labour candidates picking up National voters
- Split Voting Statistics
- Electorate Split Voting Statistics
- National candidates picking up Labour voters
December 29th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
How big is Labour’s membership? and how does it compare to other parties? I heard a rumor that it only has 6000 members and that this is small.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Why try and fix Liarbore, they’re doing a fantastic job
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
If more MPs drove party leaderships batty over constituency issues- well, rural constituency issues anyway- no social engineering would ever get done on the national level. There would be sunshine and happiness every day, and kittens would dance with unicorns. The only national policymaking that needs to be done is that required to repeal every law Labour governments put in, and to reverse every judicial extension of bogus ‘human rights’ law.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
National also could do with a few changes to envigorate it.
I’d like to start a discussion.
National’s list consisted of the sitting MP’s seeking reselection, aspiring candidates in Blue seats and aspiring candidates in Red Seats along with 2 sacrificial lambs in Epsom and Ohariu and 2 Board selections who did not stand for a seat. Another 6 were added on at the last minute in case of an electoral landslide if the month out polls came true.
The list was drawn up and consideration was given to geography, race, age, gender and ability.
The election result was that all the sitting members were returned bar Aaron Gilmore and Paul Quinn.
All the aspiring candidates in Blue seats were elected.
None of the aspiring candidates in Red seats were elected.
The two sacrificial lambs and two Board appointees were elected.
How will National persuade a top notch candidate to stand in a Red Seat? They will just be cannon foder.
I would prefer if the PM ranked 1-28 and then the 2 board appointees were chosen as 29 and 30. I’d then like to see the next 40 candidates ranked by a poll of all National party members. The poll would be preceded by the 40 candidates impressing the members at a series of regional meetings and as guest speakers at electorate meetings.
Incumbency would take second place to ability.
Lowly ranked MP’s would have to win their electorates.
(in 2011 this would probably have affected adversely just Chris Auchinvole)
Members would have a direct rather than indirect method of partial list ranking. This could help boost membership numbers.
Quality candidates in Red seats could gain a winnable list position. (This could attract better candidates)
Incumbent MP’s would not have a sinecure and would have to find merit with the general membership or lose out. no hard working member need fear this
Electorates would not struggle to find willing speakers.
The drawbacks of this plan would be that selection meetings would have to be a fraction earlier to give 6 months campaigning time and potential candidates would have to show their hand earlier.
It would take some power and patronage from the PM making life harder for the Whips.
The current system is not adequate. Change is required. But how much and how drastic?
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
The main thing I would add is killing off the culture of the ends justify the means. Some will say there is no such culture, but it has been shown time after time again. There is the belief that they are inherently good, and that those from the centre-right are inherently bad, so hence anything which helps deliver Labour to victory is culturally acceptable.
Yes but self-righteous fuck-wittery is an actual requirement in their candidate selection rules so if you’re not one of those you never get past the first hurdle.
It may not be in their written published material but clearly they apply that rule since every MP they’ve ever had meets that criteria so draw your own conclusion.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Quite a thoughtful piece by Jordan.
But the issue he identifies is not specific to Labour. Our entire democratic system has been hijacked by parliamentary insiders. Politicians are no longer the smart ordinary citizens who they used to be, but an elite sub-set of the same bureaucracy who they are in theory, sent to parliament to govern.
The party that dominates the next 20 years will be the one that delivers ordinary kiwis as candidates – not necessarily straight nor gay, gender-irrelevant, old or young, not necessarily tertiary qualifed, but with bucketloads of common sense.
A stint in a parliamentary office will in future be seen as a barrier to overcome, not a head start.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 6:49 pm
Orewa1 That’s because there are no term limits. Thus there is a professional ‘political class’ in most Western democracies. Being insiders themselves, they quickly become dominated by a inside the beltway mindset.
cheers
David Prosser
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Fisiani – Nats Board can appoint up to 5 list candidates under its constitution. If you want to try and change the way Nats do things, then join up asnd lobby from the inside. There will always be ‘hopefuls’ for hopeless seats, they are the heroes of the political process. Their main job is to get as many party votes in their patch as possible. If they run a good campaign for the party vote, they are better placed when seeking a better chance candidacy next time round.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Peter – you miss the point. Our democratic system is the property of the whole populace, not just the 1% who count themselves as political activists. It should never, ever be that the only way to effect change is to join a political party.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
@peterwn
There will always be ‘hopefuls’ for hopeless seats, they are the heroes of the political process. Their main job is to get as many party votes in their patch as possible. If they run a good campaign for the party vote, they are better placed when seeking a better chance candidacy next time round.
Heroes – you must be joking! More like the Charge of the Light Brigade. Bet you reckon they were heroes.
Vote:Give up your job for 6 months and door knock. How much does that cost?
Wave the flag and raise the Party Vote , Hip Hip Hooray.
Can you provide any shred of evidence for the claim that they would be better placed next time? Or is that just heroic wishful thinking?
December 29th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
DPF:
Just think Roger Payne, huh?
DPF:
Roger Payne is not someone I would ever want to be an MP. But DPF’s admission of his own role here doesn’t equate very well with his assertion of “local democracy in action” within the National Party.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
To be fair DPF, it is not only Labour who have the “the ends justify the means” mindset.
Look at the Greens, one co leader claimed he knew nothing about the orchestrated campaign to vandalise National Party billboards yet the other co leader was right at the heart of the matter. To the left in general there is such a thing (as coined by Trotter) as “noble corruption”.
Vote:December 29th, 2011 at 11:22 pm
I chuckle when I see a Green party [supporter/member/mp/?] going on about democratic process for getting people in parliament. Yeah good one toad…
Jordan, I’m surprised he is still blogging. Really he takes a bath if anyone ever challenges him. Sure he’s got some good ideas but he’s hopelessly partisan and can’t see any other solution than a leftist clap-trap abomination of redistribution in all cases for everything. He’s a Muppet – possibly a reasonably smart Muppet but that’s completely wasted because he’s a party man through and through, any halfwit can vote the party line without challenge to status quo.
Vote:December 30th, 2011 at 1:09 am
Toad – Roger Payne was automatically expelled when he brok his solemn signed word and stood for Chriostian Heritage after failing to win selection in 2002. You may welcome oath breakers, but I regard a signed contract as a serious matter and anyone who goes back on their written word should not expect to be welcome back as a member, let alone as a candidate.
Or are you telling me Phil U is welcome back into the Greens?
Vote:December 30th, 2011 at 9:33 am
DPF Says: “Or are you telling me Phil U is welcome back into the Greens?”
Haha – C’mon toad, when are you going to spill the beans?
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Vote:December 30th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
the rules are only an inconvenience to the greens, they are to be ignored when its expedient.
so for example when they want to do some more troughing, they ‘convince’ nandor to resign early, then ‘convince’ the next two people on their list (one who took a bit more convincing in the media) to not take their seat so that Wussel can come in and campaign on the taxpayers dime rather than their own.
so whenever they bleat about being the most democratic party or some other rubbish, remember they will throw whoever they want under the bus if it means they get what they want.
Vote: